“We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “sola fides” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us.It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]The contrary “delusion,” he says, had been invented and encouraged by the preachers, whose proceedings were infinitely worse than any mere “numbering of the people.” He storms against the clergy and vigorously foments the social discontent. To build churches, or found livings, etc., was mere outward show; “such works simply gave rise to avarice, desire for the praise of men and other vices.” “You think that as a priest you are free from sin, and yet you nourish so much jealousy in your heart; if you could slay your neighbour with impunity you would do so and then go on saying Mass. Surely it would not be surprising were a thunderbolt to smite you to the earth.” In order to complete the effect of this demagogic outburst he mocks at the sermons, with their legends “about the old ass,” etc., and their quotations from ancient philosophers, who were “not only against the Gospel, but even against God Himself.”The result was stupendous, especially in the case of the young men at the University whom the Humanists had disposed in Luther’s favour. On the day after Luther’s departure one of his sympathisers, a Canon of the Church of St. Severus, who had taken part in the solemn reception accorded Luther on his arrival in the town, was told by the Dean, Jakob Doliatoris, that he was under excommunication and might no longer attend the service in choir. On his complaining to the University, of which he was amember, the students intervened with demonstrations in his favour.[997]Luther heard of this only through certain unreliable reports and wrote to Spalatin: “They apprehend still worse things at Erfurt. The Senate pretends to see nothing of what is going on. The clergy are reviled. The young apprentices are said to be in league with the students. We are about to see the prophecy fulfilled: ‘Erfurt has become a new [Husite] Prague.’” Previous to this, in the same letter, he had said of his adversaries in the Empire: “Let them be, perhaps the day of their visitation is at hand.”[998]Soon after, however, he became rather more concerned, perhaps owing to further reports of the unrest, and began to fear for the “good name and progress of the Evangel,” in consequence of the acts of brutality committed. “It is indeed quite right,” he wrote to Melanchthon, “that those who persist in their impiety should have their courage cooled,” but in this “Satan makes a mockery of us”; he sees in a mystical vision “The Judgment Day,” the approaching end of the world at Erfurt, and the fig tree, as had been foretold, growing up, covered with leaves, but bare of fruit because the cause of the Evangel could not make its way.[999]In July, 1521, there broke out in the town the so-called “Pfaffensturm.”In a few days more than sixty parsonages had been pulled down, libraries destroyed and the archives and tithe registers of the ecclesiastical authorities ransacked; little regard was shown for human life. A little later seven clergy-houses were again set on fire. Meanwhile the Lutheran preachers, with the fanatical Lang at their head, were at liberty to stir up the people.[1000]The ruin of the University was imminent; many parents withdrew their sons, fearing lest they should be infected with the “Husite heresy.” The customary Catholic services were, however,performed as usual, but the end of Catholic worship could be foreseen owing to the ever-increasing growth of “evangelical freedom.” Renegade monks, especially Luther’s former Augustinian comrades, preached against “the old Church as the mother of faithlessness and hypocrisy”; Lang spoke of the monasteries as “dens of robbers.” Under the attacks of the preachers one human ordinance after another fell to the ground. Fasting, long prayers, founded Masses, confraternities, everything in fact, disappeared before the new liberty, value being allowed only to temporal works of mercy. The avarice of the “shorn, anointed priestlings” was no longer to be stimulated by the people’s money. “Ruffianly crowds showed their sympathy with the preachers by yelling and shouting in church. Theological questions were debated in market-places and taverns, men, women and boys expounded the Bible.”[1001]Luther, through Lang, urged the Augustinians at Erfurt, who still remained true to their monastic Rule, to apostatise; he merely expressed the wish that there should be no “tumults” against the Order. Lang was to “defend the cause of the Evangel”[1002]at the next Convention of the Saxon Augustinians, a meeting which took place at Epiphany, 1522 (above, p. 337). Lang justified his apostasy in a work in which he expressly appeals to the new doctrines on faith and good works. The exodus of the monks from their convent was not, however, carried out as quietly as Luther would have wished; he dreaded the “slanders of the foes of the Evangel” and was depressed by the immorality of the inhabitants of Erfurt, and by his own experience with his followers. He spoke his mind to Lang: “The power of the Word is still concealed, or else you pay too little heed to it. This surprises me greatly. We are just the same as before, hard, unfeeling, impatient, sinful, intemperate, lascivious and combative, in short, the mark of the Christian, true charity, is nowhere to be found. Paul’s words are fulfilled in us: We have God’s Word on our lips, but not in power (cp. 1 Cor. iv. 20).”[1003]In 1524 Lang married the rich widow of an Erfurt fuller.Those who had been unfaithful to their vows and priestlyobligations, and then acted as preachers of the new faith, gave the greatest scandal by their conduct.Many letters dating from 1522, 1523 and 1524, written by Lutheran Humanists such as Eobanus Hessus, Euricius Cordus and Michael Nossenus, who, with disgust, were observing their behaviour, bore witness to the general deterioration of morals in the town, more particularly among the escaped monks and nuns.[1004]“I see,” Luther himself wrote to Erfurt, “that monks are leaving in great numbers for no other reason than for their belly’s sake and for the freedom of the flesh.”[1005]Meanwhile, discussions were held in the Erfurt circle of the semi-theologian Lang, on the absence of free-will in man and on “the evil that God does.” Lang applied to Luther for help. “I see that you are idlers,” was his reply, “though the devil provides you with abundance of occupation in what he plots amongst you. You must not argue concerning the evil that God does. It is not, as you fancy, the work of God, but a ceasing to work on God’s part. We desire what is evil when He ceases to work in us and leaves our nature free to fulfil its own wickedness. Where He works the result is ever good. Scripture speaks of such ceasing to work on God’s part as a ‘hardening.’ Thus evil cannot be wrought [by God], since it is nothing (‘malum non potest fieri, cum sit nihil’), but it arises because what is good is neglected, or prevented.”This was one of the ethical doctrines proclaimed by Luther and Melanchthon which lay at the back of the new theory of good works. Luther enlarged on it in startling fashion in his book “De servo arbitrio” (above, p. 223 ff.).Bartholomew Usingen, the learned and pious Augustinian, who had once been Luther’s professor and had enjoyed his especial esteem, witnessed with pain and sadness the changes in the town and in his own priory. The former University professor, now an aged man, fearlessly took his place in the yet remaining Catholic pulpits, particularlyat St. Mary’s, assured of the support and respect of the staunch members of the fold who flocked in numbers to hear him. There he protested against the new doctrines and the growing licentiousness, though he too had to submit to unheard-of insults, abuse and even violent interruptions of his sermons when emissaries of the Lutherans succeeded in forcing their way in. He also laboured against religious innovations with his pen.“If we are taught,” says Usingen, “that faith alone can save us, that good works are of no avail for salvation and do not merit a reward for us in heaven, who will then take the trouble to perform them?—Why exhort men even to do what is right if we have no free-will? And who will be diligent in keeping the commandments of God if the people are taught that they cannot possibly be kept, and that Christ has already fulfilled them perfectly for us?”[1006]Usingen points out to the preachers, especially to Johann Culsamer, the noisiest of them all: “The fruits of your preaching, the excesses and scandals which spring from it, are known to the whole world; then indeed shall the people exert themselves to tame their passions when they are told repeatedly that by faith alone all sin is blotted out, and that confession is no longer necessary. Adultery, unchastity, theft, blasphemy, calumny and such other vices increase to an alarming extent, as unfortunately we see with our own eyes (‘patet per quotidianum exercitium’).”[1007]“The effect of your godless preaching is,” he says, on another occasion, “that the faithful no longer perform any works of mercy, and for this reason the poor are heard to complain bitterly of you.”[1008]“The rich no longer trouble about the needy, since they are told in sermons that faith alone suffices for salvation and that good works are not meritorious. The clergy, who formerly distributed such abundant alms from the convents and foundations, are no longer in a position to continue these works of charity because, owing to your attacks, their means have been so greatly reduced.”[1009]The worthy Augustinian had shown especial marks of favour to his pupil Lang, and it grieved him all the more deeply that he, by the boundless animosity he exhibited in his discourses, should have set an example to the other preachers in the matter of abuse, whether of the Orders, the clergy or the Papacy. He said to him in 1524, “I recalled you from exile [i.e. transferred you from Wittenberg to thestudium generaleat Erfurt] ... and this is the distinction you have won for yourself; you were the cause of the Erfurt monks leaving their monastery; there hadbeen fourteen apostasies and now yours makes the fifteenth; like the dragon of the Apocalypse when he fell from heaven, you dragged down with you the third part of the stars.”[1010]Usingen mentions the “report,” possibly exaggerated, that at one time some three hundred apostate monks were in residence at Erfurt; many ex-nuns were daily to be seen wandering about the streets.[1011]Most of these auxiliaries who had flocked to the town in search of bread, were uneducated clerics who drew upon themselves the scorn of the Humanists belonging to the new faith. Any of these clerics who were capable of speaking in public, by preference devoted themselves to invective. Usingen frequently reproached his foes with their scurrility in the pulpit, their constant attacks on the sins and crimes of the clergy, and their violent reprobation and abuse of institutions and customs held in universal veneration for ages, all of which could only exercise a pernicious influence on morality. “Holy Scripture,” he says in a work against the two preachers Culsamer and Mechler, “commands the preacher to point out their sins to the people and to exhort them to amendment. But the new preaching does not speak to the people of their faults but only of the sins of the clergy, and thus the listener forgets his own sins and leaves the church worse than he entered it.” And elsewhere: “Invective was formerly confined to the viragoes of the market-place, but now it flourishes in the churches.” “Even your own hearers are weary of your everlasting slanders. Formerly, they say, the gospel was preached to us, but such abuse and calumny was not then heard in the pulpit.”[1012]It could not be but regarded as strange that Luther himself, forgetful of his former regard, went so far as to egg on his pupils and friends at Erfurt against his old professor. Usingen certainly had never anticipated such treatment at his hands. “He has, as you know,” Luther wrote to Lang, on June 26, “become hard-headed and full of ingrained obstinacy and conceit. Therefore, in your preaching, you must draw down upon his folly the contempt that such coarse and inflated blindness deserves.” As from his early years he had never been known to yield to anyone,Luther gave up the hope of seeing the stubborn sophist “yield to Christ”; he sees here the confirmation of the proverb: “No fool like an old fool.”[1013]Carried away by his success at Erfurt, Luther urged the preachers not to allow their energies to flag.It is true that in an official Circular-Letter to the Erfurt Congregation, despatched on July 10, 1522, and intended for publication, his tone is comparatively calm; the superscription is: “Martin Luther, Ecclesiastes of Wittenberg, to all the Christians at Erfurt together with the preachers and ministers, Grace and Peace in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.”[1014]Therein, at Lang’s request, dealing with the controversy which had arisen at Erfurt regarding the veneration of the Saints, he declares that whilst there was certainly no warrant of Scripture for Saint-worship, it ought not to be assailed with violence (i.e. not after the fashion of the fanatics whose doings were a public danger). He trusts “we shall be the occasion of no rising” and points to his own example as showing with what moderation he had ever proceeded against the Papists: “As yet I have not moved a finger against them, and Christ has destroyed them with the sword of His mouth” (2 Thess. ii. 8).[1015]“Leave Christ to act” in true faith—such is the gist of his exhortation in this letter so admirably padded with Pauline phrases—but despise and avoid the “stiff-necked sophists”; “Whoever stinks, let him go on stinking.” He concludes, quite in the Pauline manner: “May Our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you together with us in all the fulness of the knowledge of Himself to the honour of His Father, Who is also ours, to Whom be Glory for ever and ever, Amen. Greet Johann Lang [and the other preachers]: George Forchheim, Johann Culhamer, Antony Musam, Ægidius Mechler and Peter Bamberger. Philip, Jonas and all our people greet you. The Grace of God be with you all, Amen.”[1016]But when Luther, at the instance of Duke Johann of Saxony and his son Johann Frederick, came to Erfurt, in October, 1522, accompanied by Melanchthon, Agricola andJacob Probst, and proceeded to address the multitude who flocked to hear him (October 21 and 22), he was unable to restrain his passion, and, by his words of fire, fanned the hatred and blind fanaticism of the mob to the highest pitch.He scolded the clergy as “fat and lazy priestlings and monks,” who “hitherto had carried on their deceitful trade throughout the whole world,” and upon whom “everything had been bestowed.” “So far they have mightily fattened their great paunches.” “Of what use were their brotherhoods, indulgence-letters and all their countless trickeries?” “Ah, it must have cost the devil much labour to establish the ecclesiastical Estate.... Alas for these oil-pots who can do nothing but anoint people, wash walls and baptise bells!” But the believer is “Lord over Pope and devil and all such powers, and is also a judge of this delusion.”And yet in remarkable contrast to all this, in his closing words, spoken with greater ponderance, he exhorts the people “not to despise their enemies even though they know not Christ, but to have patience with them.” Yet before this he had declared: “We must crush the fiendish head of this brood with the Evangel. Then the Pope will lose his crown.” He had also preached against the secular authority exercised at Erfurt by the Archbishop of Mayence: “Our Holy Fathers and reverend lords, who have the spiritual sword as well as the temporal, want to be our rulers and masters. It is plain they have not got even the spiritual sword, and certainly God never gave them the temporal. Therefore it is only right, that, as they have exalted their government so greatly, it should be greatly humbled.”[1017]Amidst all this he has not a single word of actual blame for the former acts of violence, but merely a few futile platitudes on peaceableness, such as: “We do not wish to preserve the Evangel by our own efforts,” for it is sufficiently strong to see to itself. He assures his hearers that, “he was not concerned how to defend it.”[1018]Yet he sets up each of his followers as “king” and “yoke-fellow of Christ,” having the Royal Priesthood so that they may defy the Hierarchy, “who have stolen the sword out of our hands.” All this while expressly professing to proclaim the great and popular doctrine of faith and Bible only.“You have been baptised and endowed with the true faith, therefore you are spiritual and able to judge of all things by the word of the Evangel, and are not to be judged of any man.... Say: My faith is founded on Christ alone and His Word, not on the Pope or on any Councils.... My faith is here a judge and may say: This doctrine is true, but that is false and evil. And the Pope and all his crew, nay, all men on earth, must submit to that decision.... Therefore I say: Whoever has faith is a spiritual man and judge of all things, and is himself judged of noman ... the Pope owes him obedience, and, were he a true Christian, would prostrate himself at his feet, and so too would every University, learned man or sophist.”[1019]All depends on one thing, namely, whether this believer “judges according to the Evangel,” i.e. according to the new interpretation of Scripture which Luther has disclosed.We naturally think of Usingen and those Erfurt professors who remained faithful to the Church when Luther, in the course of his sermon, in sarcastic language, pits his new interpretation of Scripture against the “sophists, birettas and skull-caps.” “Bang the mouths of the sophists to [when they cry]: ‘Papa, Papa,Concilium, Concilium,Patres, Patres, Universities, Universities.’ What on earth do we care about that? one word of God is more than all this.”[1020]“Let them go on with all their sermons and their dreams!” “Let us see what such bats will do with their feather-brooms!”[1021]The commanding tone in which he spoke and the persuasive force of his personality were apt to make his hearers forgetful of the fact, that, after all, his great pretensions rested on his own testimony alone. In the general excitement the objections, which he himself had the courage to bring forward, seemed futile: “Were not Christ and the Gospel preached before? Do you fancy,” he replies, “that we are not aware of what is meant by Gospel, Christ and Faith?”[1022]It was of the utmost importance to him that, on this occasion of his appearance at Erfurt, he should make the whole weight of his personal authority felt so as to stem betimes the flood let loose by others who taught differently; he was determined to impress the seal of his own spirit upon the new religious system at this important outpost.Even before this he had let fall some words in confidence to Lang expressive of his concern that, at Erfurt, as it seemed to him, they wished to outstrip him in the knowledge of the Word, so that he felt himself decreasing while others increased (John iii. 30),[1023]and in the Circular-Letter above mentioned, he had anxiously warned the Erfurt believers against those who, confiding in their “peculiar wisdom,” were desirous of teaching “something besides Christ and beyond our preaching.”[1024]Now, personally present at the place where danger threatened, he insists from the pulpit with great emphasis on his mission: “It was not I who put myself forward.... Christ Our Master when sending His apostles out into the world to preach gave them no other directions than to preach the Gospel ... when He makes a man a preacher and apostle He also in His gracious condescension gives him instructions how to speak and what to speak, even down to the present day.” Those who heardhim were therefore to believe for certain “that he was not preaching what was his, but, like the apostles, the Word of God.”[1025]Many of his hearers were all the more likely to overlook the strange pretensions herein embodied, seeing that a large portion of his discourse proclaimed the sweet doctrine of evangelical freedom and denounced good works.For the latter purpose he very effectively introduces the Catholic preachers, putting into their mouths the assertion, falsely credited to them, that “only works and man’s justice” availed anything, not “Christ and His Justice”; for they say, “faith is not sufficient, it is also necessary to fast, to pray, to build churches, to found monasteries, monkeries and nunneries, and so forth.” But “they will be knocked on the head and recoil, and be convicted of the fact, that they know nothing whatever of what concerns Christ, the Gospel and good works.” “We cannot become pious and righteous by our own works, if we could we should be striking Paul a blow on the mouth.” These “dream-preachers” speak in vain of “Works, fasting and prayer,” but you are a Christian if you believe that Christ is for you wisdom and righteousness. “The doctrine of those who are called Christians must not come from man, or proceed from man’s efforts.... Therefore a Christian life is not promoted by our fasting, prayers, cowls or anything that we may undertake.”[1026]He returns again and again to the belief, so deeply rooted in the heart, of the efficacy of good works in order that he may uproot it completely. The whole Christian system demands, he thinks, the condemnation of the importance attached hitherto to good works. “Thus the whole of Christianity consists in your holding fast to the Evangel, which Christ alone ordains and teaches, not to human words or works.”[1027]It is a “devil” who speaks to you of the meritorious power of works, “not indeed a black or painted devil, but a white devil, who, under a beautiful semblance of life, infuses into you the poison of eternal death.”[1028]Of the Christian who relies only on faith, he says, “Christ’s innocence becomes his innocence, and in the same way Christ’s piety, holiness and salvation become his, and all that is in Christ is contained in the believing heart together with Christ.”[1029]“But such faith is awakened in us by God. From it spring the works by which we assist and serve our neighbour.”[1030]He speaks at considerable length in the last part of his sermons of the particular works which he considers allowable and commendable. How much he wished to imply may, however, be inferred from what has gone before.Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as good,” i.e. “our own self-chosenworks,” such as “special fasting, special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone. There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these. “When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed “without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,” and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031]Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a warning.Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,” and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032]In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing, trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other: “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing to do.As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation that “the works will follow.”On January 24, 1524, Eobanus Hessus wrote to Lang: “Immorality, corruption of youth, contempt of learning and dissensions, such are the fruits of your Evangel.”[1033]“Idislike being here very much,” he says, in the same year, to his friend Sturz, “since all is lost, for there is now no hope of a revival of learning or of a recovery in public life. Everything is on the road to destruction, and we ourselves are rendered odious to all classes by reason of some unlearned deserters. “Oh, unhappy Erfurt,” he cries, in view of the “outrageous behaviour of these godless men of God”; one seeks to oppress the other; already the battlefield of passion is tinged with “blood.”[1034]“You have by your preaching called forth a diabolical life in the town,” Usingen wrote in 1524 of the preachers at Erfurt, “although this is now displeasing to you, and you encourage it even up to the present day; you set the people free from the obedience which, according to the Divine command, they owe to the authorities of the Church, you deprive the people of the fear both of God and of man, hence the corruption of morals, which increases from day to day.”[1035]Usingen, who continued courageously to vindicate the faith of his fathers, was depicted by the preachers as a “crazy old man,” just as they had been advised to do by Luther. “I am quite pleased to hear,” Luther wrote to Lang some considerable time after his return, “that this ‘Unsingen’ is still carrying on his fooleries; as the Apostle Paul says, their folly must be made manifest (2 Tim. iii. 9).”[1036]The champion of the Church, the alleged fool, was sufficiently clear-sighted and frank to predict the Peasant-War as the end of all the godless commotion, and to prophesy that the result of the general religious subversion would be the ruin of his German Fatherland. A fanatical preacher in the town had appealed to the mattocks of the peasants. Him the Augustinian asks: “If the Word of God suffices in the Church, why have you in your sermons appealed for help to the pickaxes, mattocks and spades of the peasants?” “Why do you tell the people that the peasant must come from the field with these weapons to assist the Evangel, if your own and your comrades’ words prove of no avail? Do you not know with what audacity the peasants are already rising against their lords?” “The new preaching,” he complains, even where it is not directly inflammatory, “renders the people, who are already desirous of innovations and dearly love the freedom of the flesh, only too much inclined for tumults, and this daily foments the spirit of unrest.”[1037]“Do you not know that the mob is a hydra-headed monster, a monster that thirsts for blood? Are you anxious to promote your cause with the help of cut-throats?”[1038]Owing to the iconoclasts, the ancient greatness of Constantinople fell, and the Roman Empire of the East faded away; in like manner, so gloomily he predicts, the religious struggle now being waged in Germany will bring about the ruin of the Western Empire and the loss of its ancient greatness.[1039]The help which the innovators received from the Erfurt magistrates induced the leaders of the party to pin their trust on the support of the secular authorities. Even this was justified by appeals to Scripture.Lang, on presenting to Hermann von Hoff, the president of the Erfurt town-council, a translation which he had made of the Gospel of St. Matthew, stated in the accompanying letter, that he had done so “in order that all may know and take heed to the fact, that whatever they undertake against the Gospel is also directed against you. It is necessary, unfortunately, to defend the Gospel by means of the sword.”[1040]In July, 1521, an agreement had, it is true, been entered into which brought some guarantee of safety to the clergy, more particularly the Canons of St. Mary’s and St. Severus, yet in the ensuing years the Chapters were forced to make endless protests against the preachers’ interference in their services and the encroachments of the magistrates on their personal liberty, all in direct contravention of the agreement.The council demanded that the oath of obedience should be taken to itself and not to the Archbishop of Mayence, as heretofore. Priests were arrested on charges which did not concern the council at all, and were taken to the Rathaus. The clergy were obliged to pay taxes like other citizens on all farms and property which belonged to them or to their churches—which had been exempt from time immemorial—and likewise on any treasure or cash they might possess. When the peasants threatened Erfurt, the clergy were advised to bring all the valuables belonging to their churches to the Rathaus where the council, inview of the danger of the times, would receive them into safe custody, giving in return formal receipts. Since the council, as guardians of several monasteries, including St. Peter’s, had already appointed laymen who hindered the lawful Superiors from coming to any independent decision in matters of any moment, and as all the chalices and other vessels of gold and silver, together with the more valuable Church vestments, had already been seized at the Servites, the Brothers of the Rule and the Carthusians, the Canons saw how futile it would be to reject the “advice” given, and they accordingly decided to deliver up the more valuable objects belonging to the two principal churches, St. Mary’s and St. Severus, their decision being accepted by the council with “hearty thanks.” At the formal surrender of the vessels the magistrates protested that the Canons were really not fully aware how well disposed they, the magistrates, were towards them; that they had no wish to drive away the clergy, “but rather to show them all charity so that they might return thanks to God.” Yet we learn also that: Many persons belonging to the council whispered that it was their intention to make the position of the clergy unbearable by means of this and other like acts of despoliation.[1041]On April 27, 1525, on the occasion of the taking over of the treasure, with the co-operation of persons “distinguished for their strong Lutheran views,” a strict search was made in both the venerable churches for anything of any value that might have been left. Not the least consideration was paid to the private property of the individual clergy, objects were seized in the most violent manner, locked chests and cupboards were simply forced open, or, if this took too long, broken with axes. Every hasp of silver on copes and elsewhere was torn off. “Unclean fists,” says a contemporary narrator, “seized the chalices and sacred vessels, which they had no right to touch, and carried them with loud jeers in buckets and baskets to places where they were dishonoured.” As in other churches and convents, the books and papers on which any claims of the clergy against the council might be based were selected with special care. While precious works of art were thus being consigned to destruction,[1042]members of the town-council were consoling the Canons by renewed assurances, that the council “would protect both their life and their property.” Finally, the two churches were closely watched for some while after, “lest something might still be preserved in them, and to prevent such being taken possession of by the clergy.”[1043]When, in 1525, on the news of the Peasant Rising inSwabia and Franconia, meetings were held by the peasants in the Erfurt district, the adherents of the movement determined to enforce by violence their demands even at Erfurt. Those in the town who sympathised with Luther made common cause with the rebels.[1044]The magistrates were undecided. They were not as yet exclusively Lutheran, but were anxious to make the town independent of the Archbishop of Mayence, and to secure for themselves the property and rights of the clergy. For the most part the lower orders were unfavourable to the magistrates, and therefore sided with the peasantry.The peasants from the numerous villages which were politically regarded as belonging to the Erfurt district demanded that they should be emancipated from the burdens which they had to bear, and placed on a footing of social equality with the lower class of Erfurt burghers. With this they joined, as had been done elsewhere, religious demands in the sense of Luther’s innovations. The movement was publicly inaugurated by fourteen villages at a meeting held in a beerhouse on April 25 or 26, 1525, at which the peasants bound themselves by an oath taken with “uplifted right hand,” at the risk of their lives “to support the Word of God and to combine to abolish the old obsolete imposts.” When warned not to go to Erfurt, one of the leaders replied: “God has enlightened us, we shall not remain, but go forward.” As soon as they had come to an agreement as to their demands concerning the taxes “and other heavy burdens which the Evangel was to assist them to get rid of,” they collected in arms around the walls of Erfurt.[1045]The magistrates then took counsel how to divert the threatening storm and direct it against the clergy and the hated authorities of Mayence. The remembrance of the “Pfaffensturm” which, in 1521, had served as a means to allay the social grievances, was an encouragement to adopt a similar course. As intermediary between council and peasants, Hermann von Hoff, who has been mentioned above as an opponent of the Catholic clergy and the rightsof Mayence, took a leading part; one of his principles was that “it is necessary to make use of every means, sweet as well as bitter, if we are to allay so great a commotion and to avert further mischief.”[1046]In their perplexity the magistrates, through the agency of Hoff, admitted the horde of peasants, only stipulating that they should spare the property of the burghers, though they were to be free to plunder the Palace of the Archbishop of Mayence, the “hereditary lord” of the city, and also the toll-house. The peasants made their entry on April 28 with that captain of the town whom Lang had invited to draw the sword in the cause of the Evangel. Not only was the Palace despoiled and the toll-house utterly destroyed, but the salt warehouses and almost all the parsonages were attacked and looted. In the name of “evangelical freedom” the plunderers vented all their fury on the sacred vessels, pictures and relics they were still able to find.“In the Archbishop’s Palace Lutheran preachers, for instance, Eberlin of Günzburg, Mechler and Lang, mixed with the rabble of the town and country and preached to them.” The preachers made no secret of being “in league with the peasantry and the proletariate of the town.” The clergy and religious were, however, to be made “to feel still more severely”[1047]the effects of the alliance between the three parties.At the first coming of the peasants, that quarters might be found for them, “all the convents of monks and nuns were confiscated and their inhabitants driven out into the street.” “Alas, how wretched did the poor nuns look passing up and down the alleys of the town,”[1048]says an eye-witness in an Erfurt chronicle. All those connected with the Collegiate churches of St. Mary and St. Severus had peasants billeted on them in numbers out of all proportion to their means. On the morning of April 28, the service in the church of St. Mary’s was violently interrupted. On the following Sunday, Eberlin, the apostate Franciscan, commenced a course of sermons, which he continued for several days with his customary vehemence and abuse.Exactly a week after the coming of the peasants they passed a resolution in the Mainzer Hof that the number of parishes should be reduced to ten, including the Collegiate church of St. Mary’s, and that in all these parish churches “the pure Word of God should be preached without any additions, man-made laws, decrees or doctrines.” As for the pastors, they were to be appointed and removed by the congregation. This was equivalent to sentencing the old worship to death. On the same day an order was issued to all the parish churches and monasteries to abstain in future from reciting or singing Matins, Vespers or Mass. The only man who was successful in evading the prohibition was Dr. Conrad Klinge, the courageous guardian of the Franciscans, who at the hospital continued to preach in the old way to crowded audiences.Most of the beneficed clergy now quitted the town, as the council refused to undertake any responsibility on their behalf; and as they were forbidden to resume Divine Worship or even to celebrate Mass in private, at the gate of the town they were subjected to a thorough search lest they should have any priestly property concealed about them. The magistrates sought to extort from the clergy who remained, admissions which might serve as some justification for their conduct. The post of preacher at the Dom, after it had been refused by Eberlin, who had at length taken fright at the demagogic spirit now abroad, was bestowed upon one of Luther’s immediate followers; the new preacher was Dr. Johann Lang, an “apostate, renegade, uxorious monk,” as a contemporary chronicler calls him.All tokens of any authority of the Archbishop of Mayence in the town were obliterated, and the archiepiscopal jurisdiction was declared to be at an end. Eobanus Hessus wrote gleefully of the ruin of the “popish” foe. “We have driven away the Bishop of Mayence, for ever. All the monks have been expelled, the nuns turned out, the canons sent away, all the temples and even the money-boxes in the churches plundered; the commonwealth is now established and taxes and customs houses have been done away with. Again we are now free.”[1049]Here the statement that the clergy of Mayence had been expelled “for ever” proved incorrect, for the rights of the over-lord were soon to be re-established.The magistrates were the first to fall; they were deposed, and the lower-class burghers and the peasants replaced them by two committees, one to represent the town, the other the country. In the latter committee the excited ringleaders of the peasantry gave vent to threatening speeches against the former municipal government, and such wild words as “Kill these spectres, blow out their brains” were heard.[1050]The actual wording of the resolutions passed by both the committees was principally the work of preachers of the new faith. Eberlin, too, was consulted as to how best to draw up“the articles in accordance with the Bible,” but he cautiously declined to have anything to do with this, and declared that their demands seemed to him to be exorbitant and that, “the Evangel would not help them.” The Lutheran preachers also exerted themselves to bring about the reinstatement of the magistrates. It is said that on April 30, in every quarter of the town, a minister of the new doctrine preached to the citizens and country people to the following effect: “You have now by your good and Christian acts and deeds emancipated yourselves altogether from the Court at Mayence and its jurisdiction, which, according to Divine justice and Holy Scripture, should have no temporal authority whatever. But in order that this freedom may not lead you astray, there must be some authorities over you, and therefore you must for the future recognise the worthy magistrates of Erfurt as your rulers,” etc.[1051]The words of the preachers prevailed, and the newly elected councillors became the head of a sort of republic. The burdens of the town increased to an oppressive extent, however, and the peasants who had returned to their villages groaned more than ever under the weight of the taxes. Financial difficulties continued to increase.Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, the councillors gave their sanction on May 9, 1525, “under the new seal,” to the amended articles, twenty-eight in number, which had been drafted by the town and peasant committees during the days of storm and stress. The very first article made obligatory the preaching of “the pure Word of God,” and gave to each congregation the right to choose its own pastors. “The gist of the remaining articles was the appointment of a permanent administrative council to give a yearly account, and to impose no new taxes without the knowledge and sanction of both burghers and country subjects.”In accepting the articles it was agreed that Luther’s opinion on them should be ascertained, a decision which seems to show that the peasants and burghers, though probably not the councillors themselves, reckoned upon the weighty sanction of Wittenberg. Yet about May 4 Luther had finished his booklet “Against the murderous Peasants” (above p. 201), which was far from favourable to seditiousmovements such as that of Erfurt. The council invited him by letter, on May 10, to come to Erfurt with Melanchthon “and establish the government of the town,” as Melanchthon puts it (“ad constituendum urbis statum”).[1052]Luther, however, did not accept the invitation, and a month later the council sent him a copy of the articles, requesting a written opinion. It is difficult to believe that the Erfurt magistrates were not aware of Luther’s growing bitterness against the peasants, which is attested by the pamphlets he wrote at the time, or that they were incapable of drawing the obvious conclusion as to his reply.[1053]“If the council in taking this step,” says Eitner, “was relying on Luther’s known attitude towards all revolutionary movements, and hoped to make an end of the inconvenient demands of the people by means of the Reformer’s powerful words, then their expectation was fully realised. Both Luther’s letter (i.e. his answer to the council) and his written notes on the copy of the articles sent him, are full of irony expressing the displeasure of one whose advice was so much in request, but whose interference in the peasant movement, in spite of his good intentions, had thus far met with so little success.... The very articles which the authors had most at heart were submitted by Luther to a relentless and somewhat pointless criticism.... Thus we see in a comparatively trivial case what has long been acknowledged of his action generally, viz. that Luther’s interference in the Peasant-War cannot be altogether justified.... His conduct shattered his reputation, both in the empire and in his second native town [Erfurt], and paved the way for the inevitable reaction.”[1054]Luther, in his reply to the “Honourable, prudent and beloved” members of the Erfurt council,[1055]declaresin the very first sentences that the Twenty-eight Articles were so “ill-advised” that “little good could come of them” even were he present himself at Erfurt; he is of opinion that certain people, who “are better off than they deserve,” are putting on airs at the expense of the council, constitute a danger to the common weal, and, with “unheard-of audacity and wickedness,” wish to “turn things upside down.” Things must never be permitted to come to such a pass that the councillors fear the common people and become their servants; the common people must be quiet and entrust all to the honourable magistrates to be set right, “lest the Princes have occasion to take up arms against Erfurt on account of such unwarrantable conduct.” Luther’s new sovereign, the Elector Johann, had just been assisting in the suppression of the peasant rising. He was in entire sympathy with the Wittenberg Professor, whom he so openly protected and favoured, and doubtless they had discussed together the state of affairs at Erfurt. In his written reply Luther asks whether it is not “seditious” to refuse to pay the Elector the sum due to him for acting as protector of the city. “Did they, then, esteem so lightly the Prince and the security of the town, which, as a matter of fact, was something not to be paid for in money?” Their demand really signified either that “no one was to protect the town of Erfurt, or that the Princes were to relinquish their claim to payment and yet continue to protect the town.”The demand that the congregations of the parishes should appoint their own pastors Luther considered particularly inadmissible; it was “seditious that the parishes should wish to appoint and dismiss their own pastors without reference to the councillors, as though the councillors, in whom authority was vested, were not concerned in what the town might do.” He insists that “the councillors have the right to know what sort of persons are holding office in the town.”Concerning some of the articles which dealt with taxes and imposts, he points out that the business is not his concern, since these are temporal matters. Of the proposal to re-establish the decayed University of Erfurt he says: “This article is the best of all.” Of two of the articles he notes: “Both these will do,” one being that, for the future,openly immoral persons and prostitutes of all classes were not to be tolerated, nor the common houses of public women, and the other, that every debtor, whether to the council or the community, should be “faithfully admonished no matter who he might be.” Concerning the former of these two articles, however, we may remark, that a house of correction for the punishment of light women had existed at Erfurt under the Archbishop’s rule, but had been razed to the ground by the very framers of the articles as soon as the peasants entered the town.The principal thing, in Luther’s opinion, was to place the reins in the hands of the magistrates, so that they may not sit there like an “idol,” “bound hand and foot,” “while the horses saddle and bridle their driver”; on the contrary, the aim of the articles seemed to him to be, to reduce the councillors to be mere figureheads, and to let “the rabble manage everything.”[1056]The “rabble” was just then Luther’s bugbear.The clergy who had quitted the city addressed, on May 30, a written complaint to the Cardinal of Mayence, with an account of the proceedings. On June 8 they also appealed to Johann, the Saxon Elector, and to Duke George of Saxony, asking for their mediation, since they were the “protectors and liege lords” of their Church. They also did all they could with the council to recover their rights. The councillors were, however, merely rude, and replied that the proud priests might ask as much as they pleased but would get no redress. This was what caused them to complain to their secular protectors that they were being treated worse than the meanest peasant. Duke George advised them to await the result of the negotiations which, as he knew, were proceeding between the town of Erfurt and the Cardinal.The Lutheran Elector, on the other hand, entered into closer relations with the town-council of Erfurt, accepting with good grace their appeal for help, their protestation of submission and obedience to his rule, and the explicit assurance of the councillors at the Weimar conference, onJune 22, “that they would stand by the true and unfeigned Word of God as pious and faithful Christians, and, in support of the same, stake life and limb, with the help of God’s grace.” Thereupon the Elector promised them, on June 23, that, “should they suffer any inconvenience or attack because of the Word of God,” he, as their “liege lord, ruler and protector,” would “stand by them and afford them protection to the best of his ability,” since “the Word of God and the Holy Evangel were likewise dear to him.” In point of fact he did espouse the cause of the inhabitants of Erfurt, though, like Duke George, it was his wish to see a peaceful settlement arrived at between the town and its rightful over-lord.[1057]The crafty councillors were actually negotiating with the representatives of the Cardinal of Mayence at the very time when they were seeking the protection of Saxony. The over-lord whose rights they had outraged, through his vicar, had made known his peremptory demands to the council on May 26, viz. entire restitution, damages, expulsion of the Lutheran sect, re-establishment of the old worship and payment of an indemnity. In the event of refusal he threatened them with the armed interference of the Swabian League. The threat took effect, for the Swabian League at that time was feared, and disturbers of the peace had had occasion to feel its strength. The hint of armed interference proved all the more effective when Duke George advised the inhabitants of Erfurt to come to terms with the Mayence vicar and abolish Lutheranism, as otherwise they would have to expect “something further.”The council therefore assumed a conciliatory attitude towards Mayence, and negotiations concerning the restitution to be made were commenced at a conference at Fulda on August 25, 1525. After protracted delays these terminated with the Treaty of Hammelburg on February 5, 1530. This was, “from the political point of view, an utter defeat for the inhabitants of Erfurt.”[1058]The council was not only obliged to recognise the supremacy of the Archbishop, but also to re-erect all buildings which had been destroyed, and to return everything that had been misapplied; in addition to this, for the loss of taxes and other revenues, the council was to pay the Archbishop 2500 gulden, and tothe two Collegiate churches, for losses sustained, 1200 marks of fine silver. Both these churches were to be handed over for Catholic worship. The reinstated over-lord, however, declared, for his part, that, “As regards the other churches and matters of faith and ritual, we hereby and on this occasion neither give nor take, sanction nor forbid, anything to any party.”[1059]Thus the rescinding of the innovations was for the present deferred, and Luther had every reason to be satisfied with what had been effected in a town to which he was attached by many links. How little gratitude he showed to Archbishop Albert, and how fiercely his hatred and animus against the cautious Cardinal would occasionally flame up, will be seen from facts to be mentioned elsewhere.Among the few Erfurt monks who, though expelled from their monastery, remained true to their profession and to the Church, there was one who attained to a great age and who is mentioned incidentally by Flacius Illyricus. He well remembered the first period of Luther’s life in Erfurt, his zeal for the Church and solicitude for the observance of the Rule.[1060]When considering Luther’s intervention in Erfurt matters, and his personal action there, one thought obtrudes itself.When Luther, now quite a different man and in vastly altered circumstances, returned to Erfurt on the occasion of the visit referred to above, is it not likely that he recalled his earlier life at Erfurt, where he had spent happy days of interior contentment, as is shown by the letters he wrote before his priestly ordination? In one of the sermons he delivered there, in October, 1522, he refers to his student days at Erfurt, but it does not appear that he ever seriouslyreflected on the contrast presented by the convictions he held at that time on the Church and his new ideas on faith and works. His allusions to his Erfurt recollections are neither serious nor grateful towards his old school. He speaks scoffingly of his learned Erfurt opponents, some of whom he had been acquainted with previously, as “knights of straw.” “Yes, they prate, we are Doctors and Masters.... Well, if a title settles the matter, I also became a Bachelorhere, and then a Master and then again a Bachelor. I also went to school with them, and I know and am convinced that they do not understand their own books.”[1061]Another circumstance must be taken into account. Whereas in later life he can scarcely speak of his early years as a monk without telling his hearers how he had passed from an excessive though purely exterior holiness-by-works to his great discovery, viz. to the knowledge of a gracious God, in 1522 he is absolutely silent regarding these “inward experiences”; yet his very theme, viz. the contrast between the new Evangel and the “sophistical holiness-by-works” preferred by Catholics, and likewise the familiar Erfurt scene of his early life as a monk, should, one would think, have invited him to speak of the matter here.[1062]While Luther was seeking to expel by force the popish “wolves,” more especially the monks and nuns, from the places within reach of the new Evangel, an enemy was growing up in his own camp in the shape of the so-called fanatics; their existence can be traced back as far as his Wartburg days, and his first misunderstanding with Carlstadt; these, by their alliance with Carlstadt, who had been won over to their ideas, and with the help of men like Thomas Münzer, had of late greatly increased their power, thanks to the social conditions which were so favourable to their cause.6. Sharp Encounters with the FanaticsIf, on the one hand, the antagonism which Luther was obliged to display towards the fanatical Anabaptists endangered his work, on the other the struggle was in many respects to his advantage.His being obliged to withstand the claim constantly made by the fanatics to inspiration by the Holy Ghost served as a warning to him to exercise caution and moderation in appealing to a higher call in the case of his own enterprise; being compelled also to invoke the assistance of the authorities against the fanatics’ subversion of the existing order of things, he was naturally obliged to be more reticent himself and to refrain from preaching revolution in the interests of his own teaching. We even find him at times desisting from his claim to special inspiration and guidance by the “spirit” in the negotiations entered into on account of the Münzer business; this, however, he does with a purpose and in opposition with his well-known and usual view. In place of his real ideas, as expressed by him both before and after this period, he, for a while, prefers to deprecate any use of force or violence, and counsels his sovereign to introduce the innovations gradually, pointing out the most suitable methods with patience and prudence.At first he was anxious that indulgence should be observed even in dealing with the Anabaptists, but later on he invoked vigorously the aid of the authorities.In reality he himself was borne along by principles akin to those of the fanatics whose ideas were, as a matter of fact, an outcome of his own undertaking. His own writings exhibit many a trait akin to their pseudo-mysticism. In the end his practical common sense was more than a match for these pestering opponents, who for a time gave him so much trouble. His learning and education raised him far above them and made the religious notions of the Anabaptists abhorrent to him, while his public position at the University, as well as his official and personal relations with the sovereign, ill-disposed him to the demagogism of the fanatics and their efforts to win over the common people to their side.The fanatical aim of Thomas Münzer, the quondam Catholic priest who had worked as a preacher of the newfaith at Allstedt, near Eisleben, since 1523, was the extermination by violence of all impious persons, and the setting up of a Kingdom of God formed of all the righteous here on earth, after the ideal of apostolic times. This tenet, rather than rebaptism, was the mark of his followers. The rebaptism of adults, which was practised by the sect, was merely due to their belief that an active faith was essential for the reception of the sacraments, whilst children of tender years were incapable of any faith at all.As a beginning of the war against the “idolatry” of the old Church, Münzer caused the Pilgrimage Chapel at Malderbach, near Eisleben, where a miraculous picture of Our Lady was venerated, to be destroyed in April, 1524. He then published a fiery sermon he had recently preached, in which he exhorted the great ones and all friends of the Evangel among the people at once to abolish Divine Worship as it had hitherto been practised. The sermon was sent to the Electoral Court by persons who were troubled about the rising, and who begged that Münzer might be called to account. The sermon was also forwarded to Luther by Spalatin, the Court Chaplain, evidently in order that Luther might take some steps to obviate the danger. In point of fact, Luther’s eagle eye took in the situation at a glance, and he at once decided to intervene with the utmost vigour. With Münzer’s spirit he was already acquainted through personal observation, so he said, and now he realised yet more clearly that its effect would be to let the mob loose, with the consequence that “heavenly spirits” of every sort would soon be claiming to interfere in the direction of his own enterprise.Luther at once composed a clever and powerful writing entitled “A Circular to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Spirit of Revolt.” This appeared in the last days of July, 1524. To it we shall return later, for it is of great psychological interest.Münzer was dismissed from his situation, and went to Mühlhausen, where the apostate monk, Heinrich Pfeifer, had already prepared the ground, and thence to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg he brought out, in September, 1524, his “Hochverursachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg” in reply to Luther’s Circular, above mentioned. He then recommencedhis restless wanderings through South Germany and Switzerland. He remained for some time with the ex-priest and professor of theology, Balthasar Hubmaier, then pastor of the new faith at Waldshut. On his return to Mühlhausen, in December, he put into execution his fantastic communistic scheme, which lasted until he and the seditious peasants were defeated in the encounter at Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525; his execution for a while put an end to the endeavours of the fanatics. Nevertheless, in other places, more particularly at Münster during the famous Reign of Terror from 1532-1535, the fanaticism of the Anabaptists again broke out under even worse forms.The short circular, “On the Spirit of Revolt,”[1063]referred to above as a document curiously illustrative of Luther’s psychology, is not important in the sense of furnishing a true picture of his inner thoughts and feelings. Conveying as it does a petition and admonition to the Princes, it is naturally worded politically and with great caution, and was also manifestly intended for the general public. Nevertheless its author, even where he clothes his thoughts in the strange and carefully chosen dress best calculated to serve the purpose he had in view, affords us an interesting glimpse into his mode of action. He also shows throughout the whole circular in what light he wishes to see his own higher mission regarded.
“We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “sola fides” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us.It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]The contrary “delusion,” he says, had been invented and encouraged by the preachers, whose proceedings were infinitely worse than any mere “numbering of the people.” He storms against the clergy and vigorously foments the social discontent. To build churches, or found livings, etc., was mere outward show; “such works simply gave rise to avarice, desire for the praise of men and other vices.” “You think that as a priest you are free from sin, and yet you nourish so much jealousy in your heart; if you could slay your neighbour with impunity you would do so and then go on saying Mass. Surely it would not be surprising were a thunderbolt to smite you to the earth.” In order to complete the effect of this demagogic outburst he mocks at the sermons, with their legends “about the old ass,” etc., and their quotations from ancient philosophers, who were “not only against the Gospel, but even against God Himself.”The result was stupendous, especially in the case of the young men at the University whom the Humanists had disposed in Luther’s favour. On the day after Luther’s departure one of his sympathisers, a Canon of the Church of St. Severus, who had taken part in the solemn reception accorded Luther on his arrival in the town, was told by the Dean, Jakob Doliatoris, that he was under excommunication and might no longer attend the service in choir. On his complaining to the University, of which he was amember, the students intervened with demonstrations in his favour.[997]Luther heard of this only through certain unreliable reports and wrote to Spalatin: “They apprehend still worse things at Erfurt. The Senate pretends to see nothing of what is going on. The clergy are reviled. The young apprentices are said to be in league with the students. We are about to see the prophecy fulfilled: ‘Erfurt has become a new [Husite] Prague.’” Previous to this, in the same letter, he had said of his adversaries in the Empire: “Let them be, perhaps the day of their visitation is at hand.”[998]Soon after, however, he became rather more concerned, perhaps owing to further reports of the unrest, and began to fear for the “good name and progress of the Evangel,” in consequence of the acts of brutality committed. “It is indeed quite right,” he wrote to Melanchthon, “that those who persist in their impiety should have their courage cooled,” but in this “Satan makes a mockery of us”; he sees in a mystical vision “The Judgment Day,” the approaching end of the world at Erfurt, and the fig tree, as had been foretold, growing up, covered with leaves, but bare of fruit because the cause of the Evangel could not make its way.[999]In July, 1521, there broke out in the town the so-called “Pfaffensturm.”In a few days more than sixty parsonages had been pulled down, libraries destroyed and the archives and tithe registers of the ecclesiastical authorities ransacked; little regard was shown for human life. A little later seven clergy-houses were again set on fire. Meanwhile the Lutheran preachers, with the fanatical Lang at their head, were at liberty to stir up the people.[1000]The ruin of the University was imminent; many parents withdrew their sons, fearing lest they should be infected with the “Husite heresy.” The customary Catholic services were, however,performed as usual, but the end of Catholic worship could be foreseen owing to the ever-increasing growth of “evangelical freedom.” Renegade monks, especially Luther’s former Augustinian comrades, preached against “the old Church as the mother of faithlessness and hypocrisy”; Lang spoke of the monasteries as “dens of robbers.” Under the attacks of the preachers one human ordinance after another fell to the ground. Fasting, long prayers, founded Masses, confraternities, everything in fact, disappeared before the new liberty, value being allowed only to temporal works of mercy. The avarice of the “shorn, anointed priestlings” was no longer to be stimulated by the people’s money. “Ruffianly crowds showed their sympathy with the preachers by yelling and shouting in church. Theological questions were debated in market-places and taverns, men, women and boys expounded the Bible.”[1001]Luther, through Lang, urged the Augustinians at Erfurt, who still remained true to their monastic Rule, to apostatise; he merely expressed the wish that there should be no “tumults” against the Order. Lang was to “defend the cause of the Evangel”[1002]at the next Convention of the Saxon Augustinians, a meeting which took place at Epiphany, 1522 (above, p. 337). Lang justified his apostasy in a work in which he expressly appeals to the new doctrines on faith and good works. The exodus of the monks from their convent was not, however, carried out as quietly as Luther would have wished; he dreaded the “slanders of the foes of the Evangel” and was depressed by the immorality of the inhabitants of Erfurt, and by his own experience with his followers. He spoke his mind to Lang: “The power of the Word is still concealed, or else you pay too little heed to it. This surprises me greatly. We are just the same as before, hard, unfeeling, impatient, sinful, intemperate, lascivious and combative, in short, the mark of the Christian, true charity, is nowhere to be found. Paul’s words are fulfilled in us: We have God’s Word on our lips, but not in power (cp. 1 Cor. iv. 20).”[1003]In 1524 Lang married the rich widow of an Erfurt fuller.Those who had been unfaithful to their vows and priestlyobligations, and then acted as preachers of the new faith, gave the greatest scandal by their conduct.Many letters dating from 1522, 1523 and 1524, written by Lutheran Humanists such as Eobanus Hessus, Euricius Cordus and Michael Nossenus, who, with disgust, were observing their behaviour, bore witness to the general deterioration of morals in the town, more particularly among the escaped monks and nuns.[1004]“I see,” Luther himself wrote to Erfurt, “that monks are leaving in great numbers for no other reason than for their belly’s sake and for the freedom of the flesh.”[1005]Meanwhile, discussions were held in the Erfurt circle of the semi-theologian Lang, on the absence of free-will in man and on “the evil that God does.” Lang applied to Luther for help. “I see that you are idlers,” was his reply, “though the devil provides you with abundance of occupation in what he plots amongst you. You must not argue concerning the evil that God does. It is not, as you fancy, the work of God, but a ceasing to work on God’s part. We desire what is evil when He ceases to work in us and leaves our nature free to fulfil its own wickedness. Where He works the result is ever good. Scripture speaks of such ceasing to work on God’s part as a ‘hardening.’ Thus evil cannot be wrought [by God], since it is nothing (‘malum non potest fieri, cum sit nihil’), but it arises because what is good is neglected, or prevented.”This was one of the ethical doctrines proclaimed by Luther and Melanchthon which lay at the back of the new theory of good works. Luther enlarged on it in startling fashion in his book “De servo arbitrio” (above, p. 223 ff.).Bartholomew Usingen, the learned and pious Augustinian, who had once been Luther’s professor and had enjoyed his especial esteem, witnessed with pain and sadness the changes in the town and in his own priory. The former University professor, now an aged man, fearlessly took his place in the yet remaining Catholic pulpits, particularlyat St. Mary’s, assured of the support and respect of the staunch members of the fold who flocked in numbers to hear him. There he protested against the new doctrines and the growing licentiousness, though he too had to submit to unheard-of insults, abuse and even violent interruptions of his sermons when emissaries of the Lutherans succeeded in forcing their way in. He also laboured against religious innovations with his pen.“If we are taught,” says Usingen, “that faith alone can save us, that good works are of no avail for salvation and do not merit a reward for us in heaven, who will then take the trouble to perform them?—Why exhort men even to do what is right if we have no free-will? And who will be diligent in keeping the commandments of God if the people are taught that they cannot possibly be kept, and that Christ has already fulfilled them perfectly for us?”[1006]Usingen points out to the preachers, especially to Johann Culsamer, the noisiest of them all: “The fruits of your preaching, the excesses and scandals which spring from it, are known to the whole world; then indeed shall the people exert themselves to tame their passions when they are told repeatedly that by faith alone all sin is blotted out, and that confession is no longer necessary. Adultery, unchastity, theft, blasphemy, calumny and such other vices increase to an alarming extent, as unfortunately we see with our own eyes (‘patet per quotidianum exercitium’).”[1007]“The effect of your godless preaching is,” he says, on another occasion, “that the faithful no longer perform any works of mercy, and for this reason the poor are heard to complain bitterly of you.”[1008]“The rich no longer trouble about the needy, since they are told in sermons that faith alone suffices for salvation and that good works are not meritorious. The clergy, who formerly distributed such abundant alms from the convents and foundations, are no longer in a position to continue these works of charity because, owing to your attacks, their means have been so greatly reduced.”[1009]The worthy Augustinian had shown especial marks of favour to his pupil Lang, and it grieved him all the more deeply that he, by the boundless animosity he exhibited in his discourses, should have set an example to the other preachers in the matter of abuse, whether of the Orders, the clergy or the Papacy. He said to him in 1524, “I recalled you from exile [i.e. transferred you from Wittenberg to thestudium generaleat Erfurt] ... and this is the distinction you have won for yourself; you were the cause of the Erfurt monks leaving their monastery; there hadbeen fourteen apostasies and now yours makes the fifteenth; like the dragon of the Apocalypse when he fell from heaven, you dragged down with you the third part of the stars.”[1010]Usingen mentions the “report,” possibly exaggerated, that at one time some three hundred apostate monks were in residence at Erfurt; many ex-nuns were daily to be seen wandering about the streets.[1011]Most of these auxiliaries who had flocked to the town in search of bread, were uneducated clerics who drew upon themselves the scorn of the Humanists belonging to the new faith. Any of these clerics who were capable of speaking in public, by preference devoted themselves to invective. Usingen frequently reproached his foes with their scurrility in the pulpit, their constant attacks on the sins and crimes of the clergy, and their violent reprobation and abuse of institutions and customs held in universal veneration for ages, all of which could only exercise a pernicious influence on morality. “Holy Scripture,” he says in a work against the two preachers Culsamer and Mechler, “commands the preacher to point out their sins to the people and to exhort them to amendment. But the new preaching does not speak to the people of their faults but only of the sins of the clergy, and thus the listener forgets his own sins and leaves the church worse than he entered it.” And elsewhere: “Invective was formerly confined to the viragoes of the market-place, but now it flourishes in the churches.” “Even your own hearers are weary of your everlasting slanders. Formerly, they say, the gospel was preached to us, but such abuse and calumny was not then heard in the pulpit.”[1012]It could not be but regarded as strange that Luther himself, forgetful of his former regard, went so far as to egg on his pupils and friends at Erfurt against his old professor. Usingen certainly had never anticipated such treatment at his hands. “He has, as you know,” Luther wrote to Lang, on June 26, “become hard-headed and full of ingrained obstinacy and conceit. Therefore, in your preaching, you must draw down upon his folly the contempt that such coarse and inflated blindness deserves.” As from his early years he had never been known to yield to anyone,Luther gave up the hope of seeing the stubborn sophist “yield to Christ”; he sees here the confirmation of the proverb: “No fool like an old fool.”[1013]Carried away by his success at Erfurt, Luther urged the preachers not to allow their energies to flag.It is true that in an official Circular-Letter to the Erfurt Congregation, despatched on July 10, 1522, and intended for publication, his tone is comparatively calm; the superscription is: “Martin Luther, Ecclesiastes of Wittenberg, to all the Christians at Erfurt together with the preachers and ministers, Grace and Peace in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.”[1014]Therein, at Lang’s request, dealing with the controversy which had arisen at Erfurt regarding the veneration of the Saints, he declares that whilst there was certainly no warrant of Scripture for Saint-worship, it ought not to be assailed with violence (i.e. not after the fashion of the fanatics whose doings were a public danger). He trusts “we shall be the occasion of no rising” and points to his own example as showing with what moderation he had ever proceeded against the Papists: “As yet I have not moved a finger against them, and Christ has destroyed them with the sword of His mouth” (2 Thess. ii. 8).[1015]“Leave Christ to act” in true faith—such is the gist of his exhortation in this letter so admirably padded with Pauline phrases—but despise and avoid the “stiff-necked sophists”; “Whoever stinks, let him go on stinking.” He concludes, quite in the Pauline manner: “May Our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you together with us in all the fulness of the knowledge of Himself to the honour of His Father, Who is also ours, to Whom be Glory for ever and ever, Amen. Greet Johann Lang [and the other preachers]: George Forchheim, Johann Culhamer, Antony Musam, Ægidius Mechler and Peter Bamberger. Philip, Jonas and all our people greet you. The Grace of God be with you all, Amen.”[1016]But when Luther, at the instance of Duke Johann of Saxony and his son Johann Frederick, came to Erfurt, in October, 1522, accompanied by Melanchthon, Agricola andJacob Probst, and proceeded to address the multitude who flocked to hear him (October 21 and 22), he was unable to restrain his passion, and, by his words of fire, fanned the hatred and blind fanaticism of the mob to the highest pitch.He scolded the clergy as “fat and lazy priestlings and monks,” who “hitherto had carried on their deceitful trade throughout the whole world,” and upon whom “everything had been bestowed.” “So far they have mightily fattened their great paunches.” “Of what use were their brotherhoods, indulgence-letters and all their countless trickeries?” “Ah, it must have cost the devil much labour to establish the ecclesiastical Estate.... Alas for these oil-pots who can do nothing but anoint people, wash walls and baptise bells!” But the believer is “Lord over Pope and devil and all such powers, and is also a judge of this delusion.”And yet in remarkable contrast to all this, in his closing words, spoken with greater ponderance, he exhorts the people “not to despise their enemies even though they know not Christ, but to have patience with them.” Yet before this he had declared: “We must crush the fiendish head of this brood with the Evangel. Then the Pope will lose his crown.” He had also preached against the secular authority exercised at Erfurt by the Archbishop of Mayence: “Our Holy Fathers and reverend lords, who have the spiritual sword as well as the temporal, want to be our rulers and masters. It is plain they have not got even the spiritual sword, and certainly God never gave them the temporal. Therefore it is only right, that, as they have exalted their government so greatly, it should be greatly humbled.”[1017]Amidst all this he has not a single word of actual blame for the former acts of violence, but merely a few futile platitudes on peaceableness, such as: “We do not wish to preserve the Evangel by our own efforts,” for it is sufficiently strong to see to itself. He assures his hearers that, “he was not concerned how to defend it.”[1018]Yet he sets up each of his followers as “king” and “yoke-fellow of Christ,” having the Royal Priesthood so that they may defy the Hierarchy, “who have stolen the sword out of our hands.” All this while expressly professing to proclaim the great and popular doctrine of faith and Bible only.“You have been baptised and endowed with the true faith, therefore you are spiritual and able to judge of all things by the word of the Evangel, and are not to be judged of any man.... Say: My faith is founded on Christ alone and His Word, not on the Pope or on any Councils.... My faith is here a judge and may say: This doctrine is true, but that is false and evil. And the Pope and all his crew, nay, all men on earth, must submit to that decision.... Therefore I say: Whoever has faith is a spiritual man and judge of all things, and is himself judged of noman ... the Pope owes him obedience, and, were he a true Christian, would prostrate himself at his feet, and so too would every University, learned man or sophist.”[1019]All depends on one thing, namely, whether this believer “judges according to the Evangel,” i.e. according to the new interpretation of Scripture which Luther has disclosed.We naturally think of Usingen and those Erfurt professors who remained faithful to the Church when Luther, in the course of his sermon, in sarcastic language, pits his new interpretation of Scripture against the “sophists, birettas and skull-caps.” “Bang the mouths of the sophists to [when they cry]: ‘Papa, Papa,Concilium, Concilium,Patres, Patres, Universities, Universities.’ What on earth do we care about that? one word of God is more than all this.”[1020]“Let them go on with all their sermons and their dreams!” “Let us see what such bats will do with their feather-brooms!”[1021]The commanding tone in which he spoke and the persuasive force of his personality were apt to make his hearers forgetful of the fact, that, after all, his great pretensions rested on his own testimony alone. In the general excitement the objections, which he himself had the courage to bring forward, seemed futile: “Were not Christ and the Gospel preached before? Do you fancy,” he replies, “that we are not aware of what is meant by Gospel, Christ and Faith?”[1022]It was of the utmost importance to him that, on this occasion of his appearance at Erfurt, he should make the whole weight of his personal authority felt so as to stem betimes the flood let loose by others who taught differently; he was determined to impress the seal of his own spirit upon the new religious system at this important outpost.Even before this he had let fall some words in confidence to Lang expressive of his concern that, at Erfurt, as it seemed to him, they wished to outstrip him in the knowledge of the Word, so that he felt himself decreasing while others increased (John iii. 30),[1023]and in the Circular-Letter above mentioned, he had anxiously warned the Erfurt believers against those who, confiding in their “peculiar wisdom,” were desirous of teaching “something besides Christ and beyond our preaching.”[1024]Now, personally present at the place where danger threatened, he insists from the pulpit with great emphasis on his mission: “It was not I who put myself forward.... Christ Our Master when sending His apostles out into the world to preach gave them no other directions than to preach the Gospel ... when He makes a man a preacher and apostle He also in His gracious condescension gives him instructions how to speak and what to speak, even down to the present day.” Those who heardhim were therefore to believe for certain “that he was not preaching what was his, but, like the apostles, the Word of God.”[1025]Many of his hearers were all the more likely to overlook the strange pretensions herein embodied, seeing that a large portion of his discourse proclaimed the sweet doctrine of evangelical freedom and denounced good works.For the latter purpose he very effectively introduces the Catholic preachers, putting into their mouths the assertion, falsely credited to them, that “only works and man’s justice” availed anything, not “Christ and His Justice”; for they say, “faith is not sufficient, it is also necessary to fast, to pray, to build churches, to found monasteries, monkeries and nunneries, and so forth.” But “they will be knocked on the head and recoil, and be convicted of the fact, that they know nothing whatever of what concerns Christ, the Gospel and good works.” “We cannot become pious and righteous by our own works, if we could we should be striking Paul a blow on the mouth.” These “dream-preachers” speak in vain of “Works, fasting and prayer,” but you are a Christian if you believe that Christ is for you wisdom and righteousness. “The doctrine of those who are called Christians must not come from man, or proceed from man’s efforts.... Therefore a Christian life is not promoted by our fasting, prayers, cowls or anything that we may undertake.”[1026]He returns again and again to the belief, so deeply rooted in the heart, of the efficacy of good works in order that he may uproot it completely. The whole Christian system demands, he thinks, the condemnation of the importance attached hitherto to good works. “Thus the whole of Christianity consists in your holding fast to the Evangel, which Christ alone ordains and teaches, not to human words or works.”[1027]It is a “devil” who speaks to you of the meritorious power of works, “not indeed a black or painted devil, but a white devil, who, under a beautiful semblance of life, infuses into you the poison of eternal death.”[1028]Of the Christian who relies only on faith, he says, “Christ’s innocence becomes his innocence, and in the same way Christ’s piety, holiness and salvation become his, and all that is in Christ is contained in the believing heart together with Christ.”[1029]“But such faith is awakened in us by God. From it spring the works by which we assist and serve our neighbour.”[1030]He speaks at considerable length in the last part of his sermons of the particular works which he considers allowable and commendable. How much he wished to imply may, however, be inferred from what has gone before.Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as good,” i.e. “our own self-chosenworks,” such as “special fasting, special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone. There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these. “When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed “without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,” and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031]Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a warning.Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,” and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032]In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing, trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other: “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing to do.As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation that “the works will follow.”On January 24, 1524, Eobanus Hessus wrote to Lang: “Immorality, corruption of youth, contempt of learning and dissensions, such are the fruits of your Evangel.”[1033]“Idislike being here very much,” he says, in the same year, to his friend Sturz, “since all is lost, for there is now no hope of a revival of learning or of a recovery in public life. Everything is on the road to destruction, and we ourselves are rendered odious to all classes by reason of some unlearned deserters. “Oh, unhappy Erfurt,” he cries, in view of the “outrageous behaviour of these godless men of God”; one seeks to oppress the other; already the battlefield of passion is tinged with “blood.”[1034]“You have by your preaching called forth a diabolical life in the town,” Usingen wrote in 1524 of the preachers at Erfurt, “although this is now displeasing to you, and you encourage it even up to the present day; you set the people free from the obedience which, according to the Divine command, they owe to the authorities of the Church, you deprive the people of the fear both of God and of man, hence the corruption of morals, which increases from day to day.”[1035]Usingen, who continued courageously to vindicate the faith of his fathers, was depicted by the preachers as a “crazy old man,” just as they had been advised to do by Luther. “I am quite pleased to hear,” Luther wrote to Lang some considerable time after his return, “that this ‘Unsingen’ is still carrying on his fooleries; as the Apostle Paul says, their folly must be made manifest (2 Tim. iii. 9).”[1036]The champion of the Church, the alleged fool, was sufficiently clear-sighted and frank to predict the Peasant-War as the end of all the godless commotion, and to prophesy that the result of the general religious subversion would be the ruin of his German Fatherland. A fanatical preacher in the town had appealed to the mattocks of the peasants. Him the Augustinian asks: “If the Word of God suffices in the Church, why have you in your sermons appealed for help to the pickaxes, mattocks and spades of the peasants?” “Why do you tell the people that the peasant must come from the field with these weapons to assist the Evangel, if your own and your comrades’ words prove of no avail? Do you not know with what audacity the peasants are already rising against their lords?” “The new preaching,” he complains, even where it is not directly inflammatory, “renders the people, who are already desirous of innovations and dearly love the freedom of the flesh, only too much inclined for tumults, and this daily foments the spirit of unrest.”[1037]“Do you not know that the mob is a hydra-headed monster, a monster that thirsts for blood? Are you anxious to promote your cause with the help of cut-throats?”[1038]Owing to the iconoclasts, the ancient greatness of Constantinople fell, and the Roman Empire of the East faded away; in like manner, so gloomily he predicts, the religious struggle now being waged in Germany will bring about the ruin of the Western Empire and the loss of its ancient greatness.[1039]The help which the innovators received from the Erfurt magistrates induced the leaders of the party to pin their trust on the support of the secular authorities. Even this was justified by appeals to Scripture.Lang, on presenting to Hermann von Hoff, the president of the Erfurt town-council, a translation which he had made of the Gospel of St. Matthew, stated in the accompanying letter, that he had done so “in order that all may know and take heed to the fact, that whatever they undertake against the Gospel is also directed against you. It is necessary, unfortunately, to defend the Gospel by means of the sword.”[1040]In July, 1521, an agreement had, it is true, been entered into which brought some guarantee of safety to the clergy, more particularly the Canons of St. Mary’s and St. Severus, yet in the ensuing years the Chapters were forced to make endless protests against the preachers’ interference in their services and the encroachments of the magistrates on their personal liberty, all in direct contravention of the agreement.The council demanded that the oath of obedience should be taken to itself and not to the Archbishop of Mayence, as heretofore. Priests were arrested on charges which did not concern the council at all, and were taken to the Rathaus. The clergy were obliged to pay taxes like other citizens on all farms and property which belonged to them or to their churches—which had been exempt from time immemorial—and likewise on any treasure or cash they might possess. When the peasants threatened Erfurt, the clergy were advised to bring all the valuables belonging to their churches to the Rathaus where the council, inview of the danger of the times, would receive them into safe custody, giving in return formal receipts. Since the council, as guardians of several monasteries, including St. Peter’s, had already appointed laymen who hindered the lawful Superiors from coming to any independent decision in matters of any moment, and as all the chalices and other vessels of gold and silver, together with the more valuable Church vestments, had already been seized at the Servites, the Brothers of the Rule and the Carthusians, the Canons saw how futile it would be to reject the “advice” given, and they accordingly decided to deliver up the more valuable objects belonging to the two principal churches, St. Mary’s and St. Severus, their decision being accepted by the council with “hearty thanks.” At the formal surrender of the vessels the magistrates protested that the Canons were really not fully aware how well disposed they, the magistrates, were towards them; that they had no wish to drive away the clergy, “but rather to show them all charity so that they might return thanks to God.” Yet we learn also that: Many persons belonging to the council whispered that it was their intention to make the position of the clergy unbearable by means of this and other like acts of despoliation.[1041]On April 27, 1525, on the occasion of the taking over of the treasure, with the co-operation of persons “distinguished for their strong Lutheran views,” a strict search was made in both the venerable churches for anything of any value that might have been left. Not the least consideration was paid to the private property of the individual clergy, objects were seized in the most violent manner, locked chests and cupboards were simply forced open, or, if this took too long, broken with axes. Every hasp of silver on copes and elsewhere was torn off. “Unclean fists,” says a contemporary narrator, “seized the chalices and sacred vessels, which they had no right to touch, and carried them with loud jeers in buckets and baskets to places where they were dishonoured.” As in other churches and convents, the books and papers on which any claims of the clergy against the council might be based were selected with special care. While precious works of art were thus being consigned to destruction,[1042]members of the town-council were consoling the Canons by renewed assurances, that the council “would protect both their life and their property.” Finally, the two churches were closely watched for some while after, “lest something might still be preserved in them, and to prevent such being taken possession of by the clergy.”[1043]When, in 1525, on the news of the Peasant Rising inSwabia and Franconia, meetings were held by the peasants in the Erfurt district, the adherents of the movement determined to enforce by violence their demands even at Erfurt. Those in the town who sympathised with Luther made common cause with the rebels.[1044]The magistrates were undecided. They were not as yet exclusively Lutheran, but were anxious to make the town independent of the Archbishop of Mayence, and to secure for themselves the property and rights of the clergy. For the most part the lower orders were unfavourable to the magistrates, and therefore sided with the peasantry.The peasants from the numerous villages which were politically regarded as belonging to the Erfurt district demanded that they should be emancipated from the burdens which they had to bear, and placed on a footing of social equality with the lower class of Erfurt burghers. With this they joined, as had been done elsewhere, religious demands in the sense of Luther’s innovations. The movement was publicly inaugurated by fourteen villages at a meeting held in a beerhouse on April 25 or 26, 1525, at which the peasants bound themselves by an oath taken with “uplifted right hand,” at the risk of their lives “to support the Word of God and to combine to abolish the old obsolete imposts.” When warned not to go to Erfurt, one of the leaders replied: “God has enlightened us, we shall not remain, but go forward.” As soon as they had come to an agreement as to their demands concerning the taxes “and other heavy burdens which the Evangel was to assist them to get rid of,” they collected in arms around the walls of Erfurt.[1045]The magistrates then took counsel how to divert the threatening storm and direct it against the clergy and the hated authorities of Mayence. The remembrance of the “Pfaffensturm” which, in 1521, had served as a means to allay the social grievances, was an encouragement to adopt a similar course. As intermediary between council and peasants, Hermann von Hoff, who has been mentioned above as an opponent of the Catholic clergy and the rightsof Mayence, took a leading part; one of his principles was that “it is necessary to make use of every means, sweet as well as bitter, if we are to allay so great a commotion and to avert further mischief.”[1046]In their perplexity the magistrates, through the agency of Hoff, admitted the horde of peasants, only stipulating that they should spare the property of the burghers, though they were to be free to plunder the Palace of the Archbishop of Mayence, the “hereditary lord” of the city, and also the toll-house. The peasants made their entry on April 28 with that captain of the town whom Lang had invited to draw the sword in the cause of the Evangel. Not only was the Palace despoiled and the toll-house utterly destroyed, but the salt warehouses and almost all the parsonages were attacked and looted. In the name of “evangelical freedom” the plunderers vented all their fury on the sacred vessels, pictures and relics they were still able to find.“In the Archbishop’s Palace Lutheran preachers, for instance, Eberlin of Günzburg, Mechler and Lang, mixed with the rabble of the town and country and preached to them.” The preachers made no secret of being “in league with the peasantry and the proletariate of the town.” The clergy and religious were, however, to be made “to feel still more severely”[1047]the effects of the alliance between the three parties.At the first coming of the peasants, that quarters might be found for them, “all the convents of monks and nuns were confiscated and their inhabitants driven out into the street.” “Alas, how wretched did the poor nuns look passing up and down the alleys of the town,”[1048]says an eye-witness in an Erfurt chronicle. All those connected with the Collegiate churches of St. Mary and St. Severus had peasants billeted on them in numbers out of all proportion to their means. On the morning of April 28, the service in the church of St. Mary’s was violently interrupted. On the following Sunday, Eberlin, the apostate Franciscan, commenced a course of sermons, which he continued for several days with his customary vehemence and abuse.Exactly a week after the coming of the peasants they passed a resolution in the Mainzer Hof that the number of parishes should be reduced to ten, including the Collegiate church of St. Mary’s, and that in all these parish churches “the pure Word of God should be preached without any additions, man-made laws, decrees or doctrines.” As for the pastors, they were to be appointed and removed by the congregation. This was equivalent to sentencing the old worship to death. On the same day an order was issued to all the parish churches and monasteries to abstain in future from reciting or singing Matins, Vespers or Mass. The only man who was successful in evading the prohibition was Dr. Conrad Klinge, the courageous guardian of the Franciscans, who at the hospital continued to preach in the old way to crowded audiences.Most of the beneficed clergy now quitted the town, as the council refused to undertake any responsibility on their behalf; and as they were forbidden to resume Divine Worship or even to celebrate Mass in private, at the gate of the town they were subjected to a thorough search lest they should have any priestly property concealed about them. The magistrates sought to extort from the clergy who remained, admissions which might serve as some justification for their conduct. The post of preacher at the Dom, after it had been refused by Eberlin, who had at length taken fright at the demagogic spirit now abroad, was bestowed upon one of Luther’s immediate followers; the new preacher was Dr. Johann Lang, an “apostate, renegade, uxorious monk,” as a contemporary chronicler calls him.All tokens of any authority of the Archbishop of Mayence in the town were obliterated, and the archiepiscopal jurisdiction was declared to be at an end. Eobanus Hessus wrote gleefully of the ruin of the “popish” foe. “We have driven away the Bishop of Mayence, for ever. All the monks have been expelled, the nuns turned out, the canons sent away, all the temples and even the money-boxes in the churches plundered; the commonwealth is now established and taxes and customs houses have been done away with. Again we are now free.”[1049]Here the statement that the clergy of Mayence had been expelled “for ever” proved incorrect, for the rights of the over-lord were soon to be re-established.The magistrates were the first to fall; they were deposed, and the lower-class burghers and the peasants replaced them by two committees, one to represent the town, the other the country. In the latter committee the excited ringleaders of the peasantry gave vent to threatening speeches against the former municipal government, and such wild words as “Kill these spectres, blow out their brains” were heard.[1050]The actual wording of the resolutions passed by both the committees was principally the work of preachers of the new faith. Eberlin, too, was consulted as to how best to draw up“the articles in accordance with the Bible,” but he cautiously declined to have anything to do with this, and declared that their demands seemed to him to be exorbitant and that, “the Evangel would not help them.” The Lutheran preachers also exerted themselves to bring about the reinstatement of the magistrates. It is said that on April 30, in every quarter of the town, a minister of the new doctrine preached to the citizens and country people to the following effect: “You have now by your good and Christian acts and deeds emancipated yourselves altogether from the Court at Mayence and its jurisdiction, which, according to Divine justice and Holy Scripture, should have no temporal authority whatever. But in order that this freedom may not lead you astray, there must be some authorities over you, and therefore you must for the future recognise the worthy magistrates of Erfurt as your rulers,” etc.[1051]The words of the preachers prevailed, and the newly elected councillors became the head of a sort of republic. The burdens of the town increased to an oppressive extent, however, and the peasants who had returned to their villages groaned more than ever under the weight of the taxes. Financial difficulties continued to increase.Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, the councillors gave their sanction on May 9, 1525, “under the new seal,” to the amended articles, twenty-eight in number, which had been drafted by the town and peasant committees during the days of storm and stress. The very first article made obligatory the preaching of “the pure Word of God,” and gave to each congregation the right to choose its own pastors. “The gist of the remaining articles was the appointment of a permanent administrative council to give a yearly account, and to impose no new taxes without the knowledge and sanction of both burghers and country subjects.”In accepting the articles it was agreed that Luther’s opinion on them should be ascertained, a decision which seems to show that the peasants and burghers, though probably not the councillors themselves, reckoned upon the weighty sanction of Wittenberg. Yet about May 4 Luther had finished his booklet “Against the murderous Peasants” (above p. 201), which was far from favourable to seditiousmovements such as that of Erfurt. The council invited him by letter, on May 10, to come to Erfurt with Melanchthon “and establish the government of the town,” as Melanchthon puts it (“ad constituendum urbis statum”).[1052]Luther, however, did not accept the invitation, and a month later the council sent him a copy of the articles, requesting a written opinion. It is difficult to believe that the Erfurt magistrates were not aware of Luther’s growing bitterness against the peasants, which is attested by the pamphlets he wrote at the time, or that they were incapable of drawing the obvious conclusion as to his reply.[1053]“If the council in taking this step,” says Eitner, “was relying on Luther’s known attitude towards all revolutionary movements, and hoped to make an end of the inconvenient demands of the people by means of the Reformer’s powerful words, then their expectation was fully realised. Both Luther’s letter (i.e. his answer to the council) and his written notes on the copy of the articles sent him, are full of irony expressing the displeasure of one whose advice was so much in request, but whose interference in the peasant movement, in spite of his good intentions, had thus far met with so little success.... The very articles which the authors had most at heart were submitted by Luther to a relentless and somewhat pointless criticism.... Thus we see in a comparatively trivial case what has long been acknowledged of his action generally, viz. that Luther’s interference in the Peasant-War cannot be altogether justified.... His conduct shattered his reputation, both in the empire and in his second native town [Erfurt], and paved the way for the inevitable reaction.”[1054]Luther, in his reply to the “Honourable, prudent and beloved” members of the Erfurt council,[1055]declaresin the very first sentences that the Twenty-eight Articles were so “ill-advised” that “little good could come of them” even were he present himself at Erfurt; he is of opinion that certain people, who “are better off than they deserve,” are putting on airs at the expense of the council, constitute a danger to the common weal, and, with “unheard-of audacity and wickedness,” wish to “turn things upside down.” Things must never be permitted to come to such a pass that the councillors fear the common people and become their servants; the common people must be quiet and entrust all to the honourable magistrates to be set right, “lest the Princes have occasion to take up arms against Erfurt on account of such unwarrantable conduct.” Luther’s new sovereign, the Elector Johann, had just been assisting in the suppression of the peasant rising. He was in entire sympathy with the Wittenberg Professor, whom he so openly protected and favoured, and doubtless they had discussed together the state of affairs at Erfurt. In his written reply Luther asks whether it is not “seditious” to refuse to pay the Elector the sum due to him for acting as protector of the city. “Did they, then, esteem so lightly the Prince and the security of the town, which, as a matter of fact, was something not to be paid for in money?” Their demand really signified either that “no one was to protect the town of Erfurt, or that the Princes were to relinquish their claim to payment and yet continue to protect the town.”The demand that the congregations of the parishes should appoint their own pastors Luther considered particularly inadmissible; it was “seditious that the parishes should wish to appoint and dismiss their own pastors without reference to the councillors, as though the councillors, in whom authority was vested, were not concerned in what the town might do.” He insists that “the councillors have the right to know what sort of persons are holding office in the town.”Concerning some of the articles which dealt with taxes and imposts, he points out that the business is not his concern, since these are temporal matters. Of the proposal to re-establish the decayed University of Erfurt he says: “This article is the best of all.” Of two of the articles he notes: “Both these will do,” one being that, for the future,openly immoral persons and prostitutes of all classes were not to be tolerated, nor the common houses of public women, and the other, that every debtor, whether to the council or the community, should be “faithfully admonished no matter who he might be.” Concerning the former of these two articles, however, we may remark, that a house of correction for the punishment of light women had existed at Erfurt under the Archbishop’s rule, but had been razed to the ground by the very framers of the articles as soon as the peasants entered the town.The principal thing, in Luther’s opinion, was to place the reins in the hands of the magistrates, so that they may not sit there like an “idol,” “bound hand and foot,” “while the horses saddle and bridle their driver”; on the contrary, the aim of the articles seemed to him to be, to reduce the councillors to be mere figureheads, and to let “the rabble manage everything.”[1056]The “rabble” was just then Luther’s bugbear.The clergy who had quitted the city addressed, on May 30, a written complaint to the Cardinal of Mayence, with an account of the proceedings. On June 8 they also appealed to Johann, the Saxon Elector, and to Duke George of Saxony, asking for their mediation, since they were the “protectors and liege lords” of their Church. They also did all they could with the council to recover their rights. The councillors were, however, merely rude, and replied that the proud priests might ask as much as they pleased but would get no redress. This was what caused them to complain to their secular protectors that they were being treated worse than the meanest peasant. Duke George advised them to await the result of the negotiations which, as he knew, were proceeding between the town of Erfurt and the Cardinal.The Lutheran Elector, on the other hand, entered into closer relations with the town-council of Erfurt, accepting with good grace their appeal for help, their protestation of submission and obedience to his rule, and the explicit assurance of the councillors at the Weimar conference, onJune 22, “that they would stand by the true and unfeigned Word of God as pious and faithful Christians, and, in support of the same, stake life and limb, with the help of God’s grace.” Thereupon the Elector promised them, on June 23, that, “should they suffer any inconvenience or attack because of the Word of God,” he, as their “liege lord, ruler and protector,” would “stand by them and afford them protection to the best of his ability,” since “the Word of God and the Holy Evangel were likewise dear to him.” In point of fact he did espouse the cause of the inhabitants of Erfurt, though, like Duke George, it was his wish to see a peaceful settlement arrived at between the town and its rightful over-lord.[1057]The crafty councillors were actually negotiating with the representatives of the Cardinal of Mayence at the very time when they were seeking the protection of Saxony. The over-lord whose rights they had outraged, through his vicar, had made known his peremptory demands to the council on May 26, viz. entire restitution, damages, expulsion of the Lutheran sect, re-establishment of the old worship and payment of an indemnity. In the event of refusal he threatened them with the armed interference of the Swabian League. The threat took effect, for the Swabian League at that time was feared, and disturbers of the peace had had occasion to feel its strength. The hint of armed interference proved all the more effective when Duke George advised the inhabitants of Erfurt to come to terms with the Mayence vicar and abolish Lutheranism, as otherwise they would have to expect “something further.”The council therefore assumed a conciliatory attitude towards Mayence, and negotiations concerning the restitution to be made were commenced at a conference at Fulda on August 25, 1525. After protracted delays these terminated with the Treaty of Hammelburg on February 5, 1530. This was, “from the political point of view, an utter defeat for the inhabitants of Erfurt.”[1058]The council was not only obliged to recognise the supremacy of the Archbishop, but also to re-erect all buildings which had been destroyed, and to return everything that had been misapplied; in addition to this, for the loss of taxes and other revenues, the council was to pay the Archbishop 2500 gulden, and tothe two Collegiate churches, for losses sustained, 1200 marks of fine silver. Both these churches were to be handed over for Catholic worship. The reinstated over-lord, however, declared, for his part, that, “As regards the other churches and matters of faith and ritual, we hereby and on this occasion neither give nor take, sanction nor forbid, anything to any party.”[1059]Thus the rescinding of the innovations was for the present deferred, and Luther had every reason to be satisfied with what had been effected in a town to which he was attached by many links. How little gratitude he showed to Archbishop Albert, and how fiercely his hatred and animus against the cautious Cardinal would occasionally flame up, will be seen from facts to be mentioned elsewhere.Among the few Erfurt monks who, though expelled from their monastery, remained true to their profession and to the Church, there was one who attained to a great age and who is mentioned incidentally by Flacius Illyricus. He well remembered the first period of Luther’s life in Erfurt, his zeal for the Church and solicitude for the observance of the Rule.[1060]When considering Luther’s intervention in Erfurt matters, and his personal action there, one thought obtrudes itself.When Luther, now quite a different man and in vastly altered circumstances, returned to Erfurt on the occasion of the visit referred to above, is it not likely that he recalled his earlier life at Erfurt, where he had spent happy days of interior contentment, as is shown by the letters he wrote before his priestly ordination? In one of the sermons he delivered there, in October, 1522, he refers to his student days at Erfurt, but it does not appear that he ever seriouslyreflected on the contrast presented by the convictions he held at that time on the Church and his new ideas on faith and works. His allusions to his Erfurt recollections are neither serious nor grateful towards his old school. He speaks scoffingly of his learned Erfurt opponents, some of whom he had been acquainted with previously, as “knights of straw.” “Yes, they prate, we are Doctors and Masters.... Well, if a title settles the matter, I also became a Bachelorhere, and then a Master and then again a Bachelor. I also went to school with them, and I know and am convinced that they do not understand their own books.”[1061]Another circumstance must be taken into account. Whereas in later life he can scarcely speak of his early years as a monk without telling his hearers how he had passed from an excessive though purely exterior holiness-by-works to his great discovery, viz. to the knowledge of a gracious God, in 1522 he is absolutely silent regarding these “inward experiences”; yet his very theme, viz. the contrast between the new Evangel and the “sophistical holiness-by-works” preferred by Catholics, and likewise the familiar Erfurt scene of his early life as a monk, should, one would think, have invited him to speak of the matter here.[1062]While Luther was seeking to expel by force the popish “wolves,” more especially the monks and nuns, from the places within reach of the new Evangel, an enemy was growing up in his own camp in the shape of the so-called fanatics; their existence can be traced back as far as his Wartburg days, and his first misunderstanding with Carlstadt; these, by their alliance with Carlstadt, who had been won over to their ideas, and with the help of men like Thomas Münzer, had of late greatly increased their power, thanks to the social conditions which were so favourable to their cause.6. Sharp Encounters with the FanaticsIf, on the one hand, the antagonism which Luther was obliged to display towards the fanatical Anabaptists endangered his work, on the other the struggle was in many respects to his advantage.His being obliged to withstand the claim constantly made by the fanatics to inspiration by the Holy Ghost served as a warning to him to exercise caution and moderation in appealing to a higher call in the case of his own enterprise; being compelled also to invoke the assistance of the authorities against the fanatics’ subversion of the existing order of things, he was naturally obliged to be more reticent himself and to refrain from preaching revolution in the interests of his own teaching. We even find him at times desisting from his claim to special inspiration and guidance by the “spirit” in the negotiations entered into on account of the Münzer business; this, however, he does with a purpose and in opposition with his well-known and usual view. In place of his real ideas, as expressed by him both before and after this period, he, for a while, prefers to deprecate any use of force or violence, and counsels his sovereign to introduce the innovations gradually, pointing out the most suitable methods with patience and prudence.At first he was anxious that indulgence should be observed even in dealing with the Anabaptists, but later on he invoked vigorously the aid of the authorities.In reality he himself was borne along by principles akin to those of the fanatics whose ideas were, as a matter of fact, an outcome of his own undertaking. His own writings exhibit many a trait akin to their pseudo-mysticism. In the end his practical common sense was more than a match for these pestering opponents, who for a time gave him so much trouble. His learning and education raised him far above them and made the religious notions of the Anabaptists abhorrent to him, while his public position at the University, as well as his official and personal relations with the sovereign, ill-disposed him to the demagogism of the fanatics and their efforts to win over the common people to their side.The fanatical aim of Thomas Münzer, the quondam Catholic priest who had worked as a preacher of the newfaith at Allstedt, near Eisleben, since 1523, was the extermination by violence of all impious persons, and the setting up of a Kingdom of God formed of all the righteous here on earth, after the ideal of apostolic times. This tenet, rather than rebaptism, was the mark of his followers. The rebaptism of adults, which was practised by the sect, was merely due to their belief that an active faith was essential for the reception of the sacraments, whilst children of tender years were incapable of any faith at all.As a beginning of the war against the “idolatry” of the old Church, Münzer caused the Pilgrimage Chapel at Malderbach, near Eisleben, where a miraculous picture of Our Lady was venerated, to be destroyed in April, 1524. He then published a fiery sermon he had recently preached, in which he exhorted the great ones and all friends of the Evangel among the people at once to abolish Divine Worship as it had hitherto been practised. The sermon was sent to the Electoral Court by persons who were troubled about the rising, and who begged that Münzer might be called to account. The sermon was also forwarded to Luther by Spalatin, the Court Chaplain, evidently in order that Luther might take some steps to obviate the danger. In point of fact, Luther’s eagle eye took in the situation at a glance, and he at once decided to intervene with the utmost vigour. With Münzer’s spirit he was already acquainted through personal observation, so he said, and now he realised yet more clearly that its effect would be to let the mob loose, with the consequence that “heavenly spirits” of every sort would soon be claiming to interfere in the direction of his own enterprise.Luther at once composed a clever and powerful writing entitled “A Circular to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Spirit of Revolt.” This appeared in the last days of July, 1524. To it we shall return later, for it is of great psychological interest.Münzer was dismissed from his situation, and went to Mühlhausen, where the apostate monk, Heinrich Pfeifer, had already prepared the ground, and thence to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg he brought out, in September, 1524, his “Hochverursachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg” in reply to Luther’s Circular, above mentioned. He then recommencedhis restless wanderings through South Germany and Switzerland. He remained for some time with the ex-priest and professor of theology, Balthasar Hubmaier, then pastor of the new faith at Waldshut. On his return to Mühlhausen, in December, he put into execution his fantastic communistic scheme, which lasted until he and the seditious peasants were defeated in the encounter at Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525; his execution for a while put an end to the endeavours of the fanatics. Nevertheless, in other places, more particularly at Münster during the famous Reign of Terror from 1532-1535, the fanaticism of the Anabaptists again broke out under even worse forms.The short circular, “On the Spirit of Revolt,”[1063]referred to above as a document curiously illustrative of Luther’s psychology, is not important in the sense of furnishing a true picture of his inner thoughts and feelings. Conveying as it does a petition and admonition to the Princes, it is naturally worded politically and with great caution, and was also manifestly intended for the general public. Nevertheless its author, even where he clothes his thoughts in the strange and carefully chosen dress best calculated to serve the purpose he had in view, affords us an interesting glimpse into his mode of action. He also shows throughout the whole circular in what light he wishes to see his own higher mission regarded.
“We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “sola fides” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us.It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]The contrary “delusion,” he says, had been invented and encouraged by the preachers, whose proceedings were infinitely worse than any mere “numbering of the people.” He storms against the clergy and vigorously foments the social discontent. To build churches, or found livings, etc., was mere outward show; “such works simply gave rise to avarice, desire for the praise of men and other vices.” “You think that as a priest you are free from sin, and yet you nourish so much jealousy in your heart; if you could slay your neighbour with impunity you would do so and then go on saying Mass. Surely it would not be surprising were a thunderbolt to smite you to the earth.” In order to complete the effect of this demagogic outburst he mocks at the sermons, with their legends “about the old ass,” etc., and their quotations from ancient philosophers, who were “not only against the Gospel, but even against God Himself.”
“We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “sola fides” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us.
It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]
The contrary “delusion,” he says, had been invented and encouraged by the preachers, whose proceedings were infinitely worse than any mere “numbering of the people.” He storms against the clergy and vigorously foments the social discontent. To build churches, or found livings, etc., was mere outward show; “such works simply gave rise to avarice, desire for the praise of men and other vices.” “You think that as a priest you are free from sin, and yet you nourish so much jealousy in your heart; if you could slay your neighbour with impunity you would do so and then go on saying Mass. Surely it would not be surprising were a thunderbolt to smite you to the earth.” In order to complete the effect of this demagogic outburst he mocks at the sermons, with their legends “about the old ass,” etc., and their quotations from ancient philosophers, who were “not only against the Gospel, but even against God Himself.”
The result was stupendous, especially in the case of the young men at the University whom the Humanists had disposed in Luther’s favour. On the day after Luther’s departure one of his sympathisers, a Canon of the Church of St. Severus, who had taken part in the solemn reception accorded Luther on his arrival in the town, was told by the Dean, Jakob Doliatoris, that he was under excommunication and might no longer attend the service in choir. On his complaining to the University, of which he was amember, the students intervened with demonstrations in his favour.[997]
Luther heard of this only through certain unreliable reports and wrote to Spalatin: “They apprehend still worse things at Erfurt. The Senate pretends to see nothing of what is going on. The clergy are reviled. The young apprentices are said to be in league with the students. We are about to see the prophecy fulfilled: ‘Erfurt has become a new [Husite] Prague.’” Previous to this, in the same letter, he had said of his adversaries in the Empire: “Let them be, perhaps the day of their visitation is at hand.”[998]
Soon after, however, he became rather more concerned, perhaps owing to further reports of the unrest, and began to fear for the “good name and progress of the Evangel,” in consequence of the acts of brutality committed. “It is indeed quite right,” he wrote to Melanchthon, “that those who persist in their impiety should have their courage cooled,” but in this “Satan makes a mockery of us”; he sees in a mystical vision “The Judgment Day,” the approaching end of the world at Erfurt, and the fig tree, as had been foretold, growing up, covered with leaves, but bare of fruit because the cause of the Evangel could not make its way.[999]
In July, 1521, there broke out in the town the so-called “Pfaffensturm.”
In a few days more than sixty parsonages had been pulled down, libraries destroyed and the archives and tithe registers of the ecclesiastical authorities ransacked; little regard was shown for human life. A little later seven clergy-houses were again set on fire. Meanwhile the Lutheran preachers, with the fanatical Lang at their head, were at liberty to stir up the people.[1000]The ruin of the University was imminent; many parents withdrew their sons, fearing lest they should be infected with the “Husite heresy.” The customary Catholic services were, however,performed as usual, but the end of Catholic worship could be foreseen owing to the ever-increasing growth of “evangelical freedom.” Renegade monks, especially Luther’s former Augustinian comrades, preached against “the old Church as the mother of faithlessness and hypocrisy”; Lang spoke of the monasteries as “dens of robbers.” Under the attacks of the preachers one human ordinance after another fell to the ground. Fasting, long prayers, founded Masses, confraternities, everything in fact, disappeared before the new liberty, value being allowed only to temporal works of mercy. The avarice of the “shorn, anointed priestlings” was no longer to be stimulated by the people’s money. “Ruffianly crowds showed their sympathy with the preachers by yelling and shouting in church. Theological questions were debated in market-places and taverns, men, women and boys expounded the Bible.”[1001]
Luther, through Lang, urged the Augustinians at Erfurt, who still remained true to their monastic Rule, to apostatise; he merely expressed the wish that there should be no “tumults” against the Order. Lang was to “defend the cause of the Evangel”[1002]at the next Convention of the Saxon Augustinians, a meeting which took place at Epiphany, 1522 (above, p. 337). Lang justified his apostasy in a work in which he expressly appeals to the new doctrines on faith and good works. The exodus of the monks from their convent was not, however, carried out as quietly as Luther would have wished; he dreaded the “slanders of the foes of the Evangel” and was depressed by the immorality of the inhabitants of Erfurt, and by his own experience with his followers. He spoke his mind to Lang: “The power of the Word is still concealed, or else you pay too little heed to it. This surprises me greatly. We are just the same as before, hard, unfeeling, impatient, sinful, intemperate, lascivious and combative, in short, the mark of the Christian, true charity, is nowhere to be found. Paul’s words are fulfilled in us: We have God’s Word on our lips, but not in power (cp. 1 Cor. iv. 20).”[1003]In 1524 Lang married the rich widow of an Erfurt fuller.
Those who had been unfaithful to their vows and priestlyobligations, and then acted as preachers of the new faith, gave the greatest scandal by their conduct.
Many letters dating from 1522, 1523 and 1524, written by Lutheran Humanists such as Eobanus Hessus, Euricius Cordus and Michael Nossenus, who, with disgust, were observing their behaviour, bore witness to the general deterioration of morals in the town, more particularly among the escaped monks and nuns.[1004]“I see,” Luther himself wrote to Erfurt, “that monks are leaving in great numbers for no other reason than for their belly’s sake and for the freedom of the flesh.”[1005]
Meanwhile, discussions were held in the Erfurt circle of the semi-theologian Lang, on the absence of free-will in man and on “the evil that God does.” Lang applied to Luther for help. “I see that you are idlers,” was his reply, “though the devil provides you with abundance of occupation in what he plots amongst you. You must not argue concerning the evil that God does. It is not, as you fancy, the work of God, but a ceasing to work on God’s part. We desire what is evil when He ceases to work in us and leaves our nature free to fulfil its own wickedness. Where He works the result is ever good. Scripture speaks of such ceasing to work on God’s part as a ‘hardening.’ Thus evil cannot be wrought [by God], since it is nothing (‘malum non potest fieri, cum sit nihil’), but it arises because what is good is neglected, or prevented.”
This was one of the ethical doctrines proclaimed by Luther and Melanchthon which lay at the back of the new theory of good works. Luther enlarged on it in startling fashion in his book “De servo arbitrio” (above, p. 223 ff.).
Bartholomew Usingen, the learned and pious Augustinian, who had once been Luther’s professor and had enjoyed his especial esteem, witnessed with pain and sadness the changes in the town and in his own priory. The former University professor, now an aged man, fearlessly took his place in the yet remaining Catholic pulpits, particularlyat St. Mary’s, assured of the support and respect of the staunch members of the fold who flocked in numbers to hear him. There he protested against the new doctrines and the growing licentiousness, though he too had to submit to unheard-of insults, abuse and even violent interruptions of his sermons when emissaries of the Lutherans succeeded in forcing their way in. He also laboured against religious innovations with his pen.
“If we are taught,” says Usingen, “that faith alone can save us, that good works are of no avail for salvation and do not merit a reward for us in heaven, who will then take the trouble to perform them?—Why exhort men even to do what is right if we have no free-will? And who will be diligent in keeping the commandments of God if the people are taught that they cannot possibly be kept, and that Christ has already fulfilled them perfectly for us?”[1006]Usingen points out to the preachers, especially to Johann Culsamer, the noisiest of them all: “The fruits of your preaching, the excesses and scandals which spring from it, are known to the whole world; then indeed shall the people exert themselves to tame their passions when they are told repeatedly that by faith alone all sin is blotted out, and that confession is no longer necessary. Adultery, unchastity, theft, blasphemy, calumny and such other vices increase to an alarming extent, as unfortunately we see with our own eyes (‘patet per quotidianum exercitium’).”[1007]“The effect of your godless preaching is,” he says, on another occasion, “that the faithful no longer perform any works of mercy, and for this reason the poor are heard to complain bitterly of you.”[1008]“The rich no longer trouble about the needy, since they are told in sermons that faith alone suffices for salvation and that good works are not meritorious. The clergy, who formerly distributed such abundant alms from the convents and foundations, are no longer in a position to continue these works of charity because, owing to your attacks, their means have been so greatly reduced.”[1009]The worthy Augustinian had shown especial marks of favour to his pupil Lang, and it grieved him all the more deeply that he, by the boundless animosity he exhibited in his discourses, should have set an example to the other preachers in the matter of abuse, whether of the Orders, the clergy or the Papacy. He said to him in 1524, “I recalled you from exile [i.e. transferred you from Wittenberg to thestudium generaleat Erfurt] ... and this is the distinction you have won for yourself; you were the cause of the Erfurt monks leaving their monastery; there hadbeen fourteen apostasies and now yours makes the fifteenth; like the dragon of the Apocalypse when he fell from heaven, you dragged down with you the third part of the stars.”[1010]
“If we are taught,” says Usingen, “that faith alone can save us, that good works are of no avail for salvation and do not merit a reward for us in heaven, who will then take the trouble to perform them?—Why exhort men even to do what is right if we have no free-will? And who will be diligent in keeping the commandments of God if the people are taught that they cannot possibly be kept, and that Christ has already fulfilled them perfectly for us?”[1006]
Usingen points out to the preachers, especially to Johann Culsamer, the noisiest of them all: “The fruits of your preaching, the excesses and scandals which spring from it, are known to the whole world; then indeed shall the people exert themselves to tame their passions when they are told repeatedly that by faith alone all sin is blotted out, and that confession is no longer necessary. Adultery, unchastity, theft, blasphemy, calumny and such other vices increase to an alarming extent, as unfortunately we see with our own eyes (‘patet per quotidianum exercitium’).”[1007]
“The effect of your godless preaching is,” he says, on another occasion, “that the faithful no longer perform any works of mercy, and for this reason the poor are heard to complain bitterly of you.”[1008]“The rich no longer trouble about the needy, since they are told in sermons that faith alone suffices for salvation and that good works are not meritorious. The clergy, who formerly distributed such abundant alms from the convents and foundations, are no longer in a position to continue these works of charity because, owing to your attacks, their means have been so greatly reduced.”[1009]
The worthy Augustinian had shown especial marks of favour to his pupil Lang, and it grieved him all the more deeply that he, by the boundless animosity he exhibited in his discourses, should have set an example to the other preachers in the matter of abuse, whether of the Orders, the clergy or the Papacy. He said to him in 1524, “I recalled you from exile [i.e. transferred you from Wittenberg to thestudium generaleat Erfurt] ... and this is the distinction you have won for yourself; you were the cause of the Erfurt monks leaving their monastery; there hadbeen fourteen apostasies and now yours makes the fifteenth; like the dragon of the Apocalypse when he fell from heaven, you dragged down with you the third part of the stars.”[1010]
Usingen mentions the “report,” possibly exaggerated, that at one time some three hundred apostate monks were in residence at Erfurt; many ex-nuns were daily to be seen wandering about the streets.[1011]Most of these auxiliaries who had flocked to the town in search of bread, were uneducated clerics who drew upon themselves the scorn of the Humanists belonging to the new faith. Any of these clerics who were capable of speaking in public, by preference devoted themselves to invective. Usingen frequently reproached his foes with their scurrility in the pulpit, their constant attacks on the sins and crimes of the clergy, and their violent reprobation and abuse of institutions and customs held in universal veneration for ages, all of which could only exercise a pernicious influence on morality. “Holy Scripture,” he says in a work against the two preachers Culsamer and Mechler, “commands the preacher to point out their sins to the people and to exhort them to amendment. But the new preaching does not speak to the people of their faults but only of the sins of the clergy, and thus the listener forgets his own sins and leaves the church worse than he entered it.” And elsewhere: “Invective was formerly confined to the viragoes of the market-place, but now it flourishes in the churches.” “Even your own hearers are weary of your everlasting slanders. Formerly, they say, the gospel was preached to us, but such abuse and calumny was not then heard in the pulpit.”[1012]
It could not be but regarded as strange that Luther himself, forgetful of his former regard, went so far as to egg on his pupils and friends at Erfurt against his old professor. Usingen certainly had never anticipated such treatment at his hands. “He has, as you know,” Luther wrote to Lang, on June 26, “become hard-headed and full of ingrained obstinacy and conceit. Therefore, in your preaching, you must draw down upon his folly the contempt that such coarse and inflated blindness deserves.” As from his early years he had never been known to yield to anyone,Luther gave up the hope of seeing the stubborn sophist “yield to Christ”; he sees here the confirmation of the proverb: “No fool like an old fool.”[1013]
Carried away by his success at Erfurt, Luther urged the preachers not to allow their energies to flag.
It is true that in an official Circular-Letter to the Erfurt Congregation, despatched on July 10, 1522, and intended for publication, his tone is comparatively calm; the superscription is: “Martin Luther, Ecclesiastes of Wittenberg, to all the Christians at Erfurt together with the preachers and ministers, Grace and Peace in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.”[1014]Therein, at Lang’s request, dealing with the controversy which had arisen at Erfurt regarding the veneration of the Saints, he declares that whilst there was certainly no warrant of Scripture for Saint-worship, it ought not to be assailed with violence (i.e. not after the fashion of the fanatics whose doings were a public danger). He trusts “we shall be the occasion of no rising” and points to his own example as showing with what moderation he had ever proceeded against the Papists: “As yet I have not moved a finger against them, and Christ has destroyed them with the sword of His mouth” (2 Thess. ii. 8).[1015]“Leave Christ to act” in true faith—such is the gist of his exhortation in this letter so admirably padded with Pauline phrases—but despise and avoid the “stiff-necked sophists”; “Whoever stinks, let him go on stinking.” He concludes, quite in the Pauline manner: “May Our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you together with us in all the fulness of the knowledge of Himself to the honour of His Father, Who is also ours, to Whom be Glory for ever and ever, Amen. Greet Johann Lang [and the other preachers]: George Forchheim, Johann Culhamer, Antony Musam, Ægidius Mechler and Peter Bamberger. Philip, Jonas and all our people greet you. The Grace of God be with you all, Amen.”[1016]
But when Luther, at the instance of Duke Johann of Saxony and his son Johann Frederick, came to Erfurt, in October, 1522, accompanied by Melanchthon, Agricola andJacob Probst, and proceeded to address the multitude who flocked to hear him (October 21 and 22), he was unable to restrain his passion, and, by his words of fire, fanned the hatred and blind fanaticism of the mob to the highest pitch.
He scolded the clergy as “fat and lazy priestlings and monks,” who “hitherto had carried on their deceitful trade throughout the whole world,” and upon whom “everything had been bestowed.” “So far they have mightily fattened their great paunches.” “Of what use were their brotherhoods, indulgence-letters and all their countless trickeries?” “Ah, it must have cost the devil much labour to establish the ecclesiastical Estate.... Alas for these oil-pots who can do nothing but anoint people, wash walls and baptise bells!” But the believer is “Lord over Pope and devil and all such powers, and is also a judge of this delusion.”And yet in remarkable contrast to all this, in his closing words, spoken with greater ponderance, he exhorts the people “not to despise their enemies even though they know not Christ, but to have patience with them.” Yet before this he had declared: “We must crush the fiendish head of this brood with the Evangel. Then the Pope will lose his crown.” He had also preached against the secular authority exercised at Erfurt by the Archbishop of Mayence: “Our Holy Fathers and reverend lords, who have the spiritual sword as well as the temporal, want to be our rulers and masters. It is plain they have not got even the spiritual sword, and certainly God never gave them the temporal. Therefore it is only right, that, as they have exalted their government so greatly, it should be greatly humbled.”[1017]Amidst all this he has not a single word of actual blame for the former acts of violence, but merely a few futile platitudes on peaceableness, such as: “We do not wish to preserve the Evangel by our own efforts,” for it is sufficiently strong to see to itself. He assures his hearers that, “he was not concerned how to defend it.”[1018]Yet he sets up each of his followers as “king” and “yoke-fellow of Christ,” having the Royal Priesthood so that they may defy the Hierarchy, “who have stolen the sword out of our hands.” All this while expressly professing to proclaim the great and popular doctrine of faith and Bible only.“You have been baptised and endowed with the true faith, therefore you are spiritual and able to judge of all things by the word of the Evangel, and are not to be judged of any man.... Say: My faith is founded on Christ alone and His Word, not on the Pope or on any Councils.... My faith is here a judge and may say: This doctrine is true, but that is false and evil. And the Pope and all his crew, nay, all men on earth, must submit to that decision.... Therefore I say: Whoever has faith is a spiritual man and judge of all things, and is himself judged of noman ... the Pope owes him obedience, and, were he a true Christian, would prostrate himself at his feet, and so too would every University, learned man or sophist.”[1019]All depends on one thing, namely, whether this believer “judges according to the Evangel,” i.e. according to the new interpretation of Scripture which Luther has disclosed.We naturally think of Usingen and those Erfurt professors who remained faithful to the Church when Luther, in the course of his sermon, in sarcastic language, pits his new interpretation of Scripture against the “sophists, birettas and skull-caps.” “Bang the mouths of the sophists to [when they cry]: ‘Papa, Papa,Concilium, Concilium,Patres, Patres, Universities, Universities.’ What on earth do we care about that? one word of God is more than all this.”[1020]“Let them go on with all their sermons and their dreams!” “Let us see what such bats will do with their feather-brooms!”[1021]The commanding tone in which he spoke and the persuasive force of his personality were apt to make his hearers forgetful of the fact, that, after all, his great pretensions rested on his own testimony alone. In the general excitement the objections, which he himself had the courage to bring forward, seemed futile: “Were not Christ and the Gospel preached before? Do you fancy,” he replies, “that we are not aware of what is meant by Gospel, Christ and Faith?”[1022]It was of the utmost importance to him that, on this occasion of his appearance at Erfurt, he should make the whole weight of his personal authority felt so as to stem betimes the flood let loose by others who taught differently; he was determined to impress the seal of his own spirit upon the new religious system at this important outpost.Even before this he had let fall some words in confidence to Lang expressive of his concern that, at Erfurt, as it seemed to him, they wished to outstrip him in the knowledge of the Word, so that he felt himself decreasing while others increased (John iii. 30),[1023]and in the Circular-Letter above mentioned, he had anxiously warned the Erfurt believers against those who, confiding in their “peculiar wisdom,” were desirous of teaching “something besides Christ and beyond our preaching.”[1024]Now, personally present at the place where danger threatened, he insists from the pulpit with great emphasis on his mission: “It was not I who put myself forward.... Christ Our Master when sending His apostles out into the world to preach gave them no other directions than to preach the Gospel ... when He makes a man a preacher and apostle He also in His gracious condescension gives him instructions how to speak and what to speak, even down to the present day.” Those who heardhim were therefore to believe for certain “that he was not preaching what was his, but, like the apostles, the Word of God.”[1025]Many of his hearers were all the more likely to overlook the strange pretensions herein embodied, seeing that a large portion of his discourse proclaimed the sweet doctrine of evangelical freedom and denounced good works.For the latter purpose he very effectively introduces the Catholic preachers, putting into their mouths the assertion, falsely credited to them, that “only works and man’s justice” availed anything, not “Christ and His Justice”; for they say, “faith is not sufficient, it is also necessary to fast, to pray, to build churches, to found monasteries, monkeries and nunneries, and so forth.” But “they will be knocked on the head and recoil, and be convicted of the fact, that they know nothing whatever of what concerns Christ, the Gospel and good works.” “We cannot become pious and righteous by our own works, if we could we should be striking Paul a blow on the mouth.” These “dream-preachers” speak in vain of “Works, fasting and prayer,” but you are a Christian if you believe that Christ is for you wisdom and righteousness. “The doctrine of those who are called Christians must not come from man, or proceed from man’s efforts.... Therefore a Christian life is not promoted by our fasting, prayers, cowls or anything that we may undertake.”[1026]He returns again and again to the belief, so deeply rooted in the heart, of the efficacy of good works in order that he may uproot it completely. The whole Christian system demands, he thinks, the condemnation of the importance attached hitherto to good works. “Thus the whole of Christianity consists in your holding fast to the Evangel, which Christ alone ordains and teaches, not to human words or works.”[1027]It is a “devil” who speaks to you of the meritorious power of works, “not indeed a black or painted devil, but a white devil, who, under a beautiful semblance of life, infuses into you the poison of eternal death.”[1028]Of the Christian who relies only on faith, he says, “Christ’s innocence becomes his innocence, and in the same way Christ’s piety, holiness and salvation become his, and all that is in Christ is contained in the believing heart together with Christ.”[1029]“But such faith is awakened in us by God. From it spring the works by which we assist and serve our neighbour.”[1030]He speaks at considerable length in the last part of his sermons of the particular works which he considers allowable and commendable. How much he wished to imply may, however, be inferred from what has gone before.Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as good,” i.e. “our own self-chosenworks,” such as “special fasting, special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone. There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these. “When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed “without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,” and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031]Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a warning.Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,” and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032]In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing, trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other: “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing to do.
He scolded the clergy as “fat and lazy priestlings and monks,” who “hitherto had carried on their deceitful trade throughout the whole world,” and upon whom “everything had been bestowed.” “So far they have mightily fattened their great paunches.” “Of what use were their brotherhoods, indulgence-letters and all their countless trickeries?” “Ah, it must have cost the devil much labour to establish the ecclesiastical Estate.... Alas for these oil-pots who can do nothing but anoint people, wash walls and baptise bells!” But the believer is “Lord over Pope and devil and all such powers, and is also a judge of this delusion.”
And yet in remarkable contrast to all this, in his closing words, spoken with greater ponderance, he exhorts the people “not to despise their enemies even though they know not Christ, but to have patience with them.” Yet before this he had declared: “We must crush the fiendish head of this brood with the Evangel. Then the Pope will lose his crown.” He had also preached against the secular authority exercised at Erfurt by the Archbishop of Mayence: “Our Holy Fathers and reverend lords, who have the spiritual sword as well as the temporal, want to be our rulers and masters. It is plain they have not got even the spiritual sword, and certainly God never gave them the temporal. Therefore it is only right, that, as they have exalted their government so greatly, it should be greatly humbled.”[1017]
Amidst all this he has not a single word of actual blame for the former acts of violence, but merely a few futile platitudes on peaceableness, such as: “We do not wish to preserve the Evangel by our own efforts,” for it is sufficiently strong to see to itself. He assures his hearers that, “he was not concerned how to defend it.”[1018]Yet he sets up each of his followers as “king” and “yoke-fellow of Christ,” having the Royal Priesthood so that they may defy the Hierarchy, “who have stolen the sword out of our hands.” All this while expressly professing to proclaim the great and popular doctrine of faith and Bible only.
“You have been baptised and endowed with the true faith, therefore you are spiritual and able to judge of all things by the word of the Evangel, and are not to be judged of any man.... Say: My faith is founded on Christ alone and His Word, not on the Pope or on any Councils.... My faith is here a judge and may say: This doctrine is true, but that is false and evil. And the Pope and all his crew, nay, all men on earth, must submit to that decision.... Therefore I say: Whoever has faith is a spiritual man and judge of all things, and is himself judged of noman ... the Pope owes him obedience, and, were he a true Christian, would prostrate himself at his feet, and so too would every University, learned man or sophist.”[1019]
All depends on one thing, namely, whether this believer “judges according to the Evangel,” i.e. according to the new interpretation of Scripture which Luther has disclosed.
We naturally think of Usingen and those Erfurt professors who remained faithful to the Church when Luther, in the course of his sermon, in sarcastic language, pits his new interpretation of Scripture against the “sophists, birettas and skull-caps.” “Bang the mouths of the sophists to [when they cry]: ‘Papa, Papa,Concilium, Concilium,Patres, Patres, Universities, Universities.’ What on earth do we care about that? one word of God is more than all this.”[1020]“Let them go on with all their sermons and their dreams!” “Let us see what such bats will do with their feather-brooms!”[1021]
The commanding tone in which he spoke and the persuasive force of his personality were apt to make his hearers forgetful of the fact, that, after all, his great pretensions rested on his own testimony alone. In the general excitement the objections, which he himself had the courage to bring forward, seemed futile: “Were not Christ and the Gospel preached before? Do you fancy,” he replies, “that we are not aware of what is meant by Gospel, Christ and Faith?”[1022]
It was of the utmost importance to him that, on this occasion of his appearance at Erfurt, he should make the whole weight of his personal authority felt so as to stem betimes the flood let loose by others who taught differently; he was determined to impress the seal of his own spirit upon the new religious system at this important outpost.
Even before this he had let fall some words in confidence to Lang expressive of his concern that, at Erfurt, as it seemed to him, they wished to outstrip him in the knowledge of the Word, so that he felt himself decreasing while others increased (John iii. 30),[1023]and in the Circular-Letter above mentioned, he had anxiously warned the Erfurt believers against those who, confiding in their “peculiar wisdom,” were desirous of teaching “something besides Christ and beyond our preaching.”[1024]Now, personally present at the place where danger threatened, he insists from the pulpit with great emphasis on his mission: “It was not I who put myself forward.... Christ Our Master when sending His apostles out into the world to preach gave them no other directions than to preach the Gospel ... when He makes a man a preacher and apostle He also in His gracious condescension gives him instructions how to speak and what to speak, even down to the present day.” Those who heardhim were therefore to believe for certain “that he was not preaching what was his, but, like the apostles, the Word of God.”[1025]
Many of his hearers were all the more likely to overlook the strange pretensions herein embodied, seeing that a large portion of his discourse proclaimed the sweet doctrine of evangelical freedom and denounced good works.
For the latter purpose he very effectively introduces the Catholic preachers, putting into their mouths the assertion, falsely credited to them, that “only works and man’s justice” availed anything, not “Christ and His Justice”; for they say, “faith is not sufficient, it is also necessary to fast, to pray, to build churches, to found monasteries, monkeries and nunneries, and so forth.” But “they will be knocked on the head and recoil, and be convicted of the fact, that they know nothing whatever of what concerns Christ, the Gospel and good works.” “We cannot become pious and righteous by our own works, if we could we should be striking Paul a blow on the mouth.” These “dream-preachers” speak in vain of “Works, fasting and prayer,” but you are a Christian if you believe that Christ is for you wisdom and righteousness. “The doctrine of those who are called Christians must not come from man, or proceed from man’s efforts.... Therefore a Christian life is not promoted by our fasting, prayers, cowls or anything that we may undertake.”[1026]
He returns again and again to the belief, so deeply rooted in the heart, of the efficacy of good works in order that he may uproot it completely. The whole Christian system demands, he thinks, the condemnation of the importance attached hitherto to good works. “Thus the whole of Christianity consists in your holding fast to the Evangel, which Christ alone ordains and teaches, not to human words or works.”[1027]It is a “devil” who speaks to you of the meritorious power of works, “not indeed a black or painted devil, but a white devil, who, under a beautiful semblance of life, infuses into you the poison of eternal death.”[1028]Of the Christian who relies only on faith, he says, “Christ’s innocence becomes his innocence, and in the same way Christ’s piety, holiness and salvation become his, and all that is in Christ is contained in the believing heart together with Christ.”[1029]“But such faith is awakened in us by God. From it spring the works by which we assist and serve our neighbour.”[1030]
He speaks at considerable length in the last part of his sermons of the particular works which he considers allowable and commendable. How much he wished to imply may, however, be inferred from what has gone before.
Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as good,” i.e. “our own self-chosenworks,” such as “special fasting, special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone. There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these. “When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed “without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,” and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031]
Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a warning.
Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,” and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032]
In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing, trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other: “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing to do.
As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation that “the works will follow.”
On January 24, 1524, Eobanus Hessus wrote to Lang: “Immorality, corruption of youth, contempt of learning and dissensions, such are the fruits of your Evangel.”[1033]“Idislike being here very much,” he says, in the same year, to his friend Sturz, “since all is lost, for there is now no hope of a revival of learning or of a recovery in public life. Everything is on the road to destruction, and we ourselves are rendered odious to all classes by reason of some unlearned deserters. “Oh, unhappy Erfurt,” he cries, in view of the “outrageous behaviour of these godless men of God”; one seeks to oppress the other; already the battlefield of passion is tinged with “blood.”[1034]
“You have by your preaching called forth a diabolical life in the town,” Usingen wrote in 1524 of the preachers at Erfurt, “although this is now displeasing to you, and you encourage it even up to the present day; you set the people free from the obedience which, according to the Divine command, they owe to the authorities of the Church, you deprive the people of the fear both of God and of man, hence the corruption of morals, which increases from day to day.”[1035]
Usingen, who continued courageously to vindicate the faith of his fathers, was depicted by the preachers as a “crazy old man,” just as they had been advised to do by Luther. “I am quite pleased to hear,” Luther wrote to Lang some considerable time after his return, “that this ‘Unsingen’ is still carrying on his fooleries; as the Apostle Paul says, their folly must be made manifest (2 Tim. iii. 9).”[1036]
The champion of the Church, the alleged fool, was sufficiently clear-sighted and frank to predict the Peasant-War as the end of all the godless commotion, and to prophesy that the result of the general religious subversion would be the ruin of his German Fatherland. A fanatical preacher in the town had appealed to the mattocks of the peasants. Him the Augustinian asks: “If the Word of God suffices in the Church, why have you in your sermons appealed for help to the pickaxes, mattocks and spades of the peasants?” “Why do you tell the people that the peasant must come from the field with these weapons to assist the Evangel, if your own and your comrades’ words prove of no avail? Do you not know with what audacity the peasants are already rising against their lords?” “The new preaching,” he complains, even where it is not directly inflammatory, “renders the people, who are already desirous of innovations and dearly love the freedom of the flesh, only too much inclined for tumults, and this daily foments the spirit of unrest.”[1037]“Do you not know that the mob is a hydra-headed monster, a monster that thirsts for blood? Are you anxious to promote your cause with the help of cut-throats?”[1038]Owing to the iconoclasts, the ancient greatness of Constantinople fell, and the Roman Empire of the East faded away; in like manner, so gloomily he predicts, the religious struggle now being waged in Germany will bring about the ruin of the Western Empire and the loss of its ancient greatness.[1039]
The help which the innovators received from the Erfurt magistrates induced the leaders of the party to pin their trust on the support of the secular authorities. Even this was justified by appeals to Scripture.
Lang, on presenting to Hermann von Hoff, the president of the Erfurt town-council, a translation which he had made of the Gospel of St. Matthew, stated in the accompanying letter, that he had done so “in order that all may know and take heed to the fact, that whatever they undertake against the Gospel is also directed against you. It is necessary, unfortunately, to defend the Gospel by means of the sword.”[1040]
In July, 1521, an agreement had, it is true, been entered into which brought some guarantee of safety to the clergy, more particularly the Canons of St. Mary’s and St. Severus, yet in the ensuing years the Chapters were forced to make endless protests against the preachers’ interference in their services and the encroachments of the magistrates on their personal liberty, all in direct contravention of the agreement.The council demanded that the oath of obedience should be taken to itself and not to the Archbishop of Mayence, as heretofore. Priests were arrested on charges which did not concern the council at all, and were taken to the Rathaus. The clergy were obliged to pay taxes like other citizens on all farms and property which belonged to them or to their churches—which had been exempt from time immemorial—and likewise on any treasure or cash they might possess. When the peasants threatened Erfurt, the clergy were advised to bring all the valuables belonging to their churches to the Rathaus where the council, inview of the danger of the times, would receive them into safe custody, giving in return formal receipts. Since the council, as guardians of several monasteries, including St. Peter’s, had already appointed laymen who hindered the lawful Superiors from coming to any independent decision in matters of any moment, and as all the chalices and other vessels of gold and silver, together with the more valuable Church vestments, had already been seized at the Servites, the Brothers of the Rule and the Carthusians, the Canons saw how futile it would be to reject the “advice” given, and they accordingly decided to deliver up the more valuable objects belonging to the two principal churches, St. Mary’s and St. Severus, their decision being accepted by the council with “hearty thanks.” At the formal surrender of the vessels the magistrates protested that the Canons were really not fully aware how well disposed they, the magistrates, were towards them; that they had no wish to drive away the clergy, “but rather to show them all charity so that they might return thanks to God.” Yet we learn also that: Many persons belonging to the council whispered that it was their intention to make the position of the clergy unbearable by means of this and other like acts of despoliation.[1041]On April 27, 1525, on the occasion of the taking over of the treasure, with the co-operation of persons “distinguished for their strong Lutheran views,” a strict search was made in both the venerable churches for anything of any value that might have been left. Not the least consideration was paid to the private property of the individual clergy, objects were seized in the most violent manner, locked chests and cupboards were simply forced open, or, if this took too long, broken with axes. Every hasp of silver on copes and elsewhere was torn off. “Unclean fists,” says a contemporary narrator, “seized the chalices and sacred vessels, which they had no right to touch, and carried them with loud jeers in buckets and baskets to places where they were dishonoured.” As in other churches and convents, the books and papers on which any claims of the clergy against the council might be based were selected with special care. While precious works of art were thus being consigned to destruction,[1042]members of the town-council were consoling the Canons by renewed assurances, that the council “would protect both their life and their property.” Finally, the two churches were closely watched for some while after, “lest something might still be preserved in them, and to prevent such being taken possession of by the clergy.”[1043]
In July, 1521, an agreement had, it is true, been entered into which brought some guarantee of safety to the clergy, more particularly the Canons of St. Mary’s and St. Severus, yet in the ensuing years the Chapters were forced to make endless protests against the preachers’ interference in their services and the encroachments of the magistrates on their personal liberty, all in direct contravention of the agreement.
The council demanded that the oath of obedience should be taken to itself and not to the Archbishop of Mayence, as heretofore. Priests were arrested on charges which did not concern the council at all, and were taken to the Rathaus. The clergy were obliged to pay taxes like other citizens on all farms and property which belonged to them or to their churches—which had been exempt from time immemorial—and likewise on any treasure or cash they might possess. When the peasants threatened Erfurt, the clergy were advised to bring all the valuables belonging to their churches to the Rathaus where the council, inview of the danger of the times, would receive them into safe custody, giving in return formal receipts. Since the council, as guardians of several monasteries, including St. Peter’s, had already appointed laymen who hindered the lawful Superiors from coming to any independent decision in matters of any moment, and as all the chalices and other vessels of gold and silver, together with the more valuable Church vestments, had already been seized at the Servites, the Brothers of the Rule and the Carthusians, the Canons saw how futile it would be to reject the “advice” given, and they accordingly decided to deliver up the more valuable objects belonging to the two principal churches, St. Mary’s and St. Severus, their decision being accepted by the council with “hearty thanks.” At the formal surrender of the vessels the magistrates protested that the Canons were really not fully aware how well disposed they, the magistrates, were towards them; that they had no wish to drive away the clergy, “but rather to show them all charity so that they might return thanks to God.” Yet we learn also that: Many persons belonging to the council whispered that it was their intention to make the position of the clergy unbearable by means of this and other like acts of despoliation.[1041]
On April 27, 1525, on the occasion of the taking over of the treasure, with the co-operation of persons “distinguished for their strong Lutheran views,” a strict search was made in both the venerable churches for anything of any value that might have been left. Not the least consideration was paid to the private property of the individual clergy, objects were seized in the most violent manner, locked chests and cupboards were simply forced open, or, if this took too long, broken with axes. Every hasp of silver on copes and elsewhere was torn off. “Unclean fists,” says a contemporary narrator, “seized the chalices and sacred vessels, which they had no right to touch, and carried them with loud jeers in buckets and baskets to places where they were dishonoured.” As in other churches and convents, the books and papers on which any claims of the clergy against the council might be based were selected with special care. While precious works of art were thus being consigned to destruction,[1042]members of the town-council were consoling the Canons by renewed assurances, that the council “would protect both their life and their property.” Finally, the two churches were closely watched for some while after, “lest something might still be preserved in them, and to prevent such being taken possession of by the clergy.”[1043]
When, in 1525, on the news of the Peasant Rising inSwabia and Franconia, meetings were held by the peasants in the Erfurt district, the adherents of the movement determined to enforce by violence their demands even at Erfurt. Those in the town who sympathised with Luther made common cause with the rebels.[1044]The magistrates were undecided. They were not as yet exclusively Lutheran, but were anxious to make the town independent of the Archbishop of Mayence, and to secure for themselves the property and rights of the clergy. For the most part the lower orders were unfavourable to the magistrates, and therefore sided with the peasantry.
The peasants from the numerous villages which were politically regarded as belonging to the Erfurt district demanded that they should be emancipated from the burdens which they had to bear, and placed on a footing of social equality with the lower class of Erfurt burghers. With this they joined, as had been done elsewhere, religious demands in the sense of Luther’s innovations. The movement was publicly inaugurated by fourteen villages at a meeting held in a beerhouse on April 25 or 26, 1525, at which the peasants bound themselves by an oath taken with “uplifted right hand,” at the risk of their lives “to support the Word of God and to combine to abolish the old obsolete imposts.” When warned not to go to Erfurt, one of the leaders replied: “God has enlightened us, we shall not remain, but go forward.” As soon as they had come to an agreement as to their demands concerning the taxes “and other heavy burdens which the Evangel was to assist them to get rid of,” they collected in arms around the walls of Erfurt.[1045]The magistrates then took counsel how to divert the threatening storm and direct it against the clergy and the hated authorities of Mayence. The remembrance of the “Pfaffensturm” which, in 1521, had served as a means to allay the social grievances, was an encouragement to adopt a similar course. As intermediary between council and peasants, Hermann von Hoff, who has been mentioned above as an opponent of the Catholic clergy and the rightsof Mayence, took a leading part; one of his principles was that “it is necessary to make use of every means, sweet as well as bitter, if we are to allay so great a commotion and to avert further mischief.”[1046]
In their perplexity the magistrates, through the agency of Hoff, admitted the horde of peasants, only stipulating that they should spare the property of the burghers, though they were to be free to plunder the Palace of the Archbishop of Mayence, the “hereditary lord” of the city, and also the toll-house. The peasants made their entry on April 28 with that captain of the town whom Lang had invited to draw the sword in the cause of the Evangel. Not only was the Palace despoiled and the toll-house utterly destroyed, but the salt warehouses and almost all the parsonages were attacked and looted. In the name of “evangelical freedom” the plunderers vented all their fury on the sacred vessels, pictures and relics they were still able to find.
“In the Archbishop’s Palace Lutheran preachers, for instance, Eberlin of Günzburg, Mechler and Lang, mixed with the rabble of the town and country and preached to them.” The preachers made no secret of being “in league with the peasantry and the proletariate of the town.” The clergy and religious were, however, to be made “to feel still more severely”[1047]the effects of the alliance between the three parties.
At the first coming of the peasants, that quarters might be found for them, “all the convents of monks and nuns were confiscated and their inhabitants driven out into the street.” “Alas, how wretched did the poor nuns look passing up and down the alleys of the town,”[1048]says an eye-witness in an Erfurt chronicle. All those connected with the Collegiate churches of St. Mary and St. Severus had peasants billeted on them in numbers out of all proportion to their means. On the morning of April 28, the service in the church of St. Mary’s was violently interrupted. On the following Sunday, Eberlin, the apostate Franciscan, commenced a course of sermons, which he continued for several days with his customary vehemence and abuse.Exactly a week after the coming of the peasants they passed a resolution in the Mainzer Hof that the number of parishes should be reduced to ten, including the Collegiate church of St. Mary’s, and that in all these parish churches “the pure Word of God should be preached without any additions, man-made laws, decrees or doctrines.” As for the pastors, they were to be appointed and removed by the congregation. This was equivalent to sentencing the old worship to death. On the same day an order was issued to all the parish churches and monasteries to abstain in future from reciting or singing Matins, Vespers or Mass. The only man who was successful in evading the prohibition was Dr. Conrad Klinge, the courageous guardian of the Franciscans, who at the hospital continued to preach in the old way to crowded audiences.Most of the beneficed clergy now quitted the town, as the council refused to undertake any responsibility on their behalf; and as they were forbidden to resume Divine Worship or even to celebrate Mass in private, at the gate of the town they were subjected to a thorough search lest they should have any priestly property concealed about them. The magistrates sought to extort from the clergy who remained, admissions which might serve as some justification for their conduct. The post of preacher at the Dom, after it had been refused by Eberlin, who had at length taken fright at the demagogic spirit now abroad, was bestowed upon one of Luther’s immediate followers; the new preacher was Dr. Johann Lang, an “apostate, renegade, uxorious monk,” as a contemporary chronicler calls him.All tokens of any authority of the Archbishop of Mayence in the town were obliterated, and the archiepiscopal jurisdiction was declared to be at an end. Eobanus Hessus wrote gleefully of the ruin of the “popish” foe. “We have driven away the Bishop of Mayence, for ever. All the monks have been expelled, the nuns turned out, the canons sent away, all the temples and even the money-boxes in the churches plundered; the commonwealth is now established and taxes and customs houses have been done away with. Again we are now free.”[1049]Here the statement that the clergy of Mayence had been expelled “for ever” proved incorrect, for the rights of the over-lord were soon to be re-established.The magistrates were the first to fall; they were deposed, and the lower-class burghers and the peasants replaced them by two committees, one to represent the town, the other the country. In the latter committee the excited ringleaders of the peasantry gave vent to threatening speeches against the former municipal government, and such wild words as “Kill these spectres, blow out their brains” were heard.[1050]The actual wording of the resolutions passed by both the committees was principally the work of preachers of the new faith. Eberlin, too, was consulted as to how best to draw up“the articles in accordance with the Bible,” but he cautiously declined to have anything to do with this, and declared that their demands seemed to him to be exorbitant and that, “the Evangel would not help them.” The Lutheran preachers also exerted themselves to bring about the reinstatement of the magistrates. It is said that on April 30, in every quarter of the town, a minister of the new doctrine preached to the citizens and country people to the following effect: “You have now by your good and Christian acts and deeds emancipated yourselves altogether from the Court at Mayence and its jurisdiction, which, according to Divine justice and Holy Scripture, should have no temporal authority whatever. But in order that this freedom may not lead you astray, there must be some authorities over you, and therefore you must for the future recognise the worthy magistrates of Erfurt as your rulers,” etc.[1051]The words of the preachers prevailed, and the newly elected councillors became the head of a sort of republic. The burdens of the town increased to an oppressive extent, however, and the peasants who had returned to their villages groaned more than ever under the weight of the taxes. Financial difficulties continued to increase.
At the first coming of the peasants, that quarters might be found for them, “all the convents of monks and nuns were confiscated and their inhabitants driven out into the street.” “Alas, how wretched did the poor nuns look passing up and down the alleys of the town,”[1048]says an eye-witness in an Erfurt chronicle. All those connected with the Collegiate churches of St. Mary and St. Severus had peasants billeted on them in numbers out of all proportion to their means. On the morning of April 28, the service in the church of St. Mary’s was violently interrupted. On the following Sunday, Eberlin, the apostate Franciscan, commenced a course of sermons, which he continued for several days with his customary vehemence and abuse.Exactly a week after the coming of the peasants they passed a resolution in the Mainzer Hof that the number of parishes should be reduced to ten, including the Collegiate church of St. Mary’s, and that in all these parish churches “the pure Word of God should be preached without any additions, man-made laws, decrees or doctrines.” As for the pastors, they were to be appointed and removed by the congregation. This was equivalent to sentencing the old worship to death. On the same day an order was issued to all the parish churches and monasteries to abstain in future from reciting or singing Matins, Vespers or Mass. The only man who was successful in evading the prohibition was Dr. Conrad Klinge, the courageous guardian of the Franciscans, who at the hospital continued to preach in the old way to crowded audiences.
Most of the beneficed clergy now quitted the town, as the council refused to undertake any responsibility on their behalf; and as they were forbidden to resume Divine Worship or even to celebrate Mass in private, at the gate of the town they were subjected to a thorough search lest they should have any priestly property concealed about them. The magistrates sought to extort from the clergy who remained, admissions which might serve as some justification for their conduct. The post of preacher at the Dom, after it had been refused by Eberlin, who had at length taken fright at the demagogic spirit now abroad, was bestowed upon one of Luther’s immediate followers; the new preacher was Dr. Johann Lang, an “apostate, renegade, uxorious monk,” as a contemporary chronicler calls him.
All tokens of any authority of the Archbishop of Mayence in the town were obliterated, and the archiepiscopal jurisdiction was declared to be at an end. Eobanus Hessus wrote gleefully of the ruin of the “popish” foe. “We have driven away the Bishop of Mayence, for ever. All the monks have been expelled, the nuns turned out, the canons sent away, all the temples and even the money-boxes in the churches plundered; the commonwealth is now established and taxes and customs houses have been done away with. Again we are now free.”[1049]Here the statement that the clergy of Mayence had been expelled “for ever” proved incorrect, for the rights of the over-lord were soon to be re-established.
The magistrates were the first to fall; they were deposed, and the lower-class burghers and the peasants replaced them by two committees, one to represent the town, the other the country. In the latter committee the excited ringleaders of the peasantry gave vent to threatening speeches against the former municipal government, and such wild words as “Kill these spectres, blow out their brains” were heard.[1050]
The actual wording of the resolutions passed by both the committees was principally the work of preachers of the new faith. Eberlin, too, was consulted as to how best to draw up“the articles in accordance with the Bible,” but he cautiously declined to have anything to do with this, and declared that their demands seemed to him to be exorbitant and that, “the Evangel would not help them.” The Lutheran preachers also exerted themselves to bring about the reinstatement of the magistrates. It is said that on April 30, in every quarter of the town, a minister of the new doctrine preached to the citizens and country people to the following effect: “You have now by your good and Christian acts and deeds emancipated yourselves altogether from the Court at Mayence and its jurisdiction, which, according to Divine justice and Holy Scripture, should have no temporal authority whatever. But in order that this freedom may not lead you astray, there must be some authorities over you, and therefore you must for the future recognise the worthy magistrates of Erfurt as your rulers,” etc.[1051]
The words of the preachers prevailed, and the newly elected councillors became the head of a sort of republic. The burdens of the town increased to an oppressive extent, however, and the peasants who had returned to their villages groaned more than ever under the weight of the taxes. Financial difficulties continued to increase.
Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, the councillors gave their sanction on May 9, 1525, “under the new seal,” to the amended articles, twenty-eight in number, which had been drafted by the town and peasant committees during the days of storm and stress. The very first article made obligatory the preaching of “the pure Word of God,” and gave to each congregation the right to choose its own pastors. “The gist of the remaining articles was the appointment of a permanent administrative council to give a yearly account, and to impose no new taxes without the knowledge and sanction of both burghers and country subjects.”
In accepting the articles it was agreed that Luther’s opinion on them should be ascertained, a decision which seems to show that the peasants and burghers, though probably not the councillors themselves, reckoned upon the weighty sanction of Wittenberg. Yet about May 4 Luther had finished his booklet “Against the murderous Peasants” (above p. 201), which was far from favourable to seditiousmovements such as that of Erfurt. The council invited him by letter, on May 10, to come to Erfurt with Melanchthon “and establish the government of the town,” as Melanchthon puts it (“ad constituendum urbis statum”).[1052]Luther, however, did not accept the invitation, and a month later the council sent him a copy of the articles, requesting a written opinion. It is difficult to believe that the Erfurt magistrates were not aware of Luther’s growing bitterness against the peasants, which is attested by the pamphlets he wrote at the time, or that they were incapable of drawing the obvious conclusion as to his reply.[1053]“If the council in taking this step,” says Eitner, “was relying on Luther’s known attitude towards all revolutionary movements, and hoped to make an end of the inconvenient demands of the people by means of the Reformer’s powerful words, then their expectation was fully realised. Both Luther’s letter (i.e. his answer to the council) and his written notes on the copy of the articles sent him, are full of irony expressing the displeasure of one whose advice was so much in request, but whose interference in the peasant movement, in spite of his good intentions, had thus far met with so little success.... The very articles which the authors had most at heart were submitted by Luther to a relentless and somewhat pointless criticism.... Thus we see in a comparatively trivial case what has long been acknowledged of his action generally, viz. that Luther’s interference in the Peasant-War cannot be altogether justified.... His conduct shattered his reputation, both in the empire and in his second native town [Erfurt], and paved the way for the inevitable reaction.”[1054]
Luther, in his reply to the “Honourable, prudent and beloved” members of the Erfurt council,[1055]declaresin the very first sentences that the Twenty-eight Articles were so “ill-advised” that “little good could come of them” even were he present himself at Erfurt; he is of opinion that certain people, who “are better off than they deserve,” are putting on airs at the expense of the council, constitute a danger to the common weal, and, with “unheard-of audacity and wickedness,” wish to “turn things upside down.” Things must never be permitted to come to such a pass that the councillors fear the common people and become their servants; the common people must be quiet and entrust all to the honourable magistrates to be set right, “lest the Princes have occasion to take up arms against Erfurt on account of such unwarrantable conduct.” Luther’s new sovereign, the Elector Johann, had just been assisting in the suppression of the peasant rising. He was in entire sympathy with the Wittenberg Professor, whom he so openly protected and favoured, and doubtless they had discussed together the state of affairs at Erfurt. In his written reply Luther asks whether it is not “seditious” to refuse to pay the Elector the sum due to him for acting as protector of the city. “Did they, then, esteem so lightly the Prince and the security of the town, which, as a matter of fact, was something not to be paid for in money?” Their demand really signified either that “no one was to protect the town of Erfurt, or that the Princes were to relinquish their claim to payment and yet continue to protect the town.”
The demand that the congregations of the parishes should appoint their own pastors Luther considered particularly inadmissible; it was “seditious that the parishes should wish to appoint and dismiss their own pastors without reference to the councillors, as though the councillors, in whom authority was vested, were not concerned in what the town might do.” He insists that “the councillors have the right to know what sort of persons are holding office in the town.”
Concerning some of the articles which dealt with taxes and imposts, he points out that the business is not his concern, since these are temporal matters. Of the proposal to re-establish the decayed University of Erfurt he says: “This article is the best of all.” Of two of the articles he notes: “Both these will do,” one being that, for the future,openly immoral persons and prostitutes of all classes were not to be tolerated, nor the common houses of public women, and the other, that every debtor, whether to the council or the community, should be “faithfully admonished no matter who he might be.” Concerning the former of these two articles, however, we may remark, that a house of correction for the punishment of light women had existed at Erfurt under the Archbishop’s rule, but had been razed to the ground by the very framers of the articles as soon as the peasants entered the town.
The principal thing, in Luther’s opinion, was to place the reins in the hands of the magistrates, so that they may not sit there like an “idol,” “bound hand and foot,” “while the horses saddle and bridle their driver”; on the contrary, the aim of the articles seemed to him to be, to reduce the councillors to be mere figureheads, and to let “the rabble manage everything.”[1056]The “rabble” was just then Luther’s bugbear.
The clergy who had quitted the city addressed, on May 30, a written complaint to the Cardinal of Mayence, with an account of the proceedings. On June 8 they also appealed to Johann, the Saxon Elector, and to Duke George of Saxony, asking for their mediation, since they were the “protectors and liege lords” of their Church. They also did all they could with the council to recover their rights. The councillors were, however, merely rude, and replied that the proud priests might ask as much as they pleased but would get no redress. This was what caused them to complain to their secular protectors that they were being treated worse than the meanest peasant. Duke George advised them to await the result of the negotiations which, as he knew, were proceeding between the town of Erfurt and the Cardinal.
The Lutheran Elector, on the other hand, entered into closer relations with the town-council of Erfurt, accepting with good grace their appeal for help, their protestation of submission and obedience to his rule, and the explicit assurance of the councillors at the Weimar conference, onJune 22, “that they would stand by the true and unfeigned Word of God as pious and faithful Christians, and, in support of the same, stake life and limb, with the help of God’s grace.” Thereupon the Elector promised them, on June 23, that, “should they suffer any inconvenience or attack because of the Word of God,” he, as their “liege lord, ruler and protector,” would “stand by them and afford them protection to the best of his ability,” since “the Word of God and the Holy Evangel were likewise dear to him.” In point of fact he did espouse the cause of the inhabitants of Erfurt, though, like Duke George, it was his wish to see a peaceful settlement arrived at between the town and its rightful over-lord.[1057]
The crafty councillors were actually negotiating with the representatives of the Cardinal of Mayence at the very time when they were seeking the protection of Saxony. The over-lord whose rights they had outraged, through his vicar, had made known his peremptory demands to the council on May 26, viz. entire restitution, damages, expulsion of the Lutheran sect, re-establishment of the old worship and payment of an indemnity. In the event of refusal he threatened them with the armed interference of the Swabian League. The threat took effect, for the Swabian League at that time was feared, and disturbers of the peace had had occasion to feel its strength. The hint of armed interference proved all the more effective when Duke George advised the inhabitants of Erfurt to come to terms with the Mayence vicar and abolish Lutheranism, as otherwise they would have to expect “something further.”
The council therefore assumed a conciliatory attitude towards Mayence, and negotiations concerning the restitution to be made were commenced at a conference at Fulda on August 25, 1525. After protracted delays these terminated with the Treaty of Hammelburg on February 5, 1530. This was, “from the political point of view, an utter defeat for the inhabitants of Erfurt.”[1058]The council was not only obliged to recognise the supremacy of the Archbishop, but also to re-erect all buildings which had been destroyed, and to return everything that had been misapplied; in addition to this, for the loss of taxes and other revenues, the council was to pay the Archbishop 2500 gulden, and tothe two Collegiate churches, for losses sustained, 1200 marks of fine silver. Both these churches were to be handed over for Catholic worship. The reinstated over-lord, however, declared, for his part, that, “As regards the other churches and matters of faith and ritual, we hereby and on this occasion neither give nor take, sanction nor forbid, anything to any party.”[1059]
Thus the rescinding of the innovations was for the present deferred, and Luther had every reason to be satisfied with what had been effected in a town to which he was attached by many links. How little gratitude he showed to Archbishop Albert, and how fiercely his hatred and animus against the cautious Cardinal would occasionally flame up, will be seen from facts to be mentioned elsewhere.
Among the few Erfurt monks who, though expelled from their monastery, remained true to their profession and to the Church, there was one who attained to a great age and who is mentioned incidentally by Flacius Illyricus. He well remembered the first period of Luther’s life in Erfurt, his zeal for the Church and solicitude for the observance of the Rule.[1060]
When considering Luther’s intervention in Erfurt matters, and his personal action there, one thought obtrudes itself.
When Luther, now quite a different man and in vastly altered circumstances, returned to Erfurt on the occasion of the visit referred to above, is it not likely that he recalled his earlier life at Erfurt, where he had spent happy days of interior contentment, as is shown by the letters he wrote before his priestly ordination? In one of the sermons he delivered there, in October, 1522, he refers to his student days at Erfurt, but it does not appear that he ever seriouslyreflected on the contrast presented by the convictions he held at that time on the Church and his new ideas on faith and works. His allusions to his Erfurt recollections are neither serious nor grateful towards his old school. He speaks scoffingly of his learned Erfurt opponents, some of whom he had been acquainted with previously, as “knights of straw.” “Yes, they prate, we are Doctors and Masters.... Well, if a title settles the matter, I also became a Bachelorhere, and then a Master and then again a Bachelor. I also went to school with them, and I know and am convinced that they do not understand their own books.”[1061]
Another circumstance must be taken into account. Whereas in later life he can scarcely speak of his early years as a monk without telling his hearers how he had passed from an excessive though purely exterior holiness-by-works to his great discovery, viz. to the knowledge of a gracious God, in 1522 he is absolutely silent regarding these “inward experiences”; yet his very theme, viz. the contrast between the new Evangel and the “sophistical holiness-by-works” preferred by Catholics, and likewise the familiar Erfurt scene of his early life as a monk, should, one would think, have invited him to speak of the matter here.[1062]
While Luther was seeking to expel by force the popish “wolves,” more especially the monks and nuns, from the places within reach of the new Evangel, an enemy was growing up in his own camp in the shape of the so-called fanatics; their existence can be traced back as far as his Wartburg days, and his first misunderstanding with Carlstadt; these, by their alliance with Carlstadt, who had been won over to their ideas, and with the help of men like Thomas Münzer, had of late greatly increased their power, thanks to the social conditions which were so favourable to their cause.
If, on the one hand, the antagonism which Luther was obliged to display towards the fanatical Anabaptists endangered his work, on the other the struggle was in many respects to his advantage.
His being obliged to withstand the claim constantly made by the fanatics to inspiration by the Holy Ghost served as a warning to him to exercise caution and moderation in appealing to a higher call in the case of his own enterprise; being compelled also to invoke the assistance of the authorities against the fanatics’ subversion of the existing order of things, he was naturally obliged to be more reticent himself and to refrain from preaching revolution in the interests of his own teaching. We even find him at times desisting from his claim to special inspiration and guidance by the “spirit” in the negotiations entered into on account of the Münzer business; this, however, he does with a purpose and in opposition with his well-known and usual view. In place of his real ideas, as expressed by him both before and after this period, he, for a while, prefers to deprecate any use of force or violence, and counsels his sovereign to introduce the innovations gradually, pointing out the most suitable methods with patience and prudence.
At first he was anxious that indulgence should be observed even in dealing with the Anabaptists, but later on he invoked vigorously the aid of the authorities.
In reality he himself was borne along by principles akin to those of the fanatics whose ideas were, as a matter of fact, an outcome of his own undertaking. His own writings exhibit many a trait akin to their pseudo-mysticism. In the end his practical common sense was more than a match for these pestering opponents, who for a time gave him so much trouble. His learning and education raised him far above them and made the religious notions of the Anabaptists abhorrent to him, while his public position at the University, as well as his official and personal relations with the sovereign, ill-disposed him to the demagogism of the fanatics and their efforts to win over the common people to their side.
The fanatical aim of Thomas Münzer, the quondam Catholic priest who had worked as a preacher of the newfaith at Allstedt, near Eisleben, since 1523, was the extermination by violence of all impious persons, and the setting up of a Kingdom of God formed of all the righteous here on earth, after the ideal of apostolic times. This tenet, rather than rebaptism, was the mark of his followers. The rebaptism of adults, which was practised by the sect, was merely due to their belief that an active faith was essential for the reception of the sacraments, whilst children of tender years were incapable of any faith at all.
As a beginning of the war against the “idolatry” of the old Church, Münzer caused the Pilgrimage Chapel at Malderbach, near Eisleben, where a miraculous picture of Our Lady was venerated, to be destroyed in April, 1524. He then published a fiery sermon he had recently preached, in which he exhorted the great ones and all friends of the Evangel among the people at once to abolish Divine Worship as it had hitherto been practised. The sermon was sent to the Electoral Court by persons who were troubled about the rising, and who begged that Münzer might be called to account. The sermon was also forwarded to Luther by Spalatin, the Court Chaplain, evidently in order that Luther might take some steps to obviate the danger. In point of fact, Luther’s eagle eye took in the situation at a glance, and he at once decided to intervene with the utmost vigour. With Münzer’s spirit he was already acquainted through personal observation, so he said, and now he realised yet more clearly that its effect would be to let the mob loose, with the consequence that “heavenly spirits” of every sort would soon be claiming to interfere in the direction of his own enterprise.
Luther at once composed a clever and powerful writing entitled “A Circular to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Spirit of Revolt.” This appeared in the last days of July, 1524. To it we shall return later, for it is of great psychological interest.
Münzer was dismissed from his situation, and went to Mühlhausen, where the apostate monk, Heinrich Pfeifer, had already prepared the ground, and thence to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg he brought out, in September, 1524, his “Hochverursachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg” in reply to Luther’s Circular, above mentioned. He then recommencedhis restless wanderings through South Germany and Switzerland. He remained for some time with the ex-priest and professor of theology, Balthasar Hubmaier, then pastor of the new faith at Waldshut. On his return to Mühlhausen, in December, he put into execution his fantastic communistic scheme, which lasted until he and the seditious peasants were defeated in the encounter at Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525; his execution for a while put an end to the endeavours of the fanatics. Nevertheless, in other places, more particularly at Münster during the famous Reign of Terror from 1532-1535, the fanaticism of the Anabaptists again broke out under even worse forms.
The short circular, “On the Spirit of Revolt,”[1063]referred to above as a document curiously illustrative of Luther’s psychology, is not important in the sense of furnishing a true picture of his inner thoughts and feelings. Conveying as it does a petition and admonition to the Princes, it is naturally worded politically and with great caution, and was also manifestly intended for the general public. Nevertheless its author, even where he clothes his thoughts in the strange and carefully chosen dress best calculated to serve the purpose he had in view, affords us an interesting glimpse into his mode of action. He also shows throughout the whole circular in what light he wishes to see his own higher mission regarded.