In the conversation on June 18, Luther adopts a forcedly light view of the matter: “It is only a three-months’ affair, then the whole thing will fizzle out. Would to God Philip would look at it in this light instead of grieving so over it! The Papists are now Demeas and I Mitio”; with these words commences a string of word-for-word quotations from Terence’s play “Adelphi,” all concerning the harsh and violent Demeas, whom Luther takes as a figure of the Catholic Church, and the mild and peaceable Mitio, in whom Luther sees himself. In the Notes the sentences are given almost unaltered: “The prostitute and the matron living in one house.” “A son is born.” “Margaret has no dowry.” “I, Mitio, say: ‘May the gods direct all for the best!’” “Man’s life is like a throw of the dice.”[115]“I overlook much worse things than this,” he continues. “If anyone says to me: Are you pleased with what has taken place? I reply: No; oh, would that I could alter it. Since I cannot, I am resolved to bear it with equanimity. I commit it all to our dear God. Let Him preserve His Church as it now stands in order that it may remain in the unity of faith and doctrine and the pure confession of the Word; all I hope for is that it may never grow worse!”“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting it on God—Whose chosen instrument, even at the mostcritical juncture, he would still persuade himself he was—he finds the most convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds on.”[116]With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not always able to persevere.“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118]The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend Ratzeberger’s account.[119]Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,” “offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by God. Nordoes the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin, in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk: “That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120]Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in explanation or excuse.”[121]F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small as here.”[122]—In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K. E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,”Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]Luther at the Conference of Eisenach.The Landgrave’s Indignation.An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster.According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“acerbissimis verbis”)[125]the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126]Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127]still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases, he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition.The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to sinfulconcubinage. That he was not married to his second wife was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If “hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought of.[128]—Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.During the first session of the conference, held in the Rathaus at Eisenach, Luther formally and publicly committed himself to the expedient at which he had faintly hinted even previously. He unreservedly proposed the telling of a lie. Should a situation arise where it was necessary to reply “yes” or “no,” then they must resign themselves to a downright “No.” “What harm would it do,” he said on July 15, according to quite trustworthy notes,[129]“if a man told a good, lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?” Similarly he said on July 17: “To lie in case of necessity, or for convenience, or in excuse, such lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on Himself.”[130]The Protestant historian of the Hessian Bigamy says in excuse of this: “Luther was faced by the problem whether a lie told in case of necessity could be regarded as a sin at all”; he did not have recourse to the “expedient of a mental reservation [as he had done when recommending an ambiguous reply]”; he merely absolved “the ‘mendacium officiosum’ [the useful lie] of sinfulness. This done, Luther could with a good conscience advise the telling of such a lie.”[131]Nevertheless Luther felt called upon again to return tothe alleged Confession made. He is even anxious to make out that his memorandum had been an Absolution coming under the Seal of Confession, and that the Absolution might not be “revealed”: “If the Confession was to be regarded as secret, then the Absolution also must be secret.”[132]“He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says Rockwell.[133]Moreover he gave it to be understood, that, should the Landgrave say he had committed bigamy as a right to which he was entitled, and not as a favour, then he, Luther, was quit of all responsibility; it was not the confessor’s business to give public testimony concerning what had taken place in Confession.[134]Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his advice still was that the Landgrave should conceal the bigamy behind the ambiguous declaration that: “Margaret is a concubine.” Under the influence of the hostility to the bigamy shown by the Saxon Courts he urged so strongly the Bible arguments against polygamy, that the Hessians began to fear his withdrawal from his older standpoint.The Old-Testament examples, he declared emphatically, could neither “exclude nor bind,” i.e. could not settle the matter either way; Paul’s words could not be overthrown; in the New Testament nothing could be found (in favour of bigamy), “on the contrary the New Testament confirmed the original institution [monogamy]”; therefore “since both the Divine and the secular law were at one, nothing could be done against it; he would not take it upon his conscience.” It is true, that, on the other side, must be put the statement, that he saw no reason whythe Prince should not take the matter upon his own conscience, declare himself convinced, and thus “set their [the theologians’] consciences free.” That he still virtually stood by what had happened, is also seen from his plain statement: “Many things are right before God in the tribunal of conscience, which, to the world, must appear wrong.” “In support of this he brought forward the example,” so the report of the Conference proceeds, “of the seduction of a virgin and of an illegitimate birth.” He also lays stress on the principle that they, the theologians, had merely “to dispense according to God’s command in the tribunal of conscience,” but were unable to bear witness to it publicly; hence their advice to the Landgrave had in reality never been given at all, for it was no business of the “forum externum”; the Landgrave had acted in accordance with his own ideas, just as he had undertaken many things “against their advice,” for instance, “the raid on Wirtenbergk.” He was doing the same in “this instance too, and acting on his own advice.”Again, for his own safety, he makes a request: “Beg him [the Prince] most diligently to draw in [to keep it secret],” otherwise, so he threatens, he will declare that “Luther acted like a fool, and will take the shame on himself”; he would “say: I made a mistake and I retract it; he would retract it even at the expense of his own honour; as for his honour he would pray God to restore it.”[135]In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the case of Thann (above, p. 40 f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the Landgrave.He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,” then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone “could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession,[136]which it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advicein Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”[137]These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal replies given by him at the Conference.[138]He pointed out, that: The Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage to be a mere ‘liaison’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,” viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch, “but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.” The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which it was justified.Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!” If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to “repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a Christian Council.”Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and “admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”The Saxon representatives present at the Conferencewere, however, ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity, viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference, “that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience—as could be proved by many examples from Scripture—than to cause a great scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and open admission and vindication.”[139]Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him, those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly, his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed to him by the Prince.[140]In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e. an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that, rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly, please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later, unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has ever come to my ears than thatit should have occurred to a brave man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘in conscientia’ before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e. adultery, usury and drunkenness—and who yet are supposed to be members of the Church—not merely in writings and sermons but with serious considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things, yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony, who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians: At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”Luther replied on July 24,[141]that he had not deserved that the Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would not find any fault in it.”It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all diligence,” and which, even at the worst, he would bethe last to bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what, in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to “get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage merely in conscience.In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”; in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe, and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere prostitute.”There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints, that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”; nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave, moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?” he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb. Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness in keeping the secret had brought notonly the Prince but “the whole confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious” this would be neither just nor reasonable.Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘ambiguum,’” and “not openly to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock, confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous affair.Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after receiving Luther’s letter.[142]Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip [Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a prostitute, this wedemand and insist upon, and the presence of pious men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who would at once take him to task.“It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian, nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter, concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden (Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The“cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,” that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape eternal damnation; and your Lord, the Elector, will have to admit it too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future. You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv., 2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him. Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.Melanchthon’s Complaints.Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of advice.As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy, but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy.[143]Friends informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him.[144]Owing to his weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach. On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloudthat he and Luther had been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in due time.”[145]On Sep. 1, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who even swore that this expedient was essential for him.”[146]He thus gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “Adelphi”). Melanchthon was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his dissembling and cunning.[147]Most remarkable, however, is the assertion he makes in his annoyance, viz. that the Landgrave was on the point of losing his reason: “This is the beginning of his insanity.”[148]Luther, too, had said he feared he was going crazy, as it ran in the family.[149]Philip’s father, Landgrave William II, had succumbed to melancholia as the result of syphilis. The latter’s brother, William I, had also been insane. Philip’s son, William IV, sought to explain the family trouble by a spell cast over one of his ancestors by the “courtisans” at Venice.[150]In 1538, previous to the bigamy scandal, Henry of Brunswick had written, that the Landgrave, owing to the French disease, was able to sleep but little, and would soon go mad.[151]Melanchthon became very sensitive to any mention of the Hessian bigamy. At table, on one occasion in Aug., 1540,Luther spoke of love; no one was quite devoid of love because all at least desired enjoyment; one loved his wife, another his children, others, like Carlstadt, loved honour. When Bugenhagen, with an allusion to the Landgrave, quoted the passage from Virgil’s “Bucolica”: “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori,” Melanchthon jumped up and cried: “Pastor, leave out that passage.”[152]Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,” he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however, circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen] are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small trouble.”[153]We must not press the contradiction this presents to Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy.Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions and additions which altered the meaning.Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W. Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a simulated piety (‘simulatione pietatis fefellit’). Nor did he adhere to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept [concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in oneflesh’ might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity. I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen. Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter, we are free to publish our decision (‘edere sententiam nostram’); for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as “depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘Alcibiadea natura perditus’),” an expression which also fell under the red pencil of the first editor, Camerarius.[154]Literary Feud with Duke Henry of Brunswick.Prominent amongst those who censured the bigamy was the Landgrave’s violent opponent Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Duke, a leader of the Catholic Alliance formed to resist the Schmalkalden Leaguers in North Germany, published in the early ‘forties several controversial works against Philip of Hesse. This brisk and active opponent, whose own character was, however, by no means unblemished, seems to have had a hand in the attacks of other penmen upon the Landgrave. Little by little he secured fairly accurate accounts of the proceedings in Hesse and at Wittenberg, and, as early as July 22, 1540, made a general and public reference to what had taken place.[155]In a tract published on Nov. 3, he said quite openly that the Landgrave had “two wives at the same time, and had thus rendered himself liable to the penalties against double marriage.” The Elector of Saxony had, however, permitted “his biblical experts at the University of Wittenberg to assist in dealing with these nice affairs,” nay, had himself concurred in the bigamy.[156]In consequence of these and other charges contained in the Duke’s screed, Luther wrote the violent libel entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” of which the still existing manuscript shows in what haste and frame of mind the work was dashed off. All his exasperation at the events connected with the bigamy now become public boils up in his attack on the “Bloodhound, and incendiary Harry” of Brunswick, and the “clerical devil’s whores in the Popish robbers’ cave.”[157]Of Henry’s charge he speaks in a way which is almost more than a mere concealing of the bigamy.[158]He adds: “The very name of Harry stinks like devil’s ordure freshly dropped in Germany. Did he perchance desire that not he alone should stink so horribly in the nostrils of others, but that he should make other honourable princes to stink also?” He was a renegade and a coward, who did everything like an assassin. “He ought to be set up like a eunuch, dressed in cap and bells, with a feather-brush in his hand to guard the women and that part on account of which they are called women, as the rude Germans say.” “Assassin-adultery, assassin-arson indeed became this ‘wild cat,’” etc.Even before this work was finished, in February, 1541, a pseudonymous attack upon the Landgrave appeared which “horrified Cruciger,”[159]who was with Luther at Wittenberg. The Landgrave is here upbraided with the bigamy, the reproaches culminating in the following: “I cannot but believe that the devil resides in your Serene Highness, andthat the Münster habit has infected your S.H., so that your S.H. thinks that you may take as many wives as you please, even as the King of Münster did.”An anonymous reply to this screed penned by the pastor of Melsungen, Johann Lening, is the first attempt at a public justification of Philip’s bigamy. The author only disclaims the charge that the Landgrave had intended to “introduce a new ‘ius.’”[160]Henry of Brunswick replied to “Hans Worst” and to this vindication of the bigamy in his “Quadruplicæ” of May 31, 1541. He said there of Luther’s “Hans Worst”: “That we should have roused Luther, the arch-knave, arch-heretic, desperate scoundrel and godless arch-miscreant, to put forth his impious, false, unchristian, lousy and rascally work is due to the scamp [on the throne] of Saxony.” “We have told the truth so plainly to his Münsterite brother, the Landgrave, concerning his bigamy, that he has been unable to deny it, but admits it, only that he considers that he did not act dishonourably, but rightly and in a Christian fashion, which, however, is a lie and utterly untrue.” In some of his allegations then and later, such as that the Landgrave was thinking of taking a third wife “in addition to his numerous concubines,” and that he had submitted to re-baptism, the princely knight-errant was going too far. A reply and defence of the Landgrave, published in 1544, asserts with unconscious humour that the Landgrave knew how to take seriously “to heart what God had commanded concerning marriage ... and also the demands of conjugal fidelity and love.”Johann Lening, pastor of Melsungen, formerly a Carthusian in the monastery of Eppenberg, had been the most zealous promoter of the bigamy. He was also very active in rendering literary service in its defence. The string of Bible proofs alleged by Philip in his letter to Luther of July 18 (above, p. 55 f.) can undoubtedly be traced to his inspiration. In October, 1541, he was at Augsburg with Gereon Sailer,[161]the physician so skilled in the treatment of syphilis; a little later Veit Dietrich informed Melanchthon of his venereal trouble.[162]He was much disliked by the Saxons and the Wittenbergers on account of his defence ofhis master. Chancellor Brück speaks of him as a “violent, bitter man”; Luther calls him the “Melsingen nebulo” and the “monstrum Carthusianum”;[163]Frederick Myconius speaks of the “lenones Leningi” and fears he will catch the “Dionysiorum vesania.”Such was the author of the “Dialogue of Huldericus Neobulus,” which has become famous in the history of the Hessian Bigamy; it appeared in 1541, towards the end of summer, being printed at Marburg at Philip’s expense.The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine, natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164]This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon made up his mind to write against it.He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers, but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next.... How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165]From what Luther says he was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunalof conscience, it sought also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and Landgrave[166]begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had already left the press.[167]His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance—which some admire—prove more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point, and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this, consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued agent and to remain silent.The tract of Menius, on the same political grounds, was likewise either not published at all or withdrawn later. The truth was, that it was desirable that the Hessian affair should come under discussion as little as possible, so that no grounds should be given “to increase the gossip,” as Luther put it in 1542; “I would rather it were left to settle as it began, than that the filth should be stirred up under the noses of the whole world.”[168]The work of Neobulus caused much heart-burning among the Swiss reformers; of this we hear from Bullinger, who also, in his Commentary on Matthew, in 1542, expressed himself strongly against the tract.[169]His successor, Rudolf Gualther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, wrote that it was shocking that a Christian Prince should have been guilty of such a thing and that theologians should have been found to father, advocate and defend it.[170]In time, however, less was heard of the matter and the rumours died down. A peace was even patched up between the Landgrave and the Emperor, chiefly because the Elector of Saxony was against the Schmalkalden League being involved in the Hessian affair. Without admitting the reality of the bigamy, and without even mentioning it, Philip concluded with Charles V a treaty which secured for him safety. Therein he made to the Emperor political concessions of such importance[171]as to arouse great discontent and grave suspicions in the ranks of the Evangelicals. At a time when the German Protestants were on the point of appealing to France for assistance against Charles V, he promised to do his best to hinder the French and to support the Imperial interests. In the matter of the Emperor’s feud with Jülich, he pledged himself to neutrality, thus ensuring the Emperor’s success. After receiving the Imperial pardon on Jan. 24, 1541, his complete reconciliation was guaranteed by the secret compact of Ratisbon on June 13 of the same year. He had every reason to be content, and as the editor of Philip’s correspondence with Bucer writes,[172]what better could even the Emperor desire? The great danger which threatened was a league of the German Protestants with France. And now the Prince, who alone was able to bring this about, withdrew from the opposition party, laid his cards on the table, left the road open to Guelders, offeredhis powerful support both within and outside of the Empire, and, in return, asked for nothing but the Emperor’s favour. The Landgrave’s princely allies in the faith were pained to see him forsake “the opposition [to the Emperor]. For their success the political situation was far more promising than in the preceding winter. An alliance with France offered [the Protestants] a much greater prospect of success than one with England, for François I was far more opposed to the Emperor than was Henry VIII.... Of the German Princes, William of Jülich had already pledged himself absolutely to the French King.”[173]Philip was even secretly set on obtaining the Pope’s sanction to the bigamy. Through Georg von Carlowitz and Julius Pflug he sought to enter into negotiations with Rome; they were not to grudge an outlay of from 3000 to 4000 gulden as an “offering.”[174]As early as the end of 1541 Chancellor Feige received definite instructions in the matter.The Hessian Court had, however, in the meantime been informed, that Cardinal Contarini had given it to be understood that “no advice or assistance need be looked for from the Pope.”[175]Landgravine Christina died in 1549, and, after her death, the unfortunate marriage was gradually buried in oblivion.—But did Landgrave Philip, after the conclusion of the second marriage, cease from immoral intercourse with women as he had so solemnly promised Luther he would?
In the conversation on June 18, Luther adopts a forcedly light view of the matter: “It is only a three-months’ affair, then the whole thing will fizzle out. Would to God Philip would look at it in this light instead of grieving so over it! The Papists are now Demeas and I Mitio”; with these words commences a string of word-for-word quotations from Terence’s play “Adelphi,” all concerning the harsh and violent Demeas, whom Luther takes as a figure of the Catholic Church, and the mild and peaceable Mitio, in whom Luther sees himself. In the Notes the sentences are given almost unaltered: “The prostitute and the matron living in one house.” “A son is born.” “Margaret has no dowry.” “I, Mitio, say: ‘May the gods direct all for the best!’” “Man’s life is like a throw of the dice.”[115]“I overlook much worse things than this,” he continues. “If anyone says to me: Are you pleased with what has taken place? I reply: No; oh, would that I could alter it. Since I cannot, I am resolved to bear it with equanimity. I commit it all to our dear God. Let Him preserve His Church as it now stands in order that it may remain in the unity of faith and doctrine and the pure confession of the Word; all I hope for is that it may never grow worse!”“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting it on God—Whose chosen instrument, even at the mostcritical juncture, he would still persuade himself he was—he finds the most convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds on.”[116]With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not always able to persevere.“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118]The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend Ratzeberger’s account.[119]Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,” “offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by God. Nordoes the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin, in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk: “That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120]Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in explanation or excuse.”[121]F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small as here.”[122]—In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K. E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,”Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]Luther at the Conference of Eisenach.The Landgrave’s Indignation.An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster.According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“acerbissimis verbis”)[125]the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126]Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127]still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases, he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition.The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to sinfulconcubinage. That he was not married to his second wife was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If “hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought of.[128]—Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.During the first session of the conference, held in the Rathaus at Eisenach, Luther formally and publicly committed himself to the expedient at which he had faintly hinted even previously. He unreservedly proposed the telling of a lie. Should a situation arise where it was necessary to reply “yes” or “no,” then they must resign themselves to a downright “No.” “What harm would it do,” he said on July 15, according to quite trustworthy notes,[129]“if a man told a good, lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?” Similarly he said on July 17: “To lie in case of necessity, or for convenience, or in excuse, such lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on Himself.”[130]The Protestant historian of the Hessian Bigamy says in excuse of this: “Luther was faced by the problem whether a lie told in case of necessity could be regarded as a sin at all”; he did not have recourse to the “expedient of a mental reservation [as he had done when recommending an ambiguous reply]”; he merely absolved “the ‘mendacium officiosum’ [the useful lie] of sinfulness. This done, Luther could with a good conscience advise the telling of such a lie.”[131]Nevertheless Luther felt called upon again to return tothe alleged Confession made. He is even anxious to make out that his memorandum had been an Absolution coming under the Seal of Confession, and that the Absolution might not be “revealed”: “If the Confession was to be regarded as secret, then the Absolution also must be secret.”[132]“He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says Rockwell.[133]Moreover he gave it to be understood, that, should the Landgrave say he had committed bigamy as a right to which he was entitled, and not as a favour, then he, Luther, was quit of all responsibility; it was not the confessor’s business to give public testimony concerning what had taken place in Confession.[134]Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his advice still was that the Landgrave should conceal the bigamy behind the ambiguous declaration that: “Margaret is a concubine.” Under the influence of the hostility to the bigamy shown by the Saxon Courts he urged so strongly the Bible arguments against polygamy, that the Hessians began to fear his withdrawal from his older standpoint.The Old-Testament examples, he declared emphatically, could neither “exclude nor bind,” i.e. could not settle the matter either way; Paul’s words could not be overthrown; in the New Testament nothing could be found (in favour of bigamy), “on the contrary the New Testament confirmed the original institution [monogamy]”; therefore “since both the Divine and the secular law were at one, nothing could be done against it; he would not take it upon his conscience.” It is true, that, on the other side, must be put the statement, that he saw no reason whythe Prince should not take the matter upon his own conscience, declare himself convinced, and thus “set their [the theologians’] consciences free.” That he still virtually stood by what had happened, is also seen from his plain statement: “Many things are right before God in the tribunal of conscience, which, to the world, must appear wrong.” “In support of this he brought forward the example,” so the report of the Conference proceeds, “of the seduction of a virgin and of an illegitimate birth.” He also lays stress on the principle that they, the theologians, had merely “to dispense according to God’s command in the tribunal of conscience,” but were unable to bear witness to it publicly; hence their advice to the Landgrave had in reality never been given at all, for it was no business of the “forum externum”; the Landgrave had acted in accordance with his own ideas, just as he had undertaken many things “against their advice,” for instance, “the raid on Wirtenbergk.” He was doing the same in “this instance too, and acting on his own advice.”Again, for his own safety, he makes a request: “Beg him [the Prince] most diligently to draw in [to keep it secret],” otherwise, so he threatens, he will declare that “Luther acted like a fool, and will take the shame on himself”; he would “say: I made a mistake and I retract it; he would retract it even at the expense of his own honour; as for his honour he would pray God to restore it.”[135]In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the case of Thann (above, p. 40 f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the Landgrave.He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,” then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone “could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession,[136]which it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advicein Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”[137]These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal replies given by him at the Conference.[138]He pointed out, that: The Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage to be a mere ‘liaison’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,” viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch, “but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.” The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which it was justified.Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!” If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to “repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a Christian Council.”Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and “admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”The Saxon representatives present at the Conferencewere, however, ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity, viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference, “that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience—as could be proved by many examples from Scripture—than to cause a great scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and open admission and vindication.”[139]Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him, those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly, his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed to him by the Prince.[140]In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e. an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that, rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly, please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later, unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has ever come to my ears than thatit should have occurred to a brave man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘in conscientia’ before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e. adultery, usury and drunkenness—and who yet are supposed to be members of the Church—not merely in writings and sermons but with serious considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things, yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony, who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians: At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”Luther replied on July 24,[141]that he had not deserved that the Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would not find any fault in it.”It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all diligence,” and which, even at the worst, he would bethe last to bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what, in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to “get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage merely in conscience.In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”; in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe, and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere prostitute.”There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints, that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”; nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave, moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?” he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb. Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness in keeping the secret had brought notonly the Prince but “the whole confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious” this would be neither just nor reasonable.Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘ambiguum,’” and “not openly to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock, confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous affair.Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after receiving Luther’s letter.[142]Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip [Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a prostitute, this wedemand and insist upon, and the presence of pious men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who would at once take him to task.“It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian, nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter, concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden (Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The“cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,” that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape eternal damnation; and your Lord, the Elector, will have to admit it too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future. You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv., 2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him. Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.Melanchthon’s Complaints.Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of advice.As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy, but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy.[143]Friends informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him.[144]Owing to his weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach. On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloudthat he and Luther had been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in due time.”[145]On Sep. 1, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who even swore that this expedient was essential for him.”[146]He thus gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “Adelphi”). Melanchthon was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his dissembling and cunning.[147]Most remarkable, however, is the assertion he makes in his annoyance, viz. that the Landgrave was on the point of losing his reason: “This is the beginning of his insanity.”[148]Luther, too, had said he feared he was going crazy, as it ran in the family.[149]Philip’s father, Landgrave William II, had succumbed to melancholia as the result of syphilis. The latter’s brother, William I, had also been insane. Philip’s son, William IV, sought to explain the family trouble by a spell cast over one of his ancestors by the “courtisans” at Venice.[150]In 1538, previous to the bigamy scandal, Henry of Brunswick had written, that the Landgrave, owing to the French disease, was able to sleep but little, and would soon go mad.[151]Melanchthon became very sensitive to any mention of the Hessian bigamy. At table, on one occasion in Aug., 1540,Luther spoke of love; no one was quite devoid of love because all at least desired enjoyment; one loved his wife, another his children, others, like Carlstadt, loved honour. When Bugenhagen, with an allusion to the Landgrave, quoted the passage from Virgil’s “Bucolica”: “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori,” Melanchthon jumped up and cried: “Pastor, leave out that passage.”[152]Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,” he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however, circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen] are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small trouble.”[153]We must not press the contradiction this presents to Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy.Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions and additions which altered the meaning.Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W. Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a simulated piety (‘simulatione pietatis fefellit’). Nor did he adhere to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept [concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in oneflesh’ might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity. I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen. Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter, we are free to publish our decision (‘edere sententiam nostram’); for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as “depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘Alcibiadea natura perditus’),” an expression which also fell under the red pencil of the first editor, Camerarius.[154]Literary Feud with Duke Henry of Brunswick.Prominent amongst those who censured the bigamy was the Landgrave’s violent opponent Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Duke, a leader of the Catholic Alliance formed to resist the Schmalkalden Leaguers in North Germany, published in the early ‘forties several controversial works against Philip of Hesse. This brisk and active opponent, whose own character was, however, by no means unblemished, seems to have had a hand in the attacks of other penmen upon the Landgrave. Little by little he secured fairly accurate accounts of the proceedings in Hesse and at Wittenberg, and, as early as July 22, 1540, made a general and public reference to what had taken place.[155]In a tract published on Nov. 3, he said quite openly that the Landgrave had “two wives at the same time, and had thus rendered himself liable to the penalties against double marriage.” The Elector of Saxony had, however, permitted “his biblical experts at the University of Wittenberg to assist in dealing with these nice affairs,” nay, had himself concurred in the bigamy.[156]In consequence of these and other charges contained in the Duke’s screed, Luther wrote the violent libel entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” of which the still existing manuscript shows in what haste and frame of mind the work was dashed off. All his exasperation at the events connected with the bigamy now become public boils up in his attack on the “Bloodhound, and incendiary Harry” of Brunswick, and the “clerical devil’s whores in the Popish robbers’ cave.”[157]Of Henry’s charge he speaks in a way which is almost more than a mere concealing of the bigamy.[158]He adds: “The very name of Harry stinks like devil’s ordure freshly dropped in Germany. Did he perchance desire that not he alone should stink so horribly in the nostrils of others, but that he should make other honourable princes to stink also?” He was a renegade and a coward, who did everything like an assassin. “He ought to be set up like a eunuch, dressed in cap and bells, with a feather-brush in his hand to guard the women and that part on account of which they are called women, as the rude Germans say.” “Assassin-adultery, assassin-arson indeed became this ‘wild cat,’” etc.Even before this work was finished, in February, 1541, a pseudonymous attack upon the Landgrave appeared which “horrified Cruciger,”[159]who was with Luther at Wittenberg. The Landgrave is here upbraided with the bigamy, the reproaches culminating in the following: “I cannot but believe that the devil resides in your Serene Highness, andthat the Münster habit has infected your S.H., so that your S.H. thinks that you may take as many wives as you please, even as the King of Münster did.”An anonymous reply to this screed penned by the pastor of Melsungen, Johann Lening, is the first attempt at a public justification of Philip’s bigamy. The author only disclaims the charge that the Landgrave had intended to “introduce a new ‘ius.’”[160]Henry of Brunswick replied to “Hans Worst” and to this vindication of the bigamy in his “Quadruplicæ” of May 31, 1541. He said there of Luther’s “Hans Worst”: “That we should have roused Luther, the arch-knave, arch-heretic, desperate scoundrel and godless arch-miscreant, to put forth his impious, false, unchristian, lousy and rascally work is due to the scamp [on the throne] of Saxony.” “We have told the truth so plainly to his Münsterite brother, the Landgrave, concerning his bigamy, that he has been unable to deny it, but admits it, only that he considers that he did not act dishonourably, but rightly and in a Christian fashion, which, however, is a lie and utterly untrue.” In some of his allegations then and later, such as that the Landgrave was thinking of taking a third wife “in addition to his numerous concubines,” and that he had submitted to re-baptism, the princely knight-errant was going too far. A reply and defence of the Landgrave, published in 1544, asserts with unconscious humour that the Landgrave knew how to take seriously “to heart what God had commanded concerning marriage ... and also the demands of conjugal fidelity and love.”Johann Lening, pastor of Melsungen, formerly a Carthusian in the monastery of Eppenberg, had been the most zealous promoter of the bigamy. He was also very active in rendering literary service in its defence. The string of Bible proofs alleged by Philip in his letter to Luther of July 18 (above, p. 55 f.) can undoubtedly be traced to his inspiration. In October, 1541, he was at Augsburg with Gereon Sailer,[161]the physician so skilled in the treatment of syphilis; a little later Veit Dietrich informed Melanchthon of his venereal trouble.[162]He was much disliked by the Saxons and the Wittenbergers on account of his defence ofhis master. Chancellor Brück speaks of him as a “violent, bitter man”; Luther calls him the “Melsingen nebulo” and the “monstrum Carthusianum”;[163]Frederick Myconius speaks of the “lenones Leningi” and fears he will catch the “Dionysiorum vesania.”Such was the author of the “Dialogue of Huldericus Neobulus,” which has become famous in the history of the Hessian Bigamy; it appeared in 1541, towards the end of summer, being printed at Marburg at Philip’s expense.The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine, natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164]This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon made up his mind to write against it.He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers, but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next.... How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165]From what Luther says he was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunalof conscience, it sought also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and Landgrave[166]begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had already left the press.[167]His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance—which some admire—prove more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point, and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this, consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued agent and to remain silent.The tract of Menius, on the same political grounds, was likewise either not published at all or withdrawn later. The truth was, that it was desirable that the Hessian affair should come under discussion as little as possible, so that no grounds should be given “to increase the gossip,” as Luther put it in 1542; “I would rather it were left to settle as it began, than that the filth should be stirred up under the noses of the whole world.”[168]The work of Neobulus caused much heart-burning among the Swiss reformers; of this we hear from Bullinger, who also, in his Commentary on Matthew, in 1542, expressed himself strongly against the tract.[169]His successor, Rudolf Gualther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, wrote that it was shocking that a Christian Prince should have been guilty of such a thing and that theologians should have been found to father, advocate and defend it.[170]In time, however, less was heard of the matter and the rumours died down. A peace was even patched up between the Landgrave and the Emperor, chiefly because the Elector of Saxony was against the Schmalkalden League being involved in the Hessian affair. Without admitting the reality of the bigamy, and without even mentioning it, Philip concluded with Charles V a treaty which secured for him safety. Therein he made to the Emperor political concessions of such importance[171]as to arouse great discontent and grave suspicions in the ranks of the Evangelicals. At a time when the German Protestants were on the point of appealing to France for assistance against Charles V, he promised to do his best to hinder the French and to support the Imperial interests. In the matter of the Emperor’s feud with Jülich, he pledged himself to neutrality, thus ensuring the Emperor’s success. After receiving the Imperial pardon on Jan. 24, 1541, his complete reconciliation was guaranteed by the secret compact of Ratisbon on June 13 of the same year. He had every reason to be content, and as the editor of Philip’s correspondence with Bucer writes,[172]what better could even the Emperor desire? The great danger which threatened was a league of the German Protestants with France. And now the Prince, who alone was able to bring this about, withdrew from the opposition party, laid his cards on the table, left the road open to Guelders, offeredhis powerful support both within and outside of the Empire, and, in return, asked for nothing but the Emperor’s favour. The Landgrave’s princely allies in the faith were pained to see him forsake “the opposition [to the Emperor]. For their success the political situation was far more promising than in the preceding winter. An alliance with France offered [the Protestants] a much greater prospect of success than one with England, for François I was far more opposed to the Emperor than was Henry VIII.... Of the German Princes, William of Jülich had already pledged himself absolutely to the French King.”[173]Philip was even secretly set on obtaining the Pope’s sanction to the bigamy. Through Georg von Carlowitz and Julius Pflug he sought to enter into negotiations with Rome; they were not to grudge an outlay of from 3000 to 4000 gulden as an “offering.”[174]As early as the end of 1541 Chancellor Feige received definite instructions in the matter.The Hessian Court had, however, in the meantime been informed, that Cardinal Contarini had given it to be understood that “no advice or assistance need be looked for from the Pope.”[175]Landgravine Christina died in 1549, and, after her death, the unfortunate marriage was gradually buried in oblivion.—But did Landgrave Philip, after the conclusion of the second marriage, cease from immoral intercourse with women as he had so solemnly promised Luther he would?
In the conversation on June 18, Luther adopts a forcedly light view of the matter: “It is only a three-months’ affair, then the whole thing will fizzle out. Would to God Philip would look at it in this light instead of grieving so over it! The Papists are now Demeas and I Mitio”; with these words commences a string of word-for-word quotations from Terence’s play “Adelphi,” all concerning the harsh and violent Demeas, whom Luther takes as a figure of the Catholic Church, and the mild and peaceable Mitio, in whom Luther sees himself. In the Notes the sentences are given almost unaltered: “The prostitute and the matron living in one house.” “A son is born.” “Margaret has no dowry.” “I, Mitio, say: ‘May the gods direct all for the best!’” “Man’s life is like a throw of the dice.”[115]“I overlook much worse things than this,” he continues. “If anyone says to me: Are you pleased with what has taken place? I reply: No; oh, would that I could alter it. Since I cannot, I am resolved to bear it with equanimity. I commit it all to our dear God. Let Him preserve His Church as it now stands in order that it may remain in the unity of faith and doctrine and the pure confession of the Word; all I hope for is that it may never grow worse!”“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting it on God—Whose chosen instrument, even at the mostcritical juncture, he would still persuade himself he was—he finds the most convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds on.”[116]With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not always able to persevere.“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]
In the conversation on June 18, Luther adopts a forcedly light view of the matter: “It is only a three-months’ affair, then the whole thing will fizzle out. Would to God Philip would look at it in this light instead of grieving so over it! The Papists are now Demeas and I Mitio”; with these words commences a string of word-for-word quotations from Terence’s play “Adelphi,” all concerning the harsh and violent Demeas, whom Luther takes as a figure of the Catholic Church, and the mild and peaceable Mitio, in whom Luther sees himself. In the Notes the sentences are given almost unaltered: “The prostitute and the matron living in one house.” “A son is born.” “Margaret has no dowry.” “I, Mitio, say: ‘May the gods direct all for the best!’” “Man’s life is like a throw of the dice.”[115]
“I overlook much worse things than this,” he continues. “If anyone says to me: Are you pleased with what has taken place? I reply: No; oh, would that I could alter it. Since I cannot, I am resolved to bear it with equanimity. I commit it all to our dear God. Let Him preserve His Church as it now stands in order that it may remain in the unity of faith and doctrine and the pure confession of the Word; all I hope for is that it may never grow worse!”
“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”
In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting it on God—Whose chosen instrument, even at the mostcritical juncture, he would still persuade himself he was—he finds the most convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds on.”[116]With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not always able to persevere.
“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]
Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118]The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend Ratzeberger’s account.[119]
Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,” “offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by God. Nordoes the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin, in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk: “That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120]Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in explanation or excuse.”[121]
F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small as here.”[122]—In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K. E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]
“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,”Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]
An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster.
According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“acerbissimis verbis”)[125]the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126]Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127]still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.
Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases, he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition.
The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to sinfulconcubinage. That he was not married to his second wife was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If “hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought of.[128]—Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.
During the first session of the conference, held in the Rathaus at Eisenach, Luther formally and publicly committed himself to the expedient at which he had faintly hinted even previously. He unreservedly proposed the telling of a lie. Should a situation arise where it was necessary to reply “yes” or “no,” then they must resign themselves to a downright “No.” “What harm would it do,” he said on July 15, according to quite trustworthy notes,[129]“if a man told a good, lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?” Similarly he said on July 17: “To lie in case of necessity, or for convenience, or in excuse, such lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on Himself.”[130]
The Protestant historian of the Hessian Bigamy says in excuse of this: “Luther was faced by the problem whether a lie told in case of necessity could be regarded as a sin at all”; he did not have recourse to the “expedient of a mental reservation [as he had done when recommending an ambiguous reply]”; he merely absolved “the ‘mendacium officiosum’ [the useful lie] of sinfulness. This done, Luther could with a good conscience advise the telling of such a lie.”[131]
Nevertheless Luther felt called upon again to return tothe alleged Confession made. He is even anxious to make out that his memorandum had been an Absolution coming under the Seal of Confession, and that the Absolution might not be “revealed”: “If the Confession was to be regarded as secret, then the Absolution also must be secret.”[132]“He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says Rockwell.[133]Moreover he gave it to be understood, that, should the Landgrave say he had committed bigamy as a right to which he was entitled, and not as a favour, then he, Luther, was quit of all responsibility; it was not the confessor’s business to give public testimony concerning what had taken place in Confession.[134]
Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his advice still was that the Landgrave should conceal the bigamy behind the ambiguous declaration that: “Margaret is a concubine.” Under the influence of the hostility to the bigamy shown by the Saxon Courts he urged so strongly the Bible arguments against polygamy, that the Hessians began to fear his withdrawal from his older standpoint.
The Old-Testament examples, he declared emphatically, could neither “exclude nor bind,” i.e. could not settle the matter either way; Paul’s words could not be overthrown; in the New Testament nothing could be found (in favour of bigamy), “on the contrary the New Testament confirmed the original institution [monogamy]”; therefore “since both the Divine and the secular law were at one, nothing could be done against it; he would not take it upon his conscience.” It is true, that, on the other side, must be put the statement, that he saw no reason whythe Prince should not take the matter upon his own conscience, declare himself convinced, and thus “set their [the theologians’] consciences free.” That he still virtually stood by what had happened, is also seen from his plain statement: “Many things are right before God in the tribunal of conscience, which, to the world, must appear wrong.” “In support of this he brought forward the example,” so the report of the Conference proceeds, “of the seduction of a virgin and of an illegitimate birth.” He also lays stress on the principle that they, the theologians, had merely “to dispense according to God’s command in the tribunal of conscience,” but were unable to bear witness to it publicly; hence their advice to the Landgrave had in reality never been given at all, for it was no business of the “forum externum”; the Landgrave had acted in accordance with his own ideas, just as he had undertaken many things “against their advice,” for instance, “the raid on Wirtenbergk.” He was doing the same in “this instance too, and acting on his own advice.”Again, for his own safety, he makes a request: “Beg him [the Prince] most diligently to draw in [to keep it secret],” otherwise, so he threatens, he will declare that “Luther acted like a fool, and will take the shame on himself”; he would “say: I made a mistake and I retract it; he would retract it even at the expense of his own honour; as for his honour he would pray God to restore it.”[135]In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the case of Thann (above, p. 40 f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the Landgrave.He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,” then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone “could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession,[136]which it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advicein Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”[137]These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal replies given by him at the Conference.[138]He pointed out, that: The Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage to be a mere ‘liaison’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,” viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch, “but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.” The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which it was justified.Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!” If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to “repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a Christian Council.”Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and “admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”
The Old-Testament examples, he declared emphatically, could neither “exclude nor bind,” i.e. could not settle the matter either way; Paul’s words could not be overthrown; in the New Testament nothing could be found (in favour of bigamy), “on the contrary the New Testament confirmed the original institution [monogamy]”; therefore “since both the Divine and the secular law were at one, nothing could be done against it; he would not take it upon his conscience.” It is true, that, on the other side, must be put the statement, that he saw no reason whythe Prince should not take the matter upon his own conscience, declare himself convinced, and thus “set their [the theologians’] consciences free.” That he still virtually stood by what had happened, is also seen from his plain statement: “Many things are right before God in the tribunal of conscience, which, to the world, must appear wrong.” “In support of this he brought forward the example,” so the report of the Conference proceeds, “of the seduction of a virgin and of an illegitimate birth.” He also lays stress on the principle that they, the theologians, had merely “to dispense according to God’s command in the tribunal of conscience,” but were unable to bear witness to it publicly; hence their advice to the Landgrave had in reality never been given at all, for it was no business of the “forum externum”; the Landgrave had acted in accordance with his own ideas, just as he had undertaken many things “against their advice,” for instance, “the raid on Wirtenbergk.” He was doing the same in “this instance too, and acting on his own advice.”
Again, for his own safety, he makes a request: “Beg him [the Prince] most diligently to draw in [to keep it secret],” otherwise, so he threatens, he will declare that “Luther acted like a fool, and will take the shame on himself”; he would “say: I made a mistake and I retract it; he would retract it even at the expense of his own honour; as for his honour he would pray God to restore it.”[135]
In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the case of Thann (above, p. 40 f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the Landgrave.
He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,” then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone “could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession,[136]which it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advicein Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”[137]
These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal replies given by him at the Conference.[138]He pointed out, that: The Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage to be a mere ‘liaison’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,” viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch, “but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.” The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which it was justified.
Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!” If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to “repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a Christian Council.”
Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and “admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”
The Saxon representatives present at the Conferencewere, however, ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity, viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference, “that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience—as could be proved by many examples from Scripture—than to cause a great scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and open admission and vindication.”[139]
Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him, those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly, his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.
Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed to him by the Prince.[140]
In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e. an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.
Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that, rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly, please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later, unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has ever come to my ears than thatit should have occurred to a brave man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘in conscientia’ before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e. adultery, usury and drunkenness—and who yet are supposed to be members of the Church—not merely in writings and sermons but with serious considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things, yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony, who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians: At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”
Luther replied on July 24,[141]that he had not deserved that the Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would not find any fault in it.”
It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all diligence,” and which, even at the worst, he would bethe last to bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what, in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to “get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage merely in conscience.In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”; in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe, and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere prostitute.”There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints, that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”; nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave, moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?” he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb. Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness in keeping the secret had brought notonly the Prince but “the whole confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious” this would be neither just nor reasonable.Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘ambiguum,’” and “not openly to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock, confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?
It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all diligence,” and which, even at the worst, he would bethe last to bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what, in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to “get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage merely in conscience.
In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”; in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe, and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere prostitute.”
There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints, that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”; nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave, moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?” he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb. Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness in keeping the secret had brought notonly the Prince but “the whole confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious” this would be neither just nor reasonable.
Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘ambiguum,’” and “not openly to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”
He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock, confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?
Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous affair.
Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after receiving Luther’s letter.[142]
Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip [Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a prostitute, this wedemand and insist upon, and the presence of pious men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”
As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who would at once take him to task.
“It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”
Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian, nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”
These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter, concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden (Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The“cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,” that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape eternal damnation; and your Lord, the Elector, will have to admit it too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future. You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv., 2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him. Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.
Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of advice.
As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy, but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy.[143]Friends informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him.[144]Owing to his weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach. On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloudthat he and Luther had been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in due time.”[145]On Sep. 1, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who even swore that this expedient was essential for him.”[146]He thus gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “Adelphi”). Melanchthon was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his dissembling and cunning.[147]
Most remarkable, however, is the assertion he makes in his annoyance, viz. that the Landgrave was on the point of losing his reason: “This is the beginning of his insanity.”[148]Luther, too, had said he feared he was going crazy, as it ran in the family.[149]Philip’s father, Landgrave William II, had succumbed to melancholia as the result of syphilis. The latter’s brother, William I, had also been insane. Philip’s son, William IV, sought to explain the family trouble by a spell cast over one of his ancestors by the “courtisans” at Venice.[150]In 1538, previous to the bigamy scandal, Henry of Brunswick had written, that the Landgrave, owing to the French disease, was able to sleep but little, and would soon go mad.[151]
Melanchthon became very sensitive to any mention of the Hessian bigamy. At table, on one occasion in Aug., 1540,Luther spoke of love; no one was quite devoid of love because all at least desired enjoyment; one loved his wife, another his children, others, like Carlstadt, loved honour. When Bugenhagen, with an allusion to the Landgrave, quoted the passage from Virgil’s “Bucolica”: “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori,” Melanchthon jumped up and cried: “Pastor, leave out that passage.”[152]
Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,” he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however, circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen] are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small trouble.”[153]We must not press the contradiction this presents to Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy.
Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions and additions which altered the meaning.
Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W. Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a simulated piety (‘simulatione pietatis fefellit’). Nor did he adhere to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept [concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in oneflesh’ might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity. I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen. Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter, we are free to publish our decision (‘edere sententiam nostram’); for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as “depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘Alcibiadea natura perditus’),” an expression which also fell under the red pencil of the first editor, Camerarius.[154]
Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W. Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a simulated piety (‘simulatione pietatis fefellit’). Nor did he adhere to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept [concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in oneflesh’ might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity. I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen. Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter, we are free to publish our decision (‘edere sententiam nostram’); for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as “depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘Alcibiadea natura perditus’),” an expression which also fell under the red pencil of the first editor, Camerarius.[154]
Prominent amongst those who censured the bigamy was the Landgrave’s violent opponent Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Duke, a leader of the Catholic Alliance formed to resist the Schmalkalden Leaguers in North Germany, published in the early ‘forties several controversial works against Philip of Hesse. This brisk and active opponent, whose own character was, however, by no means unblemished, seems to have had a hand in the attacks of other penmen upon the Landgrave. Little by little he secured fairly accurate accounts of the proceedings in Hesse and at Wittenberg, and, as early as July 22, 1540, made a general and public reference to what had taken place.[155]
In a tract published on Nov. 3, he said quite openly that the Landgrave had “two wives at the same time, and had thus rendered himself liable to the penalties against double marriage.” The Elector of Saxony had, however, permitted “his biblical experts at the University of Wittenberg to assist in dealing with these nice affairs,” nay, had himself concurred in the bigamy.[156]
In consequence of these and other charges contained in the Duke’s screed, Luther wrote the violent libel entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” of which the still existing manuscript shows in what haste and frame of mind the work was dashed off. All his exasperation at the events connected with the bigamy now become public boils up in his attack on the “Bloodhound, and incendiary Harry” of Brunswick, and the “clerical devil’s whores in the Popish robbers’ cave.”[157]Of Henry’s charge he speaks in a way which is almost more than a mere concealing of the bigamy.[158]He adds: “The very name of Harry stinks like devil’s ordure freshly dropped in Germany. Did he perchance desire that not he alone should stink so horribly in the nostrils of others, but that he should make other honourable princes to stink also?” He was a renegade and a coward, who did everything like an assassin. “He ought to be set up like a eunuch, dressed in cap and bells, with a feather-brush in his hand to guard the women and that part on account of which they are called women, as the rude Germans say.” “Assassin-adultery, assassin-arson indeed became this ‘wild cat,’” etc.
Even before this work was finished, in February, 1541, a pseudonymous attack upon the Landgrave appeared which “horrified Cruciger,”[159]who was with Luther at Wittenberg. The Landgrave is here upbraided with the bigamy, the reproaches culminating in the following: “I cannot but believe that the devil resides in your Serene Highness, andthat the Münster habit has infected your S.H., so that your S.H. thinks that you may take as many wives as you please, even as the King of Münster did.”
An anonymous reply to this screed penned by the pastor of Melsungen, Johann Lening, is the first attempt at a public justification of Philip’s bigamy. The author only disclaims the charge that the Landgrave had intended to “introduce a new ‘ius.’”[160]
Henry of Brunswick replied to “Hans Worst” and to this vindication of the bigamy in his “Quadruplicæ” of May 31, 1541. He said there of Luther’s “Hans Worst”: “That we should have roused Luther, the arch-knave, arch-heretic, desperate scoundrel and godless arch-miscreant, to put forth his impious, false, unchristian, lousy and rascally work is due to the scamp [on the throne] of Saxony.” “We have told the truth so plainly to his Münsterite brother, the Landgrave, concerning his bigamy, that he has been unable to deny it, but admits it, only that he considers that he did not act dishonourably, but rightly and in a Christian fashion, which, however, is a lie and utterly untrue.” In some of his allegations then and later, such as that the Landgrave was thinking of taking a third wife “in addition to his numerous concubines,” and that he had submitted to re-baptism, the princely knight-errant was going too far. A reply and defence of the Landgrave, published in 1544, asserts with unconscious humour that the Landgrave knew how to take seriously “to heart what God had commanded concerning marriage ... and also the demands of conjugal fidelity and love.”
Johann Lening, pastor of Melsungen, formerly a Carthusian in the monastery of Eppenberg, had been the most zealous promoter of the bigamy. He was also very active in rendering literary service in its defence. The string of Bible proofs alleged by Philip in his letter to Luther of July 18 (above, p. 55 f.) can undoubtedly be traced to his inspiration. In October, 1541, he was at Augsburg with Gereon Sailer,[161]the physician so skilled in the treatment of syphilis; a little later Veit Dietrich informed Melanchthon of his venereal trouble.[162]He was much disliked by the Saxons and the Wittenbergers on account of his defence ofhis master. Chancellor Brück speaks of him as a “violent, bitter man”; Luther calls him the “Melsingen nebulo” and the “monstrum Carthusianum”;[163]Frederick Myconius speaks of the “lenones Leningi” and fears he will catch the “Dionysiorum vesania.”
Such was the author of the “Dialogue of Huldericus Neobulus,” which has become famous in the history of the Hessian Bigamy; it appeared in 1541, towards the end of summer, being printed at Marburg at Philip’s expense.
The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine, natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164]
This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon made up his mind to write against it.
He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers, but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next.... How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165]From what Luther says he was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunalof conscience, it sought also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and Landgrave[166]begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had already left the press.[167]
His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance—which some admire—prove more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point, and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this, consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued agent and to remain silent.
The tract of Menius, on the same political grounds, was likewise either not published at all or withdrawn later. The truth was, that it was desirable that the Hessian affair should come under discussion as little as possible, so that no grounds should be given “to increase the gossip,” as Luther put it in 1542; “I would rather it were left to settle as it began, than that the filth should be stirred up under the noses of the whole world.”[168]
The work of Neobulus caused much heart-burning among the Swiss reformers; of this we hear from Bullinger, who also, in his Commentary on Matthew, in 1542, expressed himself strongly against the tract.[169]His successor, Rudolf Gualther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, wrote that it was shocking that a Christian Prince should have been guilty of such a thing and that theologians should have been found to father, advocate and defend it.[170]
In time, however, less was heard of the matter and the rumours died down. A peace was even patched up between the Landgrave and the Emperor, chiefly because the Elector of Saxony was against the Schmalkalden League being involved in the Hessian affair. Without admitting the reality of the bigamy, and without even mentioning it, Philip concluded with Charles V a treaty which secured for him safety. Therein he made to the Emperor political concessions of such importance[171]as to arouse great discontent and grave suspicions in the ranks of the Evangelicals. At a time when the German Protestants were on the point of appealing to France for assistance against Charles V, he promised to do his best to hinder the French and to support the Imperial interests. In the matter of the Emperor’s feud with Jülich, he pledged himself to neutrality, thus ensuring the Emperor’s success. After receiving the Imperial pardon on Jan. 24, 1541, his complete reconciliation was guaranteed by the secret compact of Ratisbon on June 13 of the same year. He had every reason to be content, and as the editor of Philip’s correspondence with Bucer writes,[172]what better could even the Emperor desire? The great danger which threatened was a league of the German Protestants with France. And now the Prince, who alone was able to bring this about, withdrew from the opposition party, laid his cards on the table, left the road open to Guelders, offeredhis powerful support both within and outside of the Empire, and, in return, asked for nothing but the Emperor’s favour. The Landgrave’s princely allies in the faith were pained to see him forsake “the opposition [to the Emperor]. For their success the political situation was far more promising than in the preceding winter. An alliance with France offered [the Protestants] a much greater prospect of success than one with England, for François I was far more opposed to the Emperor than was Henry VIII.... Of the German Princes, William of Jülich had already pledged himself absolutely to the French King.”[173]
Philip was even secretly set on obtaining the Pope’s sanction to the bigamy. Through Georg von Carlowitz and Julius Pflug he sought to enter into negotiations with Rome; they were not to grudge an outlay of from 3000 to 4000 gulden as an “offering.”[174]As early as the end of 1541 Chancellor Feige received definite instructions in the matter.
The Hessian Court had, however, in the meantime been informed, that Cardinal Contarini had given it to be understood that “no advice or assistance need be looked for from the Pope.”[175]
Landgravine Christina died in 1549, and, after her death, the unfortunate marriage was gradually buried in oblivion.—But did Landgrave Philip, after the conclusion of the second marriage, cease from immoral intercourse with women as he had so solemnly promised Luther he would?