In Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Order, the crosses and the images of the Saints had been doomed to destruction by the revolution of 1525; the silver treasures of art in the churches were hammered into plate for use at the new Lutheran Duke’s dining-table. The Estates of his country, when he had asked them to vote supplies, retorted that he might as well help himself to the treasures of the churches. The result was, so the chronicler of that day relates, “that all the chalices and other ornaments” were removed from the houses of God, barely one chalice being left in each church; some of the country churches were even driven to use pewter chalices. “When they had taken all the silver they fell upon the bells”; they left but one in each village, the rest being carried off to Königsberg and sold to the smelters.[767]At Marienwerder only did the prebendaries, appealing to the King of Poland, make a stand for the retention of their church plate and other property, until they themselves were sent in chains to Preuschmark.[768]In 1524, during the fair, the images were dragged out of the churches at Riesenburg in Pomerania, shamelessly dishonoured and finally burnt. The bishop-elect, a dignitary whom the Pope had refused to confirm and who was notoriously a “zealous instrument of the Evangel,” excused the proceeding. In other towns similar outrages were perpetrated by the iconoclasts.On the introduction of Lutheranism at Stralsund almost all the churches and monasteries were stormed, the crucifixes and images being broken up in the presence of members of the town-council (1525).[769]In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations and had 128 clergy attached to it.A list of the articles confiscated or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes, twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths, ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770]When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus (1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St. Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771]The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]During this so-called “Evangelical War” five thousand burghers and mercenaries of the town of Brunswick, shouting their war-cry: “The Word of God remaineth for ever,” set out, on July 21, 1542, against the monastery of Riddaghausen; there they broke down the altars, images and organs, carried off the monstrances, mass vestments and other treasures of the church, plundering generally and perpetrating the worst abominations. The mob also broke in pieces the images and pictures in the monastery of Steterburg and then demolished the building. Nor did the abbey of Gandersheim fare much better. The prebendaries there complained to the Emperor, that all the crucifixes and images of the Saints had been destroyed together with otherobjects set up for the adornment of the church and churchyard outside.[773]The Lutheran preacher, K. Reinholdt, looking back two decades later on the devastation wrought in Germany, reminded his hearers that Luther himself had repeatedly preached that, “it would be better that all churches and abbeys in the world were torn down and burnt to ashes, that it would be less sinful, even if done from criminal motives, than that a single soul should be led astray into Popish error and be ruined”; “if they would not accept his teaching, then, so Luther the man of God had exclaimed, he would wish not merely that his doctrine might be the cause of the destruction of Popish churches and convents, but that they were already lying in a heap of ashes.”[774]At Hamburg iconoclastic disturbances began in Dec., 1528. The Cistercian convent, Harvestehude, where the clergy still dare to say Mass, was rased to the ground.[775]At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed, part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of the beer”;[776]stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the neighbouring churches.”[777]The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778]Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779]From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells,one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780]When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.”This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781]During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances, episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor Henry II had presented to it.[782]Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,” by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783]before it was besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under the rule of a Council banned by theEmpire, it passed through a period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784]The town, “for the protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with great uproar.”Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin, was one who had war against the Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.” It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he ordered the church of St. Mary at Görlitz to be pillaged and destroyed by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to the Margrave at Küstrin.[786]In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs. weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady, St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or sold.[787]In June and July, 1552, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach laid waste the country around Mayence with fire and sword to such an extent, that the bishop of Würzburg, in order to raise the unheard-of sums demanded, had, as we find it stated in a letter of Zasius to King Ferdinand dated July 10, to lump together “all the gold and silver plate in the churches, the jewels, reliquaries, monstrances, statues and vessels of thesanctuary” and have them minted into thalers. “At Neumünster one reliquary was melted down which alone was worth 1000 florins.”[788]The citizens of Würzburg were obliged to give up all their household plate and the cathedral itself the silver statue of St. Kilian, patron of the diocese.[789]When the commanders and the troops of the Elector Maurice withdrew from the Tyrol after the frustration of their undertaking owing to the flight of the Emperor to Carinthia, all the sacred objects of value in the Cistercian monastery of Stams in the valley of the upper Inn were either broken to pieces or carried off. The soldiers broke open the vault, where the earthly remains of the ruling Princes had rested for centuries, dragged the corpses out of their coffins and stripped them of their valuables.[790]The inventory of the treasures of art made of precious metal and other substances which perished at Stams must be classed with numerous other sad records of a similar nature dating from that time.[791]After the truce of Passau, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, with the help of France, turned his attention to Frankfurt, Mayence and Treves. At Mayence, after making a vain demand for 100,000 gold florins from the clergy, he gave orders to ransack the churches, and set on fire the churches of St. Alban, St. Victor and Holy Cross, the Charterhouse and the houses of the Canons. He boasted of this as a “right princely firebrand we threw into the damned nest of parsons.” In Treves all the collegiate churches and monasteries were “sacked down to the very last farthing,” as an account relates; the monastery of St. Maximin, the priory of St. Paul, the castle of Saarburg on the Saar, Pfalzel and Echternach were given to the flames.[792]“Such proceedings were incumbent on an honourable Prince who had the glory of God at heart and was zealous for the spread of the Divine Gospel, which God the Lord in our age has allowed to shine forth with such marvellous light.” So Albert boasted to an envoy of the Archbishop of Mayence on June 27, 1552, when laying waste Würzburg.[793]“The archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence, the bishoprics of Spires, Worms and Eichstätt are laid waste with pillage,” wrote Melchior von Ossa the Saxon lawyer, “the stately edifices at Mayence, Treves and other places, where lay the bones of so many pious martyrs of old, are reduced to ashes.”[794]The complaints of a Protestant preacher who had worked for a considerable time at Schwäbisch-Hall ring much the same: “Our parents were willing to contribute towards the building ofchurches and to the adornment of the temples of God.... But now the churches have been pilfered so badly that they barely retain a roof over them. Superb Mass vestments of silk and velvet with pearls and corals were provided for the churches by our forefathers; these have now been removed and serve the woman-folk as hoods and bodices; indeed so poor have some of the churches become under the rule of the Evangel, that it is impossible to provide the ministers of the Church even with a beggarly surplice.”[795]The wanton waste and destruction which took place in the domain of art under Lutheran rule during the first fifty years of the religious innovations, great as they were, do not by any means approach in magnitude the losses caused elsewhere by Zwinglianism and Calvinism.Yet two things in Lutheranism had a disastrous effect in checking the revival of religious art, even when the first struggles for mastery were over: first, there was the animosity against the Sacrifice of the Mass and the perpetual eucharistic presence of Christ in the tabernacle; this led people to view with distrust the old alliance existing between the Eucharistic worship and the liberal arts for exalting the dignity and beauty of the churches. After the Mass had been abolished and the Sacrament had ceased to be reserved within the sacred walls, respect for and interest in the house of God, which had led to so much being lavished on it, began to wane. The other obstacle lay in Luther’s negative attitude towards the ancient doctrine and practice of good works. The belief in the meritoriousness of works had in the past been a stimulus to pecuniary sacrifices and offerings for the making of pious works of art. Now, however, artists began to complain, that, owing to the decline of zeal for church matters their orders were beginning to fall off, and that the makers of works of art were being condemned to starvation.In a protocol of the Council of Strasburg, dated Feb. 3, 1525, we read in a petition from the artists: “Painters and sculptors beg, that, whereas, through the Word of God their handicraft has died out they may be provided with posts before other claimants.” The Council answered that their appeal would “be borne in mind.”[796]The verses of Hans Sachs of Nuremberg are well-known:“Bell-founders and organists,Gold-beaters and illuminists,Hand-painters, carvers and goldsmiths,Glass-painters, silk-workers, coppersmiths,Stone-masons, carpenters and joiners,’Gainst all these did Luther wield a sword.From Thee we ask a verdict, Lord.”In the poet’s industrious and artistic native town the decline must have been particularly noticeable. According to the popular Lutheran poet of Nuremberg the fault is with the complainants themselves, who,“With scorn disdainFrom greed of gain”the Word of Christ. “They must cease worrying about worldly goods like the heathen, but must seek the Kingdom of God with eagerness.”[797]It is perfectly true that the words that Hans Sachs on this occasion places in the mouth of the complainant are unfair to Luther:“All church building and adorning he despises,Treats with scorning,He not wise is.”[798]For in spite of his attacks on the veneration of images, on the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and the meritoriousness of pious foundations, Luther was, nevertheless, not so “unwise” as to despise the “building and adorning” of the churches, where, after all, the congregation must assemble for preaching, communion and prayer.[799]That Luther was not devoid of a sense of the beautiful and of its practical value in the service of religion is proved by his outspoken love of music, particularly of church-music, his numerous poetic efforts, no less than by that strongly developed appreciation of well-turned periods, clearness and force of diction so well seen in his translation of the Bible. His life’s struggle, however, led him along paths which makeit easy to understand how it is that he has so little to say in his writings in commendation of the other liberal arts. It also explains the baldness of his reminiscences of his visit to Italy and the city of Rome; the young monk, immersed in his theology, was even then pursuing quite other interests than those of art. It is true Luther, once, in one of the rare passages in favour of ecclesiastical art, speaking from his own point of view, says: “It is better to paint on the wall how God created the world, how Noah made the ark and such-like pious tales, than to paint worldly and shameless subjects; would to God I could persuade the gentry and the rich to have the whole Bible story painted on their houses, inside and out, for everyone’s eye to see; that would be a good Christian work.”[800]Manifestly he did not intend his words to be taken too literally in the case of dwelling-houses. A fighter such as Luther was scarcely the right man to give any real stimulus in the domain of art. The heat of his religious polemics scorched up in his soul any good dispositions of this sort which may once have existed, and blighted in its very beginnings the growth of any real feeling for art among his zealous followers. Hardly a single passage can be found in which he expresses any sense of satisfaction in the products of the artist.It is generally admitted that in the 16th century German art suffered a severe set-back. For this the bitter controversies which for the while transformed Germany into a hideous battlefield were largely responsible; for such a soil could not but prove unfavourable for the arts and crafts. The very artists themselves were compelled to prostitute their talents in ignoble warfare. We need only call to mind the work of the two painters Cranach, the Elder and the Younger, and the horrid flood of caricatures and base vilifications cast both in poetry and in prose. “The rock on which art suffered shipwreck was not, as a recent art-writer says, the fact that ‘German art was too early severed from its bond with the Church,’ but that, with regard to its subject-matter and its methods of expression, it was forced into false service by the intellectual and religious leaders.”[801]
In Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Order, the crosses and the images of the Saints had been doomed to destruction by the revolution of 1525; the silver treasures of art in the churches were hammered into plate for use at the new Lutheran Duke’s dining-table. The Estates of his country, when he had asked them to vote supplies, retorted that he might as well help himself to the treasures of the churches. The result was, so the chronicler of that day relates, “that all the chalices and other ornaments” were removed from the houses of God, barely one chalice being left in each church; some of the country churches were even driven to use pewter chalices. “When they had taken all the silver they fell upon the bells”; they left but one in each village, the rest being carried off to Königsberg and sold to the smelters.[767]At Marienwerder only did the prebendaries, appealing to the King of Poland, make a stand for the retention of their church plate and other property, until they themselves were sent in chains to Preuschmark.[768]In 1524, during the fair, the images were dragged out of the churches at Riesenburg in Pomerania, shamelessly dishonoured and finally burnt. The bishop-elect, a dignitary whom the Pope had refused to confirm and who was notoriously a “zealous instrument of the Evangel,” excused the proceeding. In other towns similar outrages were perpetrated by the iconoclasts.On the introduction of Lutheranism at Stralsund almost all the churches and monasteries were stormed, the crucifixes and images being broken up in the presence of members of the town-council (1525).[769]In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations and had 128 clergy attached to it.A list of the articles confiscated or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes, twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths, ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770]When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus (1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St. Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771]The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]During this so-called “Evangelical War” five thousand burghers and mercenaries of the town of Brunswick, shouting their war-cry: “The Word of God remaineth for ever,” set out, on July 21, 1542, against the monastery of Riddaghausen; there they broke down the altars, images and organs, carried off the monstrances, mass vestments and other treasures of the church, plundering generally and perpetrating the worst abominations. The mob also broke in pieces the images and pictures in the monastery of Steterburg and then demolished the building. Nor did the abbey of Gandersheim fare much better. The prebendaries there complained to the Emperor, that all the crucifixes and images of the Saints had been destroyed together with otherobjects set up for the adornment of the church and churchyard outside.[773]The Lutheran preacher, K. Reinholdt, looking back two decades later on the devastation wrought in Germany, reminded his hearers that Luther himself had repeatedly preached that, “it would be better that all churches and abbeys in the world were torn down and burnt to ashes, that it would be less sinful, even if done from criminal motives, than that a single soul should be led astray into Popish error and be ruined”; “if they would not accept his teaching, then, so Luther the man of God had exclaimed, he would wish not merely that his doctrine might be the cause of the destruction of Popish churches and convents, but that they were already lying in a heap of ashes.”[774]At Hamburg iconoclastic disturbances began in Dec., 1528. The Cistercian convent, Harvestehude, where the clergy still dare to say Mass, was rased to the ground.[775]At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed, part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of the beer”;[776]stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the neighbouring churches.”[777]The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778]Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779]From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells,one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780]When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.”This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781]During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances, episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor Henry II had presented to it.[782]Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,” by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783]before it was besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under the rule of a Council banned by theEmpire, it passed through a period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784]The town, “for the protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with great uproar.”Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin, was one who had war against the Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.” It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he ordered the church of St. Mary at Görlitz to be pillaged and destroyed by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to the Margrave at Küstrin.[786]In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs. weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady, St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or sold.[787]In June and July, 1552, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach laid waste the country around Mayence with fire and sword to such an extent, that the bishop of Würzburg, in order to raise the unheard-of sums demanded, had, as we find it stated in a letter of Zasius to King Ferdinand dated July 10, to lump together “all the gold and silver plate in the churches, the jewels, reliquaries, monstrances, statues and vessels of thesanctuary” and have them minted into thalers. “At Neumünster one reliquary was melted down which alone was worth 1000 florins.”[788]The citizens of Würzburg were obliged to give up all their household plate and the cathedral itself the silver statue of St. Kilian, patron of the diocese.[789]When the commanders and the troops of the Elector Maurice withdrew from the Tyrol after the frustration of their undertaking owing to the flight of the Emperor to Carinthia, all the sacred objects of value in the Cistercian monastery of Stams in the valley of the upper Inn were either broken to pieces or carried off. The soldiers broke open the vault, where the earthly remains of the ruling Princes had rested for centuries, dragged the corpses out of their coffins and stripped them of their valuables.[790]The inventory of the treasures of art made of precious metal and other substances which perished at Stams must be classed with numerous other sad records of a similar nature dating from that time.[791]After the truce of Passau, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, with the help of France, turned his attention to Frankfurt, Mayence and Treves. At Mayence, after making a vain demand for 100,000 gold florins from the clergy, he gave orders to ransack the churches, and set on fire the churches of St. Alban, St. Victor and Holy Cross, the Charterhouse and the houses of the Canons. He boasted of this as a “right princely firebrand we threw into the damned nest of parsons.” In Treves all the collegiate churches and monasteries were “sacked down to the very last farthing,” as an account relates; the monastery of St. Maximin, the priory of St. Paul, the castle of Saarburg on the Saar, Pfalzel and Echternach were given to the flames.[792]“Such proceedings were incumbent on an honourable Prince who had the glory of God at heart and was zealous for the spread of the Divine Gospel, which God the Lord in our age has allowed to shine forth with such marvellous light.” So Albert boasted to an envoy of the Archbishop of Mayence on June 27, 1552, when laying waste Würzburg.[793]“The archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence, the bishoprics of Spires, Worms and Eichstätt are laid waste with pillage,” wrote Melchior von Ossa the Saxon lawyer, “the stately edifices at Mayence, Treves and other places, where lay the bones of so many pious martyrs of old, are reduced to ashes.”[794]The complaints of a Protestant preacher who had worked for a considerable time at Schwäbisch-Hall ring much the same: “Our parents were willing to contribute towards the building ofchurches and to the adornment of the temples of God.... But now the churches have been pilfered so badly that they barely retain a roof over them. Superb Mass vestments of silk and velvet with pearls and corals were provided for the churches by our forefathers; these have now been removed and serve the woman-folk as hoods and bodices; indeed so poor have some of the churches become under the rule of the Evangel, that it is impossible to provide the ministers of the Church even with a beggarly surplice.”[795]The wanton waste and destruction which took place in the domain of art under Lutheran rule during the first fifty years of the religious innovations, great as they were, do not by any means approach in magnitude the losses caused elsewhere by Zwinglianism and Calvinism.Yet two things in Lutheranism had a disastrous effect in checking the revival of religious art, even when the first struggles for mastery were over: first, there was the animosity against the Sacrifice of the Mass and the perpetual eucharistic presence of Christ in the tabernacle; this led people to view with distrust the old alliance existing between the Eucharistic worship and the liberal arts for exalting the dignity and beauty of the churches. After the Mass had been abolished and the Sacrament had ceased to be reserved within the sacred walls, respect for and interest in the house of God, which had led to so much being lavished on it, began to wane. The other obstacle lay in Luther’s negative attitude towards the ancient doctrine and practice of good works. The belief in the meritoriousness of works had in the past been a stimulus to pecuniary sacrifices and offerings for the making of pious works of art. Now, however, artists began to complain, that, owing to the decline of zeal for church matters their orders were beginning to fall off, and that the makers of works of art were being condemned to starvation.In a protocol of the Council of Strasburg, dated Feb. 3, 1525, we read in a petition from the artists: “Painters and sculptors beg, that, whereas, through the Word of God their handicraft has died out they may be provided with posts before other claimants.” The Council answered that their appeal would “be borne in mind.”[796]The verses of Hans Sachs of Nuremberg are well-known:“Bell-founders and organists,Gold-beaters and illuminists,Hand-painters, carvers and goldsmiths,Glass-painters, silk-workers, coppersmiths,Stone-masons, carpenters and joiners,’Gainst all these did Luther wield a sword.From Thee we ask a verdict, Lord.”In the poet’s industrious and artistic native town the decline must have been particularly noticeable. According to the popular Lutheran poet of Nuremberg the fault is with the complainants themselves, who,“With scorn disdainFrom greed of gain”the Word of Christ. “They must cease worrying about worldly goods like the heathen, but must seek the Kingdom of God with eagerness.”[797]It is perfectly true that the words that Hans Sachs on this occasion places in the mouth of the complainant are unfair to Luther:“All church building and adorning he despises,Treats with scorning,He not wise is.”[798]For in spite of his attacks on the veneration of images, on the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and the meritoriousness of pious foundations, Luther was, nevertheless, not so “unwise” as to despise the “building and adorning” of the churches, where, after all, the congregation must assemble for preaching, communion and prayer.[799]That Luther was not devoid of a sense of the beautiful and of its practical value in the service of religion is proved by his outspoken love of music, particularly of church-music, his numerous poetic efforts, no less than by that strongly developed appreciation of well-turned periods, clearness and force of diction so well seen in his translation of the Bible. His life’s struggle, however, led him along paths which makeit easy to understand how it is that he has so little to say in his writings in commendation of the other liberal arts. It also explains the baldness of his reminiscences of his visit to Italy and the city of Rome; the young monk, immersed in his theology, was even then pursuing quite other interests than those of art. It is true Luther, once, in one of the rare passages in favour of ecclesiastical art, speaking from his own point of view, says: “It is better to paint on the wall how God created the world, how Noah made the ark and such-like pious tales, than to paint worldly and shameless subjects; would to God I could persuade the gentry and the rich to have the whole Bible story painted on their houses, inside and out, for everyone’s eye to see; that would be a good Christian work.”[800]Manifestly he did not intend his words to be taken too literally in the case of dwelling-houses. A fighter such as Luther was scarcely the right man to give any real stimulus in the domain of art. The heat of his religious polemics scorched up in his soul any good dispositions of this sort which may once have existed, and blighted in its very beginnings the growth of any real feeling for art among his zealous followers. Hardly a single passage can be found in which he expresses any sense of satisfaction in the products of the artist.It is generally admitted that in the 16th century German art suffered a severe set-back. For this the bitter controversies which for the while transformed Germany into a hideous battlefield were largely responsible; for such a soil could not but prove unfavourable for the arts and crafts. The very artists themselves were compelled to prostitute their talents in ignoble warfare. We need only call to mind the work of the two painters Cranach, the Elder and the Younger, and the horrid flood of caricatures and base vilifications cast both in poetry and in prose. “The rock on which art suffered shipwreck was not, as a recent art-writer says, the fact that ‘German art was too early severed from its bond with the Church,’ but that, with regard to its subject-matter and its methods of expression, it was forced into false service by the intellectual and religious leaders.”[801]
In Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Order, the crosses and the images of the Saints had been doomed to destruction by the revolution of 1525; the silver treasures of art in the churches were hammered into plate for use at the new Lutheran Duke’s dining-table. The Estates of his country, when he had asked them to vote supplies, retorted that he might as well help himself to the treasures of the churches. The result was, so the chronicler of that day relates, “that all the chalices and other ornaments” were removed from the houses of God, barely one chalice being left in each church; some of the country churches were even driven to use pewter chalices. “When they had taken all the silver they fell upon the bells”; they left but one in each village, the rest being carried off to Königsberg and sold to the smelters.[767]At Marienwerder only did the prebendaries, appealing to the King of Poland, make a stand for the retention of their church plate and other property, until they themselves were sent in chains to Preuschmark.[768]In 1524, during the fair, the images were dragged out of the churches at Riesenburg in Pomerania, shamelessly dishonoured and finally burnt. The bishop-elect, a dignitary whom the Pope had refused to confirm and who was notoriously a “zealous instrument of the Evangel,” excused the proceeding. In other towns similar outrages were perpetrated by the iconoclasts.On the introduction of Lutheranism at Stralsund almost all the churches and monasteries were stormed, the crucifixes and images being broken up in the presence of members of the town-council (1525).[769]In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations and had 128 clergy attached to it.A list of the articles confiscated or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes, twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths, ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770]When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus (1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St. Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771]The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]During this so-called “Evangelical War” five thousand burghers and mercenaries of the town of Brunswick, shouting their war-cry: “The Word of God remaineth for ever,” set out, on July 21, 1542, against the monastery of Riddaghausen; there they broke down the altars, images and organs, carried off the monstrances, mass vestments and other treasures of the church, plundering generally and perpetrating the worst abominations. The mob also broke in pieces the images and pictures in the monastery of Steterburg and then demolished the building. Nor did the abbey of Gandersheim fare much better. The prebendaries there complained to the Emperor, that all the crucifixes and images of the Saints had been destroyed together with otherobjects set up for the adornment of the church and churchyard outside.[773]The Lutheran preacher, K. Reinholdt, looking back two decades later on the devastation wrought in Germany, reminded his hearers that Luther himself had repeatedly preached that, “it would be better that all churches and abbeys in the world were torn down and burnt to ashes, that it would be less sinful, even if done from criminal motives, than that a single soul should be led astray into Popish error and be ruined”; “if they would not accept his teaching, then, so Luther the man of God had exclaimed, he would wish not merely that his doctrine might be the cause of the destruction of Popish churches and convents, but that they were already lying in a heap of ashes.”[774]At Hamburg iconoclastic disturbances began in Dec., 1528. The Cistercian convent, Harvestehude, where the clergy still dare to say Mass, was rased to the ground.[775]At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed, part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of the beer”;[776]stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the neighbouring churches.”[777]The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778]Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779]From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells,one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780]When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.”This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781]During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances, episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor Henry II had presented to it.[782]Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,” by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783]before it was besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under the rule of a Council banned by theEmpire, it passed through a period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784]The town, “for the protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with great uproar.”Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin, was one who had war against the Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.” It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he ordered the church of St. Mary at Görlitz to be pillaged and destroyed by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to the Margrave at Küstrin.[786]In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs. weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady, St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or sold.[787]In June and July, 1552, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach laid waste the country around Mayence with fire and sword to such an extent, that the bishop of Würzburg, in order to raise the unheard-of sums demanded, had, as we find it stated in a letter of Zasius to King Ferdinand dated July 10, to lump together “all the gold and silver plate in the churches, the jewels, reliquaries, monstrances, statues and vessels of thesanctuary” and have them minted into thalers. “At Neumünster one reliquary was melted down which alone was worth 1000 florins.”[788]The citizens of Würzburg were obliged to give up all their household plate and the cathedral itself the silver statue of St. Kilian, patron of the diocese.[789]When the commanders and the troops of the Elector Maurice withdrew from the Tyrol after the frustration of their undertaking owing to the flight of the Emperor to Carinthia, all the sacred objects of value in the Cistercian monastery of Stams in the valley of the upper Inn were either broken to pieces or carried off. The soldiers broke open the vault, where the earthly remains of the ruling Princes had rested for centuries, dragged the corpses out of their coffins and stripped them of their valuables.[790]The inventory of the treasures of art made of precious metal and other substances which perished at Stams must be classed with numerous other sad records of a similar nature dating from that time.[791]After the truce of Passau, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, with the help of France, turned his attention to Frankfurt, Mayence and Treves. At Mayence, after making a vain demand for 100,000 gold florins from the clergy, he gave orders to ransack the churches, and set on fire the churches of St. Alban, St. Victor and Holy Cross, the Charterhouse and the houses of the Canons. He boasted of this as a “right princely firebrand we threw into the damned nest of parsons.” In Treves all the collegiate churches and monasteries were “sacked down to the very last farthing,” as an account relates; the monastery of St. Maximin, the priory of St. Paul, the castle of Saarburg on the Saar, Pfalzel and Echternach were given to the flames.[792]“Such proceedings were incumbent on an honourable Prince who had the glory of God at heart and was zealous for the spread of the Divine Gospel, which God the Lord in our age has allowed to shine forth with such marvellous light.” So Albert boasted to an envoy of the Archbishop of Mayence on June 27, 1552, when laying waste Würzburg.[793]“The archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence, the bishoprics of Spires, Worms and Eichstätt are laid waste with pillage,” wrote Melchior von Ossa the Saxon lawyer, “the stately edifices at Mayence, Treves and other places, where lay the bones of so many pious martyrs of old, are reduced to ashes.”[794]The complaints of a Protestant preacher who had worked for a considerable time at Schwäbisch-Hall ring much the same: “Our parents were willing to contribute towards the building ofchurches and to the adornment of the temples of God.... But now the churches have been pilfered so badly that they barely retain a roof over them. Superb Mass vestments of silk and velvet with pearls and corals were provided for the churches by our forefathers; these have now been removed and serve the woman-folk as hoods and bodices; indeed so poor have some of the churches become under the rule of the Evangel, that it is impossible to provide the ministers of the Church even with a beggarly surplice.”[795]
In Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Order, the crosses and the images of the Saints had been doomed to destruction by the revolution of 1525; the silver treasures of art in the churches were hammered into plate for use at the new Lutheran Duke’s dining-table. The Estates of his country, when he had asked them to vote supplies, retorted that he might as well help himself to the treasures of the churches. The result was, so the chronicler of that day relates, “that all the chalices and other ornaments” were removed from the houses of God, barely one chalice being left in each church; some of the country churches were even driven to use pewter chalices. “When they had taken all the silver they fell upon the bells”; they left but one in each village, the rest being carried off to Königsberg and sold to the smelters.[767]At Marienwerder only did the prebendaries, appealing to the King of Poland, make a stand for the retention of their church plate and other property, until they themselves were sent in chains to Preuschmark.[768]
In 1524, during the fair, the images were dragged out of the churches at Riesenburg in Pomerania, shamelessly dishonoured and finally burnt. The bishop-elect, a dignitary whom the Pope had refused to confirm and who was notoriously a “zealous instrument of the Evangel,” excused the proceeding. In other towns similar outrages were perpetrated by the iconoclasts.
On the introduction of Lutheranism at Stralsund almost all the churches and monasteries were stormed, the crucifixes and images being broken up in the presence of members of the town-council (1525).[769]
In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations and had 128 clergy attached to it.A list of the articles confiscated or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes, twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths, ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770]
When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus (1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St. Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771]
The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]
During this so-called “Evangelical War” five thousand burghers and mercenaries of the town of Brunswick, shouting their war-cry: “The Word of God remaineth for ever,” set out, on July 21, 1542, against the monastery of Riddaghausen; there they broke down the altars, images and organs, carried off the monstrances, mass vestments and other treasures of the church, plundering generally and perpetrating the worst abominations. The mob also broke in pieces the images and pictures in the monastery of Steterburg and then demolished the building. Nor did the abbey of Gandersheim fare much better. The prebendaries there complained to the Emperor, that all the crucifixes and images of the Saints had been destroyed together with otherobjects set up for the adornment of the church and churchyard outside.[773]
The Lutheran preacher, K. Reinholdt, looking back two decades later on the devastation wrought in Germany, reminded his hearers that Luther himself had repeatedly preached that, “it would be better that all churches and abbeys in the world were torn down and burnt to ashes, that it would be less sinful, even if done from criminal motives, than that a single soul should be led astray into Popish error and be ruined”; “if they would not accept his teaching, then, so Luther the man of God had exclaimed, he would wish not merely that his doctrine might be the cause of the destruction of Popish churches and convents, but that they were already lying in a heap of ashes.”[774]
At Hamburg iconoclastic disturbances began in Dec., 1528. The Cistercian convent, Harvestehude, where the clergy still dare to say Mass, was rased to the ground.[775]
At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed, part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of the beer”;[776]stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the neighbouring churches.”[777]
The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778]Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779]From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells,one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780]
When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.”
This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781]
During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.
In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances, episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor Henry II had presented to it.[782]
Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,” by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783]before it was besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under the rule of a Council banned by theEmpire, it passed through a period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784]The town, “for the protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with great uproar.”
Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]
Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin, was one who had war against the Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.” It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he ordered the church of St. Mary at Görlitz to be pillaged and destroyed by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to the Margrave at Küstrin.[786]
In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs. weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady, St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or sold.[787]
In June and July, 1552, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach laid waste the country around Mayence with fire and sword to such an extent, that the bishop of Würzburg, in order to raise the unheard-of sums demanded, had, as we find it stated in a letter of Zasius to King Ferdinand dated July 10, to lump together “all the gold and silver plate in the churches, the jewels, reliquaries, monstrances, statues and vessels of thesanctuary” and have them minted into thalers. “At Neumünster one reliquary was melted down which alone was worth 1000 florins.”[788]The citizens of Würzburg were obliged to give up all their household plate and the cathedral itself the silver statue of St. Kilian, patron of the diocese.[789]
When the commanders and the troops of the Elector Maurice withdrew from the Tyrol after the frustration of their undertaking owing to the flight of the Emperor to Carinthia, all the sacred objects of value in the Cistercian monastery of Stams in the valley of the upper Inn were either broken to pieces or carried off. The soldiers broke open the vault, where the earthly remains of the ruling Princes had rested for centuries, dragged the corpses out of their coffins and stripped them of their valuables.[790]The inventory of the treasures of art made of precious metal and other substances which perished at Stams must be classed with numerous other sad records of a similar nature dating from that time.[791]
After the truce of Passau, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, with the help of France, turned his attention to Frankfurt, Mayence and Treves. At Mayence, after making a vain demand for 100,000 gold florins from the clergy, he gave orders to ransack the churches, and set on fire the churches of St. Alban, St. Victor and Holy Cross, the Charterhouse and the houses of the Canons. He boasted of this as a “right princely firebrand we threw into the damned nest of parsons.” In Treves all the collegiate churches and monasteries were “sacked down to the very last farthing,” as an account relates; the monastery of St. Maximin, the priory of St. Paul, the castle of Saarburg on the Saar, Pfalzel and Echternach were given to the flames.[792]“Such proceedings were incumbent on an honourable Prince who had the glory of God at heart and was zealous for the spread of the Divine Gospel, which God the Lord in our age has allowed to shine forth with such marvellous light.” So Albert boasted to an envoy of the Archbishop of Mayence on June 27, 1552, when laying waste Würzburg.[793]
“The archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence, the bishoprics of Spires, Worms and Eichstätt are laid waste with pillage,” wrote Melchior von Ossa the Saxon lawyer, “the stately edifices at Mayence, Treves and other places, where lay the bones of so many pious martyrs of old, are reduced to ashes.”[794]The complaints of a Protestant preacher who had worked for a considerable time at Schwäbisch-Hall ring much the same: “Our parents were willing to contribute towards the building ofchurches and to the adornment of the temples of God.... But now the churches have been pilfered so badly that they barely retain a roof over them. Superb Mass vestments of silk and velvet with pearls and corals were provided for the churches by our forefathers; these have now been removed and serve the woman-folk as hoods and bodices; indeed so poor have some of the churches become under the rule of the Evangel, that it is impossible to provide the ministers of the Church even with a beggarly surplice.”[795]
The wanton waste and destruction which took place in the domain of art under Lutheran rule during the first fifty years of the religious innovations, great as they were, do not by any means approach in magnitude the losses caused elsewhere by Zwinglianism and Calvinism.
Yet two things in Lutheranism had a disastrous effect in checking the revival of religious art, even when the first struggles for mastery were over: first, there was the animosity against the Sacrifice of the Mass and the perpetual eucharistic presence of Christ in the tabernacle; this led people to view with distrust the old alliance existing between the Eucharistic worship and the liberal arts for exalting the dignity and beauty of the churches. After the Mass had been abolished and the Sacrament had ceased to be reserved within the sacred walls, respect for and interest in the house of God, which had led to so much being lavished on it, began to wane. The other obstacle lay in Luther’s negative attitude towards the ancient doctrine and practice of good works. The belief in the meritoriousness of works had in the past been a stimulus to pecuniary sacrifices and offerings for the making of pious works of art. Now, however, artists began to complain, that, owing to the decline of zeal for church matters their orders were beginning to fall off, and that the makers of works of art were being condemned to starvation.
In a protocol of the Council of Strasburg, dated Feb. 3, 1525, we read in a petition from the artists: “Painters and sculptors beg, that, whereas, through the Word of God their handicraft has died out they may be provided with posts before other claimants.” The Council answered that their appeal would “be borne in mind.”[796]
The verses of Hans Sachs of Nuremberg are well-known:
“Bell-founders and organists,Gold-beaters and illuminists,
Hand-painters, carvers and goldsmiths,Glass-painters, silk-workers, coppersmiths,
Stone-masons, carpenters and joiners,’Gainst all these did Luther wield a sword.
From Thee we ask a verdict, Lord.”
In the poet’s industrious and artistic native town the decline must have been particularly noticeable. According to the popular Lutheran poet of Nuremberg the fault is with the complainants themselves, who,
“With scorn disdainFrom greed of gain”
the Word of Christ. “They must cease worrying about worldly goods like the heathen, but must seek the Kingdom of God with eagerness.”[797]
It is perfectly true that the words that Hans Sachs on this occasion places in the mouth of the complainant are unfair to Luther:
“All church building and adorning he despises,
Treats with scorning,He not wise is.”[798]
For in spite of his attacks on the veneration of images, on the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and the meritoriousness of pious foundations, Luther was, nevertheless, not so “unwise” as to despise the “building and adorning” of the churches, where, after all, the congregation must assemble for preaching, communion and prayer.[799]
That Luther was not devoid of a sense of the beautiful and of its practical value in the service of religion is proved by his outspoken love of music, particularly of church-music, his numerous poetic efforts, no less than by that strongly developed appreciation of well-turned periods, clearness and force of diction so well seen in his translation of the Bible. His life’s struggle, however, led him along paths which makeit easy to understand how it is that he has so little to say in his writings in commendation of the other liberal arts. It also explains the baldness of his reminiscences of his visit to Italy and the city of Rome; the young monk, immersed in his theology, was even then pursuing quite other interests than those of art. It is true Luther, once, in one of the rare passages in favour of ecclesiastical art, speaking from his own point of view, says: “It is better to paint on the wall how God created the world, how Noah made the ark and such-like pious tales, than to paint worldly and shameless subjects; would to God I could persuade the gentry and the rich to have the whole Bible story painted on their houses, inside and out, for everyone’s eye to see; that would be a good Christian work.”[800]Manifestly he did not intend his words to be taken too literally in the case of dwelling-houses. A fighter such as Luther was scarcely the right man to give any real stimulus in the domain of art. The heat of his religious polemics scorched up in his soul any good dispositions of this sort which may once have existed, and blighted in its very beginnings the growth of any real feeling for art among his zealous followers. Hardly a single passage can be found in which he expresses any sense of satisfaction in the products of the artist.
It is generally admitted that in the 16th century German art suffered a severe set-back. For this the bitter controversies which for the while transformed Germany into a hideous battlefield were largely responsible; for such a soil could not but prove unfavourable for the arts and crafts. The very artists themselves were compelled to prostitute their talents in ignoble warfare. We need only call to mind the work of the two painters Cranach, the Elder and the Younger, and the horrid flood of caricatures and base vilifications cast both in poetry and in prose. “The rock on which art suffered shipwreck was not, as a recent art-writer says, the fact that ‘German art was too early severed from its bond with the Church,’ but that, with regard to its subject-matter and its methods of expression, it was forced into false service by the intellectual and religious leaders.”[801]