CHAPTER XII

EXCOMMUNICATION AND OUTLAWRY SPIRITUAL BAPTISM IN THE WARTBURG

1. The Trial. The Excommunication (1520) and its Consequences

ON June 15, 1520, Leo X promulgated the Bull condemning forty-one

Propositions of Luther’s teaching, and threatening the person of their

author with excommunication.[110]

The Bull was the result of a formal suit instituted at Rome on the

details of which light has been thrown in recent times by Karl Müller,

Aloys Schulte and Paul Kalkoff.[111]

The trial had taken a long time, much too long considering the state

of things in Germany; this delay was in reality due to political

causes, to the Pope’s regard for the Elector of Saxony, the

approaching Imperial Election and to the procrastination of the German

Prince-Bishops. Even before Dr. Johann Eck proceeded to Rome to promote

the case the negotiations had been resumed in the Papal Consistories

at the instance of the Italian party. The first Consistory was held on

January 9, 1520.

After this, from February to the middle of March, the matter was in the

hands of a commission of theologians who were to prepare the decision.

A still more select commission, presided over by the Pope in person,

then undertook the drafting of the Bull with the forty-one Propositions

of Luther which were to be condemned. Upon the termination of their

work, in the end of April, it was submitted to the Cardinals for their

decision; four more Consistories, held in May and June, were, however,

necessary before the matter was finally settled. Certain differences

of opinion arose as to the question whether the forty-one Propositions

were, as Cardinal Cajetan proposed, to be separately stigmatised as

heretical, false, scandalous, etc., or whether, as had been done in the

case of the Propositions of Wiclif and Hus at Constance, they should be

rejected in the lump without any more definite characterisation. The

latter opinion prevailed. In the last Consistory of June 1 the Pope

decided on the publication of the Bull in this shape, and by June 15 it

was complete.

Two Cardinals, Pietro Accolti (Anconitanus) and Thomas de Vio

(Cajetanus), had all along been busy with the case. The moving spirit

was, however, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici.[112] Everything points to

“the matter having been treated as a very grave one.”[113]

Legally the case was based on the notoriety of Luther’s doctrines,

he having proposed and defended them at the Disputation of Leipzig,

according to the sworn evidence of the notaries-public. The Louvain

theologians and Eck had their share in selecting and denouncing the

Theses. It would seem that during the trial Eck submitted the official

printed minutes of the Leipzig Disputation in order to prove that the

errors were really expressed in Luther’s own words.

This utilisation of the Leipzig Disputation was justified, as it

rendered nugatory Luther’s appeal to a General Council. At the

Disputation in question he had denied the authority even of Œcumenical

Assemblies.

Eck’s efforts were of assistance in elucidating and pressing on the

matter. But we may gather how incorrectly the question was regarded in

Rome by many, who, it is true, had little to do with it, from the fact

that, even on May 21, persons were to be found holding the opinion that

the publication of a solemn Bull would tend to injure the cause of the

Church rather than to advance it, and that the scandal in Germany would

only become greater if it were apparent that so much importance was

attached to Luther’s errors.[114]

In the final sentence pronounced by the Pope, i.e. in the Bull

commencing with the words: _Exsurge Domine_, the forty-one Propositions

are condemned _in globo_ as “heretical or false, scandalous,

offensive to pious ears, insulting, ensnaring and contrary to

Catholic truth.”[115] A series of Luther’s principal doctrines on

human inability for good, on Faith, Justification and Grace, on the

Sacraments, the Hierarchy and Purgatory were there condemned.

The Papal sentence did not proceed against Luther’s person with the

severity which, in accordance with Canon Law, his fiercest adversaries

perhaps anticipated. Even the errors mentioned as occurring in his

writings are designated only in the body of the Bull, and with

much circumlocution. The only penalty directly imposed on him in

the meantime was the prohibition to preach. The Bull declares that

legally, as his case then stood, he might have been excommunicated

without further question, particularly on account of his appeal to a

General Council, to which the Constitutions of Pius II and Julius II

had attached the penalties of heresy. Instead of this he is, for the

present, merely threatened with excommunication, and is placed under

the obligation, within sixty days (i.e. after a triple summons repeated

at intervals of twenty days) from the date of the promulgation of

the Bull, of making his submission in writing before ecclesiastical

witnesses, or of coming to Rome under the safe conduct guaranteed by

the Bull; he was also to commit his books to the flames; in default of

this, by virtue of the Papal declaration, he would, _ipso facto_, incur

the penalties of open heresy as a notorious heretic (i.e. be cut off

from the Communion of the Faithful by excommunication); every secular

authority, including the Emperor, was bound, in accordance with the

law, to enforce these penalties. A similar sentence was pronounced

against all Luther’s followers, aiders or abettors.

With respect to the terms in which the Papal Edict is couched, the

severe criticism of certain Protestant writers might perhaps have been

somewhat less scathing had they taken into account the traditional

usages of the Roman Chancery, instead of judging them by the standard

of the legal language of to-day. Such are the harsh passages quoted

from Holy Scripture, which may appear to us unduly irritating and

violent. When all is said, moreover, is it to be wondered at, that,

after the unspeakably bitter and insulting attacks on the Papacy and

the destruction of a portion of the German Church, strong feelings

should have found utterance in the Bull?

The document begins with the words of the Bible: “Arise, O God, judge

thine own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man

hath reproached thee all the day” (Ps. lxxiii. 22). “Shew me thy face;

catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines” (Cant. ii. 15)....

“The boar out of the wood hath laid it waste: and a singular wild

beast hath devoured it” (Ps. lxxix. 14). “Lying teachers have arisen

who set up schools of perdition and bring upon themselves speedy

destruction; their tongue is a fire full of the poison of death,” etc.

“They spit out the poison of serpents, and when they see themselves

vanquished they raise calumnies.” “We are determined to resist this

pestilence and this eating canker, the noxious adder must no longer

be permitted to harm the vineyard of the Lord.” These, the strongest

expressions, are taken almost word for word from the Bible; they

might, moreover, be matched by much stronger passages in Luther’s own

writings against the authorities of the Church.

Further on the Pope addresses, in a mild, fatherly and conciliatory

fashion, the instigator of the dreadful schism within a Christendom

hitherto united. “Mindful of the compassion of God Who desireth not

the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live, we are ready

to forget the injury done to us and to the Holy See. We have decided

to exercise the greatest possible indulgence and, so far as in our

power lies, to seek to induce the sinner to enter into himself and to

renounce the errors we have enumerated, so that we may see him return

to the bosom of the Church and receive him with kindness, like the

prodigal son in the Gospel. We therefore exhort him and his followers

through the love and mercy of our God and the precious blood of Our

Lord Jesus Christ, by which the human race was redeemed and the Church

founded, and adjure them that they cease from troubling with their

deadly errors the peace, unity and truth of the Church for which the

Saviour prayed so fervently to His Father. They will then, if they

prove obedient, find us full of fatherly love and be received with

open arms.”

Luther was aware that, after the promulgation of the Bull, he could

place no further hope in the Emperor Charles V, whose devotion to

the Church was well known, but he was sure of the protection of his

Elector.[116] It was clear to Luther that, without the support of the

Elector, the execution of the Bull by the secular power after the

excommunication had come into force would mean his death.

Before publicly burning his boats he launched among the people his

booklet “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lügen,”[117] pretending

that the Bull (which he knew to be genuine) was merely a fabrication of

Dr. Eck’s. Here, with a bold front, he repeated that his doctrine had

not yet been condemned, nor the controversy decided, and that all the

hubbub was merely the result of Eck’s personal hatred.

This was shortly after followed by the pamphlet “Against the Bull

of ‘End-Christ,’”[118] issued by his indefatigable press. The Latin

version of the little work, brimming over with hatred, was ready by the

end of October, 1520.

Although, in order to keep up the pretence of doubting the

authenticity of the Bull, he here deals with it hypothetically, he

nevertheless implores the Pope and his Cardinals, should they really

have issued it, to reflect, otherwise he would be forced to curse

their abode as the dwelling-place of Antichrist. In the same strain he

proceeds: “Where art thou, good Emperor, and you, Christian Kings and

Princes? You took an oath of allegiance to Christ in baptism and yet

you endure these hellish voices of Antichrist.”[119]

In the German version, from motives of policy, the tone is rather

milder. Luther shrank from instigating the German princes too openly

to violent measures. The appeal to them and to the Emperor is there

omitted. The call to the people, however, rings loud and enthusiastic:

“Would it be a wonder if the Princes, the Nobility and the laity were

to knock the Pope, the Bishops, parsons and monks on the head and

drive them out of the land?” For the action of Rome is heretical,

the Pope, the Bishops, the parsons and the monks were bringing the

laity about their ears by this “blasphemous, insulting Bull.” Then he

suddenly pulls himself up, but to very little purpose, and adds: “not

that I wish to incite the laity against the clergy, but rather that

we should pray to God that He may turn aside His wrath from them, and

set them free from the evil spirit that has possessed them.”[120]

In the German version, however, he refers more distinctly to the

existence of “the Bulls against Dr. Luther which are said to have

recently come from Rome.”[121] He here declares, as to the theological

question involved, that “as a matter of fact the whole Christian

Church cannot err,” viz. “all Christians throughout the whole world,”

but that the Pope is guilty of the most devilish presumption in

setting up his own opinion, as though it were as good as that of the

whole Church. The work is thus levelled at the doctrine of Papal

Infallibility, which had always been accepted in the Church in cases

where the Pope decides on matters of doctrine as supreme judge; this

doctrine had ever been taken for granted, and stood in the forefront

in all the measures previously taken by the Church against the attacks

of heretics. Even in those days the Church had always based her action

against separatists on her infallibility as a teacher.

In view of the existing political conditions there was but little hope

that it would be possible for the General Council, to which Luther had

appealed, to meet at an early date. At the time of Luther’s uprising,

moreover, the state of feeling, both in ecclesiastical circles and

among the laity, gave little promise of good results even in the event

of the calling together of a great Council. The stormy so-called

Reforming Councils of the fifteenth century had shown the dangers

of the prevailing spirit of independence, and the feeling among the

ecclesiastical authorities was, from motives of caution, averse to the

holding of Councils. Luther, on his part, was well aware how futile was

his appeal to a General Council.

That his request was useless and only intended to gain time was

apparent to all who had any discernment, when, on November 17, 1520,

he again appealed to a “free Christian Council.” Luther’s appeal

was published at the same time as his Latin work “Against the Bull

of End-Christ” Its character is plain from its invitation to the

people “to oppose the mad action of the Pope.” It was a method of

agitation calculated to call forth the applause of those who had become

accustomed to the ecclesiastical radicalism of the so-called reforming

Councils.

* * * * *

Luther gave practical effect to his view regarding the value to be set

on solemn Papal decrees on faith by his famous act before the Elster

Gate of Wittenberg.

On December 10 he there proceeded to burn the Bull of Excommunication

amid the acclamations of his followers amongst the students, whom

he had invited to the spectacle by a public notice exhibited at the

University. Not the Bull only was committed to the flames, but,

according to the programme, also “books of the Papal Constitutions and

of scholastic theology.” Besides the Bull the following were cast into

the great fire: the Decretum of Gratian, the Decretals with the “Liber

Sextus,” the Clementines and the Extravagants, also the Summa Angelica

of Angelus de Clavasio, the work then most in use on the Sacrament of

Penance, books by Eck, particularly that entitled “Chrysopassus,” some

by Emser, and others, too, offered by the zeal of private individuals.

The recently discovered account by Johann Agricola says, that the works

of Thomas and Scotus would also have been consigned to the flames but

that no one was willing to deprive himself of them for this purpose.

According to this writer, whose information is fuller than that of the

authority generally quoted, Luther, while in the act of burning the

Bull, pronounced the words: “Because thou hast destroyed the truth of

the Lord, the Lord consume thee in this fire” (cp. Josue vii. 25).[122]

A few weeks later Luther related, not without pride, how the students

“in the Carnival days made the Pope figure in the show [the students

being dressed up to play the part], seated on a car with great pomp; it

was really too droll. At the stream in the market-place they allowed

him to escape with his Cardinals, bishops and attendants; he was then

chased through various parts of the city: everything was well and

grandly planned; for the enemy of Christ is deserving of such mockery,

since he himself mocks at the greatest Princes and even Christ Himself.

The verses which describe the whole scene are now being printed.” This

was how Luther wrote to Spalatin, who was then with the Elector at the

Diet of Worms.[123]

Evil things were in store for Luther at Worms. It seemed that his

summons thither was unavoidable, since Pope Leo X, in the new Bull,

“_Decet Romanum Pontificem_,” of January 3, 1521, had declared that

Luther, owing to his persistent contumacy, had, _ipso facto_, incurred

excommunication and become liable to the penalties already decreed by

law against heretics.

Certain historians have extolled the great calmness which Luther

preserved even during the stormy days when the excommunication arrived;

they will have it that his composure of mind never deserted him. He

himself, however, speaks otherwise.

According to his own statements contained in the letters which give

so speaking a testimony to the state of his mind, he frequently did

not know what he was doing, and blindly obeyed the impulse which drove

him onward. Luther’s behaviour at that time was the very reverse of

the clear-sighted, enlightened and self-controlled conduct of holy and

virtuous Churchmen when in the midst of storm and stress. He himself

confessed with regard to his polemics: “Yes, indeed, I feel that I

am not master of myself (_compos mei non sum_). I am carried away

and know not by what spirit. I wish evil to none, but I am not on my

guard against Satan, and it is to this that the fury of my enemies is

due.”[124]

To explain this inward turmoil we must take into account, not only the

excommunication, but also the unexampled overexertion which at that

time taxed his mental and physical powers. He was necessarily in a

state of the utmost nervous tension. “Works of the most varied kind,”

he says, in the letter quoted, “carry my thoughts in all directions.

I have to speak publicly no less than twice daily. The revision of

the Commentary on the Psalms engages my attention. At the same time

I am preparing sermons for the press, I am also writing against my

enemies, opposing the Bull in Latin and in German and working at my

defence. Besides this I write letters to my friends. I am also obliged

to entertain my ordinary visitors at home.” At this time Luther not

unfrequently kept three printing-presses at work at once.

Never before had Gutenberg’s art been of such service to any public

cause; all Germany was flooded with Luther’s writings with bewildering

rapidity.

He commenced printing the booklet “To the Christian Nobility” before

it was fully written, and its plan he settled whilst a second pamphlet

of his against Prierias was passing through the press. This, in turn,

was accompanied by a booklet against the Franciscan Alveld. Between

the publication of the three so-called great “Reformation works,”

which, with the new editions immediately called for, followed each

other in rapid succession, came the printing of a sermon on the New

Testament and the tracts already mentioned: “Von den newen Eckischenn

Bullen,” and “Against the Bull of Antichrist” (in Latin); then followed

the publication of his “Warumb des Bapsts und seyner Jüngern Bücher

vorbrant seyn,” then the “Defence of all the Propositions” condemned

in the Bull (in Latin), then the controversial pamphlets: “An den Bock

zu Leyptzck” (Hieronymus Emser), and “Auff des Bocks zu Leypczick

Antwort.” At the same time, however, he published some religious works

of a practical nature, namely the “Tessaradekas,” a book of consolation

for suffering and perturbed Christians, and the commencement of his

exposition of the Magnificat. The latter he dedicated to Johann

Friedrich, the Elector’s nephew; it is not only improving in tone, but

was also of practical use in increasing the esteem in which he was held

at Court.

Such incredible overtaxing of his strength naturally resulted in

a condition of serious mental strain, at the very time, too, when

Luther had to weigh in his mind profound and momentous questions,

vital problems, the treatment of which called for the most utmost

recollection and composure.

“While I am preaching to others, I myself am a castaway,” so he once

writes in biblical terms in a letter to Staupitz,[125] “so much does

intercourse with men carry me away.” Pope Leo X, whose personal

qualities he had shortly before been praising, becomes in this letter

a wolf, who in his Bull has condemned all that Staupitz had taught

regarding God’s mercy. Christ Himself is condemned by the Pope, damned

and blasphemed. Staupitz might well exhort him to humility, for, alas,

he knew he was proud, but Staupitz, on his part, was too humble,

otherwise he would not retreat before the Pope. “Men may accuse me of

every vice, of pride, adultery, murder and even of Anti-popery, but

may I never be guilty of a godless silence in the presence of those

who are crucifying our Lord afresh.... Therefore at least suffer me

to go on and be carried away even though you may not yourself agree

to follow (_sine me ire et rapi_).” It is here that he appeals to the

assistance of Hutten and his party, and to the intervention of the

Elector Frederick in the words already quoted.[126]

And yet he confesses to a certain nervousness: “At first I trembled

and I prayed while burning the Papal books and the Bull. But now I am

more rejoiced at this than at any previous act of my life; they [the

Romanists] are a worse pestilence than I had thought.” This he writes

to his same fatherly friend, Staupitz.[127]

His perturbation, which had become to him almost a life-element, served

to dispel his fears and his doubts: “I am battling with the floods and

am carried away by them (“_fluctibus his rapior et volvor_”). “The

noise [of strife] rages mightily. Both sides are putting their heart

into it.”[128] Catholics discern with grief in this uncanny joy a sad

attempt on his part to find encouragement in the preposterous notion he

fostered of the “devilishness” of the Papacy. They will also perceive

in his outbursts of rage, and in the challenges to violence in which

he indulges in unguarded moments, the effect of the excommunication

working on a mind already stirred to its innermost depths. When we hear

him declare in a popular pamphlet, after the arrival of the Papal Bull,

that it would not be surprising were the Princes, the nobility and

laity to hit the Pope, the bishops, priests and monks over the head and

drive them out of the land,[129] we find that such language agrees only

too well with his furious words in his tract written in 1520 against

Prierias, where he compares the Pope and his followers to a band of

cut-throats.

If murderers are punished with the sword, why then should we not

proceed with still greater severity against those “teachers of

perdition” who are determined not to repent? “Why do we not attack

them with every weapon that comes to hand and wash our hands in their

blood, if we thereby save ourselves and ours from the most dangerous

of flames? How happy are those Christians who are not obliged like

us, the most miserable of men, to live under such an Antichrist.”

Recognising the ominous character of the passage “_Cur non ...

manus nostras in sanguine istorum lavamus_,” etc., later Lutherans

added certain words which appear first in the Jena edition (German

translation) in 1555: “But God Who says (Deut. xxxii. 35, Rom. xii.

19) ‘Vengeance is mine’ will find out these His enemies in good time,

who are not worthy of temporal punishment, but whose punishment must

be eternal in the abyss of hell.” These words, which are not found

in the original edition of 1520, are given in Walch’s edition of

Luther, vol. xviii., p. 245. The argument in exoneration of Luther,

based upon them by a recent Lutheran, thus falls to the ground. The

addition will be sought for in vain in the Weimar edition (6, p. 347

f.), and in that of Erlangen (“Opp. Lat. var.” 2, p. 107). Paulus has

proved that the falsification of the text was the work of Nicholas

Amsdorf, who was responsible for the Jena edition, though in the

Preface he protests that his edition of Luther’s works is free from

all correction or addition.[130]

In view of the inflammatory language which he hurled among the

crowd, assurances of an entirely different character, which, when

it suited his purpose, he occasionally made for the benefit of the

Court, really deserve less consideration. In these he is desirous of

disclaiming beforehand the responsibility for any precipitate and

dangerous measures taken by men like Hutten, and such as Spalatin

in his anxiety fancied he foresaw. What Luther wrote on January 16,

1521, was addressed to him and intended for the Elector;[131] here he

says that the war for the Gospel ought not to be waged by violence

and manslaughter, because Antichrist is to be destroyed by “the Word”

alone. On this occasion he expresses the wish that God would restrain

the fury of those men who threatened to injure His good cause and who

might bring about a general rising against the clergy such as had

taken place in Bohemia (i.e. the Husite insurrection).[132]

1911, p. 17. He foresees, however, that the Romanists will bring this

misfortune upon themselves through their obstinate resistance to “the

Word.” As yet they were holding back (so he wrote when the meeting at

Worms had commenced); but, should their fury burst forth, then, it was

generally apprehended that it would lead to a regular Bohemian revolt

in Germany, in which the clergy would suffer; he himself, however,

was certainly not to blame, as he had advised the nobility to proceed

against the Romanists with “edicts” and not with the sword.[133]

The menacing attitude of the Knights seemed to Luther sufficiently

favourable to his cause without their actually declaring war. We shall

return later to Luther’s ideas regarding the use of force in support of

the Evangel (vol. iii. xv. 3).

As for the above-mentioned references to Antichrist, we can only assume

that he had gradually persuaded himself that the Pope really was the

Antichrist of the Bible. According to his opinion the Antichrist of

prophecy was not so much a definite person as the Papacy as a whole,

at least in its then degenerate form. So thoroughly did he imbue his

mind with those biblical images which appealed to him, and so vivid

were the pictures conjured up by his imagination of the wickedness of

his foes, that we cannot be surprised if the idea he had already given

expression to, viz. that the Pope was Antichrist,[134] took more and

more possession of him. Owing to the pseudo-mysticism, under the banner

of which he carried on his war against the Church of Rome, he was the

more prone to indulge in such a view. His lamentations over Babylon and

Antichrist, and his intimate persuasion that he had unmasked Antichrist

and that therefore the second coming of Christ was imminent (see

below), undoubtedly rested on a morbid, pseudo-mystic foundation.

At about that time he set forth his ideas regarding Antichrist in

learned theological form, for the benefit of readers of every nation,

in a Latin exposition of the prophecies of Daniel, in which, according

to him, the Papacy is predicted as Antichrist and described in minutest

detail. This strange commentary is found in his reply to the Italian

theologian Ambrose Catharinus: “_Ad librum Catharini responsio_.”[135]

Cultured foreign readers can scarcely have gained from these pages a

very favourable impression of the imaginative German monk’s method of

biblical exposition. This curious tract followed too quickly upon that

to which it was a reply. Luther received a copy of the book against him

by Catharinus on March 6 or 7, yet, in order to forestall the effect

of the work on the Diet of Worms, in the course of the same month he

composed the lengthy reply which is all steeped in mystical fanaticism.

From that time forward the crazy fiction that the Pope was Antichrist

gained more and more hold of him, so that even towards the end of his

life, as we shall see, he again set about decking it out with new and

more forceful proofs from Holy Scripture.

Luther’s frame of mind again found expression in a tract which he

launched among the people not long after, viz. the “Deuttung des

Munchkalbes.”[136] Here he actually seeks to show in all seriousness

that the horrors of the Papacy, and particularly of the religious

state, had been pointed out by heaven through the birth of a misshapen

calf, an occurrence which at that time was attracting notice. Passages

from the Bible, and likewise Apocalyptic dreams, were pressed in to

serve the author of this lamentable literary production.

Yet, in spite of all these repulsive exaggerations with which his

writings were crammed, nay, on account of these images of a heated

imagination, the attack upon the old Church called forth by Luther

served its purpose with all too many. Borne on the wings of a hatred

inspired by a long-repressed grudge, his pamphlets were disseminated

with lightning speed by discontented Catholics. Language of appalling

coarseness, borrowed from the lips of the lowest of the populace,

seemed to carry everything before it, and the greater the angry

passion it displayed the greater was its success. What one man’s

words can achieve under favourable circumstances was never, anywhere

in the history of the world, so clearly exemplified as in Germany

in those momentous days. Luther’s enthusiastic supporters read his

writings aloud and explained them to the people in the squares and

market-places, and the stream of eloquence falling on ready ears proved

far more effective than the warnings of the clergy, who in many places

were regarded with suspicion or animosity.

Spalatin, in the meantime, was engaged in trying to prevent Luther from

incurring the only too well-founded reproach of openly inciting people

to revolt against the authority of the Empire; with such a charge

against him it would have been difficult for the Elector of Saxony to

protect him.

As, during Spalatin’s stay at Worms, the burning of Luther’s books

had already begun in various places, owing to the putting in force of

the Bull “_Exsurge Domine_,” the courtier was at pains to advise his

impetuous friend as to what he should do respecting such measures. He

counselled Luther to compose a pamphlet addressed to penitents, dealing

with the forbidden books, the matter being a practical one owing to

the likelihood of people confessing in the tribunal of penance that

they possessed works of Luther. It was no easy task to deal with this

question of the duty of confession. Luther, however, felt himself

supported by the attitude assumed by the Elector, at whose command,

so he says, he had first published his new booklet against the Bull,

“Grund und Ursach aller Artickel” (Ground and Reason of all the

[condemned] Articles), in German and Latin.[137]

He therefore determined to carry his war into the confessional and, by

means of a printed work, to decide, in his own favour, the pressing,

practical question regarding his books. The flames were blazing in

the bishoprics of Merseburg and Meissen, and to them were consigned

such of Luther’s writings as had been given up by Catholics or halting

disciples. Easter, too, was drawing near with the yearly confession.

Many a conscience might be stirred up by the exhortations of pious

confessors and be aroused to renewed loyalty to the Church. Luther’s

pamphlet, entitled “Unterricht der Beychtkinder ubir die vorpotten

Bücher” (An Instruction for Penitents concerning the prohibited books),

which appeared in the earlier part of February, 1521, affords us an

insight into the strategies adopted by Lutheranism at its inception.

The language of this tract is, for a writer like Luther, extremely

moderate and circumspect, for its object was to enlist in his cause

the most secret and intimate of all acts, that of the penitent in

confession; its apparent reticence made it all the more seductive.

In his new guise of an instructor of consciences, Luther here seems

fully to recognise the Sacrament of Confession. He has no wish, so he

protests, to introduce “strife, disputation and dissension into the

holy Sacrament of Confession.”[138]

The penitent, who is in the habit of reading his works, he tells to

beg his confessor in “humble words,” should he question him, not to

trouble him concerning Luther’s books. He is to say to his confessor:

“Give me the Absolution to which I have a right, and, after that,

wrangle about Luther, the Pope and whomsoever else you please.” He

encourages his readers to make such a request by explaining that these

books, and likewise Luther’s guilt, have not yet been duly examined,

that many were in doubt about the Bull, that Popes had often changed

their minds upon similar matters and contradicted themselves, and that

a confessor would therefore be acting tyrannically were he to demand

that the books should be given up; this was, however, the unfair

treatment to which he had ever been subjected. There was only one

thing wanting, namely, that Luther should have repeated what he had

shortly before declared, that, for the sake of peace, he would “be

quite happy to see his books destroyed,” if only people were permitted

to keep and read the Bible.[139]

He continues: Since it might happen that some would be conscientiously

unable to part with his writings, owing to knowledge or suspicion of

the truth, such people should quietly waive their claim to Absolution

should it be withheld. They were nevertheless to “rejoice and feel

assured that they had really been absolved in the sight of God and

approach the Sacrament without any shrinking.” Those who were more

courageous, however, and had a “strong conscience” were to say plainly

to the “taskmaster” (the confessor): “You have no right to force me

against my conscience, as you yourself know, or ought to know, Romans

xiv.” “Confessors are not to meddle with the judgment of God, to whom

alone are reserved the secrets of the heart.” If, however, communion

be refused, then all were first to “ask for it humbly,” “and if that

was of no avail, then they were to let Sacrament, altar, parson and

Church go”; for “contrary to God’s Word and your conscience no

commandment can be made, or hold good if made, as they themselves all

teach.”

Such a view of the functions of a confessor and of his duty as a

judge appointed by authority had certainly never been taught in the

Church, but was entirely novel and unheard of, however much it might

flatter the ears of the timid, and of those who wavered or were

actually estranged from the Church. Most of his readers were unaware

how shamelessly their adviser was contradicting himself, and how this

apparently well-meaning instructor of consciences in the confessional

was the very man who in previous polemical tracts had denied that

there was any difference between priests and laymen.[140] Towards the

close of this Instruction, however, the author reappears in his true

colours, and whereas, at the commencement when introducing himself, he

had spoken of confession as a holy Sacrament, at the end he describes

it as an unjust invention of the priesthood, and, indeed, in his eyes,

it was really a mere “human institution.” Towards the conclusion,

where he relapses into his wonted threatening and abusive language,

he “begs all prelates and confessors” not to torture consciences in

the confessional lest the people should begin to question “whence

their authority and the practice of private confession came”; as if

his very words did not convey to the reader an invitation to do so.

“The result,” he prudently reminds them, “might be a revolt in which

they [the prelates] might be worsted. For though confession is a most

wholesome thing, everyone knows how apt some are to take offence.”

He points out how in his case the authorities had driven him further

and further, well-intentioned though he was: “How many things would

never have happened had the Pope and his myrmidons not treated me with

violence and deceit.”[141]

The Easter confession that year might prove decisive to thousands.

The little earnestness shown by too many in the practice of their

religion, the laxity of the German clergy, even the apparent

insignificance of the question of retaining or perusing certain books,

all this was in his favour. In the above tract he set before the

devout souls who were “tyrannised” by their confessors the example of

Christ and His Saints, who all had suffered persecution; “we must ask

God to make us worthy of suffering for the sake of His Word.” The more

imaginative, he likewise warned of the approaching end of the world.

“Remember that it was foretold that in the days of ‘End-Christ’ no

one will be allowed to preach, and that all will be looked upon as

outcasts who speak or listen to the Word of God.” Those who hesitated

and were scrupulous about keeping Luther’s writings, seeing they had

been prohibited by law and episcopal decrees as “blasphemous,” he

sought to reassure by declaring that his books were nothing of the

kind, for in them he had attacked the person neither of the Pope nor

of any prelate, but had merely blamed vices, and that if they were to

be described as blasphemous, then the same “must be said of the Gospel

and the whole of Holy Scripture.”[142]

Thus, in this ingenious work, each one found something suited to his

disposition and his scruples and calculated to lead him astray. The

culmination is, however, in the words already adduced: Nothing against

conscience, nothing against the Word of God! The “enslaved conscience”

and the “commanding Word of God,” these are the catchwords of which

Luther henceforth makes use so frequently and to such purpose. He

employs these terms as a cloak to conceal the complete emancipation of

the mind from every duty towards a rule of faith and ecclesiastical

authority which he really advocates. The “commanding Word of God,” on

his lips, means the right of independent, private interpretation of

the sacred Books, though he reserves to himself the first place in

determining their sense.

Conscience and the Word of God, words with which Luther had

familiarised the masses from the commencement of his apostasy, were

also to be his cry at the Diet of Worms in 1521, when he stood before

the supreme spiritual and temporal authorities there assembled around

the Emperor. Uttered there before Church and Empire, this cry was to

re-echo mightily and to bring multitudes to his standard.

2. The Diet of Worms, 1521; Luther’s Attitude

The Diet had been assembled at Worms around the Emperor since January

27, 1521.

Charles V showed himself in religious questions a staunch supporter of

the Catholic Church, to which indeed he was most devotedly attached. He

was not, however, always well-advised, and the multitudinous cares of

his empire frequently blinded him to the real needs of the Church, or

else made it impossible for him to act as he would have wished.

On February 13, 1521, in the presence of the Princes and the

States-General of the Empire, Hieronymus Aleander, the Papal Legate

accredited to the Diet, delivered the speech, which has since become

historic, on the duty of the Empire to take action against Luther as

a notorious, obstinate heretic, definitively condemned by the supreme

Papal Court. He did not fail to point out, that “it was a fact of

common knowledge that Luther was inciting the people to rebellion and

that, like the heretics of Bohemia, he was destroying all law and order

in the name and semblance of the Gospel.”[143]

On March 6 Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet at Worms,

the Emperor furnishing him with an escort and guaranteeing his safe

return. Encouraged by the latter promise, secure in the favour of his

own sovereign, and assured of the support of the Knights, he decided to

comply with the summons.

The thought of bearing testimony to his newly discovered Evangel before

the whole country and enjoying the opportunity, by his appearance in

so public a place, of rousing others to enthusiasm for the work he

had undertaken urged him on. Severe bodily ailments from which he was

suffering at that time did not deter him. His illness, he declared, was

merely a trick of “the devil to hinder him”; on his part he would do

all he could to “affright and defy him.” “Christ lives, and we shall

enter Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the powers of the

air.”[144] To Spalatin we owe an echo from one of Luther’s letters at

that time: “He was determined to go to Worms though there should be as

many devils there as there were tiles on the roofs.”[145]

The journey to Worms resembled a sort of triumphal progress, owing to

the festive reception everywhere prepared for him by his friends, and

in particular by the Humanists.

His arrival at Erfurt was celebrated beforehand by Eobanus Hessus in

a flattering poem. On April 6 the Rector of the University, Crotus

Rubeanus, with forty professors and a great crowd of people, went out

to meet him when he was still three leagues from the city. The address

delivered by Rubeanus at the meeting expressed gratitude for the

“Divine apparition” which was vouchsafed to them in the coming of the

“hero of the Evangel.”[146]

On the following day Luther preached in the Church of the Augustinians.

He spoke of good works: “One erects churches, another makes a

pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella or to St. Peter’s, a third

fasts and prays, wears a cowl or goes barefoot ... such works are of

no avail and must be done away with. Mark these words: All our works

are worthless. I am your justification, says Christ our Lord, I have

destroyed the sins with which you are loaded; therefore believe only

that it is I alone who have done this and you will be justified.”

Luther fired invectives against the intolerable yoke of the Papacy

and against the clergy who “slaughtered the sheep instead of leading

them to pasture.” Himself he represents as persecuted by the would-be

righteous, the Pope and his Bull, on account of his teaching which was

directed against the false self-righteousness arising from works.[147]

On the occasion of this sermon Luther, as his followers asserted,

performed his first miracle, quelling a disturbance excited by the

devil during the sermon in the overcrowded church; the interruption

ceased when Luther had exorcised the fiend.[148]

At Erfurt the enthusiasm for his cause became so great that on the day

after his departure riots broke out, the so-called “Pfaffensturm” or

priest-riot, which will be considered below (xiv. 5), together with

other circumstances attending the introduction of the new Evangel at

Erfurt. Luther was at the time silent concerning the occurrence.[149]

Not long after his arrival at the Wartburg, referring to similar scenes

of violence, he says, in a letter to Melanchthon: “The priests and

monks raged against me like madmen when I was free; but now that I am a

captive they are afraid and have restrained their insane action. They

cannot endure the common people who now have them under their heel.

Behold the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, Who is working for us while

we are silent, suffer and pray.”[150] Nevertheless, when all was over,

he protested against the acts of violence committed at Erfurt in a

letter to Spalatin, which was found in that courtier’s library.[151]

On the journey through Thuringia he met the Prior of the

Rheinhardsbrunn monastery, whom he exhorted as follows: “Say an Our

Father for our Lord Christ that His Father may be gracious to Him. If

He upholds His cause, then mine also is assured.”[152] Such was the

strange manner in which he expressed his real inward feelings. Those

who expected him to recant at Worms did not know their man.

Reaching Worms on April 16 he was, on the following day, submitted to

the first interrogation. To the question whether he was the author

of the books mentioned, he replied in the affirmative, and when

exhorted to retract his errors he begged for “a respite and time for

consideration” that, as he says in his own notes at the time, “as I

have to give a verbal answer I may not through want of caution say too

much, or too little, to repent of it later,” especially as it was a

matter concerning “the highest good in heaven or on earth, the Holy

Word of God and the faith.” The respite granted was only for one day.

On April 18 he declared boldly, at his second interrogation, that

any retractation of the books he had written against the Pope was

impossible for him, since he would thereby be strengthening his tyranny

and unchristian spirit; the consciences of Christians were held captive

in the most deplorable fashion by the Papal laws and the doctrines of

men; even the property of the German nation was swallowed up by the

rapacity of the Romans. He would repeat what Christ had said before the

High Priest and his servants: “If I have spoken evil, give testimony

of the evil”; if the Lord was willing to listen to the testimony of a

servant, “how much more must I, the lowest erring creature, wait and

see whether any man brings forward testimony adverse to my teaching.”

He asks, therefore, to be convinced of error and confuted by the Bible.

“I shall be most ready if I am shown to be wrong to retract every

error.” He owed it to Germany, his native land, to warn those in high

station to beware of condemning the truth. After recommending himself

to the protection of the Emperor against his enemies, he concluded with

the words: “I have spoken.”

On returning after this to the inn through the staring crowds, no

sooner had he reached the threshold than “he stretched out his arms

and cried with a cheerful countenance: ‘I have got through, I have got

through.’”[153]

The Emperor bade him begone from that very hour, but the Estates, who

were divided in their views as to the measures to be taken, feared a

“revolt in the Holy Empire,” owing to the strength of the feeling in

his favour and the threats uttered by his armed friends, should “steps

be taken against him so hurriedly and without due trial.” Accordingly

an effort was made to persuade Luther by friendly means, through

the intermediary of a commission consisting of certain clerical and

lay members of the Diet under the Archbishop of Treves, Richard of

Greiffenklau. Their pains were, however, in vain.[154]

Even some of his friends besought him to commit his cause to the

Emperor and the Estates of the Empire, but likewise to no purpose. He

also refused the proposal that he should submit to the joint decision

of the Emperor and certain German prelates to be nominated by the Pope.

All he would promise was to hearken to a General Council, but even

this promise he qualified with a proviso which rendered his assent

illusory: “So long as no judgment contrary or detrimental to the

truth is pronounced.” Who but Luther himself was to decide what was

the truth? Cochlæus made an offer, which under the circumstances was

foredoomed to refusal, that a public disputation should be held with

the Wittenberg monk; to this Luther would not listen. Neither would he

give an undertaking to refrain from preaching and writing.

His final declaration at the Diet was as follows: Seeing that a simple

and straightforward answer was demanded of him, he would give it:

“If I am not convinced by proofs from Scripture or clear theological

reasons (‘_ratione evidente_’), then I remain convinced by the passages

which I have quoted from Scripture, and my conscience is held captive

by the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract, for to go against

one’s conscience is neither prudent nor right.” He concluded this

asseveration, after a protest had been raised and caused a tumult

amongst the audience, with the words which passed almost unheard: “God

help me, Amen!” The tragic and solemn setting which was very soon given

to these not at all unusual concluding words, was an uncalled-for

embellishment not in agreement with the oldest sources.[155]

After this, on April 26, in accordance with the command of the Emperor,

he was obliged to quit Worms. An extension of the safe conduct for

twenty-one days was expressly granted him, coupled, however, with

the injunction not to preach or publish anything on the way. Two

days later, while on his journey, Luther forwarded a missive to the

Emperor and another to the Estates in his own defence, the latter being

immediately printed by his friends as a broadsheet. The print depicted

Luther with a halo, and the dove or symbol of the Holy Ghost hovering

over him.

The fact that at the time the Diet was sitting a committee of the

Estates brought forward, under a new form, the so-called “Gravamina of

the German Nation” against the Roman See, was greatly to the advantage

of Luther’s cause. They consisted largely of legitimate suggestions

for the amelioration of ecclesiastical conditions and the removal of

the oppression exercised by the Curia. These were made the subject of

debate, and were exploited in Luther’s interests by those desirous of

innovations. Those among the Humanists who sided with him, and likewise

the Knights of the Empire, had taken various steps during his stay at

Worms to strengthen his position and to frighten the Estates by hinting

at violent action to be undertaken on his behalf.

Ulrich von Hutten wrote to him from the Ebernburg on April 17: “Keep

a good heart ... I will stand by you to the last breath if you remain

true to yourself.” He knows how those assembled at the Diet gnash

their teeth at him; his fancy indeed paints things black, but his

hope in God sustains him.[156] In a second letter of April 20, Hutten

speaks to him of trusting not only in God and His Christ, but also

in earthly weapons: “I see that sword and bow, arrows and bolts are

necessary in order to withstand the mad rage of the devil ... the

wisdom of my friends hinders me from a venture, because they fear lest

I go too far, otherwise I should already have prepared some kind of

surprise for these gentlemen under the walls [of Worms]. In a short

time, however, my hand will be free, and then you shall see that I

will not be wanting in the spirit which God has roused up in me.”[157]

In the same way as in his rhetorical language he ascribes his own

mood to the illumination of the Spirit of God, so Hutten also sought

to unearth a Divine inspiration in his friend Franz von Sickingen;

all this was the outcome of Luther’s pseudo-mysticism, to which his

friends were indebted for such figures of speech. Regarding Sickingen,

Hutten wrote to Willibald Pirkheimer: “He has, so to speak, drunk in

Luther completely; he has his little books read aloud at table, and I

have heard him swear that he will never forsake the cause of truth in

spite of every danger.” “You may well regard these words as a Divine

Voice, so great is his constancy.”[158]

Numerous threats of violence reached the ears of the timorous Estates

assembled at Worms. A notice was affixed to the Rathaus in which

400(?) sworn noblemen with 8000(?) men challenged the “Princes and

Messrs. the Romanists.” It concluded with the watchword of the

insurgents: “Bundschuh, Bundschuh, Bundschuh.” Towards the close of

the Diet several hundred knights assembled around Worms.[159]

At the Diet the Elector of Saxony made no secret of his patronage of

Luther.

He it was who, on the evening before Luther’s departure, informed him

in the presence of Spalatin and others, that he would be seized on the

homeward journey and conducted to a place of safety which would not be

told him beforehand.[160]

After having received this assurance Luther left Worms.

On the journey such was his boldness that he disregarded the Imperial

prohibition to preach, though he feared that this violation of the

conditions laid down would be taken advantage of by his opponents, and

cause him to forfeit his safe-conduct. He himself says of the sermons

which he delivered at Hersfeld and Eisenach, on May 1 and 2, that they

would be regarded as a breach of the obligations he had undertaken

when availing himself of the safe conduct; but that he had been unable

to consent that the Word of God should be bound in chains. He is here

playing on the words of the Bible: “_Verbum Dei non est alligatum_.”

“This condition, even had I undertaken it, would not have been binding,

as it would have been against God.”[161]

After the journey had been resumed the well-known surprise took place,

and Luther was carried off to the Wartburg on May 4.

In his lonely abode, known to only a few of his friends, he awaited

with concern the sentence of outlawry which was to be passed upon him

by the Emperor and the Estates. The edict, in its final form of May 8,

was not published until after the safe-conduct had expired. “To-morrow

the Imperial safe conduct terminates,” Luther wrote on May 11 from the

Wartburg to Spalatin; “ ... It grieves me that those deluded men should

call down such a misfortune upon their own heads. How great a hatred

will this inconsiderate act of violence arouse. But only wait, the time

of their visitation is at hand.”[162] The proclamation of outlawry

was couched in very stern language and enacted measures of the utmost

severity, following in this the traditions of the Middle Ages; Luther’s

writings were to be burnt, and he himself was adjudged worthy of death.

Of Luther the document says, that, “like the enemy of souls disguised

in a monk’s garb,” he had gathered together “heresies old and new.” The

impression made by Luther on the Emperor and on other eminent members

of the Diet, was that of one possessed.[163]

There was, from the first, no prospect of the sentence being carried

into effect. The hesitation of the German Princes of the Church to

publish even the Bull of Excommunication had shown that they were not

to be trusted to put the new measures into execution.

The thoughts of retaliation which were aflame in Luther, i.e. his

expectation of a “Divine judgment” on his adversaries, he committed to

writing in a letter which he forwarded to Franz von Sickingen on June

1, 1521, together with a little work dedicated to him, “Concerning

Confession, whether the Pope has the power to decree it.”[164] In it he

reminds Sickingen that God had slain thirty-one Kings in the land of

Chanaan together with the inhabitants of their cities. “It was ordained

by God that they should fight against Israel bravely and defiantly,

that they should be destroyed and no mercy shown them. This story looks

to me like a warning to our Popes, bishops, men of learning and other

spiritual tyrants.” He feared that it was God’s work that they should

feel themselves secure in their pride, “so that, in the end, they would

needs perish without mercy.” Unless they altered their ways one would

be found who “would teach them, not like Luther by word and letter, but

by deeds.” We cannot here go into the question of why the revolutionary

party in the Empire did not at that time proceed to “deeds.”

3. Legends

The beginning of the legends concerning the Diet of Worms can be traced

back to Luther himself. He declared, only a year after the event,

shortly after his departure from the Wartburg, in a letter of July

15, 1522, intended for a few friends and not for German readers: “I

repaired to Worms although I had already been apprised of the violation

of the safe-conduct by the Emperor Charles.”

He there says of himself, that, in spite of his timidity, he

nevertheless ventured “within reach of the jaws of Behemoth [the

monster mentioned in Job xl.]. And what did these terrible giants [my

adversaries] do? During the last three years not one has been found

brave enough to come forward against me here at Wittenberg, though

assured of a safe-conduct and protection”; “rude and timorous at one

and the same time” they would not venture “to confront him, though

single-handed,” or to dispute with him. What would have happened

had these weaklings been forced to face the Emperor and all-powerful

foes as he had done at Worms? This he says to the Bohemian, Sebastian

Schlick, Count of Passun, in the letter in which he dedicates to him

his Latin work “Against Henry VIII of England.”[165] It is worth

noting that Luther did not insert this dedication in the German

edition, but only in the Latin one intended for Bohemia and foreign

countries where the circumstances were not so well known.

Luther always adhered obstinately to the idea, which ultimately passed

into a standing tradition with many of his followers, that no one

had been willing to dispute with him at Worms or elsewhere during

the period of his outlawry; that he had, in fact, been condemned

unheard; that his opponents had sought to vanquish him by force, not

by confronting him with proofs, and had obstinately shut their ears to

his arguments from Holy Scripture. He finally came to persuade himself,

that they were in their hearts convinced that he was right, but out of

consideration for their temporal interests had not been willing or able

to give in.

He expressly mentions Duke George of Saxony, as an opponent who

had taken up the latter position, also the influential Archbishop

Albrecht of Mayence, and, above all, Johann Eck. “Is it not obdurate

wickedness,” he exclaims in one of his outbursts, “to be the enemy

of, and withstand, what is known and recognised as true? It is a

sin against the first Commandment and greater than any other. But

because it is not their invention they look on it as nought! Yet

their own conscience accuses them.”[166] In another passage, in 1528,

he complains of the persecutors in Church and State who appealed to

the edict of Worms; “they sought for an excuse to deceive the simple

people, though they really knew better”; if they act thus, it must be

right, “were we to do the same, it would be wrong.”[167]

Yet,even from the vainglorious so-called “Minutes of the Worms

Negotiations” (“Akten der Wormser Verhandlungen”), published

immediately after at Wittenberg with Luther’s assistance,[168] it

is clear that the case was fully argued in his presence at Worms,

and that he had every opportunity of defending himself, though, from

a legal point of view, the Bull of Excommunication having already

been promulgated, the question was no longer open to theological

discussion. In these “Minutes” the speeches he made in his defence at

Worms are quoted. Catholic contemporaries even reproached him with

having allowed himself to be styled therein “Luther, the man of God”;

his orations are introduced with such phrases as: “Martin replied to

the rude and indiscreet questions with his usual incredible kindness

and friendliness in the following benevolent words,” etc.[169]

In order still further to magnify the bravery he displayed at Worms,

Luther stated later on that the Pope had written to Worms, “that no

account was to be made of the safe-conduct.”[170] As a matter of

fact, however, the Papal Nuncios at Worms had received instructions

to use every effort to prevent Luther being tried in public, because

according to Canon Law the case was already settled; if he refused

to retract, and came provided with a safe-conduct, nothing remained

but to send him home, and then proceed against him with the utmost

severity.[171] It was for this reason, according to his despatches,

that Aleander took no part in the public sessions at which Luther was

present. Only after Luther, on the return journey, had sent back the

herald who accompanied him, and had openly infringed the conditions

of the Imperial safe-conduct, did Aleander propose “that the Emperor

should have Luther seized.”[172]

Luther, from the very commencement, stigmatised the Diet of Worms

as the “Sin of Wormbs, which rejected God’s truth so childishly and

openly, wilfully and knowingly condemned it unheard”;[173] to him the

members of the Diet were culpably hardened and obdurate “Pharaohs,”

who thought Christ could not see them, who, out of “utterly sinful

wilfulness,” were determined “to hate and blaspheme Christ at Wormbs,”

and to “kill the prophets, till God forsook them”; he even says:

“In me they condemned innocent blood at Wormbs; ... O thou unhappy

nation, who beyond all others has become the lictor and executioner

of End-Christ against God’s saints and prophets.”[174] An esteemed

Protestant biographer of Luther is, however, at pains to point out,

quite rightly, that the Diet could “not do otherwise than condemn

Luther.” “By rejecting the sentence of the highest court he placed

himself outside the pale of the law of the land. Even his very friends

were unable to take exception to this.” It is, he says, “incorrect

to make out, as so many do, that Luther’s opponents were merely

impious men who obstinately withstood the revealed truth.” This author

confines himself to remarking that, in his own view, it was a mistake

to have “pronounced a formal sentence” upon such questions.[175]

That Luther, at the Diet of Worms, bore away the palm as the heroic

defender of entire freedom of research and of conscience, and as the

champion of the modern spirit, is a view not in accordance with a fair

historical consideration of the facts.

He himself was then, and all through life, far removed from the idea of

any freedom of conscience in the modern sense, and would have deemed

all who dared to use it against Divine Revelation, as later opponents

of religion did, as deserving of the worst penalties of the mediæval

code. “It is an altogether one-sided view, one, indeed, which wilfully

disregards the facts, to hail in Luther the man of the new age, the

hero of enlightenment and the creator of the modern spirit.” Such is

the opinion of Adolf Harnack.[176]

At Worms, Luther spoke of himself as being bound by the Word of God. It

is true he claimed the freedom of interpreting Holy Scripture according

to his own mind, or, as he said, according to the understanding

bestowed on him by God, and of amending all such dogmas as displeased

him.

But he would on no account cease to acknowledge that a revealed Word

of God exists and claims submission from the human mind, whereas, from

the standpoint of the modern free-thinker, there is no such thing

as revelation. The liberty of interpreting revelation, which Luther

proclaimed at Worms, or, to be more exact, calmly assumed, marked, it

is true, a great stride forward in the road to the destruction of the

Church.

Luther failed to point out at Worms how such liberty, or rather

licence, agreed with the institutions established by Christ for the

preservation and perpetual preaching of His doctrine of salvation.

He was confronted by a Church, still recognised throughout the whole

public life of the nations, which claimed as her own a Divine authority

and commission to interpret the written Word of God. She was to the

Faithful the lighthouse by which souls struggling in the waves of

conflicting opinions might safely steer their course. In submitting his

own personal opinion to the solemn judgment of an institution which had

stood the test of time since the days of Christ and the Apostles, the

Wittenberg Professor had no reason to fear any affront to his dignity.

Whoever submitted to the Church accepted her authority as supreme, but

he did not thereby forfeit either his freedom or his dignity; he obeyed

in order not to expose himself to doubt or error; he pledged himself

to a higher, and better, wisdom than he was able to reach by his own

strength, by the way of experience, error and uncertainty. The Church

plainly intimated to the heresiarch the error of his way, pointing

out that the freedom of interpretation which he arrogated to himself

was the destruction of all sure doctrine, the death-blow to the truth

handed down, the tearing asunder of religious union, and the harbinger

of endless dissensions.--We here see where Luther’s path diverged from

that followed by Catholics. He set up subjectivity as a principle, and

preached, together with the freedom of interpreting Scripture, the most

unfettered revolt against all ecclesiastical authority, which alone

can guarantee the truth. The chasm which he cleft still yawns; hence

the difference of opinion concerning the sentence pronounced at Worms.

We are not at liberty to conceal this fact from ourselves, nor can we

wonder at the conflicting judgments passed on the position then assumed

by Luther.

We may perhaps be permitted to quote a Protestant opinion which throws

some light on Luther’s “championship of entire freedom of conscience.”

It is that of an experienced observer of the struggles of those

days, Friedrich Paulsen: “The principle of 1521, viz. to allow no

authority on earth to dictate the terms of faith, is anarchical; with

it no Church can exist.... The starting-point and the justification

of the whole Reformation consisted in the complete rejection of all

human authority in matters of faith.... If, however, a Church is to

exist, then the individual must subordinate himself and his belief

to the body as a whole. To do this is his duty, for religion can

only exist in a body, i.e. in a Church.”[177] ... “Revolution is the

term by which the Reformation should be described ... Luther’s work

was no Reformation, no ‘reforming’ of the existing Church by means

of her own institutions, but the destruction of the old shape, in

fact, the fundamental negation of any Church at all. He refused to

admit any earthly authority in matters of faith, and regarding morals

his position was practically the same; he left the matter entirely

to the individual conscience.... Never has the possibility of the

existence of any ecclesiastical authority whatsoever been more rudely

denied.”[178]

“It is true that this is not the whole Luther,” he continues.

“The same Luther who here advocates ecclesiastical ‘anarchy’ at

a later date was to oppose those whose conscience placed another

interpretation on God’s Word than that discovered in it by the

inhabitants of Wittenberg.” Paulsen quotes certain sentences in

which Luther, shortly afterwards, denounced all deviations from

his teaching: “My cause is God’s cause,” and “my judgment is God’s

judgment,” and proceeds: “Nothing was left for the Reformers, if there

was to be a Church at all, but to set up their own authority in place

of the authority of the Popes and the Councils. Only on one tiresome

point are they at a disadvantage, anyone being free to appeal from the

later Luther to the Luther of Worms.” “Just as people are inclined

to reject external authority, so they are ready to set up their own.

This is one of the roots from which spring the desire for freedom

and the thirst for power. It was not at all Luther’s way to consider

the convictions of others as of equal importance with his own.” This

he clearly demonstrated in the autocratic position which he claimed

for the Wittenberg theology as soon as the “revolutionary era of the

Reformation had passed.”

“The argument which Luther had employed in 1521 against the Papists,

i.e. that it was impossible to confute him from Scripture, he found

used against himself in his struggle with the ‘fanatics’ who also

urged that no one could prove them wrong by Scripture.... For the

confuting of heretics a Rule of faith is necessary, a living one which

can decide questions as they arise.... One who pins his faith to what

Luther did in 1521 might well say: If heretics cannot be confuted from

Scripture, this would seem to prove that God does not attach much

importance to the confutation of heretics; otherwise He would have

given us His Revelation in catechisms and duly balanced propositions

instead of in Gospels and Epistles, in Prophets and Psalms....

On the one hand there can be no authority on earth in matters of

faith, and on the other there must be such an authority, such is the

antinomy which lies at the foundation of the Protestant Church.... A

contradiction exists in the very essence of Protestantism. On the one

hand the very idea of a Church postulates oneness of faith manifested

by submission; on the other the conviction that if faith in the

Protestant sense is to exist at all, then each person must answer

for himself; ... it is _my_ faith alone which helps me, and if my

faith does not agree with the faith and doctrine of others, I cannot

for that reason abandon it.... The fact is, there has never been a

revolution conducted on entirely logical lines.”[179]

That “authority in matters of faith” which Luther began to claim for

himself, did not prevent him in the ensuing years from insisting

on the right of private judgment, though all the while he was

interpreting biblical Revelation in accordance with his own views.

As time went on he became, however, much more severe towards the

heretics who diverged from his own standpoint. But this was only when

the “revolutionary era of the Reformation,” as Paulsen calls it, was

over and gone. So long as it lasted he would not and could not openly

refuse to others what he claimed for himself. Even in 1525 we find him

declaring that “the authorities must not interfere with what each one

wishes to teach and to believe, whether it be the Gospel or a lie.”

He is here speaking of the authorities, but his own conduct in the

matter of tolerating heretics was even then highly inconsistent, to

say nothing of toleration of Catholics.

From the above it is easy to see that the freedom which Luther

advocated at Worms cannot serve as the type of our modern freedom of

thought, research and conscience.

To return to the historical consideration of the event at Worms, the

words already mentioned, “God help me, Amen!” call for remark.

The celebrated exclamation put into Luther’s mouth: “Here I stand. I

cannot do otherwise. God help me, Amen!” usually quoted as the briefest

and most characteristic expression of his “exalted, knightly act” at

Worms, is a legend which has not even the credit of being incorporated

in Luther’s Latin account of his speech.

He himself gives the conclusion as simply: “God help me, Amen,” a

formula which has nothing emphatic about it, was customary at the end

of a discourse and is to be found elsewhere in Luther’s own writings.

Its embellishment by the historic addition was produced at Wittenberg,

where it was found desirable to render “the words rather more forcible

and high-sounding.” “There is not the faintest proof that the

amplification came from anyone who actually heard the words.”[180] The

most that can be said is that it may have grown up elsewhere.[181]

The enlarged form is first found in the two editions of the discourse

printed by Grüneberg at Wittenberg in 1521, one in Latin and the other

in German, which are based as to the remaining portion on notes on the

subject emanating from Luther. Karl Müller, the last thoroughly to

examine the question, opines that Luther’s concluding phrase may very

easily have been amplified without the co-operation of Luther or of

any actual witness. The proposal made in 1897 in Volume vii. of the

Weimar edition of Luther’s works to accept as reliable Grüneberg’s

edition which contains the altered form of the phrase, must, according

to Karl Müller, be regarded as “a total failure,” nor does he think

much better of the Weimar edition in its account of the Worms Acts

generally.

How little the exclamation can pretend to any special importance is

clear from a note of Conrad Peutinger’s, who was present during the

address and committed his impression to writing the following day.

When Luther had finished his explanation, so it runs, the “official”

again exhorted him to retract, seeing he had already been condemned by

higher councils. Thereupon Luther retorted that the Councils “had also

erred and over and over again contradicted themselves and come into

opposition with the Divine Law. This the ‘official’ denied. Luther

insisted that it was so and offered to prove it. This brought the

discussion suddenly to an end, and there was a great outcry as Luther

left the place. In the midst of it he recommended himself submissively

to His Imperial Mt. [Majesty]. Before concluding he uttered the words:

May God come to my help.” According to this account the words were

interjected as Luther was about to leave the assembly, in the midst of

the tumult and “great outcry” which followed his recommending himself

to the Imperial protection.

In view of the circumstances just described, P. Kalkoff, years

ago, admitted that Luther’s words as quoted above had “no claim to

credibility,”[182] while, quite recently, H. Böhmer declared that “it

would be well not to quote any more these most celebrated of Luther’s

words as though they were his. Many will be sorry, yet the absence

of these words need not affect our opinion of Luther’s behaviour at

Worms.”[183] W. Friedensburg is also of opinion that “we must, at any

rate, give up the emphatic conclusion of the speech--‘Here I stand,’

etc.--as unhistorical; the searching examinations made in connection

with the Reichstagsakten have rendered it certain that Luther’s

conclusion was simply: ‘God help me, Amen.’” Of this Karl Müller

adduced conclusive proofs.[184]

The immense success of the legend of the manly, decisive, closing

words so solemnly uttered in the assembly is quite explicable when we

come to consider the circumstances. The Diet, an event which stands

out in such strong relief in Luther’s history, where his friends

seemed to see his star rising on the horizon only to set again

suddenly behind the mountain fortress, was itself of a nature to

invite them to embellish it with fiction.

Apart from the legends in circulation among Luther’s friends, there

were others which went the rounds among his opponents and later

polemics. Such is the statement to the effect that Luther played the

coward at Worms, and that his assumed boldness and audacity was merely

due to the promises of material assistance, or, as Thomas Münzer

asserts, to actual coercion on the part of his own followers.

According to all we have seen, Luther’s chief motive-force was his

passionate prepossession in favour of his own ideas. It is true that,

especially previous to the Diet, this was alloyed with a certain

amount of quite reasonable fear. He himself admits, that when summoned

to Worms, he “fell into a tremble” till he determined to bid defiance

to the devils there.[185] On his first appearance before the Diet on

April 17, he spoke, according to those who heard him, “in an almost

inaudible voice,” and gave the impression of being a timid man.[186]

Later his enthusiasm and his boldness increased with the lively sense

of the justice of his cause aided by the applause of sympathisers.

There can be no doubt that he was stimulated to confidence not merely

by the thought of the thousands who were giving him their moral

support, but by the offers of material help he had received, and

by his knowledge that the atmosphere of the Diet was charged with

electricity. “Counts and Nobles,” he himself says later, “looked hard

at me; as a result of my sermon, as people in the know think, they

lodged in court a charge of 400 Articles [the ‘Gravamina’] against

the clergy. They [the members of the Diet] had more cause to fear me

than I to fear them, for they apprehended a tumult.”[187] It was his

fiery conviction that he had rediscovered the Gospel and torn away the

mask of Antichrist, combined with his assurance of outward support,

that inspired him with that “mad courage” of which he was wont to talk

even to the end of his life: “I was undismayed and feared nothing;

God alone is able to make a man mad after this fashion; I hardly know

whether I should be so cheery now.”[188]

The unfavourable accounts, circulated from early days among Luther’s

opponents concerning his mode of life at Worms, must not be allowed to

pass unchallenged.

Luther was said to have “distinguished himself by drunkenness,” and

to have indulged in moral “excesses.” Incontrovertible proof would be

necessary to allow of our accepting such statements of a time when he

was actually under the very eyes of the highest authorities, clerical

and lay, and a cynosure of thousands. We should have to ask ourselves

how he came to prejudice his judges still further by intemperance and

a vicious life. The accounts appealed to do not suffice to establish

the charge, consisting as they do of general statements founded partly

on the impression made by Luther’s appearance, partly on reports

circulated by his enemies. That the friends of the Church were all

too ready to believe everything, even the worst, of the morals of

so defiant and dangerous a heretic, was only to be expected. The

reports were not treated with sufficient discernment even in the

official papers, but accepted at their face-value when they suited

the purposes of his foes. Luther seemed deficient in the recollection

looked for in a religious, though he wore the Augustinian habit; the

self-confidence, which he never lost an occasion of displaying, had

the appearance of presumption and excessive self-sufficiency; it may

also be that the manners which he had inherited from his low-born

Saxon parents excited hostile comment among the cultured members

of the Diet; if he indulged a little in the good Malvasian wine in

which his friends pledged him, this would be regarded by strangers as

betraying his German love of the bottle; at the same time it is true

that, when starting for Worms, and likewise during the journey, it is

reported how, with somewhat unseemly mirth, he had not scrupled to

indulge in the juice of the grape, perhaps to dispel sad thoughts.

Caspar Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, who was present at Worms,

wrote to Venice: “Martin has scarcely fulfilled the expectations

cherished of him here by all. He displays neither a blameless life

nor any sort of cleverness. He is quite unversed in learning and

has nothing to distinguish him but his impudence.”[189] Perhaps the

remark concerning Luther’s want of culture and wit, on which alone

the Venetian here lays stress, was an outcome of Luther’s behaviour

at his first interrogation; we have already seen how another witness

alludes to the nervousness then manifested by him, but over which he

ultimately triumphed.[190]

The second authority appealed to, viz. the Nuncio, Hieronymus

Aleander, writes more strongly against Luther than does Contarini. It

is not however certain that he was an “eye-witness,” as he has been

termed, at least it is doubtful whether he ever saw Luther while he

was in the town, though he describes his appearance, his demeanour and

look, as though from personal observation.[191] Aleander speaks much

from hearsay, collects impressions and tittle-tattle at haphazard, and

enters into no detail, save that he sets on record the “many bowls of

Malvasian” which Luther, “being very fond of that wine,” drank before

his departure from Worms. It is he who wrote to Rome that the Emperor,

so soon as he had seen Luther, exclaimed: “This man will never make a

heretic of me.” Aleander merely adds, that almost everybody looked

on Luther as a stupid, possessed fool; and that it was unnecessary

to speak of “the drunkenness to which he was so much addicted, and

the many other instances of coarseness in his looks, words, acts,

demeanour and gait.” By his behaviour he had forfeited all the respect

the world had had for him. He describes him as dissolute and a

demoniac (“dissoluto, demoniaco”).[192] Yet Count Hoyer of Mansfeld,

who will be referred to more particularly below, and who blames

Luther’s moral conduct after his stay at the Wartburg, alleging it as

his reason for forsaking his cause, admits that, while at Worms, he,

the Count, had been quite Lutheran; hence nothing to the prejudice of

Luther’s morals can have reached his ears there. In the absence of any

further information we may safely assume that it was merely Luther’s

general behaviour which was rather severely criticised at the great

assembly of notables.

A capital opportunity for a closer study of Luther’s mind is afforded

by his life and doings in the Wartburg.

4. Luther’s sojourn at the Wartburg

The solitude of the Wartburg afforded Luther a refuge for almost ten

months, to him a lengthy period.

Whereas but a little while before he had been inspirited by the loud

applause of his followers and roused by the opposition of those in high

places to a struggle which made him utterly oblivious of self, here, in

the quiet of the mountain stronghold, the thoughts born of his solitude

assailed him in every conceivable form. He was altogether thrown upon

himself and his studies. The croaking of the ravens and magpies about

the towers in front of his windows sounded like the voices which spoke

in the depths of his soul.

Looking back upon his conduct at Worms, he now began to doubt; how,

indeed, could an outlaw do otherwise, even had he not undertaken so

subversive a venture as Luther? To this was added, in his case, the

responsibility for the storm he had let loose on his beloved native

land. His own confession runs: “How often did my heart faint for fear,

and reproach me thus: You wanted to be wise beyond all others. Are

then all others in their countless multitude mistaken? Have so many

centuries all been in the wrong? Supposing you were mistaken, and,

owing to your mistake, were to drag down with you to eternal damnation

so many human creatures!”[193]

He must often have asked himself such questions, especially at the

beginning of the “hermit life,” as he calls it, which he led within

those walls. But to these questionings he of set purpose refused to

give the right answer; he had set out on the downward path and could

not go back; of this he came to convince himself as the result of a

lengthy struggle.

This is the point which it is incumbent on the psychologist to study

beyond all else. Luther’s everyday life and his studies at Worms have

been discussed often enough already.

It is unheard of, so he says in the accounts he gives of his interior

struggles in those days, “to run counter to the custom of so many

centuries and to oppose the convictions of innumerable men and such

great authorities. How can anyone turn a deaf ear to these reproaches,

insults and condemnations?” “How hard is it,” he exclaims from his own

experience, “to come to terms with one’s own conscience when it has

long been accustomed to a certain usage [like that of the Papists],

which is nevertheless wrong and godless. Even with the plainest words

from Holy Scripture I was scarcely able so to fortify my conscience as

to venture to challenge the Pope, and to look on him as Antichrist,

on the bishops as the Apostles of Antichrist and the Universities as

his dens of iniquity!” He summoned all his spirit of defiance to his

aid and came off victorious. “Christ at length strengthened me by His

words, which are steadfast and true. No longer does my heart tremble

and waver, but mocks at the Popish objections; I am in a haven of

safety and laugh at the storms which rage without.”[194]

From the Catholic point of view, what he had done was violently to

suppress the higher voice which had spoken to him in his solitude. Yet

this voice was again to make itself heard, and with greater force than

ever.

Luther had then succeeded so well in silencing it that he was able

to write to his friends, as it seems, without the slightest scruple,

that, as to Worms, he was only ashamed of not having spoken more

bravely and emphatically before the whole Empire; were he compelled to

appear there again, they would hear a very different tale of him. “I

desire nothing more ardently than to bare my breast to the attacks of

my adversaries.” He spent his whole time in picturing to himself “the

empire of Antichrist,” a frightful vision of the wrath of God.[195]

With such pictures he spurs himself on, and encourages Melanchthon,

with whose assistance he was unable to dispense, to overcome his

timidity and vacillation. In many of his letters from the Wartburg

he exhorts his friends to courage and confidence, being anxious to

counteract by every possible effort the ill-effects of his absence.

In these letters his language is, as a rule, permeated by a fanatical

and, at times, mystical tone, even more so than any of his previous

utterances. He exhibits even less restraint than formerly in his

polemics. “Unless a man scolds, bites and taunts, he achieves nothing.

If we admonish the Popes respectfully, they take it for flattery and

fancy they have a right to remain unreformed. But Jeremias exhorts

me, and says to me: ‘Cursed be he who does the work of the Lord

deceitfully’ (xlviii. 10), and calls for the use of the sword against

the enemies of God.”[196]

Two phenomena which accompanied this frenzy render it still graver

in the eyes of an onlooker. These were, on the one hand, certain

occurrences which bordered on hallucination, and, on the other,

frightful assaults of the tempter.

Concerning both, his letters of that time, and likewise his own

accounts at a later date, supply us with definite information. It

is, indeed, a dark page on which they direct our attention. All the

circumstances must carefully be borne in mind. First, much must be

attributed to the influence of his new and unaccustomed place of abode

and the strange nature of his surroundings. His gloomy meditations

and enforced leisure; a more generous diet, which, in comparison with

his former circumstances, meant to the Monk, now metamorphosed into

“Squire George,” an almost luxurious mode of living; finally, bodily

discomfort, for instance, the constipation to which he frequently

refers as troubling him,[197] all this tended to develop an abnormal

condition of soul to which his former psychological states of terror

may also have contributed. He fancied, and all his life maintained,

that in the Wartburg he had suffered bodily assaults of the devil.

Luther believed that he had not only heard the devil tormenting him

by day, and more particularly by night, with divers dreadful noises,

but that he had seen him in his room under the form of a huge black

dog, and had chased him away by prayer. His statements, to which we

shall return in detail in another connection (vol. vi., xxxvi. 3;

cp. vol. v., xxxi. 4), are such as presuppose, at the very least,

the strangest illusions. Some have even opined that he suffered from

real hallucinations of hearing and sight, though they have adduced

no definite proof of such. The disputes with the devil, of which he

speaks, are certainly nothing more than a rhetorical version of his own

self-communings.

If Luther brought with him to the Wartburg a large stock of popular

superstition, he increased it yet more within those dreary walls,

thanks to the sensitiveness of his lively imagination, until he

himself became the plaything of his fancy. “Because he was so lonely,”

writes his friend the physician Ratzeberger, on the strength of

Luther’s personal communication, “he was beset with ghosts and noisy

spirits which gave him much concern.” And after quoting the tale of

the dog he goes on: “Such-like and many other ghosts came to him at

that time, all of which he drove away by prayer, and which he would

not talk about, for he said he would never tell anyone by how many

different kinds of ghosts he had been molested.”[198]

The temptations of the flesh which he then experienced Luther also

attributed, in the main, to the devil. They fell upon him with greater

force than ever before. Their strength displeased him, according to

his letters, and he sought to resist them, though it is plain from his

words that he realised the utter futility of his desire to rid himself

of them. In this state of darkness he directed his thoughts more

vigorously than heretofore to the question of monastic vows and their

binding power. He seems to be clanking the chains by which he had by

his own vow freely pledged himself to the Almighty.

In July, 1521, in a letter from the Wartburg to his friend

Melanchthon, while repudiating, in the somewhat bombastic fashion

of the Humanists, Melanchthon’s praise, he makes the following

confession: “Your good opinion of me shames and tortures me. For I

sit here [instead of working for God’s cause as you fondly imagine]

hardened in immobility, praying, unhappily, too little instead of

sighing over the Church of God; nay, I burn with the flames of

my untamed flesh; in short, I ought to be glowing in the spirit,

and instead I glow in the flesh, in lust, laziness, idleness and

drowsiness, and know not whether God has not turned away His face from

me because you have ceased to pray for me. You, who are more rich

in the gifts of God than I, are now holding my place. For a whole

week I have neither written, prayed nor studied, plagued partly by

temptations of the flesh, partly by the other trouble.” The other

trouble was the painful bodily ailment mentioned above, to which

he returns here in greater detail. “Pray for me,” he concludes this

letter--in which he seeks to confirm his friends in the course upon

which they had set out,--“pray, for in this solitude I am sinking

into sin.”[199] And in another letter, in December, we again have an

allusion to his besetting temptations: “I am healthy in body and am

well cared for, but I am also severely tried by sin and temptations.

Pray for me, and fare you well.”[200] He here speaks of sins _and_

temptations, but it may well be that under “sins” he here, as

elsewhere, comprehends concupiscence, which he, in accordance with his

teaching, looked upon as sin.

“Believe me,” he says in a letter of that time to Nicholas Gerbel of

Strasburg, “in the quiet of my hermitage I am exposed to the attacks

of a thousand devils. It is far easier to fight against men, who are

devils incarnate, than against the ‘spirits of wickedness dwelling in

high places’ (Eph. vi. 12). I fall frequently, but the right hand of

the Lord again raises me up.”[201]

The distaste which was growing up within him for the vow of chastity

which he had once esteemed so highly, did not appear to him to come

from the devil, for he congratulates the same friend that he has

forsaken the “unclean and in its nature damnable state of celibacy,”

in order to enter the “married state ordained by God.” “I consider the

married state a true Paradise, even though the married couple should

live in the greatest indigence.” At the same time he privately informs

Gerbel, that, with the co-operation of Melanchthon, he has already

started “a powerful conspiracy with the object of setting aside the

vows of the clergy and religious.” He is here alluding to the tract

he was then writing “On Monastic Vows.” “The womb is fruitful, and

is soon due to bring forth; if Christ wills it will give birth to a

child [the tract in question], which shall break in pieces with a rod

of iron (Apoc. xii. 5) the Papists, sophists, religiosists [defenders

of religious Orders] and Herodians.” “O how criminal is Antichrist,

seeing that Satan by his means has laid waste all the mysteries of

Christian piety.... I daily see so much that is dreadful in the

wretched celibacy of young men and women that nothing sounds more evil

in my ears than the words nun, monk and priest.”[202]

Hence, at the beginning of November, 1521, when he was engaged on the

momentous work “On Monastic Vows,” he believed he had found decisive

biblical arguments against the state of chastity and continence,

recommended though it had been by Christ and His Apostles.

Previously the case had been different, when Carlstadt and others

first began to boggle at vows; Luther was then still undecided, seeking

for ostensibly theological arguments with which to demolish the

difficulty. At that time he had been troubled by such plain biblical

words as those of the Psalmist, “Vow ye and pray to the Lord your God”

(Ps. lxxv. 12). Even in August, 1521, he had confided his scruples to

Spalatin from the Wartburg: “What can be more perilous than to invite

so large a number of unmarried persons to enter into matrimony on the

strength of a few passages of doubtful meaning? The consequence will

only be that consciences will be still more troubled than they are at

present. I, too, would fain see celibacy made optional, as the Gospel

wills, but I do not yet see my way to proving this.”[203] We likewise

find him criticising rather unkindly Melanchthon’s reasons, because

they took a wrong way to a goal after which he was himself ardently

striving, viz. the setting aside of the vow of celibacy. He was

suffering, he admits, “grievous pain through being unable to find the

right answer to the question.”[204]

Such efforts were naturally crowned with success in the end.

Five weeks later he was able to inform Melanchthon: “It seems to me

that now I can say with confidence how our task is to be accomplished.

The argument is briefly this: Whoever has taken a vow in a spirit

opposed to evangelical freedom must be set free and his vow be

anathema. Such, however, are all those who have taken the vow in the

search for salvation, or justification. Since the greater number of

those taking vows make them for this reason, it is clear that their

vow is godless, sacrilegious, contrary to the Gospel and hence to be

dissolved and laid under a curse.”[205]

Thus it was the indefinite and elastic idea of “evangelical freedom”

which was finally to settle the question. Concerning his own frame of

mind while working out this idea in his tract, he says to Spalatin,

on November 11, in a letter of complaint about other matters: “I am

going to make war against religious vows.... I am suffering from

temptations, and out of temper, so don’t be offended. There is more

than one Satan contending with me; I am alone, and yet at times not

alone.”[206]

The book was finished in November and sent out under the title, “On

Monastic Vows.”[207] The same strange argument, based on evangelical

freedom, recurs therein again and again under all sorts of rhetorical

forms; the tract is also noteworthy for its distortion of the Church’s

teaching,[208] though we cannot here enter in detail into its theology

and misstatements. The very origin of the book does not inspire

confidence. Many great and monumental historical works and events

have originated in conditions far from blameless, but few of Luther’s

writings have sprung from so base a source as this one; yet its results

were far-reaching, and it was a means of seducing countless wavering

and careless religious, depicting the monasteries and furthering

immensely the new evangelical teaching. While writing the book Luther

had naturally in his mind the multitude he was so desirous of setting

free, and chose his language accordingly.

But what were his thoughts concerning himself at that period, when the

idea of matrimony had not yet dawned upon him?

In the letter to Melanchthon just referred to, he says of himself: “If

I had had the above argument [concerning evangelical freedom] before

my eyes when I made my vow, I should never have taken it. I too am,

therefore, uncertain as to the frame of mind in which I did take it; I

was rather carried away than drawn, such was God’s will; I fear that

I too made a godless and sacrilegious vow.... Later, when the vows

were made, my earthly father, who was angry about it all, said to me

when he had calmed down: ‘If only it was not a snare of Satan!’ His

words made such an impression on me that I remember them better than

anything else he ever said, and I believe that through his mouth God

spoke to me, at a late hour indeed, and as from afar, to rebuke and

warn me.”[209]

Very closely connected with his own development is the fact that at

that time, on several occasions, he described most glaringly and

untruthfully the moral corruption in which the Papists were sunk,

owing to the vow of chastity and the state of celibacy. It seems

to have been his way of quieting his conscience. So greatly does

he generalise concerning the evil which he attributes with much

exaggeration to his fellows in the religious state, representing it

as an inevitable result of monastic life, that, strange to say, he

forgets to except himself. Only at a much later date did he casually

inform his hearers that, through God’s dispensation, he had preserved

his chastity.[210]

As to whether he himself had any intention then of dissolving his

vow by marriage, we may put on record what he had said at an earlier

date in a written sermon intended for the general public: “I hope I

have got so far that, with God’s grace, I may remain as I am,” but

he adds: “though I am not yet out of the wood and dare not compare

myself to the chaste hearts, still I should be sorry and pray God

graciously to preserve me from it.”[211] The “chaste hearts” are the

“false saints” whom he is assailing in that particular section of his

sermon. To the “false saints” he opposes the true ones, much as in his

earliest sermons at Wittenberg he had attacked the stricter monks and

their observance, describing them opprobriously as little saints and

proud self-righteous by works. The connecting link between the two,

i.e. his erroneous opposition to all good works and renunciation of

sensuality, here, and again and again elsewhere, is clearly Luther’s

starting-point.

He fancies he hears those who were desirous of faithfully keeping the

vow they had made to God reproaching him with his sensuality, “how

they open their jaws,” and say, “alas, poor monk, how he must feel

the weight of his cowl, how pleased he would be to have a wife! But

let them blaspheme,” such is his answer, one typical of his language

on the subject, “let them blaspheme, these chaste hearts and great

saints, let them be of iron and stone as they feign to be; but as for

you, beware of forgetting that you are a man of flesh and blood; leave

it to God to judge between the angelical and mighty heroes and the

despised and feeble sinners. If you only knew who they are who make a

show of such great chastity and discipline, and what that is of which

St. Paul speaks, Ephesians v. 12: ‘For of the things that are done

by them in secret it is a shame even to speak,’ you would not esteem

their boasted chastity fit even for a prostitute to wipe her boots

on. Here we have the perversion that the chaste are the unchaste and

deceive all that come in contact with them.”[212]

Yet the pious religious who were true to their vows would certainly

have been the last to deny that they were mere flesh and blood;

they did not pretend to be made of “iron,” nor did they vaunt their

“boasted chastity,” but prayed to God, did humble penance, and so

acquired the grace necessary for keeping what they had cheerfully

vowed in the fear of the Lord and in the consoling hope of an eternal

reward. On the other hand, we hear but little of Luther’s praying in

the Wartburg, and still less of his having performed penance. And yet

those walls were full of the memory of that great Saint, Elizabeth

of Hungary, whose life was a touching example of zealous prayer and

penance.

Luther, during his stay in the Castle, accused himself in very strong

terms, which, however, he did not intend to be taken literally, of

gluttony and luxurious living, and also of idleness. “I sit here all

day in idleness and fill my belly,” he says in hyperbolical language

on May 14, 1521, in a letter to Spalatin,[213] soon after his arrival

at the Wartburg. Already before this, at Wittenberg, in a letter to

Staupitz, he had reproached himself with drunkenness.[214]

If, however, the “luxury” with which he reproached himself was no

graver than his “idleness,” then Luther is not really in such a bad

case, for his “idleness” was so little meant to be taken literally,

that, in the same letter, he immediately goes on to speak of his

literary projects: “I am about to write a German sermon on the freedom

of auricular confession [this duly appeared and was dedicated to

Sickingen]; I also intend to continue the Commentary on the Psalms [a

plan never realised]; also my postils as soon as I have received what

I require from Wittenberg [the German postil alone was published]; I

am also awaiting the unfinished MS. of the Magnificat [this also was

published later].”

It was not in his nature to be really idle.

His chief German work, which was to render him so popular, viz. his

translation of the Bible, was commenced in the Wartburg, where he

started with the translation of the New Testament from the Greek. We

shall speak elsewhere of the merits and defects of this translation.

The general excellence of its style and language cannot hide the

theological bias which frequently guides the writer’s pen, nor can its

value as a popular work allow us to overlook the fact that he was often

carried away by the precipitation incidental to his temperament.[215]

Another work which he finished within those quiet walls treated of the

Sacrifice of the Mass. His thoughts early turned with aversion from

this centre of Catholic worship; indeed, he seemed bent on robbing the

Church of the very pearl of her worship. He appears to have said Mass

for the last time on his way to Augsburg to meet Cardinal Cajetan. In

the Wartburg he refused to have anything to do with the “Mass priest”

living there. On August 1, 1521, he wrote to Melanchthon, that the

renewal of Christ’s institution of the celebration of the Supper,

proposed by his friends at Wittenberg, agreed entirely with the plans

he had in view when he should return, and that from that time forward

he would never again say a private Mass.[216]

The work just mentioned, which appeared in 1522, is entitled, “On the

Abuse of the Mass.” He dedicated it in the Preface “to the Augustinians

of Wittenberg,” his dear brethren, because he had heard in his

solitude, so he says, “that they had been the first to commence setting

aside the abuse of Masses in their assembly [congregation].”[217] He is

desirous of fortifying their “consciences” against the Mass, because

he is anxious lest “all should not have the same constancy, and good

conscience, in the undertaking of so great and notable a work.” In the

same way as he in his struggle had attained to assurance of conscience,

so they, too, must act “with a like conscience, faith and trust, and

look on the opinion of the whole world as nothing but chaff and straw,

knowing that we are sent to a death-struggle against the devil and all

his might, yea, against the judgment of God, and, like Jacob (Gen.

xxxii. 28), can only overcome by our strength of faith.”

To despise the protests of the world was not so difficult, but to pay

“no heed to the devil and the solemn judgment of God” was a harder task.

It would seem that some of the Augustinians were not capable of this,

and had become uneasy concerning the innovations. He is thereupon at

pains to assure them that he is an expert in the matter; he declares

that he has learnt from experience how “our conscience makes us out

to be sinners in God’s sight and deserving of eternal reprobation,

unless it is well preserved and protected at every point by the holy,

strong and veracious Word of God.”[218] This “stronghold” he would fain

open to them by demonstrating from the Word of God the horrors of the

Sacrifice of the Mass.

Hence he begins by overthrowing, with incredible determination,

everything that might be advanced against him and in favour of the

Mass in general by the “doctrine and discipline of the Church, the

teaching of the Fathers, immemorial custom and usage,” commandments

of men and theological faculties, Saints, Fathers, or, in fine, the

“Pope and his Gomorrhas.” The utter unrestraint of his language

here and there is only matched by the extravagance of his ideas and

interpretation of the Bible.

All men are priests, he declares; as to Mass priests there should

be none. “I defy the idols and pomps of this world, the Pope and

his parsons. You fine priestlings, can you point out to us in all

the gospels and epistles a single bit of proof that you are or were

intended to act as priests for other Christians?”[219] Whoever dares

to adduce the well-known passages in the Bible to the contrary he

looks on as a “rude, unlettered donkey.” Why? Because he would not

otherwise defend the “smeared and shorn priesthood.” “O worthy

patron of the shaven, oily little gods,” he says to him with mocking

commiseration.[220] We are the persecuted party, we, who, whilst

acknowledging Christ’s presence in the Sacrament, will have nothing

to do with the sacrificial character of the Supper. For whoever

holds fast simply to Christ’s institution is scolded as a heretic by

the Pope. “There they sit, the unlettered, godless hippopotami, on

costly, royal thrones, Pope, Cardinal, bishop, monk and parson with

their schools of Paris and Louvain, and their dear sisters Sodom and

Gomorrah.” As soon as they see the poor, small, despised crew [the

opponents of the Mass] they wax wroth, “frown, turn up their noses,

hold up their hands in horror, and cry: ‘The heretics do not observe

the usage and form of the Roman Church’”; but they themselves are

“unlearned dunces and donkeys.”[221]

The author, whose very pen seems steeped in ire, goes off at a tangent

to speak of the Pope and of celibacy.

He is never tired of explaining “that the abominable and horrid

priesthood of the Papists came into the world from the devil”; “the

Pope is a true apostle of his master the hellish fiend, according to

whose will he lives and reigns”; he has dropped into the holy kingdom

of the priesthood common to all like the “devil’s hog he is, and with

his snout” has befouled, yea, destroyed it; with his celibacy he has

raised up a priesthood which is “a brew of all abominations.”[222] The

devil himself does not suffice to make Luther’s language strong enough

for his liking, and he is driven to his imagination for other ugly

pictures.

“I believe, that, even had the Pope made fornication obligatory, he

would not have given rise to and furthered such great unchastity [as

by celibacy].” “Who can sufficiently deplore the fury of the devil

with his godless, cursed law?” The “Roman knave” wishes to rule

everywhere, and the “universities, those shameless brothels, sit still

and say nothing.... They, like obedient children of the Church, carry

out the commands of the whoremaster. Every Christian ought to resist

him at the risk of his life, even though he had a thousand heads,

because we see how the poor, simple, common folk who stand in terror

of his childish, shameful Bulls, do, and submit to, whatever the

damned Roman rogue invents with the help of the devil.”[223]

Many of his contemporaries may well be excused for having felt that

such language was the result of the Pope’s Bull; the curse of the

Church had overtaken Luther, in the solitude of the Wartburg it had

done its work, and now the spirit of evil and darkness had gained

complete mastery.[224]

“So great,” he cries, “is God’s anger over this vale of Tafet and

Hinnan that those who are most learned, and live most chastely, do

more harm than those who learn nothing and live in fornication.” “O

unhappy wretches that we are, who live in these latter days among

so many Baalites, Bethelites and Molochites, who all appear so

spiritual and Christian, and yet have swallowed up the whole world and

themselves desire to be the only Church; they live and laugh in their

security and freedom, instead of weeping tears of blood over the cruel

murder of the children of our people.”[225]

In conclusion, he gives his open approval to the Wittenbergers, that

“Mass is no longer said, that there is no more organ-playing,” and

that “bleating and bellowing” has ceased in the Church, so that the

Papists say: “They are all heretics and have gone crazy.”[226] It

seems to him that Saxony is the happiest of lands, “because there the

living truth of the Gospel has arisen”; surely the Elector Frederick

must be the Prince, foretold by prophecy, who was to deliver the Holy

Sepulchre; himself he compares to the “Angel at the Sepulchre,” or to

Magdalene who announced the Resurrection.[227]

His self-confidence and arrogance had not been shaken by the many weary

hours of lonely introspection in the Wartburg, but, on the contrary,

had been nourished and inflamed. That was the period of his “spiritual

baptism”; he felt volcanic forces surging up within him. He believed

that a power from above had commanded him to teach as he was doing.

Hence he called the Wartburg his Patmos; as the Apostle John had

received his revelation on Patmos, so, as he thought, he also had been

favoured in his seclusion with mysterious communications from above.

The idea of a divine commission now began to penetrate all his being

with overwhelming force.

When the ecclesiastical troubles at Wittenberg necessitated his

permanent return thither, he declared to the Elector, who had hitherto

never heard such language from his lips, “Your Electoral Grace is

already aware, or, if unaware, is hereby apprised of the fact, that I

have not received the Gospel from man, but from heaven only, through

Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I might already have accounted myself

and signed myself a servant and evangelist, and for the future shall

do so.”[228] We must also refer to the days of his Saxon Patmos--which

exercised so deep an influence on his interior life--the remarkable

mystical utterance to which his pupils afterwards declared he had given

vent at a later date, viz. that he had been “commanded,” nay, “enjoined

under pain of eternal reprobation (‘_interminaretur_’) not to doubt in

any way of these things [of the doctrines he was to teach].”[229]

Every road that led back to his duty to the Church and his Order

was barred by the gloomy enthusiasm Luther kindled within himself,

subsequently to his spiritual baptism in the Wartburg.

The time spent in the Wartburg brought him his final conviction in

his calling as a prophet and his divine commission, but if we are to

understand Luther aright we must not forget that this conviction was a

matter of gradual growth (cp. vol. iii., xvi. 1).

We cannot doubt that even in the first years of his public career,

certainly in 1519 and 1520, the belief in his own divine mission had

begun to take firm root in his mind.

In order to explain the rise of this idea we must turn first of all to

his confidential letters dating from this period; his public writings

in this respect are of less importance. With their help it is possible

to recognise to some extent the course of this remarkable psychological

development. So soon as he had perceived that his discovery, of the

worthlessness of good works, and of justification by faith alone, was

in permanent contradiction to the teaching of the Roman Church, the

presentiment necessarily began to awaken within him, that the whole

body of the faithful had been led by Rome into the greatest darkness.

He fancied himself fortified in this idea by the sight of the real

abuses which had overspread the whole life of the Church in his time.

He thought he descried a universal corruption which had penetrated down

to the very root of ecclesiasticism, and he did not scruple to say so

in his earliest sermons and lectures. He felt it his duty to bewail the

falling away. In the hours in which he gave free play to his fancy, it

even seemed to him that Christ and the Gospel had almost disappeared.

The applause which greeted the appearance of his first writings, and

which he eagerly accepted, confirmed him in his belief that he had made

a most far-reaching discovery. He lacked the sense and discrimination

which might have enabled him to see the too great importance he was

ascribing to his invention. He says in May, 1518, to an elderly

friend who opposed his views: My followers, prelates of the Church

and scholarly men of the world, all rightly admit, that “formerly

they had heard nothing of Christ and the Gospel.” “To put it briefly,

I am convinced that no reform of the Church is possible unless the

ecclesiastical dogmas, the decisions of the Popes, the theology of the

schools, philosophy and logic as they exist at present are completely

altered.... I fear no man’s contradiction when defending such a

thesis.”[230] In the same year, in March, he wrote to a friendly

ecclesiastic, that the theologians who had hitherto occupied the

professorial chairs, viz. the schoolmen, did not understand the Gospel

and the Bible one bit. “To quibble about the meaning of words is not to

interpret the Gospel. All the Professors, Universities and Doctors are

nothing but shadows whom you have no cause to be afraid of.”[231]

If he wished to proceed further--and we know how he allowed himself to

be carried away--he could not do otherwise than assume to himself the

dignity of a divinely appointed teacher. No one save a prophet could

dare condemn the whole of the past in the way he was doing.

During the excitement incidental to periods of transition such as

Luther’s, belief in a supernatural calling was no rare thing. Those who

felt within themselves unusual powers and wished to assume the command

of the movements of the day not unfrequently laid claim to a divine

mission. Not only fanatics from the ranks of the Anabaptists, but

worldly minded men, such as Hutten and Sickingen, dreamt, in Luther’s

day, of great enterprises for which they had been chosen. In short,

there were only two courses open to Luther, either to draw back when

it was seen that the Church remained resolutely opposed to him, or to

vindicate his assaults by representing himself as a messenger sent by

God. Luther was not slow to adopt the latter course. The idea to him

was no mere passing fancy, but took firm root in his mind. He assured

his friends that he was daily receiving new light from God in this

matter through the study of the Scripture.

It was under the influence of this persuasion that, in January, 1518,

he wrote the following remarkable words to Spalatin: “To those who are

desirous of working for the glory of God, an insight into the written

Word of God is given from above, in answer to their prayers; this I

have experienced” (“_experto crede ista_”); he says that the action

of the Holy Ghost may be relied on, and urges others to do as he has

done.[232] It would also appear, that, believing firmly that he was

under the “influence of the Holy Ghost,” he, for a while, cherished the

illusion that the Church would gradually come over to his teaching.

When at length he was forced to recognise that the ecclesiastical

authorities were, on the contrary, determined to check him, he decided

to throw overboard all the preceding ages and the whole authority of

the Church. As a natural consequence he then proceeded to reform the

old and true idea of the Church. The preserving and proclaiming of

the faith is committed to no external teaching office instituted by

Christ, such was his teaching, but simply to the illumination of the

Spirit; each one is led by this interior guide; it is the Spirit who is

directing me in the struggle just commenced and who, through me, will

bring back to the world the Gospel which has so long lain hidden under

rubbish.

5. Wartburg Legends

Luther’s adversaries have frequently taken the statements contained

in the letters of the lonely inmate of the castle[233] concerning

his carnal temptations, and his indulgence in eating and drinking

(“_crapula_”), rather too unfavourably, as though he had been

referring to real, wilful sin rather than to mere temptation, and as

though Luther was not exaggerating in his usual vein when he speaks

of his attention to the pleasures of the table. At least no proof is

forthcoming in favour of this hostile interpretation.

On the other hand, the attempts constantly made by Luther’s supporters

to explain away the sensual lusts from which he tells us he suffered

there, and likewise the enticements (“_titillationes_”) which he

had admitted even previously to Staupitz his Superior, as nothing

more than worldliness, inordinate love of what is transitory, and

temptations to self-seeking, are certainly somewhat strange. Why, we

may ask, make such futile efforts?[234] Is it in order to counteract

the exaggerations of Luther’s opponents, who, in popular works, have

recently gone so far as, in all good faith, to declare the “trouble”

(“_molestiæ_”) of which Luther complained in his correspondence at that

time, was the result of disease arising from the sins of his youth,

though, from the context, it is clear that the “trouble” in question

was simply a prosaic attack of constipation.[235]

Luther related later, according to the “Table-Talk,”[236] how the wife

of “Hans von Berlips [Berlepsch, the warden of the Wartburg] coming to

Eisenach,” and “scenting” that he (Luther) was in the Castle, would

have liked to see him; but as this was not permitted he had been taken

to another room, while she was lodged in his. Luther mentions this when

alluding to the annoyance from which he complains he suffered owing to

the noisy ghosts of the Wartburg, whom he took for devils. Two pages,

who brought him food and drink twice a day, were the only human beings

allowed to visit him. He relates that during the night she spent in his

room this woman was likewise disturbed by ghosts: “All that night there

was such a to-do in the room that she thought a thousand devils were in

it.” The fact is that Berlepsch, the Warden of the Castle, was not then

married, wedding Beata von Ebeleben only in 1523.[237] Hence we have

here either an anachronism when the visitor to the Wartburg is spoken

of as being already his wife, or a case of mistaken identity. Luther

speaks of the visit quite simply. The woman’s object in calling at the

Castle may very well have been to gratify her feminine curiosity by a

sight of Luther, and to pay a visit to the Warden. The supposition that

the slightest misconduct took place between Luther and the visitor can

only be classed in the category of the fictitious.

The mention of the diabolical spectres infesting the Wartburg calls to

mind the famous ink-stain on one of the walls of the Castle.

The tradition is that it was caused by Luther hurling his inkpot at the

devil, who was disputing with him. The tradition is, however, a legend

which probably had its origin in a murky splash on the wall. In Köstlin

and Kawerau’s new biography of Luther this has already been pointed

out, and the fact recalled that in 1712 Peter the Great was shown a

similar stain in Luther’s room at Wittenberg, not in the Wartburg,

and that Johann Salomo Semler, a well-known Protestant writer, in his

Autobiography published in 1781, mentions a like stain in the fortress

of Coburg where Luther had tarried.[238]