unanimous cry of horror. The noblest of the duke’s subjects flung
off their allegiance. His very servants quitted him in disgust. His
fellow-princes invoked justice against him and Ulrich von Hutten, from
his sick couch at Ems, penned eloquent appeals to the German nation, to
rise and crush the ruthless wretch who had quenched in blood, the life,
the light, the hope, the very flower of Teutonic chivalry.
The “Philippics” of Ulrich were mainly instrumental in raising a
terrible Nemesis to take vengeance upon his ducal namesake; and he
afterward wrote his “Phalarismus” to show that the tyrant excited
horror, even in the infernal regions. The opening sentence--“Jacta
est alea!” became his motto; and his family took for its apt
device--“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!” From this time
forward, Ulrich von Hutten was a public man, and became one of the
foremost heroes of his heroic age. He was now scholar, poet, and knight.
His fame would have been a pleasant thing to him, but the pleasure was
temporarily diminished by the death of his old benefactor, Eitelwolf
von Stein. The latter was the first German statesman who was also a
great scholar; and _his_ example first shook the prejudice, that for a
knight or nobleman to be book-learned was derogatory to his chivalry
and nobility. Into the area of public warfare Ulrich now descended,
and the enemies of light trembled before the doughty champion. The
collegiate teachers at Cologne, with Hogstraten, the Inquisitor,
Pfefierkorn, a converted Jew, and Ortuin--at their head, had directed
all the powers of the scholastic prejudices against Reuchlin and his
followers, who had declared, that not only Greek, but Hebrew should
form a portion of the course of study for those destined to enter the
Church. The ancient party pronounced this Heathenism; Reuchlin and
his party called it Reason, and Germany, was split in two, upon the
question.
At the very height of the contest, a lad with a sling and a stone
entered the lists, and so dexterously worked his missiles, that the
enemy of learning was soon overcome. The lad was Von Hutten, who, as
chief author of those amusing satires, “Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum,”
ruined Monkery and paralyzed Rome, by making all the world laugh at the
follies, vices, crimes, and selfish ignorance of both.
Leo X. was so enraged, that he excommunicated the authors, and devoted
them to damnation. “I care no more,” said Von Hutten, “for the bull
of excommunication than I do for a soap-bubble.” The reputation he
had acquired, helped him to a reconciliation with his family; but the
members thereof had only small respect for a mere learned knight. They
urged him to qualify himself for a chancellor, and to repair to Rome,
and study the law accordingly.
Something loath, he turned his face toward the Tyber, in 1515. The
first news received of the law-student was to the effect, that having
been attacked, dagger in hand, at a pic-nic, near Viterbo, by five
French noblemen, whom he had reproved for speaking ill of Germany and
the Emperor Maximilian, he had slain one and put the other four to
flight. From this fray he himself escaped with a slash on the cheek. He
recounted his victory in a song of triumph, and when the law-student
sat down to his books, every one in Rome acknowledged that his sword
and his pen were equally pointed.
His French adversaries threatened vengeance for their humiliating
defeat; and he accordingly avoided it, by withdrawing to Bologne, where
he again, with hearty disgust, applied himself to the severe study of a
law which was never applied for justice sake. He found compensation in
penning such stirring poetry as his satirical “Nemo,” and in noting the
vices of the priesthood with the intention of turning his observation
to subsequent profit. A feud between the German and Italian students at
Bologna soon drove our scholar from the latter place. He took himself
to Ferrara and Venice; was welcomed everywhere by the learned and
liberal, and, as he wrote to Erasmus, was loaded by them with solid
pudding as well as empty praise.
From this journey he returned to his native country. He repaired to
Augsburg, where Maximilian was holding court, and so well was he
commended to the emperor, that on the 15th of June, 1517, that monarch
dubbed him Imperial Knight, placed a gold ring, symbolic of chivalrous
dignity, on his finger, and crowned him a poet, with a laurel wreath,
woven by the fairest flower of Augsburg, Constance Peutinger.
After such honors, his father received him with joy at his hearth;
and while Von Hutten went from his native Stackelberg to the library
at Fulda, yet hesitating whether to take service under the Emperor or
under the Elector of Mayence, he bethought himself of the irrefutable
work of Laurentius Valla against the temporal authority and possessions
of the Popedom. He studied the work well, published an improved
edition, and dedicated it, in a letter of fire and ability, to Leo
X.;--a proof of his hope in, or of his defiance of, that accomplished
infidel.
Luther and Von Hutten were thus, each unconscious of the other,
attacking Popery on two points, about the same moment. Luther employed
fearful weapons in his cause, and wielded them manfully. Von Hutten
only employed, as yet, a wit which made all wither where it fell; and
an irony which consumed where it dropped. In the handling of these
appliances, there was no man in Germany who was his equal. Leo could
admire and enjoy both the wit and the irony; and he was not disinclined
to agree with the arguments of which they were made the supports; but
what he relished as a philosopher, he condemned as a Pontiff. The
Florentine, Lorenzo de’ Medici, could have kissed the German on either
cheek, but the Pope, Leo X., solemnly devoted him to Gehenna.
As a protection against papal wrath, Von Hutten entered the service of
Albert, Elector-Archbishop of Mayence. Albert was a liberal Romanist,
but nothing in the least of an Ultra-Montanist. He loved learning and
learned men, and he recollected that he was a German before he was
a Romanist. In the suite of the elector, Von Hutten visited Paris,
in 1518. He returned to Mayence only to carry on more vigorously his
onslaught against the begging monks. He accounted them as greater
enemies to Germany than the Turks. “We fight with the latter, beyond
our frontier for power; but the former are the corrupters of science,
of religion, of morals--and they are in the very midst of us.” So does
he write, in a letter to Graf Nuenar, at Cologne.
The building of St. Peter’s cost Rome what the building of Versailles
cost France--a revolution. In each case, an absolute monarchy was
overthrown never again to rise. To provide for the expenses of
St. Peter’s, the Dominican Tetzel traversed Germany, selling his
indulgences. Luther confronted him, and denounced his mission, as well
as those who sent him on it. Von Hutten, in his hatred of monks, looked
upon this as a mere monkish squabble; and he was glad to see two of the
vocation holding one another by the throat.
At this precise moment, Germany was excited at the idea of a projected
European expedition against the Turks. The Imperial Knight saw clearly
the perils that threatened Christendom from that question, and was
ready to rush, sword in hand, to meet them. He declared, however, that
Europe groaned under a more insupportable yoke, laid on by Rome, and
he deprecated the idea of helping Rome with funds against the Moslem.
What a change was here from the Imperial crusading knights of a few
centuries earlier. “If Rome,” he said, “be serious on the subject of
such a crusade, we are ready to fight, but she must pay us for our
services. She shall not have both our money and our blood.” He spoke,
wrote, and published boldly against Rome being permitted to levy taxes
in Germany, on pretence of going to war with the unbelieving Ottomans.
At the same moment, Luther was denouncing the monks who thought to
enrich the coffers of Rome by the sale of indulgences. One was the
political, the other the religious enemy of the power which sought to
rule men and their consciences from under the shadow of the Colosseum.
There was little hope of aid from the emperor, but Von Hutten looked
for all the help the cause needed in a union of the citizen classes
(whom he had been wont to satirize) with the nobility. To further the
end in view, he wrote his masterly dialogue of “The Robbers.” In this
piece, the speakers are knights and citizens. Each side blames the
other, but each is made acquainted with the other’s virtues, by the
interposition of a _Deus ex machinâ_ in the presence of the knight,
Franz von Sickingen. The whole partakes of the spirit and raciness of
Bunyan and Cobbett. Throughout the dialogue, the vices of no party in
the state find mercy, while the necessity of the mutual exercise of
virtue and aid is ably expounded.
The knight, Franz von Sickingen, was author of a part of this dialogue.
His adjurations to Von Hutten not to be over-hasty and his reason
why, are no doubt his own. By the production of such papers, Germany
was made eager for the fray. This particular and powerful dialogue
was dedicated to John, Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, and
Count of Spanheim. This illustrious personage had requested Ulrich
that whenever he published any particularly bold book, in support of
national liberty, he would dedicate it to him, the duke. The author
obeyed, in this instance, on good grounds and with right good will.
There is in the dialogue an audible call to war, and this pleased
Luther himself, who was now convinced that with the pen alone, the
Reformation could not be an established fact.
Ulrich longed for the contact, whereby to make his country and his
church free of Romanist tyranny. But he considers the possibility of
a failure. He adjured his family to keep aloof from the strife, that
they might not bring ruin on their heads, in the event of destruction
falling on his own. The parents of Ulrich were now no more; Ulrich
as head of his house was possessed of its modest estates. Of his
own possessions he got rid, as of an encumbrance to his daring and
his gigantic activity. He formally made over nearly all to his next
brother, in order that his enemies, should they ultimately triumph,
might have no ground for seizing them.
At the same time, he warned his brother to send him neither letters nor
money, as either would be considered in the light of aid offered to an
enemy, and might be visited with terrible penalties.
Having rid himself of what few would so easily have parted from, he
drew his sword joyously and independently for the sake of liberty
alone, and with a determination of never sheathing it until he had
accomplished that at which he aimed, or that the accomplishment of such
end had been placed beyond his power.
“Jacta est alea,” cried he, viewing his bright sword, “the die is
thrown, Ulrich has risked it.”
In the meantime Von Hutten remained in the service of the
Elector-Archbishop of Mayence. The courtiers laughed at him as a
rude knight. The knights ridiculed him as a poor philosopher. Both
were mistaken; he was neither poor nor rude, albeit a _Ritter_ and
a sage. What he most cared for, was opportunity to be useful in his
generation, and leisure enough to cultivate learning during the hours
he might call his own. His satirical poems, coarsely enough worded
against a courtier’s life, are admirable for strength and coloring.
Not less admirable for taste and power are his letters of this period.
In them he denounces that nobility which is composed solely of family
pride; and he denounces, with equally good foundation, the life of
“Robber Knights,” as he calls them, who reside in their castles, amid
every sort of discomfort, and a world of dirt, of hideous noises, and
unsavory smells; and who only leave them to plunder or to be plundered.
He pronounces the true knights of the period to be those alone who
love religion and education. With the aid of these, applied wisely and
widely, and with the help of great men whom he names, and who share his
opinions, he hopes, as he fervently declares, to see intellect gain
more victories than force--to be able to bid the old barbarous spirit
which still influenced too many “to gird up its loins and be off.”
Health came to him with this determination to devote himself to the
service and improvement of his fellow-men. It came partly by the use of
simple remedies, the chief of which was moderation in all things. Pen
and sword were now alike actively employed. He put aside the former,
for a moment, only to assume the latter, in order to strike in for
vengeance against the aggressive Duke of Wurtemburg.
The crimes of this potentate had at length aroused the emperor against
him. Maximilian had intrusted the leadership of his army to the famous
knight-errant of his day, Franz von Sickingen. This cavalier had often
been in open rebellion against the emperor himself; and Hutten now
enrolled himself among the followers of Franz. His patron not only
gave him the necessary permission but continued to him his liberal
stipend; when the two knights met, and made their armor clash with
their boisterous embrace, they swore not to stop short of vengeance on
the guilty duke, but to fight to the death for liberty and Christendom.
They slept together in the same bed in token of brotherly knighthood,
and they rose to carry their banner triumphantly against the
duke--ending the campaign by the capture of the metropolis, Stutgardt.
Reuchlin resided in the capital, and the good man was full of fear; for
murder and rapine reigned around him. His fear was groundless, for Von
Hutten had urged Sickingen to give out that in the sack of Stutgardt,
no man should dare to assail the dwelling of Reuchlin. The two knights
left the city to proceed to the spot in the wood where still lay buried
the body of the murdered John von Hutten. “It had lain four years
in the grave,” said Ulrich, “but the features were unchanged. As we
touched him, blood flowed afresh from his wounds; recognise in this the
witness of his innocence.” The corpse was eventually transported to the
family vault at Esslingen.
The cities of the hard-pressed duke fell, one after the other, and the
guilty prince was driven from his inheritance. Von Hutten remained with
the army, busily plying his pen; his sword on the table before him,
his dagger on his hip, and himself encased in armor to the throat.
Erasmus laughingly wrote to him to leave Mars and stick to the Muses.
He scarcely needed this advice, for his letters from the camp show that
fond as he was of the field, he loved far better the quiet joys of the
household hearth. Amid the brazen clangor of trumpets, the neighing of
steeds, the rolling of the drum, and the boom of battle, he writes to
Piscator (Fischer), his longing for home, and his desire for a wife to
smile on, and care for him; one who would soothe his griefs and share
his labors--“One,” he says, “with whom I might sportively laugh and
feel glad in our existence--who would sweeten the bitter of life and
alleviate the pressure of care. Let me have a wife, my dear Friederich,
and thou knowest how I would love her ... young, fair, shy, gentle,
affectionate, and well-educated. She may have some fortune, but not
excess of it; and as for position, this is my idea thereon: that _she_
will be noble enough whom Ulrich von Hutten chooses for his mate.” As
a wooer, it will be seen that the scholar-knight had as little of the
faint heart as the audacious “Findlay” of Burns, and I might almost
say of Freiligrath, so spiritedly has the latter poet translated into
German the pleasant lines of the Ayrshire ploughman.
Well had it been for Ulrich had he found, in 1519, the wife of his
complacent visions. The gentle hand would have saved him from many a
cruel hour.
On his return to Mayence he had well-nigh obeyed the universal call
addressed to him, to join openly with Luther against Rome. He was
withheld by his regard for his liberal patron, the archbishop. He
remained, partly looking on and partly aiding, on the outskirts of the
field where the fray was raging. He published a superb edition of Livy,
and to show that the reforming spirit still burned brightly in the
bosom of the scholar, he also published his celebrated “Vadiscus, sive
Trias Romana.” This triple-edged weapon still inflicts anguish on Rome.
Never had arrow of such power stricken the harlot before. Its point
is still in her side; and her adversaries knew well how to use it, by
painfully turning it in the wound.
The knight now hung up his sword in his chamber at Stackelberg,
and devoted himself to his pen. In the convent library at Fulda he
discovered an ancient German work against the supremacy of the Pope
over the princes and people of Germany. Of this he made excellent
use. His own productions against Rome followed one another with great
rapidity. Down to the middle of 1520 he was incessantly charging the
Vatican, at the point of a grey goosequill. He had at heart the freeing
of Germany from the ecclesiastical domination of Italy, just as the
men of Northern Italy have it at heart to rescue her from the cruel
domination of Austria.
To accomplish his ends, Von Hutten left no means untried. Knight and
scholar, noble and villain, the very Emperor Charles V. himself,
Ulrich sought to enlist in the great confederacy, by which he hoped to
strike a mortal blow at the temporal power of the “Universal Bishop.”
His books converted even some of the diocesans of the Romish Church;
but Rome thundered excommunication on the books and their author, and
directed a heavy weight of censure against his protector, Albert of
Mayence.
The archbishop admonished Von Hutten, and interdicted his works. This
step decided Ulrich’s course. He at once addressed his first letter to
Luther. It began with the cry of “Freedom for ever!” and it offered
heart, head, soul, body, brains, and purse, in furtherance of the great
cause. He tendered to Luther, in the name of Sickingen, a secure place
of residence; and he established his first unassailable battery against
Rome, by erecting a printing-press in his own room in the castle of
Stackelberg, whence he directed many a raking fire against all his
assailants. “Jacta est alea!” was his cry; “Let the enemies of light
look to it!”
From Fulda he started to the court of the Emperor Charles V. at
Brussels. But his enemies stood between him and the foot of the throne,
and he was not allowed to approach it. His life, too, was being
constantly threatened. He withdrew before these threats, once more into
Germany, taking compensation by the way, for his disappointment, by a
characteristic bit of spirit. He happened to fall in with Hogstraten,
the heretic-finder, and the arch-enemy of Reuchlin. Ulrich belabored
him with a sheathed sword till every bone in the body of Hogstraten
was sore. In return, the knight was outlawed, and Leo X. haughtily
commanded that hands should be laid upon him wherever he might be
found, and that he should be delivered, gagged, and bound, to the Roman
tribunals.
Franz von Sickingen immediately received him within the safe shelter
of his strong fortress of Ebernberg, where already a score of
renowned theological refugees had found an asylum. The colloquies of
the illustrious fugitives made the old walls ring again. Von Hutten
reduced these colloquies to writing, and I may name, as one of their
conclusions, that the service of the mass in German was determined on,
as the first step toward an established reformation.
The attempt of the Pope to have Ulrich seized and sacrificed, was
eagerly applied by the latter to the benefit of the cause he loved.
To the emperor, to the elector, to the nobles, knights, and states
of Germany, he addressed papers full of patriotism, eloquence, and
wisdom, against the aggression on German liberty. Throughout Germany
this scholar-knight called into life the spirit of civil and religious
freedom, and Luther, looking upon what Ulrich was doing, exclaimed:
“Surely the last day is at hand!”
These two men, united, lit up a flame which can never be trodden out.
One took his Bible and his pen, and with these pricked Rome into a
fury, from which she has never recovered. The other, ungirding his
sword, and transferring his printing-press to Ebernberg, sent therefrom
glowing manifestoes which made a patriot of every reader.
The lyre and learning were both now employed by Von Hutten, in
furtherance of his project. His popular poetry was now read or sung at
every hearth. Not a village was without a copy, often to be read by
stealth, of his “Complaint and Admonition.” His dialogues, especially
that called the “Warner,” in which the colloquists are a Roman alarmist
and Franz von Sickingen himself, achieved a similar triumph. It was to
give heart to the wavering that Von Hutten wrote, and sent abroad from
his press at Ebernberg, those remarkable dialogues.
Franz von Sickingen, his great protector, was for a season apprehensive
that Ulrich’s outcry against Rome was louder than necessary, and
his declared resolution to resent oppression by means of the sword,
somewhat profane. Ulrich reasoned with and read to the gallant knight.
His own good sense, and the arguments of Luther and Ulrich, at length
convinced him that it was folly and sin to maintain outward respect
for Rome as long as the latter aspired to be lord in Germany, above
the kaiser himself. Franz soon agreed with Hutten that they ought not
to heed even the Emperor, if he commanded them to spare the Pope,
when such mercy might be productive of injury to the empire. In such
cases, not to obey was the best obedience. They would not now look
back. “It is better,” so runs it in Von Hutten’s “Warner,” “to consider
what God’s will is, than what may enter the heads of individuals,
capricious men, more especially in the case wherein the truth of the
Gospel is concerned. If it be proved that nothing satisfactory, by way
of encouragement, can come to us from the Emperor, they who love the
Church and civil liberty must be bold at their own peril, let the issue
be what it may.”
The dialogue of the “Warner” was, doubtless, not only read to Sickingen
during the progress of its composition, but was unquestionably a
transcript of much that was talked about, weighed, and considered
between the two friends, as they sat surrounded by a circle of great
scholars and soldiers, for whose blood Rome was thirsting. It ends with
an assurance of the full adhesion of Franz to the views of Ulrich. “In
this matter,” says the “Warner” to the knight of Ebernberg, “I see you
have a passionate and zealous instigator, a fellow named Von Hutten,
who can brook delay with patience, and who has heaped piles upon piles
of stones, ready to fling them at the first adversary who presents
himself.” “Ay, in good sooth,” is the ready answer of Franz, “and his
service is a joy to me, for he has the true spirit requisite to insure
triumph in such a struggle as ours.”
Thus at Ebernburg the battery was played against the defences of
Rome, while Luther, from his known abodes, or from his concealment in
friendly fortresses, thundered his artillery against the doctrines and
superstitions of Rome. The movement had a double aspect. The Germans
were determined to be free both as Christians and as citizens. The
conducting of such determination to its successful issue could not be
intrusted to worthier or more capable hands than those of Luther, aided
by the Saxon Frederick the Wise, and Ulrich von Hutten, with such a
squire at his side as hearty Franz von Sickingen.
In 1521 the young emperor, Charles V., delivered a speech at Worms,
which seemed to have been framed expressly to assure the reformers that
the emperor was with them. It abounded in promises that the kaiser
would do his utmost to effect necessary reforms within the empire.
The reformers were in great spirits, but they soon learned, by the
summoning of Luther to Worms, and by the subsequent conduct of the
emperor, that they had nothing to expect from him which they could
thankfully acknowledge.