the outburst of its enemies at this time. One thing is very observable:
that its claims to supremacy and obedience were, ostensibly at least,
almost universally acquiesced in. From Norway to Calabria the theory
of a Universal Church, divinely founded and divinely sustained, in
possession of superhuman power and uncommunicated knowledge, governed
by an infallible chief, and administered by an uninterrupted line
of priests and bishops, who had given up the vanities of the world,
satisfier of doubts, and sole instrument of salvation,--this seemed so
perfect and so natural an organization that it had been accepted from
time immemorial as incapable of denial. If a voice was heard here and
there in an Alpine valley or in a scholastic debating-room impugning
these arrangements or asking proof from history or revelation, the
civil power was let loose upon the gainsayer, with the general consent
of orthodox men, and the Vaudois were murdered with sword and spear
and the inquiring student chained in his monkish cell. The theory and
organization of the Universal Church were, in fact, never so well
defined as at the moment when its reign was drawing to a close. Nobody
doubted that a general Father, clothed in infallible wisdom, and armed
with powers directly committed to him for the guidance or punishment of
mankind, was the Heaven-sent arbiter of differences, the rewarder of
faithful kings, the corrector of unruly nations; and yet the spectacle
was presented, to the believers in this ideal, of a series of wicked
and abandoned rulers sitting in Peter's chair, and only imitating the
apostle in his furiousness and his denial; cardinals depraved and
worldly beyond the example of temporal princes; a priesthood steeped,
for the most part, in ignorance and vice, and monks and nuns the
_opprobria_ of all nations where they were found. Never were claims
and performances brought into such startling contrast before. The
Pope was the representative upon earth of the Saviour of men; and he
poisoned his guests, like Borgia, slew his opponents, like Julius,
or led the life of an intellectual epicure, like Leo the Tenth. In
former times the contrariety between doctrine and practice would have
been slightly known or easily reconciled. Few comparatively visited
Rome; cardinals were seldom seen; priests were not more ignorant than
their parishioners, and monks not more wicked than their admirers. All
believed in the miraculous efficacy of the wares in which even the
lower order of the clergy dealt, and their rule in country places was
so lax, their penances so easily performed or commuted, their relations
with their people so friendly and on such equal terms, that in the
rural districts the voice of complaint was either unheard or neglected.
In Italy, the head-quarters of the faith, the excesses of priestly
rule were the most glaring and wide-spread. Rome itself was always the
seat of turbulence and disaffection. The lives of professedly holy men
were known, and the vices of popes and prelates pressed heavily on the
people, who were the first victims of their avarice or cruelty. But
the utmost extent of their indignation never reached to a questioning
of the foundation of the power from which they suffered. An Italian
crushed to the earth by the extortion of his Church, irritated perhaps
by the personal wickedness of his director, sought no escape from such
inflictions in disbelieving either the temporal or spiritual authority
of his oppressor. Rather he would have looked with savage satisfaction
on the fagot-fire of any one who hinted that the principles of his
Church required the slightest amendment; that the absolution of his
sensual confessor was not altogether indispensable; that the image he
bowed down to was common wood, or that the relics he worshipped were
merely dead men's bones. Perhaps, indeed, in those luxurious regions,
a bare and unadorned worship would not seem to be worship at all. With
his impassioned mind and glowing fancy, the Spaniard or Italian must
pour out his whole being on the object of his adoration. He loves his
patron saint with the warmth of an earthly affection, and thinks he
undervalues her virtues or her claims if he does not heap her shrine
with his offerings and address her image with rapture. He must make
external demonstration of his inward feelings, or nobody will believe
in their existence. The crouchings and kneelings, therefore, which our
colder natures stigmatize as idolatry, are to him nothing more than
the outward manifestation of affection and thankfulness. He does the
same to his master or his benefactor without degradation in the eyes
of his countrymen. Without these bowings and genuflections his conduct
would be thought ungrateful and disrespectful. That this amount of
warm-hearted sincerity is wasted upon such unworthy objects as his
saints and relics is greatly to be deplored; but wide allowances must
be made for peculiarities of situation and disposition; and we should
remember that whereas in the North a religion of forms and ceremonies
would be a body without a soul, because there would be no inward
exaltation answering to the outward manifestation, the Southern heart
sees a meaning where there is none to us, is conscious of a sense of
trust and reverence where we only see slavishness and imposture, and
a feeling of divine consolation and hope in services which to us are
histrionic and absurd. Religious belief, in the sense of a true and
undivided faith in the doctrines of Christianity, had no recognised
existence at the period we have reached. But this absence of religious
belief was combined, however strange the statement may appear, with
a most implicit trust in the directions and authority of the Church.
Sunny skies might have shone forever over the political abasement
and slightly Christianized paganism of the inhabitants of the two
peninsulas and the Southeast of Europe, but a cloud was about to rise
in the North which dimmed them for a time, but which, after it burst
in purifying thunder, has refreshed and cleared the atmosphere of the
whole world.
The first book that Guttenberg published in 1451 was the Holy
Bible,--in the Latin language, to be sure, and after the Vulgate
edition, but still containing, to those who could gather it, the
manna of the Word. Two years after that, in 1453, the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks had scattered the learning of the Greeks
among all the nations of the West. The universities were soon supplied
with professors, who displayed the hitherto-unexplored treasures of the
language of Pericles and Demosthenes. Everywhere a spirit of inquiry
began to reawaken, but limited as yet to subjects of philosophy and
antiquity. Christianity, indeed, had so lost its hold on the minds of
scholars that it was not considered worth inquiring into. It was looked
on as a fable, and only profitable as an instrument of policy. Erasmus
was alarmed at the state of feeling in 1516, and expressed his belief
that, if those Grecian studies were pursued, the ancient deities would
resume their sway. But the Bible was already reaping its appointed
harvest. Its voice, lost in the din of speculative philosophies and
the dissipation of courts, was heard in obscure places, where it never
had penetrated before. In 1505, Luther was twenty-two years of age. He
had made himself a scholar by attendance at schools where his poverty
almost debarred him from appearing. At Eisenach he gained his bread by
singing at the richer inhabitants' doors. Afterwards he had gone to
Erfurt, and, tired or afraid of the world, anxious for opportunities
of self-examination, and dissatisfied with his spiritual state, he
entered the convent of the Augustines, and in two years more, in 1507,
became priest and monk. There was an amazing amount of goodness and
simplicity of life among the brotherhood of this community. Learning
and devout meditation were encouraged, holy ascetic lives were led, the
body was kept under with fastings and stripes. A Bible was open to them
all, but chained to its place in the chapel, and only to be studied
by standing before the desk on which it lay. All these things were
insufficient, and Brother Martin was miserable. His companions pitied
and respected him. Staupitz, a man of great rank in the Church, a sort
of inspector-general of a large district, visited the convent, and in
a moment was attracted by the youthful monk. He conversed with him,
soothed his agitated mind, not with anodynes from the pharmacopoeia of
the Church, but from the fountain-head of the faith. He painted God as
the forgiver of sinners, the Father of all men; and Luther took some
comfort. But, on going away, the kind-hearted Staupitz gave the young
man a Bible,--a Bible all to himself, his own property, to carry in
his bosom, to study in his cell. His vocation was at once fixed. The
Reformer felt his future all before him, like Achilles when he grasped
the sword and rejected the feminine toys. The books he had taken
with him into the monastery were Plautus and Virgil; but he studied
plays and epics no more. Augustin and the Bible supplied their place.
Hungering for better things than the works of the law,--abstinence,
prayer-repetitions, scourgings, and all the wearisome routine of
mechanical devotion,--he dashed boldly into the other extreme, and
preached free grace,--grace without merit, the great doctrine which is
called, theologically, "justification by faith alone." This had been
the main theme of his master Augustin, and Luther now gave it practical
shape. In 1510 he was sent on some business of his convent to Rome,--to
Rome, the head-quarters of the Church, the earthly residence of the
infallible! How holy will be its dwellings, how gracious the words of
its inhabitants! The German monk saw nothing but sin and infidelity.
In high places as in low, the taint of corruption was polluting all
the air. In terror and dismay, he left the city of iniquity within
a fortnight of his arrival, and hurried back to the peacefulness of
his convent. "I would not for a hundred thousand florins have missed
seeing Rome," he said, long afterwards. "I should always have felt
an uneasy doubt whether I was not, after all, doing injustice to the
Pope. As it is, I am quite satisfied on the point." The Pope was Julius
the Second, whose career we followed in the League of Cambrai; and
we may enter into the surprise of Luther at seeing the Father of the
Faithful breathing blood and ruin to his rival neighbours. But the
force of early education was still unimpaired. The Pope was Pope, and
the devout German thought of him on his knees. But in the year 1517 a
man of the name of Tetzel, a Dominican of the rudest manners and most
brazen audacity, appeared in the market-place of Wittenberg, ringing a
bell, and hawking indulgences from the Holy See to be sold to all the
faithful. A new Pope was on the throne,--the voluptuous Leo the Tenth.
He had resolved to carry on the building of the great Church of St.
Peter, and, having exhausted his funds in riotous living, he sent round
his emissaries to collect fresh treasures by the sale of these pardons
for human sin. "Pour in your money," cried Tetzel, "and whatever crimes
you have committed, or may commit, are forgiven! Pour in your coin,
and the souls of your friends and relations will fly out of purgatory
the moment they hear the chink of your dollars at the bottom of the
box." Luther was Doctor of Divinity, Professor in the University,
and pastoral visitor of two provinces of the empire. He felt it was
his duty to interfere. He learned for the first time himself how far
indulgences were supposed to go, and shuddered at the profanity of the
notion of their being of any value whatever. On the festival of All
Saints, in November, 1517, he read a series of propositions against
them in the great church, and startled all Germany like a thunderbolt
with a printed sermon on the same subject. The press began its work,
and people no longer fought in darkness. Nationalities were at an end
when so wide-embracing a subject was treated by so universal an agent.
The monk's voice was heard in all lands, even in the walls of Rome, and
crossed the sea, and came in due time to England. "Tush, tush! 'tis
a quarrel of monks," said Leo the Tenth; and, with an affectation of
candour, he remarked, "This Luther writes well: he is a man of fine
genius."
Gallant young Henry the Eighth thought it a good opportunity to show
his talent, and meditated an assault on the heretic,--a curious duel
between a pale recluse and the gayest prince in Christendom. But
the recluse was none the worse when the book was published, and the
prince earned from the gratitude of the Pope the name "Defender of
the Faith," which is still one of the titles of the English crown.
Penniless Maximilian looked on well pleased, and wrote to a Saxon
counsellor, "All the popes I have had any thing to do with have been
rogues and cheats. The game with the priests is beginning. What your
monk is doing is not to be despised: take care of him. It may happen
that we shall have need of him." Luther's own prince, the Elector of
Saxony, was his firm friend, and on one side or other all Europe was
on the gaze. Leo at last perceived the danger, and summoned the monk
to Rome. He might as well have yielded in the struggle at once, for
from Rome he never could have returned alive. He consented, however, to
appear before the Legate at Augsburg, attended by a strong body-guard
furnished by the Elector, and held his ground against the threats
and promises of the Cardinal of Cajeta. But Maximilian carried his
poverty and disappointment to the grave in 1519; and when Leo saw
the safe accession of his successor Charles the Fifth, the faithful
servant of St. Peter, he pushed matters with a higher hand against
the daring innovator. Brother Martin, however, was unmoved. He would
not retreat; he even advanced in his course, and wrote to the Pope
himself an account of the iniquities of Rome. "You have three or four
cardinals," he says, "of learning and faith; but what are these three
or four in so vast a crowd of infidels and reprobates? The days of
Rome are numbered, and the anger of God has been breathed forth upon
her. She hates councils, she dreads reforms, and will not hear of a
check being placed on her desperate impiety." This was a dangerous
man to meet with such devices as bulls and interdicts. Charles
determined to try harsher measures, and summoned him to appear at
a Diet of the States held in Worms. The emperor was now twenty-one
years old. His sceptre stretched over the half of Europe, and across
the great sea to the golden realm of Mexico. Martin begged a new gown
from the not very lavish Elector, and went in a sort of chariot to
the appointed city,--serene and confident, for he had a safe-conduct
from the emperor and various princes, and trusted in the goodness of
his cause. [A.D. 1521.] Such a scene never occurred in any age of the
world as was presented when the assemblage met. All the peers and
potentates of the German Empire, presided over by the most powerful
ruler that ever had been known in Europe, were gathered to hear the
trial and condemnation of a thin, wan-visaged young man, dressed in
a monk's gown and hood and worn with the fatigues and hazards of his
recent life. "Yet prophet-like that lone one stood, with dauntless
words and high," and answered all questions with force and modesty.
But answers were not what the Diet required, and retractation was
far from Luther's mind. So the Chancellor of Trèves came to him and
said, "Martin, thou art disobedient to his Imperial Majesty: wherefore
depart hence under the safe-conduct he has given thee." And the monk
departed. As he was nearing his destination, and was passing through a
wood alone, some horsemen seized his person, dressed him in military
garb, and put on him a false beard. They then mounted him on a led
horse and rode rapidly away. His friends were anxious about his fate,
for a dreadful sentence had been uttered against him by the emperor on
the day when his safe-conduct expired, forbidding any one to sustain
or shelter him, and ordering all persons to arrest and bring him into
prison to await the judgment he deserved. People thought he had been
waylaid and killed, or at all events sent into a dungeon. Meantime he
was living peaceably and comfortably in the castle of Wartburg, to
which he had been conveyed in this mysterious manner by his friend the
Elector,--safe from the machinations of his enemies, and busily engaged
in his immortal translation of the Bible.
The movement thus communicated by Luther knew no pause nor end.
It soon ceased to be a merely national excitement caused by local
circumstances, and became the one great overwhelming question of
the time. Every thing was brought into its vortex: however distant
might be its starting-point, to this great central idea it was sure
to attach itself at last. Involuntarily, unconsciously, unwillingly,
every government found that the Reformation formed part of its scheme
and policy. One nation, and one only, had the clear eye and firm
hand to make it ostensibly, and of its deliberate choice, the guide
and landmark in its dangerous and finally triumphant career. This
was England,--not when under the degrading domination of its Henry
or the heavy hand of its Mary, but under the skilful piloting of the
great Elizabeth, the first of rulers who seems to have perceived that
submission to a foreign priest is a political error on the part both
of kings and subjects, and that occupation by a foreign army is not
more subversive of freedom and independence than the supremacy of a
foreign Church. Hitherto England had been nearly divided from the whole
world, and was merely one of the distant satellites that revolved on
the outside of the European system, the centre of which was Rome.
She was now to burn with light of her own. The Continent, indeed,
at the commencement of the Reformation, seemed almost in a state of
dissolution. In 1529 disunion had attained such a pitch in the Empire
that the different princes were ranged on hostile sides. At the Diet
of Spires, in this year, the name of Protestant had been assumed by
the opponents of the excesses and errors of the Church of Rome. At
the same time that the religious unity was thus finally thrown off,
the Turks were thundering at the Eastern gates of Europe, and Solyman
of Constantinople laid siege to Vienna. France was exhausted with her
internal troubles. Spain came to the rescue of the outraged faith, and
made heresy punishable with death throughout all her dominions. While
the Netherlands, against which this was directed, was groaning under
this new infliction, disorder seemed to extend over the solid earth
itself. There were earthquakes and great storms in many lands. Lisbon
was shaken into ruins, with a loss of thirty thousand inhabitants; and
the dykes of Holland were overwhelmed by a prodigious rising of the
sea, and four hundred thousand people were drowned.