THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
I had failed, and I did not conceal from myself one reason why I had
failed. My past life and reputation had detracted from the weight of
my arguments, rather than strengthened them. That I was stark mad, or
perhaps the subject of demoniac possession was the firm impression (I
afterwards learned), of most of my friends in Rome. Letters informing
me as much and chiding me for “casting away the fairest chance that
ever a man had of winning the Pope’s favor,” overtook me whilst I
tarried at Vicenza, breaking my journey north. I had done well to
leave Rome suddenly, otherwise I would surely have been placed under
some restraint as a lunatic, whose folly took the form of heresy.
From Vicenza I wrote to my Venice bankers, bidding them to sell all
my estates and property in Italy to the first fair purchaser, and
remit me the proceeds against goldsmiths’ bills on Augsburg. With the
South I had finished. I dropped the title of Palaestro from my style,
and for better or worse I reëntered Germany as only the “Graf von
Regenstein.”
Even after so brief an absence I could see how the spirit of
excitement and enthusiasm for Luther had swelled. At Tübingen I met
the latest pamphlet by Ulrich von Hutten, the prince of the German
poets and Humanists, who had flown to the cause of Luther. His
pen had been surely dipped in gall. In his biting invectives were
embodied all the implacable hate which had been accumulating among
the men of the North against the Papacy.
Thus ran some of the “triads” in his _Vadiscus, or the Roman Trinity_.
“Three things abound in Rome; antiquities, poison, and ruins.
“Three things the Romans trade in; Christ, church offices, and
women.
“Three things everybody wants in Rome; short masses, good gold,
and a merry life.
“Three things are most praised yet are most rare in Rome;
devotion, faith, and innocence.
“Three things a pilgrim usually brings back from Rome; a soiled
conscience, a sick stomach, an empty purse.
“Three things are most feared in Rome; that the princes get
united, that the people begin to open their eyes, and that Rome’s
frauds come to light.
“Three things only can set Rome right; the determination of the
princes, the impatience of the people, and a host of Turks at her
doors.”
Here I have given only some of the mildest of his onslaughts.
Everybody was reading them. Everybody was believing them. Ploughboys
and tapsters stood around their more literate companions while they
conned aloud the latest pamphlet of the great debate. Glorious
Johannes Gutenberg, what a debt to thee and thy printer’s art, owe
all who love truth, justice, and the freeing of the human soul!
But Hutten had not spoken alone. Louder and clearer than his sounded
the voice from Wittenberg. Dr. Luther had anticipated the tardily
fashioned Bull. The Wittenberg printing-presses had scattered his
pamphlets to wide Germany. It was not to the learned Latinists that
he was speaking now. “The time for silence is gone, and the time
for speaking has come.” So in the words of Ecclesiastes, did the
Augustinian friar begin his “_Address to the German Nobility_,”--the
work that more than any other one book split Christendom into two
hostile camps. On July 20, 1520, just as I was reëntering Germany, it
was published. I met my first copy a few days later at Nuremberg. I
remember sitting up late into the night in the hot room of my inn to
finish it. In the morning I discovered that five other guests in the
selfsame inn had burned out their candles doing the like. Men could
talk of nothing else. I was not amazed to hear that very soon the
presses of Leipzig and Strassburg were busily reprinting.
I fear that if I had seen this book before seeking my audience with
Leo I would have turned back silent, and hazarding nothing. The
Wittenberg preacher had thrown away the scabbard. Such plainness
of speech had not been used against Rome since pagan emperors had
ceased to persecute. I leave to historians and theologians to tell
our children’s children of this book. Cold enough seems the invective
now, perhaps, as the fleeting years bring us German Protestants
slothful safety. But let it be read as I and a million others read
it,--with the great issue trembling on the brink, with the vast
fabric of the One Catholic Church and the One Vicar of Christ its
head tottering as to their fall,--old rooted ideas and beliefs,
things men had sucked in with their mothers’ milk, things men had
learned to believe as certainly as that the sun crosses the sky
toward the west, all these in short seemingly about to perish, and
_then_ perchance some of the glow and battle spirit might come, some
of the hope, fear, trembling, exaltation.
When I read that “the government of the Pope agrees with the
government of the apostles as well as Lucifer with Christ, hell with
heaven, night with day, and yet the Pope calls himself Christ’s
Vicar,” how could my memory fail to race back to the scenes just
witnessed at Rome? I read on and on, involuntarily nodding my head
with approval at even the fiercest invective. I was in no mood
to analyze the argument, to weigh the justice of each specific
criticism, of each suggested improvement in churchly discipline.
Nothing seemed spared. Saints’ days, masses for the dead, fasting,
begging pilgrimages, a thousand other things all were written down
in one fiery condemnation. And I smiled when I read “Heretics should
be overcome with books, not with fire, else the hangmen would be the
most learned doctors in the world, and there would be no need of
study.”
“Ah! Monsignori by the Tiber,” quoth I, “you will not be pleased to
have doctrines like that prevail.”
I remember casting the little book upon my pillow, and leaping up
with a laugh which awakened Andrea, who was sleeping on a pallet near
the door.
“Parried! Parried fairly,” I cried; “the sword of Rome is blunted on
the war-club of Germany. Behold the answer to the Papal Bull!”
* * * * *
A few more days of hard riding brought me to Wittenberg. The Elbe
country was all in the green and glory of ripening summer. A golden
haze filled the evening as I cantered over the plain and saw the
great tower of the Schloss-kirche looming ever higher. The honest
peasantry were trudging homeward from the fields. Their genial “Gruss
Gott” was welcome to my ears. All was peace and quietude. Rome
and its atmosphere of ostentatious elegance, suppressed intrigue,
polite scandal, pagan learning, almost faded from my ken. I rode up
the street of the little city. The lamps were being lighted. A few
students were trolling a hearty catch in one of the taverns. Leaving
the horses to be taken by my servants to the Castellan’s I went alone
and unannounced to the Augustinian convent. Familiarity made me enter
boldly. I mounted the stairway and threw open the door of Dr. Luther.
It was the same room that I had entered on an October evening almost
three years before,--the green tile stove, the solid chairs, the
great solid table. Only around the open lattice vines were climbing,
and I caught a heavy perfume from the convent gardens. The room was
very dim, but I stopped involuntarily as I crossed the threshold.
Dr. Luther was kneeling on the praying stool in one corner before a
tall, bare, wooden cross. He was praying softly aloud. I could not
catch the words, but stood awestruck, reverent, for no small time.
Presently he arose and turned. His bold, strong face seemed to shine
out upon me from the gloaming. Then of a sudden he saw me.
“Walter! _Ach! Liebe Gott!_”
He ran up to me, and almost crushed me with his powerful embrace.
Then he led me to the window-seat, and sat for some moments holding
both my hands, and pelting me with questions, so rapidly that I could
hardly answer one, ere he had discharged another.
“Oh! dear Lord Jesus Christ!” he cried at length, “what have I, poor
Brother Martin, done, that the noble Graf von Regenstein should run
this peril for my sake?”
“The peril was nothing, but I am come back a beaten soldier. I have
failed.”
“Yes, the Bull is issued. Good! Asses must bray, wolves howl, and
cardinals clamor for a poor German’s blood. Heaven has made it so. We
cannot complain.”
“Yet consider, dear Dr. Martin, who and what will save us now?”
“_Us?_ ‘Me’ you intended to say.”
“Us, for am I not one with you for life and for death?”
He was silent for an instant, then the grip on my hand was renewed.
“I have not deserved this. I cannot involve noble friends. The cause
will triumph, but very likely over my bones. It must not march over
yours also.”
“Dear Doctor,” said I, “it is you who have taught me to seek God and
to play the man and not the accursed fool. It is ‘us’ from this time
forth, though the Pope and every king rise up against us.”
“I have not deserved this. I thank you.” Then he reached to the table
and took up a Psalter. “Let me say the forty-sixth psalm.”
And in the gray twilight, with the book unopened before him, I heard
his deep voice roll out the majestic Latin of the Vulgate.
“_God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble._
_Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and
though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea._
_Though the waters therefore roar and be troubled: though the
mountains shake with the swelling thereof._
_The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: He uttered His
voice, the earth melted._
_Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the
heathen, I will be exalted in the earth._
_The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge._”
We sat silent again for a long time when he ceased. The daylight
faded. I shall no more forget that hour than I shall forget the scene
in the hunting lodge with Leo de’ Medici. A few years afterward
Luther was to cast this psalm into a hymn which Germany, and many
Christians afar, will verily sing forever, ‘_Ein feste Burg ist unser
Gott_.’...
Not that evening but in the clear warm morning sunlight was the final
issue drawn. I was there with Philip Melanchthon and Dr. Nicolaus
Amsdorf, a careful young theologian who had become Luther’s left
arm, if Melanchthon was his right. Dr. Martin had taken us on a walk
through the brilliant green country down toward the swirling Elbe. As
we walked out of the Eastern Gate two curly headed children, the boy
and girl of some parishioner, ran out to their stalwart friend and
nestled up by him, one on either side. They went along with us for a
while right merrily, talking about their school, their plays and how
their big sister was going to marry a Dessau hops-merchant. Luther
twined his big fingers in their long hair, pinched their red cheeks,
and asked innumerable questions. Then he told them a story of how the
night before he had dreamed of a bright and glorious city, wherein
were a hundred million boys and girls like themselves with marvellous
toys wherewith they never grew weary playing, and most beautiful
clothes which never grew soiled. And he had asked a holy man present
(he thought he was an angel), if the little folk of Wittenberg could
some day enter into that city too? “Yes,” had been the answer, “but
many years hence, after they were grown up, and only then if they
obeyed their parents, learned of their teachers, and loved the dear
God.”
Our artless companions listened open-eyed and trustful, ever asking
for “more stories,” until at last their attention was diverted by
some gorgeous butterflies, and away they went, hot on the chase. Dr.
Martin was looking after them very earnestly.
“Is it not written,” he asked, “‘of such is the kingdom of heaven,’
and again, ‘a little child shall lead them’? Good, they have led us
here! And if it is not God who has led us to-day through them, I am
sure it is not the devil. The devil is far too gloomy a gentleman to
show his ugly nose on so fine a day. Come, Philip; come, all of us.
Let us sit on these old timbers and deliberate, for we are not as the
old Persians, who took advice only in their cups.”
Before us was the rapid river, with here and there a brown,
lumber-laden barge drifting toward Magdeburg. A northern wind made
the open sun delightful. We sat for some time in a contemplative
mood, saying little. At last Dr. Luther broke the silence.
“Hearken, noble and learned friends of a poor and simple friar.
Here I am told that a Bull has been fashioned against me at Rome. A
Bull very terrible, such as princes and kings might well quake to
have launched against them, let alone the son of poor Hans Luther,
the miner of Eisleben. That being the case, if I am to save soul and
body, tell me what I am to do, having neither soldiers nor gulden to
avoid the onslaught?”
The words were lightly said, but I knew not so lightly meant. It was
for no mere summer stroll we had been taken out that day. Amsdorf,
ever cautious, began dryly.
“If you, dear Doctor, would indeed have sound council, you should
assemble all your learned and discreet Wittenberg friends. We lack
alike in years and wisdom.”
But Luther laughed with a kind of irony. “A pest on learned and
discreet friends! I will have friends who are bold and lusty, but not
waxed over wise. A council of graybeards will buzz out as much wisdom
as a wasps’ nest. Three councillors suffice for many princes, and
they shall suffice for me. What think you, Philip?”
Melanchthon stroked his thin beard.
“I was reflecting upon what the Roman Hadrian said upon his
death-bed, if Cassius Dio reports him aright, ‘Many physicians are
the Emperor’s death.’ In numbers we are sufficient, but in sound
judgment--”
“Away with your classic anecdotes. We are not in the lecture hall. I
have led you here for reasonable council, and where is a better place
for it than under God’s blue heaven, where He can see and hear if all
we say and think is aright? For no light matter methinks to go the
road which we have undertaken. And if we are to traverse it, let it
not be as blindfolded oxen goaded to the butcher.”
“Proceed,” we said together.
“Then let the king lay matters before his council. Our noble Walter
von Regenstein here tells me, what is beyond peradventure true, that
a Papal Bull has been prepared and approved, and since his departure
from Italy it has been beyond doubt officially published. It declares
me a heretic, and with me all my adherents and favorers. It orders
the burning of my books. Rumor says that I and my friends are given
sixty days wherein to recant our errors and to burn our books; in
other words, to surrender up our castle with even the innermost keep.
Failing thereof we are cut off as ‘withered branches not abiding in
Christ,’ and to endure that law concerning heretics which has been
from ages provided,--the tenor whereof you know right well. Good,
then, my noble masters; on which horn of the dilemma shall I sit
down? For I am not the first honest monk to whom the paternal father
at Rome has spoken, ‘Turn or burn.’”
He looked from Amsdorf to Melanchthon, from him to me. We looked
sheepishly upon the water. There was nothing hesitant in Luther’s
tone or manner, but we were reluctant to speak.
“Dear Doctor,” at last I said, with a smile, “after the trumpet blast
of your last pamphlet I do not see how we need seek for your answer.”
“Ah, Walter,” he replied, “you are right. And yet I will tell
you--when I sit in my study among my books and think upon all the
evils of the world, I am beside myself. How fortunate it is I am not
God! If I were He, and had committed the government to my son, as He
to His Son, and these vile people were as disobedient to him as they
are now, I would knock the world in pieces. Therefore I would not
renounce the Pope and all his minions whilst in some fine frenzy at
my table, spitting out the fierce words with my ink. Not so. It is
here--where all is peace, calm, sunlight, friendship, that I must do
the deed. And no slight deed, I warrant.”
We all watched his face. He seemed to care little for what we said,
but much that we should see that he was perfectly calm and collected.
“Dear friends,” his deep voice continued, “so far have I gone, but
yet I can go back. Better men than Martin Luther have burned their
books at a Papal summons, and sung their palinode. And I: who am I to
set my weak wisdom against all the learned men, the sainted doctors
and sages who have confirmed the power of Rome?”
“Who are you?” cried I, while Melanchthon affectionately closed both
his delicate hands around one of his master’s great ones. “You are
a prophet and saint, beside whom Aquinas and Albertus Magnus are
unworthy to breathe the same air. Your word is truth. You cannot
fail, or God fails with you!”
“Hear how the dear Graf Walter proves himself the adept courtier and
flatterer, Philip,” responded Dr. Martin. “He would make me think I
was a prince or a cardinal if he could. But he speaks in one thing
the truth. Of late I have come to know how it was that the apostle
wrote, ‘It is no more I that live, but Christ Jesus which liveth in
me.’ Oh! blessed assurance, such as no Pope can give, with all his
power from his high throne. For thanks to God’s word I am possessed
by His Truth, and after that--what can man do unto me?”
“Dr. Luther,” said Melanchthon slowly, “you know that it is yours to
speak, it is ours to follow. Long since you have learned all that.”
The Augustinian’s spare form grew straighter as he sat. His hands
pressed hard upon his knees, but his voice was calm when he answered
us.
“Hear, then, comrades and beloved. The Church wherein I have been
born and bred, the Pope whom I have been taught to reverence--these
have cast me off, because I have been obedient to the voice of God.
Graf Walter here, on the night of the theses, warned me of this.
I would believe nothing. How foolish of me--yet how well Heaven
ordered it! For if I had taken fright then, how could I have learned
now what manner of things the Pope and Rome are? Whether they get my
body for the fire, whether an angel preserves me, matters little.
For I am in the state even of Peter and of John when they said to
the Jews: ‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto
you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things
which we have seen or heard.’ And I dare not answer save as they,
lest in saving my body from the flames to-day, I commit my soul to
the devil and his eternal fires to-morrow. Do you agree?”
In silence we looked on him, assenting. He reached down at his feet
and plucked a long slip of pure green grass.
“I have heard,” he continued, “that when the Crusaders were in the
wastes of Palestine, with the foe awaiting them, and no priest able
to administer the sacrament, they divided amongst themselves and
partook of a bit of grass, as token that they were still true to one
another, to their cause, and to the dear God. Shall we do the like?”
Together we nodded. His lips were a little pale as he broke the
slip into four portions and gave one to each. We ate the morsel,
looking out upon the welling river and the scattered clouds above it.
Suddenly Dr. Luther rose, and his laugh seemed carefree and boyish.
“Oh! What a tale to tell. Oh! Who would ever have dreamed it--that I,
a German miner’s son and a friar, should give so foul a headache to
the noble lords of the Vatican. Come, Philip; come all of us, back to
Wittenberg. There is work enough waiting and to spare.”
On the walk homeward I had never seen Doctor Luther more lively and
genial. He was full of droll anecdotes of his schoolboy life at
Eisenach and his student days at Erfurt. Melanchthon and Amsdorf, as
well as myself, were inclined to be pensive, but our master was able
to make good spirits for all of us. When I was about to leave him
at the convent, he was sitting down at his table with a huge leaden
inkstand and a prodigious pile of paper before him.
“A stranger,” said I from the threshold, “would think you were
about to compile a wondrously learned lecture on the Categories of
Aristotle.”
He laughed as he nibbed his pen.
“Think of me as the Crusader about to fall upon the Paynim,” he
shot back; “behold my battle-axe! _Ach!_ It is a mighty havoc, God
willing, I will make to-night among our present-day Mussulmans from
Italy!”
His pen began racing over the paper with marvellous rapidity. I stood
for a time watching him. Occasionally he would turn hastily the
leaves of his well-thumbed Bible to verify a text; once he reached
for the Reuchlin’s Hebrew Grammar. He speedily forgot my presence and
wrote faster than ever. I saw him fling aside his first sheet.
“_Upon the Babylonian Captivity of the Church_,” it read in Latin.
Another thunderbolt to rock the Vatican. Knowing that I could do
nothing more that day, I went to my pleasant hosts at the Castellan’s
house.