THE FRIAR OF WITTENBERG ORDAINS
It was a real home-coming which I had to the Regenstein. There seemed
to be affection as well as loyalty in the welcome all gave me, from
Adolf down to Wache, the great boar hound. Graf Moritz rode over
from Blankenburg with a brotherly greeting. By painful economy and
management he was putting his estates in tolerable order, and paying
off his father’s debts to the Frankfort Jews, and I was glad to see
his face growing less care-worn.
A few days, however, after my return, an incident occurred which
jarred me painfully. One afternoon as I sat writing in my cabinet
a deputation of four of my chief dependants came scraping and
bowing,--two petty nobles, and two well-to-do peasants, who rejoiced
in the title of “Schöffe.” On my granting permission, the spokesman,
a lean, long-winded rascal, entered upon a lengthy eulogium upon my
gracious governance, but then added that my loving subjects had been
much grieved by my repeated absences from the lordship, “the more
especially as I had no direct heir for the Regenstein, and in event
of any accident or foul hap, which God and the saints forefend!--the
whole country would pass to my very distant kinsfolk in Brandenburg.”
“And therefore?” I demanded.
“That your most noble Grace will in benignity condescend to the
loyal representations of your devoted liegemen, and speedily take to
yourself a noble wife, who will be mother to a worthy posterity. The
Graf von Wernigerode has two marriageable and comely daughters, and
we do most humbly represent--”
My Christian virtues had not been so cultivated at Wittenberg as to
prevent my gorge from rising.
“Hear you, sirrah!” I thundered. “Loyal subjects never masque as
busybodies! I suffer you to pick your own wives--be as good to your
Graf and master. When I would marry it will be time enough to have
you in as my august councillors.”
Four very sheepish “notables” shuffled out of my apartment. But the
incident cut me to the quick, the more as I knew all the countryside
was saying behind my back what these oafs had ventured to my face. In
fact, Moritz on his second visit again blurted it out.
“_Donnerwetter_, Walter. Don’t you see how you will never be happy
here in the North till you have somewhat to hold you? You know what I
wished for Ilsa? Well--the cat has lapped up that cream long since,
but there is more elsewhere. What with your wealth and breeding, you
might look for a great prince’s daughter; but Gräfin Elisabeth of
Wernigerode--”
“Good heavens, Moritz,” cried I, suffering him no further;--“are you
also in the conspiracy against me?”
“Conspiracy, no! Friendly truth. She is of the best of our Harz
nobility, piously bred, tall as a pine, and as lovely. Her father
announces a very ample dowry. There could be nothing more fortunate.”
Here, however, he stopped, halted by the pain that surely flashed
from my eyes. I put my hand on his knee.
“Good comrade,” said I, “you mean your words for the best, and I will
strive hard not to be angry. In the very spirit you name--friendly
advantage--I said that I sought your sister’s hand. It is everywhere
the same. ‘Passion for a sweetheart, cold calculation in picking a
wife.’ In Italy, Germany, in France or Spain, that is the kind of
a union the Church blesses. But your sister, Ilsa von Blankenburg,
thought otherwise, and she was right. Rather than take me, as I made
my chilly proffer, she sought the convent. And now how may I do this
wrong to Elisabeth von Wernigerode or any woman else?”
“Romance--worthy of a minnesinger!” he laughed in my face. “Awake,
man! Dwell not in minstrel’s dreams, but in realities.”
“Yes,” I tossed back bitterly; “in desperate realities I live, right
truly. And now I say somewhat that may startle you.”
“Discharge your culverin,” he ordered, watching me intently.
“_I will wed your sister Ilsa, or I will wed no woman._”
“Holy God!” he exclaimed, crossing himself; “are you proclaiming a
vow of celibacy, or are you mad? Whatsoever may befall Luther, nuns
have been nuns since Christians have been Christians. On what do you
base your hope?”
“I cannot tell,” I answered, with a fierce gesture, rising and
pacing feverishly. “In that Book which Luther teaches me to read is
written ‘Old things are passed away, behold all things are become
new.’ We stand on the threshold of changes beyond human imaginings.
Since quitting Italy, night after night I have seen some one in my
dreams--your sister. We are always together. We are holding each
other’s hands, we are looking into one another’s faces, we are
growing old joyously together as husband and wife. There is enough
Southern blood in me still to believe in signs and presages. I cannot
tell how it will all come to pass. I will do the task that comes to
hand--and hope.”
“Alas! poor Walter,” said he, shaking his head; “you might dream
better of the pot of gold beyond the moon than that Quedlinburg
convent will ever give you an honorable bride.”
“I am doing nothing rashly,” said I, reassuring him: “my deeds
shall be deeds of reason, but my thoughts are not to be ruled by
schoolman’s logic.”
So we dropped the sore topic, and talked of the new Emperor and
whether he could long maintain the peace with France. Nevertheless,
that night I sent my quondam outlaw Gunter away on a private mission.
He was to steal back to Quedlinburg and ascertain from his daughter
Trude what was the gossip among the nuns touching the abbess’s niece.
* * * * *
But now for me began a period of intense activity. Not lightly had
I taken that strange pledge with the other three that summer’s day,
beside the rushing Elbe. If Luther and the Cause were to be saved,
they were not to be saved by letters from learned doctors, nor by
the plaudits of students and worthy peasants. One thing I knew in
last resort would halt the vengeance of the now roused Vatican,--the
“thou shalt not” of the German princes and free cities, backed by the
armed hand. In Italy I had failed. In Germany I did not fail. During
the following months I was but little at the Regenstein. My mission
carried me to almost every princely court in North Germany. Sometimes
I was turned away with scant courtesies, but not always. If Elector
Frederick of Saxony sent word to Luther to remain in Wittenberg, at a
moment the hard-pressed friar was preparing to flee the land, I had
my modest part in winning the favor of His Electoral Grace. I was
in constant correspondence with Spalatin, the Elector’s confessor.
Not a few influential Grafs and Freiherrs were changed from wavering
friends to hearty supporters by my poor efforts. Perhaps it was
thanks to me that young Philip, Markgraf of Hesse, so early gave his
support to the Cause and its leader. I had like fortune at the ducal
courts of Brunswick, Lüneburg and Mecklenburg. I argued the case
of Luther before the lordly Burgomasters and Councillors of mighty
Lübeck, the queen city by the Baltic--and not in vain.
My travels even carried me to distant Prussia, to the confines of the
German land; and there in his glorious Marienburg, true Kaiser among
castles, I met Prince Albrecht, Grand-Master of the Teutonic Knights,
and talked till the candles were deep in their sockets, pleading the
cause of Germany against Italy, of the Wittenberg prophet against
the black gowns of Rome. And here too I think my seed was destined
to bear a harvest. Then as I labored, and imagined I saw my labors
crowned with a fair success, I felt my soul rise buoyantly within me.
I knew that the forsaking of Italy had been no rash mistake, that I
could mock at my old companions when they wrote to me from the South
“thou fool.”
As I went to and fro, I knew that Luther’s pen had never been more
active. In October the presses had begun to clang with the great
_Babylonish Captivity_ pamphlet,--a true trumpet call to battle.
Almost simultaneously came _The Freedom of a Christian Man_, wherein
was set forth the peace, joy, liberty, possessed by him who had cast
off the old Church and its bondage. Then pealed another clarion,--the
last _Letter to the Pope_, wherein the peasant’s son spoke to the
Holy Father in tones never heard by Pope before. Clearly he told Leo
de’ Medici that it was not he in person, but the Vatican and the
evils it perpetuated, against which he aimed.
“The Church of Rome, one time most holy of all churches, has become
the lawless den of thieves, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell,
so that not even Anti-Christ could devise addition to its wickedness.
Meantime you, O Leo, are sitting as a lamb amid wolves,--what
resistance can you alone make to these monstrous woes!”
Violent? Most surely. But let those who would have had Luther speak
softly and sweetly, tell whether the Monsignori have ever yielded jot
or tittle for all the fair arguments in the world? When a battle is
joined, strong men do not let blood with needles.
Presently, after due rumors, the Papal Bull was published in Germany.
Eck had brought it North with a kind of triumph. He had caused to be
inserted in the Bull the names of several controversialists, who were
his personal foes, some of whom were no intimate friends of Luther.
To intrust the publication of the Bull to Eck, the most unpopular
man in Germany, was simply another of those blunders whereby the
Vatican spun its own skein of troubles. Where a prince-bishop or the
Dominicans were influential it was published amid sullen silence, and
in a few such towns Luther’s books, blazed in little bonfires lit by
the common hangman (which bonfires added to the sale and reading of
the heretical books exceedingly). But in North Germany many a duke or
burghermaster let the mob pluck the offensive paper from the church
door and rend it to pieces amid shrill curses. So it was actually
treated by the students even in monk-ridden Leipzig. Yet everywhere
men asked me, “How will the friar answer?” For answer was expected,
and rightly. Early in December I received this letter, while passing
through Dresden.
_Martin Luther to his dear friend in Christ, the noble Graf
Walter von Regenstein_:--
Come to Wittenberg by the 10th, without fail. I have a song to
sing, and a deed to perform which you must hear and see.
Farewell.
I guessed the purpose of the summons. Little was the need again to
urge my coming. I entered Wittenberg on the evening of the ninth, and
almost as my horse went under the gate, a friendly student thrust in
my hand a printed bill. I give it word for word.
All Friends of Evangelical Truth
_are summoned about nine o’clock to the Church of the Holy
Cross beyond the city wall_.
At that place, according to ancient apostolic usage, the godless
books of the Papal constitutions and the Scholastic Theology will
be burned; inasmuch as the presumption of the enemies of the
Gospel has gone so far that they have cast the godly, evangelical
books of Luther into the fire.
Let all earnest students attend this sight, for now is the time
when Anti-Christ must stand revealed.
The air of the small city seemed charged as before a thunderstorm.
Men stood in little knots upon the street talking in low whispers.
Now at last the dullest and feeblest who had said “peace, peace,”
knew that peace was not to be, that Christendom was to be rent into
two hostile camps, a schism that might endure far beyond children’s
children.
Freiherr von Steinitz greeted me with his usual cordiality at his
stately home, but he and his good lady were alike touched by the
common sentiment. We sat silent and pensive by his well-piled table.
At last he gave a forced laugh.
“Do you remember that evening of your first coming more than three
years ago, and how I asked who would bell the cat, meaning Tetzel?”
“Certainly.”
“Saints and angels! Who would have imagined that after belling the
cat, it must needs prove necessary to bell Leo, the lion! God grant
we do not all make the beast a fine meal ere it is over; but it is
Heaven’s way, not ours. Luther is a prophet of God, if ever Moses or
Elijah were such. Live or die, we are with him.”
And I think Von Steinitz spoke the mind of all Wittenberg that night.
At the Augustinian convent later I found Luther and Melanchthon with
a few friends. Their tongues were going briskly. Dr. Martin even
ventured the catch of a song.
“I was certain of your coming, Walter,” was his greeting when I
entered. “The devil will try very hard to-morrow to make us sad and
down-hearted. So we will prove our trust in God by abundance of good
talk and music, for I am sure the angels are better pleased by seeing
men happy, than by fasting or lying all night in the shape of a
cross.”
I sat down with the company. My gloomy mood fled. I told of my
adventures and successes in Mechlenburg and Prussia. Melanchthon was
charming, with his classic wit and apt quotations; even the serious
Amsdorf was merry.
“What a pleasant evening was this,” said Dr. Martin when I left him.
“Why cannot the fine cardinals at Rome and the Dominicans leave a
poor rascal like myself alone; then I could always sit with Philip by
the stove, with a little beer and the good word going? But we must
have very hard and strait words to-morrow.”
* * * * *
The morning of the short winter day dawned gray and tolerably warm.
A damp mist was driving across the Elbe marshlands, and above it
the towers of the two Wittenberg churches and the tops of the tall
poplars by the river loomed like great dim cones floating upon
clouds. Long before the time set, the crowds were in motion, from Von
Steinitz in his fur-lined cloak, and the pompous city “Honorability”
to the begging itinerant students, ragged at knee and elbow. All
lectures had ceased in the University. Down Collegien-strasse we
streamed, a silent, thoughtful multitude. The mist had lifted a
little by the time we passed the eastern Elster-gate, outside of
which stood the little Chapel of the Holy Cross. Hard by was a small
pest-house used in days of the plague, and before it an open space
where infected clothing had been burned. On this appropriate spot
the zealous students had heaped dry wood, well soaked with pitch--a
goodly pyre.
We stood in a wide circle, drawing our cloaks about us, while waiting
the little procession from the Augustinian Convent. There was no long
delay. About a dozen of Luther’s theological friends, capped and
gowned according to their masterships and doctorates, accompanied
their friend and leader. He carried his head high, and his body
a trifle rigid. Never had I seen a deeper light in his eyes. No
elaborate ceremonies delayed him. Perhaps by the mere simplicity of
his act he desired to mark the antithesis to the ponderous ceremonial
and procedure of the Church whereon he was declaring war. The crowd
opened to let him pass. His arms were full of books,--I could guess
their titles, “Gratian’s Decretals of the Canon Law,” “Thomas
Aquinas,” “Albertus Magnus,” and the other great schoolmen whose
teachings had been to Rome a front and rear ward. Silent stood we
all, while he advanced and laid them on the pyre, then stepped back.
A man in a master’s robe appeared with a firebrand, and cast it far
into the pyre. The flames caught instantly. They mounted crackling
toward the winter heavens. Soon they roared in a mighty blaze. Then
we saw Dr. Luther approach again. From under his cloak he drew a
scroll and held it aloft that all might witness--those near enough
could behold the Papal arms, and the seal of Leo de’ Medici. It was
the Bull of Excommunication. Out into the flames he flung it, as one
would fling a snake, while his great voice sounded to the confines of
the breathless crowd:--
“_Because thou has troubled the Holy One of God, may the eternal fire
consume thee!_”
The Pope had excommunicated Martin Luther. Martin Luther had
excommunicated the Pope.
He stood a little while in a kind of revery, watching the dancing
fire until books and scroll had glowed away to ashes; then amid a
tense silence of the people he wrapped his black cassock about him,
and followed by his friends went quietly back to the convent.
After his going, much of the multitude dispersed; but the students
long kept up the sport, feeding the fire, casting on the flame
numerous pamphlets of Luther’s enemies, and singing mock funeral
hymns over the dying embers. The next day Dr. Martin reproved the
students for their levity, after what had been a solemn and sacred
act, adding intently: “If, with your whole heart, you do not separate
from the dominion of the Pope, you cannot be saved. In this wicked
world I would rather endure all perils, than, by silence, burden my
conscience with the account which I must render unto God.”
Such was that 10th of December, and the more I meditate on the thing
then done the more I marvel at the manner whereby Heaven allowed that
weak friar to bring great deeds to pass. Other Papal Bulls had been
burned before--by mighty monarchs. Henry IV, in his imperial pride,
had thundered against Roman domination, and Henry IV had knelt in the
snows at Canossa, seeking abjectly the pardon of the stern Vicar of
Christ. Luther, the peasant’s son, went to no Canossa. He fared to
Worms, and God fared with him.