When Wolf went back to Erasmus the latter assured his friend that he had
met no maiden in Ratisbon who, to rare gifts, united the dignity which
he had hitherto admired only in the ladies whom he had met at the court
of the Elector of Saxony. His sparkling eyes flashed more brightly as
he spoke, and, like a blushing girl, he confessed to his friend that
Jungfrau Blomberg’s promise to sing one of his own compositions to him
made him a happy man.
Barbara’s conduct had made the repressed fire of love blaze up anew in
Wolf.
Now, for the first time, the woman he loved fully and entirely fulfilled
the ideal which he had formed of the “queen” of his heart.
Was it the sad separation from him, the taking leave of her father, or
her new love, which was bestowed on a man whom he also esteemed, that
impressed upon her nature the stamp of a nobility which beseemed her as
well as it suited her aristocratic beauty?
Never had it appeared to him so utterly impossible that he could yield
her to another without resistance. Perhaps the man chosen by such a
jewel was more worthy than he, but no one’s love could surpass his in
strength and fervour. She had tested it, and he need no longer call
himself an insignificant suitor; for, if he gained possession of the
living which Don Luis had ready for him, if he obtained a high position
in Valladolid--But his friend gave him no time to pursue such thoughts
further, for, while Barbara shortly after midnight stole down the
stairs like a criminal, and Quijada conducted her to her imperial lover,
Erasmus began to press him with demands which he was obliged to reject.
The Wittenberg master of arts, ever since his first meeting with his
friend, had been on the point of asking the question how he, who had
obtained in the school of poets an insight into the pure word of God,
could prevail upon himself to continue to wear the chains of Rome and
remain a Catholic.
Wolf had expected this query, and, while he filled his companion’s
goblet with the good Wurzburg wine which Ursula provided, he begged him
not to bring religion into their conversation.
The young Wittenberg theologian, however, had come for the express
purpose of discussing it with his friend.
Religion, he asserted in the fervid manner characteristic of him, was in
these times the axis around which turned the inner life of the world
and every individual. He himself had resolved to live for the object
for whose sake it was worth while to die. He knew the great perils which
would be associated with it for one of his warlike temperament, but
he had become, by the divine summons, an evangelical theologian, a
combatant for the liberation of the slaves sighing under the tyranny of
Rome. A serious conversation with a friend who was a German and resisted
yielding to a movement of the spirit which was kindling the inmost
depths of the German nature, thoughts, and feelings, and was destined
to heal the woes of the German nation and preserve it from the basest
abuse, would be to him inconceivable.
Wolf interrupted this avowal with the assurance that he must
nevertheless decline a religious discussion with him, for the weapons
they would use were too different. Erasmus, as a theologian, was deeply
versed in the Protestant faith, while he professed Catholicism merely
as a consequence of his birth and with a layman’s understanding and
knowledge. Yet he would not shun the conflict if his hands were not
bound by the most sacred of oaths. Then he turned to the past, and
while he himself, as it were, lived through for the second time the most
affecting moment in his existence, he transported his friend to his dead
mother’s sick-bed.
In vivid language he described how the devout widow and nun implored her
son to resist like a rock in the sea the assault of the new heretical
ideas, that the thousands of prayers which she had uttered for him, for
his soul, and his father’s, might not be vain.
Then Wolf confessed that just at that time, as a pupil in the school
of poets, he had come under the influence of the scholar Naevius, whose
evangelical views Erasmus knew, and related how difficult it had been
for him to take the oath which, nevertheless, now that he had once sworn
it, he would keep, even though life and his own intelligence would not
have taught him to prefer the old faith to every new doctrine, whether
it emanated from Luther, from Calvin, or from Zwingli.
For a short time Erasmus found no answer to this statement, and
Wolf’s old nurse, who herself clung to the Protestants from complete
conviction, and had listened attentively to his words, urged her young
co-religionist, by all sorts of signs, to respect his friend’s decision.
The confession of his schoolmate had not been entirely without effect
upon the young theologian. The name of “mother” also filled him with
reverence.
True, his birth had cost his own mother her life, but he had long
possessed a distinct idea of her nature and being, and had given her
precisely the same position which, in the early days of his school life,
the Virgin Mary had occupied.
To induce another to break a vow made to his mother would have been
sinful. But a brief reflection changed his mind.
Were there not circumstances in which the Bible itself commanded a man
to leave father and mother? Had not Jesus Christ made the surrender of
every old relation and the following after him the duty of those who
were to become his disciples? What was the meaning of the words the
Saviour had uttered to his august mother, “Woman, what have I to do
with thee?” except it was commanded to turn even from the mother when
religion was at stake?
Many another passage of Scripture had strengthened the courage of
the young Bible student when at last, with a look of intelligence, he
pledged Wolf, and remarking, “How could I venture the attempt to lead
you to break so sacred an oath?” instantly brought forward every plea
that a son who, in religious matters, followed a different path from his
mother could allege in his justification.
A short time before, in Brussels, Wolf had seen a superior of the
new Society of Jesus, whose members were now appearing everywhere
as defenders of the violently assailed papacy, seek to win back to
Catholicism the son of evangelical parents with the very same arguments.
He told his friend this, and also expressed the belief that the Jesuit,
too, had spoken in good faith.
Erasmus shrugged his shoulders, saying “Doubtless there are many
mansions in our Father’s house, but who will blame us if we left
the dilapidated old one, where our liberty was restricted and our
consciences were burdened, and preferred the new one, in which man is
subject to no other mortal, but only to the plain words of the Bible and
to the judge in his own breast? If we prefer this mansion, which stands
open to every one whose heart the old one oppresses, to the ruinous one
of former days----”
“Yet,” interrupted Wolf, “you must say to yourselves that you leave
behind in the old one much which the new one lacks, no matter with how
many good things you may equip it. The history of our religion and its
development does not belong to your new home--only to the old one.”
“We stand upon it as every newer thing rests on the older,” replied
Erasmus eagerly. “What we cast aside and refuse to take into the new
home with us is not the holy faith, but merely its deformity, abasement,
and falsification.”
“Call it so,” replied Wolf calmly. “I have heard others name and
interpret differently what you probably have in mind while using these
harsh epithets. But is it not the old house, and that alone, in which
the martyrs shed their blood for Christianity? Where did it fulfil its
lofty task of saturating the heart of mankind with love, softening
the customs of rude pagans, clearing away forests, transforming barren
wastes into cultivated fields, planting the cross on chapels and
churches, summoning men with the consecrated voice of the bell to the
sermon which proclaims love and peace? Where did it open the doors of
the school which prepares the intellect to satisfy its true destiny, and
first qualifies man to become the image of God? By the old mansion this
country, covered with marshes, moors; and impenetrable forests, was
rendered what it now is; from it proceeded that fostering of science and
the arts of which as yet I have seen little in your circles.”
“Give us time,” cried the theologian, “and perhaps in our home their
flowering will attain an unsurpassed richness of development. With what
loose bonds the humanists are still united to you!”
“And the finest intellect of all, the great scholar whose name you bear,
though he deemed many things in our old home deserving of improvement,
remained with us until his death. Jesus Christ is one, and so his Church
must also remain. The only question is, What the Saviour still is to you
Protestants, what he is to you, my friend?”
“Before how many saints, and many another whom your Church desires to
honour, do you bow the knee?” Erasmus fervidly answered; “but we do so
only to the august Trinity. And do you wish to know what Jesus Christ,
the Son, is to me? All, and more than all, is the answer; I live and
breathe in my Saviour Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and
throughout eternity.”
The young theologian raised his sparkling eyes heavenward as he spoke,
and continued: “Our doctrine is founded on him, his word, his love
alone; and who among the enthusiastic heralds of Christianity in ancient
times grasped faith in him with warmer sincerity than the very Martin
Luther whom you would have led to the stake had not the Emperor
Charles’s plighted word been dearer to him than the approval of Rome?
Oh, my friend, our young faith can also show its martyrs. Think of the
Bohemian John Huss and the true Christians who, in the Netherlands and
Spain, were burned at the stake and bled upon the scaffold because they
read the Bible, the Word of God and their Saviour, and would rather die
than deny it. If it should come to the worst, thousands here would also
be ready to ascend the funeral pyre, and I at their head. If war is
declared now, the Emperor Charles will gain the victory; and if he does
not wish to withdraw in earnest from Romish influences, who can tell
what will then await us Protestants? But I am not anxious about what may
come. We German citizens, who are accustomed to guide our own destinies
and maintain the system of government we arranged for ourselves, who
built by our own strength our solid, comfortable, gable-roofed houses
and noble, towering cathedrals, will also independently maintain the
life of our minds and our souls. Rome, with her legions of priests,
claimed the right not only to interfere in our civil life, but also
to intrude into our houses, our married lives, and our nurseries. What
could she not decide for the individual by virtue of the power she
arrogates to bind and to loose, to forgive sins, and to open or to close
the door of heaven for the dying? What she has done with the Church’s
gifts of grace we know.
“There is a deep, beautiful meaning underlying this idea. But it has
degenerated into a base traffic in indulgences. We have sincere natures.
For a long time we believed that salvation is gained by works--gifts
to the Church, fasts, scourgings, seclusion from the world,
self-confinement in a cell--and our wealth went to Rome. Rarely do we
look vainly in the most beautiful sites on mountain or by river for a
monastery! But at last the sound sense of Germany rebelled, and when
Luther saw in Rome poor sufferers from gout and cripples ascending the
stairs of the Lateran on their knees, a voice within cried out to him
the great ‘sola fide’ on which our faith is founded. On it alone, on
devotion to Jesus Christ, depends our salvation.”
“Then,” asked Wolf, “you boldly deny any saving power to good works?”
“Yes,” was the firm reply, “so far as they do not proceed from faith.”
“As if the Church did not impose the same demand!” replied Wolf in a
more animated tone. “True, base wrong has been done in regard to the
sale of indulgences, but at the Council of Trent opposition will be made
to it. No estimable priest holds the belief that money can atone for
a sin or win the mercy of Heaven. With us also sincere repentance or
devout faith must accompany the gift, the fasting, and whatever else the
believer imposes upon himself here below. Man is so constituted that the
only things which make a deep impression are those that the body also
feels. The teacher’s blow has a greater effect than his words, a gift
produces more willingness than an entreaty, and the tendency toward
asceticism and penance is genuinely Christian, and belongs to many
a people of a different faith. Your Erasmus said that his heart was
Catholic, but his stomach desired to be Protestant. You have an easier
task than we.”
“On the contrary,” the young theologian burst forth. “It is mere child’s
play for you to obtain forgiveness by acts which really do not cut
deeply into the flesh; but if one of us errs, how hard must be the
conflict in his own breast ere he attains the conviction that his guilt
is expiated by deep repentance and better deeds!”
“I can answer for that,” here interposed old Ursel, who from her
arm-chair had listened to the conversation between the two with intense
interest.
“Good heavens! One went forth from the confessional as pure as a white
dove after absolution had been received and the penance performed; but
now that I belong to the Protestants, it is hard to reach a perfect
understanding with the dear Saviour and one’s self.”
“And ought that to redound to the discredit of my faith?” asked Wolf.
“So far as I have learned to know men, the majority, at least, will not
hasten to attain our Ursel’s complete understanding with one’s self.
I should even fear that there are many among you who no longer feel a
desire to heed little sins and their forgiveness----”
Here Ursel again interrupted him with an exclamation of dissent,
accompanied by a gesture of denial from her thin old hand; but Wolf
glanced at the clock which the precentor had received as a testimonial
of affection from the members of the cathedral choir, which he had led
for years.
It was already half past one, and for the sake of Ursel, who was still
obliged to take care of herself, he urged departure, adding gaily that
he had not the ability to “defend himself against two.” Erasmus, too,
was surprised to find it so late, and, after shaking hands with the
old woman and promising to visit her soon again, seized his cap. Wolf
accompanied him.
The May night was sultry, and the air in the low room had been hot and
oppressive.
He would gladly have dropped the useless discussion, but Erasmus’s heart
was set upon winning his schoolmate to the doctrine which he believed
with his whole soul. He toiled with the utmost zeal, but during their
nocturnal walk also he failed to convince his opponent. Both were true
to their religion. Erasmus saw in his faith the return to the pure
teachings of Christ and the liberation of the human soul from ancient
fetters; Wolf, who had had them pointed out to him at school by a
Protestant teacher, by no means denied the abuses that had crept into
his, but he clung with warm love to Holy Church, which offered his soul
an abundance of what it needed.
His art certainly also owed to her its best development--from the
inexhaustible spring of faith which is formed from thousands of rivulets
and tributaries in the holy domain of the Catholic Church, and in it
alone, the most sublime of all material flowed to the musician, and not
to him only, but to the artist, the architect, and the sculptor. The
fullest stream--he was well aware of it--came from ancient pagan times,
but from whatever sources the spring was fed, the Church had understood
how to assimilate, preserve, and sanctify it.
Erasmus listened silently while Wolf eagerly made these statements; but
when the latter closed with the declaration that the evangelical faith
would never attain the same power of elevating hearts, he interrupted
the knight with the exclamation, “We shall have to wait for that!”
Luther, he went on, had given the most powerful encouragement to music,
and the German Protestant composers even now were not so very far behind
the Netherland ones. The Catholic Church could no longer claim the great
Albrecht Durer, and, if art ceased to create images of the saints, with
which the childish minds of the common people practised idolatry, so
much the better. The Infinite and Eternal was no subject for the artist.
The humanization of God only belittled his infinite and illimitable
nature. Earthly life offered art material enough. Man himself would
be the worthiest model for imitation, and perhaps no earlier epoch had
created handsomer likenesses of men and women than would now be produced
by evangelical artists.
To their own surprise, during this conversation they had reached the
Hiltner house, and Erasmus invited his friend to come to his room and
over a glass of wine answer him, as he had had the last word. But Wolf
had already drunk at his own home more of the fiery Wurzburg from the
precentor’s cellar than usual. Besides, much as he still had to say in
reply to Erasmus, the sensible young man deemed it advisable to avoid
the syndic’s house for the present. The confessor’s suspicion had been
aroused, and De Soto was a Dominican, who certainly did not stand far
from the Holy Inquisition.
Therefore while Erasmus, with burning head and great excitement, was
still urging his friend to come in, Wolf unexpectedly bade him a hasty
and resolute farewell.