Like German troops Luther was best in taking the offensive. These

early years when he was standing almost alone and attacking one abuse

after another, were the finest of his whole career. Later, when he

came to reconstruct a church, he modified or withdrew much of what he

had at first put forward, and re-introduced a large portion of the

medieval religiosity which he had once so successfully and fiercely

attacked. The year 1520 saw him at the most advanced point he ever

attained. It was then that he produced, with marvellous fecundity, a

series of pamphlets unequalled by him and unexcelled anywhere, both in

the incisive power of their attack on existing institutions and in the

popular force of their language.

[Sidenote: _To the Christian Nobility_, 1520]

His greatest appeal to his countrymen was made in his _Address to the

Christian Nobility of the German Nation on the Improvement of the

Christian Estate_. In this he asserts the right of the civil power to

reform the spiritual, and urges the government to exercise this right.

The priests, says he, defend themselves against all outside

interference by three "walls," of {71} which the first is the claim

that the church is superior to the state, in case the civil authority

presses them; the second, the assertion, if one would correct them by

the Bible, that no one can interpret it but the pope; the third, if

they are threatened with a general council, the contention that no one

can convoke such a council save the pope. Luther demolishes these

walls with words of vast import. First, he denies any distinction

between the spiritual and temporal estates. Every baptized Christian,

he asserts, is a priest, and in this saying he struck a mortal blow at

the great hierarchy of privilege and theocratic tyranny built up by the

Middle Ages. The second wall is still frailer than the first, says the

writer, for anyone can see that in spite of the priests' claims to be

masters of the Bible they never learn one word of it their whole life

long. The third wall falls of itself, for the Bible plainly commands

everyone to punish and correct any wrong-doer, no matter what his

station.

[Sidenote: Reform measures]

After this introduction Luther proposes measures of reform equally

drastic and comprehensive. The first twelve articles are devoted to

the pope, the annates, the appointment of foreigners to German

benefices, the appeal of cases to Rome, the asserted authority of the

papacy over bishops, the emperor, and other rulers. All these abuses,

as well as jubilees and pilgrimages to Rome should be simply forbidden

by the civil government. The next three articles deal with sacerdotal

celibacy, recommending that priests be allowed to marry, and calling

for the suppression of many of the cloisters. It is further urged that

foundations for masses and for the support of idle priests be

abolished, that various vexatious provisions of the Canon Law be

repealed, and that begging on any pretext be prohibited. The

twenty-fourth article deals with the Bohemian schism, saying that Huss

was wrongly {72} burned, and calling for union with the Hussites who

deny transubstantiation and demand the cup for the laity. Next, the

writer takes up the reform of education in the interests of a more

biblical religion. Finally, he urges that sumptuary laws be passed,

that a bridle be put in the mouth of the great monopolists and usurers,

and that brothels be no longer tolerated.

Of all the writer's works this probably had the greatest and most

immediate influence. Some, indeed, were offended by the violence of

the language, defended by Luther from the example of the Bible and by

the necessity of rousing people to the enormities he attacked. But

most hailed it as a "trumpet-blast" calling the nation to arms. Four

thousand copies were sold in a few days, and a second edition was

called for within a month. Voicing ideas that had been long, though

vaguely, current, it convinced almost all of the need of a reformation.

According to their sympathies men declared that the devil or the Holy

Ghost spoke through Luther.

[Sidenote: The Babylonian Captivity, 1520]

Though less popular both in form and subject, _The Babylonian Captivity

of the Church_ was not less important than the _Address to the German

Nobility_. It was a mortal blow at the sacramental system of the

church. In judging it we must again summon the aid of our historical

imagination. In the sixteenth century dogmas not only seemed but were

matters of supreme importance. It was just by her sacramental system,

by her claim to give the believer eternal life and salvation through

her rites, that the church had imposed her yoke on men. As long as

that belief remained intact progress in thought, in freedom of

conscience, in reform, remained difficult. And here, as is frequently

the case, the most effective arguments were not those which seem to us

logically the strongest. Luther made no appeal to reason as such. He

{73} appealed to the Bible, recognized by all Christians as an

authority, and showed how far the practice of the church had

degenerated from her standard. [Sidenote: Sacraments] In the first

place he reduced the number of sacraments, denying that name to

matrimony, orders, extreme unction and confirmation. In attacking

orders he demolished the priestly ideal and authority. In reducing

marriage to a civil contract he took a long step towards the

secularization of life. Penance he considered a sacrament in a certain

sense, though not in the strict one, and he showed that it had been

turned by the church from its original significance of "repentance" [1]

to that of sacramental penance, in which no faith was required but

merely an automatic act. Baptism and the eucharist he considered the

only true sacraments, and he seriously criticized the prevalent

doctrine of the latter. He denied that the mass is a sacrifice or a

"good work" pleasing to God and therefore beneficial to the soul either

of living or of dead. He denied that the bread and wine are

transubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus, though he held that

the body and blood are really present with the elements. He demanded

that the cup be given to the laity.

The whole trend of Luther's thought at this time was to oppose the

Catholic theory of a mechanical distribution of grace and salvation

(the so-called _opus operatum_) by means of the sacraments, and to

substitute for it an individual conception of religion in which faith

only should be necessary. How far he carried this idea may be seen in

his _Sermon on the New Testament, that is on the Holy Mass_,[2]

published in the same year as the pamphlets just analysed. In it he

makes the essence of the sacrament forgiveness, and the vehicle of this

forgiveness the word of God apprehended by {74} faith, _not_ the actual

participation in the sacred bread and wine. Had he always been true to

this conception he would have left no place for sacrament or priest at

all. But in later years he grew more conservative, until, under

slightly different names, almost the old medieval ideas of church and

religion were again established, and, as Milton later expressed it,

"New presbyter was but old priest writ large."

[1] In Latin _penitentia_ means both penance and repentance.

[2] _Cf_. Matthew, xxvi, 28.

SECTION 2. THE REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Germany]

Although the Germans had arrived, by the end of the fifteenth century,

at a high degree of national self-consciousness, they had not, like the

French and English, succeeded in forming a corresponding political

unity. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, though continuing

to assert the vast claims of the Roman world-state, was in fact but a

loose confederacy of many and very diverse territories. On a map drawn

to the scale 1:6,000,000 nearly a hundred separate political entities

can be counted within the limits of the Empire and there were many

others too small to appear. The rulers of seven of these territories

elected the emperor; they were the three spiritual princes, the

Archbishops of Mayence, Trèves and Cologne, the three German temporal

princes, the Electors of the Rhenish Palatinate, Saxony, and

Brandenburg, and in addition the King of Bohemia, who, save for

purposes of the imperial choice, did not count as a member of the

Germanic body. Besides these there were some powerful dukedoms, like

Austria and Bavaria, and numerous smaller bishoprics and counties.

There were also many free cities, like Augsburg and Nuremberg, small

aristocratic republics. Finally there was a large body of "free

knights" or barons, whose tiny fiefs amounted often to no more than a

castle and a few acres, but who owned no feudal superior save {75} the

emperor. The unity of the Empire was expressed not only in the person

of the emperor, but in the Diet which met at different places at

frequent intervals. Its authority, though on the whole increasing, was

small.

With no imperial system of taxation, no professional army and no

centralized administration, the real power of the emperor dwindled.

Such as it was he derived it from the fact that he was always elected

from one of the great houses. Since 1438 the Hapsburgs, Archdukes of

Austria, had held the imperial office. Since 1495 there was also an

imperial supreme court of arbitration. [Sidenote: 1495] The first

imperial tax was levied in 1422 to equip a force against the Hussites.

In the fifteenth century also the rudiments of a central administration

were laid in the division of the realm into ten "circles," and the levy

of a small number of soldiers. And yet, at the time of the

Reformation, the Empire was little better than a state in dissolution

through the centrifugal forces of feudalism.

So little was the Empire an individual unit that the policy of her

rulers themselves was not imperial. The statesmanship of Maximilian

was something smaller than national; it was that of his Archduchy of

Austria. The policy of his successor, on the other hand, was

determined by something larger than Germany, the consideration of the

Spanish and Burgundian states that he also ruled. Maximilian tried in

every way to aggrandize his personal power, not that of the German

Nation. [Sidenote: Maximilian I, 1493-1519] The Diet of Worms of 1495

tried to remodel the constitution. It proclaimed a perpetual public

peace, provided that those who broke it should be outlawed, and placed

the duty of executing the ban upon all territories within ninety miles

of the offender. It also passed a bill for taxation, called the

"common penny," which combined features of a poll tax, an {76} income

tax and a property tax. The difficulty of collecting it was great;

Maximilian himself as a territorial prince tried to evade it instead of

setting his subjects the good example of paying it. He probably

derived no more than the trifling sum of 50,000-100,000 gulden from it

annually. The Diet also revived the Supreme Court and gave it a

permanent home at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Feeble efforts to follow up

this beginning of reform were made in subsequent Diets, but they failed

owing to the insuperable jealousies of the princes and because the

party of national unity lost the sympathy of the common people, to whom

alone they could look for support.

Maximilian's external policy, though adventurous and unstable, was

somewhat more successful. His only principle was to grasp whatever

opportunity seemed to offer. Thus at one time he seriously proposed to

have himself elected pope. His marriage with Mary, the daughter of

Charles the Bold, added to the estates of his house Burgundy--the land

comprising what is now Belgium, Luxemburg, most of Holland and large

portions of north-eastern France. On the death of Mary, in 1482,

Maximilian had much trouble in getting himself acknowledged as regent

of her lands for their son Philip the Handsome. A part of the domain

he also lost in a war with France. This was more than made up,

however, by the brilliant match he made for Philip in securing for him

the hand of Mad Joanna, the daughter and heiress of Ferdinand and

Isabella of Spain. This marriage produced two sons, Charles and

Ferdinand. The deaths of Isabella (1504), of Philip (1506) and of

Ferdinand of Aragon (1516) left Charles at the age of sixteen the ruler

of Burgundy and of Spain with its immense dependencies in Italy and in

America. [Sidenote: Charles V, 1500-1558] From this time forth the

policy of Maximilian concentrated in the effort to {77} secure the

succession of his eldest grandson to the imperial throne.

When Maximilian died on January 12, 1519, there were several candidates

for election. So little was the office considered national that the

kings of France and England entered the lists, and the former, Francis

I, actually at one time secured the promise of votes from the majority

of electors. Pope Leo made explicit engagements to both Charles and

Francis to support their claims, and at the same time instructed his

legate to labor for the choice of a German prince, either Frederic of

Saxony, if he would in return give up Luther, or else Joachim of

Brandenburg. But at no time was the election seriously in doubt. The

electors followed the only possible course in choosing Charles on June

28. They profited, however, by the rivalry of the rich king of France

to extort enormous bribes and concessions from Charles. The banking

house of Fugger supplied the necessary funds, and in addition the

agents of the emperor-elect were obliged to sign a "capitulation"

making all sorts of concessions to the princes. One of these, exacted

by Frederic of Saxony in the interest of Luther, was that no subject

should be outlawed without being heard.

The settlement of the imperial election enabled the pope once more to

turn his attention to the suppression of the rapidly growing heresy.

After the Leipzig debate the universities of Cologne and Louvain had

condemned Luther's positions. Eck went to Rome in March, 1520, and

impressed the curia, which was already planning a bull condemning the

heretic, with the danger of delay. After long discussions the bull

_Exsurge Domine_ was ratified by the College of Cardinals and

promulgated by Leo on June 15. [Sidenote: Bull against Luther, 1520]

In this, forty-one of Luther's sayings, relating to the sacraments of

penance and the eucharist, to indulgences and {78} the power of the

pope, to free will and purgatory, and to a few other matters, were

anathematized as heretical or scandalous or false or offensive to pious

ears. His books were condemned and ordered to be burnt, and unless he

should recant within sixty days of the posting of the bull in Germany

he was to be considered a heretic and dealt with accordingly. Eck was

entrusted with the duty of publishing this fulmination in Germany, and

performed the task in the last days of September.

The time given Luther in which to recant therefore expired two months

later. Instead of doing so he published several answers to "the

execrable bull of Anti-christ," and on December 10 publicly and

solemnly burnt it, together with the whole Canon Law. This he had come

to detest, partly as containing the "forged decretals," partly as the

sanction for a vast mechanism of ecclesiastical use and abuse,

repugnant to his more personal theology. The dramatic act, which sent

a thrill throughout Europe, symbolized the passing of some medieval

accretions on primitive Christianity. There was nothing left for the

pope but to excommunicate the heretic, as was done in the bull _Decet

Pontificem Romanum_ drawn up at Rome in January, [Sidenote: 1521] and

published at Worms on May 6.

In the meantime Charles had come to Germany. For more than a year

after his election he remained in Spain, where his position was very

insecure on account of the revolt against his Burgundian officers.

Arriving in the Netherlands in the summer of 1520 Charles was met by

the special nuncios of the pope, Caracciolo and Aleander. After he was

crowned emperor at Aix-la-Chapelle, he opened his first Diet, at Worms.

[Sidenote: October 23, 1520 January 27, 1521 The Diet of Worms]

Before this august assembly came three questions of highest import.

The first related to the dynastic {79} policy of the Hapsburgs. For

the chronic war with France an army of 24,000 men and a tax of 128,000

gulden was voted. The disposition of Württemberg caused some trouble.

Duke Ulrich had been deposed for rebellion in 1518, and his land taken

from him by the Swabian League and sold to the emperor in 1520.

Together with the Austrian lands, which Charles secretly handed over to

his young brother Ferdinand, this territory made the nucleus of

Hapsburg power in Germany.

The Diet then took up the question of constitutional reform. In order

to have a permanent administrative body, necessary during the long

absences of the emperor, an Imperial Council of Regency was established

and given a seat at Nuremberg. [Sidenote: Council of Regency] The

emperor nominated the president and four of the twenty-two other

members; each of the six German electors nominated one member; six were

chosen by the circles into which the Empire was divided and six were

elected by the other estates. The powers of the council were limited

to the times when the emperor was away.

The third question treated by the Diet was the religious one. As

usual, they drew up a long list of grievances against the pope, to

which many good Catholics in the assembly subscribed. Next they

considered what to do with Luther. Charles himself, who could speak no

language but French, and had no sympathy whatever with a rebel from any

authority spiritual or temporal, would much have preferred to outlaw

the Wittenberg professor at once, but he was bound by his promise to

Frederic of Saxony. Of the six electors, who sat apart from the other

estates, Frederic was strongly for Luther, the Elector Palatine was

favorably inclined towards him, and the Archbishop of Mayence

represented a mediating policy. The other three electors were opposed.

Among the {80} lesser princes a considerable minority was for Luther,

whereas among the representatives of the free cities and of the

knights, probably a majority were his followers. The common people,

though unrepresented, applauded Luther, and their clamors could not

pass unheeded even by the aristocratic members of the Diet. [Sidenote:

February 13] The debate was opened by Aleander in a speech dwelling on

the sacramental errors of the heretic and the similarity of his

movement to that of the detested Bohemians. After a stormy session the

estates decided to summon the bold Saxon before them and accordingly a

citation, together with a safe-conduct, was sent him.

Though there was some danger in obeying the summons, Luther's journey

to Worms, was a triumphal progress. Brought before the Diet in the

late afternoon of April 17, he was asked if a certain number of books,

the titles of which were read, were his and if he would recant the

heresy contained in them. The form of the questions took him by

surprise, for he had expected to be confronted with definite charges

and to be allowed to defend his positions. He accordingly asked for

time, and was granted one more day. [Sidenote: April 18, 1521] On his

second appearance he made a great oration admitting that the books were

his and closing with the words:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture or by right reason

(for I trust neither popes nor councils since they have

often erred and contradicted themselves) . . . I neither

can nor will recant anything since it is neither safe nor

right to act against conscience. God help me. Amen.

There he stood, braving the world, for he could do no other. . . . He

left the hall the hero of his nation.

Hoping still to convince him of error, Catholic theologians held

protracted but fruitless conferences with him before his departure from

Worms on the 26th of {81} April. The sympathy of the people with him

was shown by the posting at Worms of placards threatening his enemies.

Charles was sincerely shocked and immediately drew up a statement that

he would hazard life and lands on the maintenance of the Catholic faith

of his fathers. An edict was drafted by Aleander on the model of one

promulgated in September in the Netherlands. [Sidenote: Luther banned]

The Edict of Worms put Luther under the ban of the Empire, commanded

his surrender to the government at the expiration of his safe-conduct,

and forbade all to shelter him or to read his writings. Though dated

on May 8, to make it synchronize with a treaty between Charles and Leo,

the Edict was not passed by the Diet until May 26. At this time many

of the members had gone home, and the law was forced on the remaining

ones, contrary to the wishes of the majority, by intrigue and imperial

pressure.

After leaving Worms Luther was taken by his prince, Frederic the Wise,

and placed for safe-keeping in the Wartburg, a fine old castle near

Eisenach. [Sidenote: The Wartburg] Here he remained in hiding for

nearly a year, while doing some of his most important work. Here he

wrote his treatise _On Monastic Vows_, declaring that they are wrong

and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the

cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from

a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the

greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began

his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September

1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last published

in 1532.

[Sidenote: The radicals]

While Luther was in retirement at the Wartburg, his colleagues

Carlstadt and Melanchthon, and the Augustinian friar Gabriel Zwilling,

took up the movement at Wittenberg and carried out reforms more radical

{82} than those of their leader. The endowments of masses were

confiscated and applied to the relief of the poor on new and better

principles. Prostitution was suppressed. A new order of divine

service was introduced, in which the words purporting that the mass was

a sacrifice were omitted, and communion was given to the laity in both

kinds. Priests were urged to marry, and monks were almost forced to

leave the cloister. An element of mob violence early manifested itself

both at Wittenberg and elsewhere. An outbreak at Erfurt against the

clergy occurred in June, 1521, and by the end of the year riots took

place at Wittenberg.

Even now, at the dawn of the revolution, appeared the beginnings of

those sects, more radical than the Lutheran, commonly known as

Anabaptist. The small industrial town of Zwickau had long been a

hotbed of Waldensian heresy. Under the guidance of Thomas Münzer the

clothweavers of this place formed a religious society animated by the

desire to renovate both church and state by the readiest and roughest

means. Suppression of the movement at Zwickau by the government

resulted only in the banishment, or escape, of some of the leaders.

[Sidenote: December 27, 1521] Three of them found their way to

Wittenberg, where they proclaimed themselves prophets divinely

inspired, and conducted a revival marked with considerable, though

harmless, extravagance.

[Sidenote: January 20, 1522]

As the radicals at Wittenberg made the whole of Northern Germany

uneasy, the Imperial Council of Regency issued a mandate forbidding all

the innovations and commanding the Elector of Saxony to stop them. It

is remarkable that Luther in this felt exactly as did the Catholics.

Early in March he returned to Wittenberg with the express purpose of

checking the reforms which had already gone too far {83} for him. His

personal ascendency was so great that he found no trouble in doing so.

Not only the Zwickau prophets, but Carlstadt and Zwilling were

discredited. Almost all their measures were repealed, including those

on divine service which was again restored almost to the Catholic form.

Not until 1525 were a simple communion service and the use of German

again introduced.

[Sidenote: Rebellion of the knights, 1522-3]

It soon became apparent that all orders and all parts of Germany were

in a state of ferment. The next manifestation of the revolutionary

spirit was the rebellion of the knights. This class, now in a state of

moral and economic decay, had long survived any usefulness it had ever

had. The rise of the cities, the aggrandizement of the princes, and

the change to a commercial from a feudal society all worked to the

disadvantage of the smaller nobility and gentry. About the only means

of livelihood left them was freebooting, and that was adopted without

scruple and without shame. Envious of the wealthy cities, jealous of

the greater princes and proud of their tenure immediately from the

emperor, the knights longed for a new Germany, more centralized, more

national, and, of course, under their special direction. In the

Lutheran movement they thought they saw their opportunity; in Ulrich

von Hutten they found their trumpet, in Francis von Sickingen their

sword. A knight himself, but with possessions equal to those of many

princes, a born warrior, but one who knew how to use the new weapons,

gold and cannon, Sickingen had for years before he heard of Luther kept

aggrandizing his power by predatory feuds. So little honor had he,

that though appointed to high military command in the campaign against

France, he tried to win personal advantage by treason, playing off the

emperor against King Francis, with whom, for a long time, he almost

{84} openly sided. In 1520 he fell under the influence of Hutten, who

urged him to espouse the cause of the "gospel" as that of German

liberty. By August 1522 he became convinced that the time was ripe for

action, and issued a manifesto proclaiming that the feudal dues had

become unbearable, and giving the impression that he was acting as an

ally of Luther, although the latter knew nothing of his intentions and

would have heartily disapproved of his methods.

Sickingen's first march was against Trèves. The archbishop's

"unchristian cannon" forced him to retire from this city. On October

10 the Council of Regency declared him an outlaw. A league formed by

Trèves, the Palatinate and Hesse, defeated him and captured his castle

at Landstuhl in May, 1523. Mortally wounded he died on May 7.

Alike unhurt and unhelped by such incidents as the revolt of the

knights, the main current of religious revolution swept onwards. Leo X

died on December 1, 1521, and in his place was elected Adrian of

Utrecht, a man of very different character. [Sidenote: Adrian VI,

1522-33] Though he had already taken a strong stand against Luther, he

was deeply resolved to reform the corruption of the church. To the

Diet called at Nuremberg [Sidenote: Diet of Nuremberg, 1522] in the

latter part of 1522 he sent as legate Chieregato with a brief demanding

the suppression of the schism. It was monstrous, said he, that one

little brother should seduce a whole nation from the path trodden by so

many martyrs and learned doctors. Do you suppose, he asked, that the

people will longer respect civil government if they are taught to

despise the canons and decrees of the spiritual power? At the same

time Adrian wrote to Chieregato:

Say that we frankly confess that God permits this

persecution of his church on account of the sins of men,

especially those of the priests and prelates. . . . We

{85}

know that in this Holy See now for some years there have

been many abominations, abuses in spiritual things,

excesses in things commanded, in short, that all has become

perverted. . . . We have all turned aside in our ways,

nor was there, for a long time, any who did right,--no,

not one.

This confession rather strengthened the reform party, than otherwise,

making its demands seem justified; and all that the Diet did towards

the settlement of the religious question was to demand that a council,

with representation of the laity, should be called in a German city. A

long list of grievances against the church was again drawn up and laid

before the emperor.

The same Diet took up other matters. The need for reform and the

impotence of the Council of Regency had both been demonstrated by the

Sickingen affair. A law against monopolies was passed, limiting the

capital of any single company to fifty thousand gulden. In order to

provide money for the central government a customs duty of 4 per cent.

ad valorem was ordered. Both these measures weighed on the cities,

which accordingly sent an embassy to Charles. They succeeded in

inducing him to disallow both laws.

[Sidenote: Diet of Nuremberg, 1524]

The next Diet, which assembled at Nuremberg early in 1524, naturally

refrained from passing more futile laws for the emperor to veto, but on

the other hand it took a stronger stand than ever on the religious

question. The Edict of Worms was still nominally in force and was

still to all intents and purposes flouted. Luther was at large and his

followers were gaining. In reply to a demand from the government that

the Edict should be strictly carried out, the Diet passed a resolution

that it should be observed by each state as far as its prince deemed it

possible. Despairing of an oecumenical council the estates demanded

that a {86} German national synod be called at Spires before the close

of the year with power to decide on what was to be done for the time

being.

There is no doubt that by this time the public opinion of North

Germany, at least, was thoroughly Lutheran. Ferdinand hardly

exaggerated when he wrote his brother that throughout the Empire there

was scarce one person in a thousand not infected with the new

doctrines. [Sidenote: 1523] The place now occupied by newspapers and

weekly reviews was taken by a vast swarm of pamphlets, most of which

have survived. [Sidenote: Popular pamphlets] Those of the years

immediately following the Diet of Worms reveal the first enthusiasm of

the people for the "gospel." The greater part of the broadsides

produced are concerned with the leader and his doctrines. The

comparison of him to Huss was a favorite one. One pamphleteer, at

least, drew the parallel between his trial at Worms and that of Christ

before Pilate. The whole bent of men's minds was theological.

Doctrines which now seem a little quaint and trite were argued with new

fervor by each writer. The destruction of images, the question of the

real presence in the sacrament, justification by faith, and free will

were disputed. Above all the Bible was lauded in the new translation,

and the priests continued, as before, to be the favorite butt of

sarcasm.

Among the very many writers of these tracts the playwright of

Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, took a prominent place. In 1523 he published

his poem on "the Nightingale of Wittenberg, whose voice sounds in the

glorious dawn over hill and dale." This bird is, of course, Luther,

and the fierce lion who has sought his life is Leo. [Sidenote: Hans

Sachs] The next year Hans Sachs published no less than three pamphlets

favoring the reform. They were: 1. A Disputation between a Canon and a

Shoemaker, defending the Word of God and the Christian {87} Estate. 2.

Conversation on the Hypocritical Works of the Clergy and their Vows, by

which they hope to be saved to the disparagement of Christ's Blood. 3.

A Dialogue against the Roman Avarice. Multiply these pamphlets, the

contents of which is indicated by their titles, by one hundred, and we

arrive at some conception of the pabulum on which the people grew to

Protestantism. Of course there were many pamphlets on the other side,

but here, as in a thousand other cases, the important thing proved to

be to have the cause ventilated. So long as discussion was forced in

the channels selected by the reformers, even the interest excited by

their adversaries redounded ultimately to their advantage.

[Sidenote: The Peasants' War, 1524-5]

The denunciation of authority, together with the message of the

excellence of the humblest Christian and the brotherhood of man,

powerfully contributed to the great rising of the lower classes, known

as the Peasants' War, in 1524-5. It was not, as the name implied,

confined to the rustics, for probably as large a proportion of the

populace of cities as of the tillers of the soil joined it. Nor was

there in it anything entirely new. The cry for justice was of long

standing, and every single element of the revolt, including the hatred

of the clergy and demand for ecclesiastical reform, is to be found also

in previous risings. Thus, the rebellion of peasants under Hans Böhm,

commonly called the Piper of Niklashausen, in 1476, was brought about

by a religious appeal. The leader asserted that he had special

revelations from the Virgin Mary that serfdom was to be abolished, and

the kingdom of God to be introduced by the levelling of all social

ranks; and he produced miracles to certify his divine calling. There

had also been two risings, closely connected, the first, in 1513,

deriving its name of "Bundschuh" from the peasant's tied shoe, a class

emblem, and the {88} second, in 1514, called "Poor Conrad" after the

peasant's nickname. If the memory of the suppression of all these

revolts might dampen the hopes of the poor, on the other hand the

successful rise of the Swiss democracy was a perpetual example and

encouragement to them.

[Sidenote: Causes]

The most fundamental cause of all these risings alike was, of course,

the cry of the oppressed for justice. This is eternal, as is also one

of the main alignments into which society usually divides itself, the

opposition of the poor and the rich. It is therefore not very

important to inquire whether the lot of the third estate was getting

better or worse during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In

either case there was a great load of wrong and tyranny to be thrown

off. But the question is not uninteresting in itself. As there are

diametrically opposite answers to it, both in the testimony of

contemporaries and in the opinion of modern scholars, it is perhaps

incapable of being answered. In some districts, and in some respects,

the lot of the poor was becoming a little easier; in other lands and in

different ways it was becoming harder. The time was one of general

prosperity, in which the peasant often shared. The newer methods of

agriculture, manufacture and commerce benefited him who knew how to

take advantage of them. That some did so may be inferred from the

statement of Sebastian Brant that the rustics dress like nobles, in

satin and gold chains. On the other hand the rising prices would bear

hard on those laborers dependent on fixed wages, though relieving the

burden of fixed rents. The whole people, except the merchants,

disliked the increasing cost of living and legislated against it to the

best of their ability. Complaints against monopoly were common, and

the Diets sometimes enacted laws against them. Foreign trade was

looked on with {89} suspicion as draining the country of silver and

gold. Again, although the peasants benefited by the growing stability

of government, they felt as a grievance the introduction of the new

Roman law with its emphasis upon the rights of property and of the

state. Burdens directly imposed by the territorial governments were

probably increasing. If the exactions from the landlords were not

becoming greater, it was simply because they were always at a maximum.

At no time was the rich gentleman at a loss to find law and precedent

for wringing from his serfs and tenants all that they could possibly

pay. [Sidenote: Peasant classes] The peasants were of three classes:

the serfs, the tenants who paid a quit-rent, and hired laborers. The

former, more than the others, perhaps, had now arrived at the

determination to assert their rights. For them the Peasants' War was

the inevitable break with a long economic past, now intolerable and

hopeless. There is some evidence to show that the number of serfs was

increasing. This process, by menacing the freedom of the others,

united all in the resolve to stop the gradual enslavement of their

class, to reckon with those who benefited by it.

How little now there was in the ideals of the last and most terrible of

the peasant risings may be seen by a study of the programs of reform

put forward from time to time during the preceding century. There is

nothing in the manifestos of 1525 that may not be found in the

pamphlets of the fifteenth century. The grievances are the same, and

the hope of a completely renovated and communized society is the same.

One of the most influential of these socialistic pamphlets was the

so-called _Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund_, written by an

Augsburg clergyman about 1438, first printed in 1476, and reprinted a

number of times before the end of the century. Its title bears witness

to the Messianic belief of the people that one of their {90} great, old

emperors should sometime return and restore the world to a condition of

justice and happiness. The present tract preached that "obedience was

dead and justice sick"; it attacked serfdom as wicked, denounced the

ecclesiastical law and demanded the freedom given by Christ.

The same doctrine, adapted to the needs of the time, is preached in the

_Reformation of the Emperor Frederic III_, published anonymously in

1523. Though more radical than Luther it reflects some of his ideas.

Still more, however, does it embody the reforms proposed at Nuremberg

in 1523. It may probably have been written by George Rüxner, called

Jerusalem, an Imperial Herald prominent in these circles. It advocated

the abolition of all taxes and tithes, the repeal of all imperial civil

laws, the reform of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiastical

property, and the limitation of the amount of capital allowed any one

merchant to 10,000 gulden.

Though there was nothing new in either the manner of oppression or in

the demands of the third estate during the last decade preceding the

great rebellion, there does seem to be a new atmosphere, or tone, in

the literature addressed to the lower classes. While on the one hand

the poor were still mocked and insulted as they always had been by

foolish and heartless possessors of inherited wealth and position, from

other quarters they now began to be also flattered and courted. The

peasant became in the large pamphlet literature of the time an ideal

figure, the type of the plain, honest, God-fearing man. [Sidenote: The

peasant idealized] Nobles like Duke Ulrich of Württemberg affected to

be called by popular nicknames. Carlstadt and other learned men

proclaimed that the peasant knew better the Word of God and the way of

salvation than did the learned. Many radical preachers, especially the

Anabaptist {91} Münzer, carried the message of human brotherhood to the

point of communism. There were a number of lay preachers, the most

celebrated being the physician Hans Maurer, who took the sobriquet

"Karsthans." This name, "the man with the hoe," soon became one of the

catch-words of the time, and made its way into popular speech as a

synonym for the simple and pious laborer. Hutten took it up and urged

the people to seize flails and pitchforks and smite the clergy and the

pope as they would the devil. [Sidenote: 1521] Others preached hatred

of the Jews, of the rich, of lawyers. Above all they appealed to the

Bible as the devine law, and demanded a religious reform as a condition

and preliminary to a thorough renovation of society. Although Luther

himself from the first opposed all forms of violence, his clarion

voice rang out in protest against the injustice of the nobles. "The

people neither can nor will endure your tyranny any longer," he said to

them in 1523, "God will not endure it; the world is not what it once

was when you drove and hunted men like wild beasts."

The rising began at Stühlingen, not far from the Swiss frontier, in

June 1524, and spread with considerable rapidity northward, until the

greater part of Germany was in the throes of revolution. The rebels

were able to make headway because most of the regular troops had been

withdrawn to the Turkish front or to Italy to fight the emperor's

battle against France. In South Germany, during the first six months,

the gatherings of peasants and townsmen were eminently peaceable. They

wished only to negotiate with their masters and to secure some

practical reforms. But when the revolt spread to Franconia and Saxony,

a much more radically socialistic program was developed and the rebels

showed themselves readier to enforce their demands by arms. For the

year 1524 there {92} was no general manifesto put forward, but there

were negotiations between the insurgents and their quondam masters. In

this district or in that, lists of very specific grievances were

presented and redress demanded. In some cases merely to gain time, in

others sincerely, the lords consented to reply to these petitions.

They denied this or that charge, and they promised to end this or that

form of oppression. Neither side was prepared for civil war. In all

it was more like a modern strike than anything else.

In the early months of 1525 several programs were drawn up of a more

general nature than those previously composed, and yet by no means

radical. The most famous of these was called _The Twelve Articles_,

printed and widely circulated in February. [Sidenote: _The Twelve

Articles_] The exact place at which they originated is unknown. The

authorship has been much disputed, and necessarily so, for they were

the work of no one brain, but were as composite a production as is the

Constitution of the United States. The material in them is drawn from

the mouths of a whole people. Far more than in other popular writings

one feels that they are the genuine expression of the public opinion of

a great class. Probably their draftsman was Sebastian Lotzer, the

tanner who for years past had preached apostolic communism. It is not

impossible that the Anabaptist Balthasar Hübmaier had a hand in them.

Their demands are moderate and would be considered matters of

self-evident justice to-day. The first article is for the right of

each community to choose its own pastor. The second protests against

the minor tithes on vegetables paid to the clergy, though expressly

admitting the legality of the tithes on grain. The third article

demands freedom for the serfs, the fourth and fifth, ask for the right

to hunt and to cut wood in the forests. The sixth, seventh and eighth

articles {93} protest against excessive forced labor, illegal payments

and exorbitant rents. The ninth article denounces the new (Roman) law,

and requests the reëstablishment of the old (German) law. The tenth

article voices the indignation of the poor at the enclosure by the rich

of commons and other free land. The eleventh demands the abolition of

the heriot, or inheritance-tax, by which the widow of a rustic was

obliged to yield to her lord the best head of cattle or other valuable

possession. The final article expresses the willingness of the

insurgents to have all their demands submitted to the Word of God.

Both here and in the preamble the entire assimilation of divine and

human law is postulated, and the charge that the Lutheran Gospel caused

sedition, is met.

[Sidenote: Other manifestos]

Though the _Twelve Articles_ were adopted by more of the bands of

peasants than was any other program, yet there were several other

manifestos drawn up about the same time. Thus, in the _Fifty-nine

Articles_ of the Stühlingen peasants the same demands are put forth

with much more detail. The legal right to trial by due process of law

is asserted, and vexatious payments due to a lord when his peasant

marries a woman from another estate, are denounced. But here, too, and

elsewhere, the fundamental demands were the same: freedom from serfdom,

from oppressive taxation and forced labor, and for unrestricted rights

of hunting and woodcutting in the forests. Everywhere there is the

same claim that the rights of the people are sanctioned by the law of

God, and generally the peasants assume that they are acting in

accordance with the new "gospel" of Luther. The Swabians expressly

submitted their demands to the arbitration of a commission of four to

consist of a representative of the emperor, Frederic of Saxony, Luther

and either Melanchthon or Bugenhagen.

{94} When the revolt reached the central part of Germany it became at

once more socialistic and more bloody. [Sidenote: Münzer] The baleful

eloquence of Thomas Münzer was exerted at Mühlhausen to nerve the

people to strike down the godless with pitiless sword. Already in

September 1524 he preached: "On! on! on! This is the time when the

wicked are as fearful as hounds. . . . Regard not the cries of the

godless. . . . On, while the fire is hot. Let not your swords be cold

from blood. Smite bang, bang on the anvil of Nimrod; cast his tower to

the ground!" Other leaders took up the message and called for the

extirpation of the tyrants, including both the clergy and the lords.

Communism was demanded as in the apostolic age; property was denounced

as wrong. Regulation of prices was one measure put forward, and the

committing of the government of the country to a university another.

The propaganda of deeds followed close upon the propaganda of words.

During the spring of 1525 in central Germany forty-six cloisters and

castles were burned to the ground, while violence and rapine reigned

supreme with all the ferocity characteristic of class warfare. On

Easter Sunday, April 16, one of the best-armed bands of peasants, under

one of the most brutal leaders, Jäcklein Rohrbach, attacked Weinsberg.

The count and his small garrison of eighteen knights surrendered and

were massacred by the insurgents, who visited mockery and insult upon

the countess and her daughters. Many of the cities joined the

peasants, and for a short time it seemed as if the rebellion might be

successful.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the rising]

But in fact the insurgents were poorly equipped, untrained, without

coöperation or leadership. As soon as the troops which won the battle

of Pavia in Italy were sent back to Germany the whole movement

collapsed. [Sidenote: February 24, 1525] The Swabian League inflicted

decisive {95} defeats upon the rebels at Leipheim on April 4, and at

Wurzach ten days later. Other blows followed in May. In the center of

Germany the Saxon Electorate lay supine. Frederic the Wise died in the

midst of the tumult [Sidenote: May 5, 1525] after expressing his

opinion that it was God's will that the common man should rule, and

that it would be wrong to resist the divine decree. His young

neighbor, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, acted vigorously. After coming

to terms with his own subjects by negotiations, he raised troops and

met a band of insurgents at Frankenhausen. He wished to treat with

them also, but Münzer's fanaticism, promising the deluded men

supernatural aid, nerved them to reject all terms. In the very ancient

German style they built a barricade of wagons, and calmly awaited the

attack of the soldiers. [Sidenote: May 15] Undisciplined and poorly

armed, almost at the first shot they broke and fled in panic, more than

half of them perishing on the field. Münzer was captured, and, after

having been forced by torture to sign a confession of his misdeeds, was

executed. After this there was no strength left in the peasant cause.

The lords, having gained the upper hand, put down the rising with great

cruelty. The estimates of the numbers of peasants slain vary so widely

as to make certainty impossible. Perhaps a hundred thousand in all

perished. The soldiers far outdid the rebels in savage reprisals. The

laborers sank back into a more wretched state than before; oppression

stalked with less rebuke than ever through the land.

SECTION 3. THE FORMATION or THE PROTESTANT PARTY

[Sidenote: Defections from Luther]

In the sixteenth century politics were theological. The groups into

which men divided had religious slogans and were called churches, but

they were also political parties. The years following the Diet of {96}

Worms saw the crystallization of a new group, which was at first

liberal and reforming and later, as it grew in stability, conservative.

At Worms almost all the liberal forces in Germany had been behind

Luther, the intellectuals, the common people with their wish for social

amelioration, and those to whom the religious issue primarily appealed.

But this support offered by public opinion was vague; in the next years

it became, both more definite and more limited. At the same time that

city after city and state after state was openly revolting from the

pope, until the Reformers had won a large constituency in the Imperial

Diets and a place of constitutional recognition, there was going on

another process by which one after another certain elements at first

inclined to support Luther fell away from him. During these years he

violently dissociated himself from the extreme radicals and thus lost

the support of the proletariat. In the second place the growing

definiteness and narrowness of his dogmatism and his failure to show

hospitality to science and philosophy alienated a number of

intellectuals. Third, a great schism weakened the Protestant church.

But these losses were counterbalanced by two gains. The first was the

increasing discipline and coherence of the new churches; the second was

their gradual but rapid attainment of the support of the middle and

governing classes in many German states.

[Sidenote: The Radicals]

Luther's struggle with radicalism had begun within a year after his

stand at Worms. He had always been consistently opposed to mob

violence, even when he might have profited by it. At Worms he

disapproved Hutten's plans for drawing the sword against the Romanists.

When, from his "watchtower," he first spied the disorders at

Wittenberg, he wrote that notwithstanding the great provocation given

to the common man by the clergy, yet tumult was the work of {97} the

devil. When he returned home he preached that the only weapon the

Christian ought to use was the Word. "Had I wished it," said he then,

"I might have brought Germany to civil war. Yes, at Worms I might have

started a game that would not have been safe for the emperor, but it

would have been a fool's game. So I did nothing, but only let the Word

act." Driven from Wittenberg, the Zwickau prophets, assisted by Thomas

Münzer, continued their agitation elsewhere. As long as their

propaganda was peaceful Luther was inclined to tolerate it. "Let them

teach what they like," said he, "be it gospel or lies." But when they

began to preach a campaign of fire and sword, Luther wrote, in July

1524, to his elector begging him "to act vigorously against their

storming and ranting, in order that God's kingdom may be advanced by

word only, as becomes Christians, and that all cause of sedition may be

taken from the multitude [Herr Omnes, literally Mr. Everybody], more

than enough inclined to it already."

When the revolt at last broke out Luther was looked up to and appealed

to by the people as their champion. In April 1525 he composed an

_Exhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants_,

[Sidenote: Exhortation to Peace] in which he distributed the blame for

the present conditions liberally, but impartially, on both sides,

aristocrats and peasants. To the former he said that their tyranny,

together with that of the clergy had brought this punishment on

themselves, and that God intended to smite them. To the peasants he

said that no tyranny was excuse for rebellion. Of their articles he

approved of two only, that demanding the right to choose their pastors

and that denouncing the heriot or death-duty. Their second demand, for

repeal of some of the tithes, he characterized as robbery, and the

third, for freedom of the serf, as unjustified because it made

Christian {98} liberty a merely external thing, and because Paul had

said that the bondman should not seek to be free (I Cor. vii, 20 f).

The other articles were referred to legal experts.

Hardly had this pamphlet come from the press before Luther heard of the

deeds of violence of Rohrbach and his fellows. Fearing that complete

anarchy would result from the triumph of the insurgents, against whom

no effective blow had yet been struck, he wrote a tract _Against the

Thievish, Murderous Hordes of Peasants_. [Sidenote: The peasants

denounced] In this he denounced them with the utmost violence of

language, and urged the government to smite them without pity.

Everyone should avoid a peasant as he would the devil, and should join

the forces to slay them like mad dogs. "If you die in battle against

them," said he to the soldiers, "you could never have a more blessed

end, for you die obedient to God's Word in Romans 13, and in the

service of love to free your neighbor from the bands of hell and the

devil." A little later he wrote: "It is better that all the peasants

be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the

rustics took the sword without divine authority. The only possible

consequence of their Satanic wickedness would be the diabolic

devastation of the kingdom of God." And again: "One cannot argue

reasonably with a rebel, but one must answer him with the fist so that

blood flows from his nose." Melanchthon entirely agreed with his

friend. "It is fairly written in Ecclesiasticus xxxiii," said he,

"that as the ass must have fodder, load, and whip, so must the servant

have bread, work, and punishment. These outward, bodily servitudes are

needful, but this institution [serfdom] is certainly pleasing to God."

Inevitably such an attitude alienated the lower classes. From this

time, many of them looked not to {99} the Lutheran but to the more

radical sects, called Anabaptists, for help. The condition of the

Empire at this time was very similar to that of many countries today,

where we find two large upper and middle-class parties, the

conservative (Catholic) and liberal (Protestant) over against the

radical or socialistic (Anabaptist).

[Sidenote: The Anabaptists]

The most important thing about the extremists was not their habit of

denying the validity of infant baptism and of rebaptizing their

converts, from which they derived their name. What really determined

their view-point and program was that they represented the poor,

uneducated, disinherited classes. The party of extreme measures is

always chiefly constituted from the proletariat because it is the very

poor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they have

not usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, many

of them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. A

complete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrors

for them, but only promise.

A radical party almost always includes men of a wide variety of

opinions. So the sixteenth century classed together as Anabaptists men

with not only divergent but with diametrically opposite views on the

most vital questions. Their only common bond was that they all alike

rejected the authoritative, traditional and aristocratic organization

of both of the larger churches and the pretensions of civil society.

It is easy to see that they had no historical perspective, and that

they tried to realize the ideals of primitive Christianity, as they

understood it, without reckoning the vast changes in culture and other

conditions, and yet it is impossible not to have a deep sympathy with

the men most of whose demands were just and who sealed their faith with

perpetual martyrdom. {100} [Sidenote: Spread of radicalism]

Notwithstanding the heavy blow to reform given in the crushing of the

peasants' rising, radical doctrines continued to spread among the

people. As the poor found their spiritual needs best supplied in the

conventicle of dissent, official Lutheranism became an established

church, predominantly an aristocratic and middle-class party of vested

interest and privilege.

It is sometimes said that the origin and growth of the Anabaptists was

due to the German translation of the Bible. This is not true and yet

there is little doubt that the publication of the German version in

1522 and the years immediately following, stimulated the growth of many

sects. The Bible is such a big book, and capable of so many different

interpretations, that it is not strange that a hundred different

schemes of salvation should have been deduced from it by those who came

to it with different prepossessions. While many of the Anabaptists

were perfect quietists, preaching the duty of non-resistance and the

wickedness of bearing arms, even in self-defence, others found sanction

for quite opposite views in the Scripture, and proclaimed that the

godless should be exterminated as the Canaanites had been. In ethical

matters some sects practised the severest code of morals, while others

were distinguished by laxity. By some marriage was forbidden; others

wanted all the marriage they could get and advocated polygamy. The

religious meetings were similar to "revivals," frequently of the most

hysterical sort. Claiming that they were mystically united to God, or

had direct revelations from him, they rejected the ceremonies and

sacraments of historic Christianity, and sometimes substituted for them

practices of the most absurd, or most doubtful, character. When

Melchior Rink preached, his followers howled like dogs, bellowed like

cattle, neighed like horses, and brayed like asses--some of them very

{101} naturally, no doubt. In certain extreme cases the meetings ended

in debauchery, while we know of men who committed murder in the belief

that they were directed so to do by special revelation of God. Thus at

St. Gall one brother cut another's throat, while one of the saints

trampled his wife to death under the influence of the spirit. But it

is unfair to judge the whole movement by these excesses.

The new sectaries, of course, ran the gauntlet of persecution. In 1529

the emperor and Diet at Spires passed a mandate against them to this

effect: "By the plenitude of our imperial power and wisdom we ordain,

decree, oblige, declare, and will that all Anabaptists, men and women

who have come to the age of understanding, shall be executed and

deprived of their natural life by fire, sword, and the like, according

to opportunity and without previous inquisition of the spiritual

judges." Lutherans united with Catholics in passing this edict, and

showed no less alacrity in executing it. As early as 1525 the

Anabaptists were persecuted at Zurich, where one of their earliest

communities sprouted. Some of the leaders were drowned, others were

banished and so spread their tenets elsewhere. Catholic princes

exterminated them by fire and sword. In Lutheran Saxony no less than

thirteen of the poor non-conformists were executed, and many more

imprisoned for long terms, or banished.

And yet the radical sects continued to grow. The dauntless zeal of

Melchior Hofmann braved all for the propagation of their ideas. For a

while he found a refuge at Strassburg, but this city soon became too

orthodox to hold him. He then turned to Holland, where the seed sowed

fell into fertile ground. Two Dutchmen, the baker John Matthys of

Haarlem and the tailor John Beuckelssen of Leyden went to the episcopal

city of Münster in Westphalia [Sidenote: Münster] near the Dutch {102}

border, and rapidly converted the mass of the people to their own

belief in the advent of the kingdom of God on earth. An insurrection

expelled the bishop's government and installed a democracy in February,

1534. After the death of Matthys on April 5, a rising of the people

against the dictatorial power of Beucklessen was suppressed by this

fanatic who thereupon crowned himself king under the title of John of

Leyden. Communism of goods was introduced and also polygamy. The city

was now besieged by its suzerain, the Bishop of Münster, and after

horrible sufferings had been inflicted on the population, taken by

storm on June 25, 1535. The surviving leaders were put to death by

torture.

The defeat itself was not so disastrous to the Anabaptist cause as were

the acts of the leaders when in power. As the Reformer Bullinger put

it: "God opened the eyes of the governments by the revolt at Münster,

and thereafter no one would trust even those Anabaptists who claimed to

be innocent." Their lack of unity and organization told against them.

Nevertheless the sect smouldered on in the lower classes, constantly

subject to the fires of martyrdom, until, toward the close of the

century, it attained some cohesion and respectability. The later

Baptists, Independents, and Quakers all inherited some portion of its

spiritual legacies. To the secular historian its chief interest is in

the social teachings, which consistently advocated tolerance, and

frequently various forms of anarchy and socialism.

[Sidenote: Defection of the humanists]

Next to the defection of the laboring masses, the severest loss to the

Evangelical party in these years was that of a large number of

intellectuals, who, having hailed Luther as a deliverer from

ecclesiastical bondage, came to see in him another pope, not less {103}

tyrannous than he of Rome. Reuchlin the Hebrew scholar and Mutian the

philosopher had little sympathy with any dogmatic subtlety. Zasius the

jurist was repelled by the haste and rashness of Luther. The so-called

"godless painters" of Nuremberg, George Penz and the brothers Hans and

Bartholomew Beham, having rejected in large part Christian doctrine,

were naturally not inclined to join a new church, even when they

deserted the old.

But a considerable number of humanists, and those the greatest, after

having welcomed the Reformation in its first, most liberal and hopeful

youth, deliberately turned their backs on it and cast in their lot with

the Roman communion. The reason was that, whereas the old faith

mothered many of the abuses, superstitions, and dogmatisms abominated

by the humanists, it had also, at this early stage in the schism,

within its close a large body of ripe, cultivated, fairly tolerant

opinion. The struggling innovators, on the other hand, though they

purged away much obsolete and offensive matter, were forced, partly by

their position, partly by the temper of their leaders, to a raw

self-assertiveness, a bald concentration on the points at issue,

incompatible with winsome wisdom, or with judicial fairness. How the

humanists would have chosen had they seen the Index and Loyola, is

problematical; but while there was still hope of reshaping Rome to

their liking they had little use for Wittenberg.

I admit that for some years I was very favorably

inclined to Luther's enterprise [wrote Crotus Rubeanus in

1531] [Sidenote: Rubeanus], but when I saw that nothing

was left untorn and undefiled . . . I thought the devil

might bring in great evil in the guise of something good,

using Scripture as his shield. So I decided to remain

in the church in which I was baptized, reared and taught.

Even if some fault might be found in it, yet in time it

{104}

might have been proved, sooner, at any rate, than in the

new church which in a few years has been torn by so many sects.

Wilibald Pirckheimer, the Greek scholar and historian of Nuremberg,

hailed Luther so warmly at first that he was put under the ban of the

bull _Exsurge Domine_. By 1529, however, he had come to believe him

insolent, impudent, either insane or possessed by a devil.

I do not deny [he wrote] that at the beginning all

Luther's acts did not seem to be vain, since no good man

could be pleased with all those errors and impostures that

had accumulated gradually in Christianity. So, with

others, I hoped that some remedy might be applied to

such great evils, but I was cruelly deceived. For, before

the former errors had been extirpated, far more intolerable

ones crept in, compared to which the others seemed

child's play.

[Sidenote: Appeal to Erasmus]

To Erasmus, the wise, the just, all men turned as to an arbiter of

opinion. From the first, Luther counted on his support, and not

without reason, for the humanist spoke well of the Theses and

commentaries of the Wittenberger. On March 28, 1519, Luther addressed

a letter to him, as "our glory and hope," acknowledging his

indebtedness and begging for support. Erasmus answered in a friendly

way, at the same time sending a message encouraging the Elector

Frederic to defend his innocent subject.

Dreading nothing so much as a violent catastrophe, the humanist labored

for the next two years to find a peaceful solution for the threatening

problem. Seeing that Luther's two chief errors were that he "had

attacked the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks," Erasmus

pressed upon men in power the plan of allowing the points in dispute to

be settled by an impartial tribunal, and of imposing silence on both

parties. At the same time he begged Luther to do nothing {105} violent

and urged that his enemies be not allowed to take extreme measures

against him. But after the publication of the pamphlets of 1520 and of

the bull condemning the heretic, this position became untenable.

Erasmus had so far compromised himself in the eyes of the inquisitors

that he fled from Louvain in the autumn of 1521, and settled in Basle.

He was strongly urged by both parties to come out on one side or the

other, and he was openly taunted by Ulrich von Hutten, a hot Lutheran,

for cowardice in not doing so. Alienated by this and by the dogmatism

and intolerance of Luther's writings, Erasmus finally defined his

position in a _Diatribe on Free Will_. [Sidenote: 1524] As Luther's

theory of the bondage of the will was but the other side of his

doctrine of justification by faith only--for where God's grace does all

there is nothing left for human effort--Erasmus attacked the very

center of the Evangelical dogmatic system. The question, a deep

psychological and metaphysical one, was much in the air, Valla having

written on it a work published in 1518, and Pomponazzi having also

composed a work on it in 1520, which was, however, not published until

much later. It is noticeable that Erasmus selected this point rather

than one of the practical reforms advocated at Wittenberg, with which

he was much in sympathy. Luther replied in a volume on _The Bondage of

the Will_ reasserting his position more strongly than ever. [Sidenote:

1525] How theological, rather than philosophical, his opinion was may

be seen from the fact that while he admitted that a man was free to

choose which of two indifferent alternatives he should take, he denied

that any of these choices could work salvation or real righteousness in

God's eyes. He did not hesitate to say that God saved and damned souls

irrespective of merit. Erasmus answered again in a large work, the

_Hyperaspistes_ (_Heavy-Armed Soldier_), which came {106} out in two

parts. [Sidenote: 1526-7] In this he offers a general critique of the

Lutheran movement. Its leader, he says, is a dogmatist, who never

recoils from extremes logically demanded by his premises, no matter how

repugnant they may be to the heart of man. But for himself he is a

humanist, finding truth in the reason as well as in the Bible, and

abhorring paradoxes.

The controversy was not allowed to drop at this point. Many a barbed

shaft of wit-winged sarcasm was shot by the light-armed scholar against

the ranks of the Reformers. "Where Lutheranism reigns," he wrote

Pirckheimer, "sound learning perishes." "With disgust," he confessed

to Ber, "I see the cause of Christianity approaching a condition that I

should be very unwilling to have it reach . . . While we are

quarreling over the booty the victory will slip through our fingers.

It is the old story of private interests destroying the commonwealth."

Erasmus first expressed the opinion, often maintained since, that

Europe was experiencing a gradual revival both of Christian piety and

of sound learning, when Luther's boisterous attack plunged the world

into a tumult in which both were lost sight of. On March 30, 1527, he

wrote to Maldonato:

I brought it about that sound learning, which among

the Italians and especially among the Romans savored of

nothing but pure paganism, began nobly to celebrate

Christ, in whom we ought to boast as the sole author of

both wisdom and happiness if we are true Christians. . . .

I always avoided the character of a dogmatist, except

in certain _obiter dicta_ which seemed to me conducive

to correct studies and against the preposterous judgments

of men.

In the same letter he tells how hard he had fought the obscurantists,

and adds: "While we were waging a fairly equal battle against these

monsters, behold {107} Luther suddenly arose and threw the apple of

Discord into the world."

In short, Erasmus left the Reformers not because they were too liberal,

but because they were too conservative, and because he disapproved of

violent methods. His gentle temperament, not without a touch of

timidity, made him abhor the tumult and trust to the voice of

persuasion. In failing to secure the support of the humanists

Protestantism lost heavily, and especially abandoned its chance to

become the party of progress. Luther himself was not only disappointed

in the disaffection of Erasmus, but was sincerely rebelled by his

rationalism. A man who could have the least doubt about a doctrine was

to him "an Arian, an atheist, and a skeptic." He went so far as to say

that the great Dutch scholar's primary object in publishing the Greek

New Testament was to make readers doubtful about the text, and that the

chief end of his _Colloquies_ was to mock all piety. Erasmus, whose

services to letters were the most distinguished and whose ideal of

Christianity was the loveliest, has suffered far too much in being

judged by his relation to the Reformation. By a great Catholic[1] he

has been called "the glory of the priesthood and the shame," by an

eminent Protestant scholar[2] "a John the Baptist and Judas in one."

[Sidenote: Sacramentarian schism]

The battle with the humanists was synchronous with the beginnings of a

fierce internecine strife that tore the young evangelical church into

two parts. Though the controversy between Luther and his principal

rival, Ulrich Zwingli, was really caused by a wide difference of

thought on many subjects, it focused its rays, like a burning-glass,

upon one point, the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood

of Christ in the {108} eucharist. The explanation of this mystery

evolved in the Middle Ages and adopted by the Lateran Council of 1215,

was the theory, called "transubstantiation," that the substance of the

bread turned into the substance of the body, and the substance of the

wine into the substance of the blood, without the "accidents" of

appearance and taste being altered. Some of the later doctors of the

church, Durand and Occam, opposed this theory, though they proposed a

nearly allied one, called "consubstantiation," that the body and blood

are present with the bread and wine. Wyclif and others, among whom was

the Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola, proposed the theory now

held in most Protestant churches that the bread and wine are mere

symbols of the body and blood.

At the dawn of the Reformation the matter was brought into prominence

by the Dutch theologian Hoen, from whom the symbolic interpretation

[Sidenote: Symbolism] was adopted first by Carlstadt and then by the

Swiss Reformers Zwingli and Oecolampadius. Luther himself wavered. He

attacked the sacrifice of the mass, in which he saw a "good work"

repugnant to faith, and a great practical abuse, as in the endowed

masses for souls, but he finally decided on the question of the real

presence that the words "this is my body" were "too strong for him" and

meant just what they said.

After a preliminary skirmish with Carlstadt, resulting in the latter's

banishment from Saxony, there was a long and bitter war of pens between

Wittenberg and the Swiss Reformers. Once the battle was joined it was

sure to be acrimonious because of the self-consciousness of each side.

Luther always assumed that he had a monopoly of truth, and that those

who proposed different views were infringing his copyright, so to

speak. "Zwingli, Carlstadt and Oecolampadius would never have known

Christ's gospel rightly," he {109} opined, "had not Luther written of

it first." He soon compared them to Absalom rebelling against his

father David, and to Judas betraying his Master. Zwingli on his side

was almost equally sure that he had discovered the truth independently

of Luther, and, while expressing approbation of his work, refused to be

called by his name. His invective was only a shade less virulent than

was that of his opponent.

The substance of the controversy was far from being the straight

alignment between reason and tradition that it has sometimes been

represented as. Both sides assumed the inerrancy of Scripture and

appealed primarily to the same biblical arguments. Luther had no

difficulty in proving that the words "hoc est corpus meum" meant that

the bread was the body, and he stated that this must be so even if

contrary to our senses. Zwingli had no difficulty in proving that the

thing itself was impossible, and therefore inferred that the biblical

words must be explained away as a figure of speech. In a long and

learned controversy neither side convinced the other, but each became

so exasperated as to believe the other possessed of the devil. In the

spring of 1529 Lutherans joined Catholics at the Diet of Spires in

refusing toleration to the Zwinglians. The division of Protestants of

course weakened them. Their leading statesman, Philip, Landgrave of

Hesse, seeing this, did his best to reconcile the leaders. For several

years he tried to get them to hold a conference, but in vain. Finally,

he succeeded in bringing together at his castle at Marburg on the Lahn,

Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and a large number of

other divines. [Sidenote: Marburg colloquy October 1-3, 1529] The

discussion here only served to bring out more strongly the

irreconcilability of the two "spirits." Shortly afterwards, when the

question of a political alliance came up, the Saxon theologians drafted

a memorial stating that {110} they would rather make an agreement with

the heathen than with the "sacramentarians." [Sidenote: 1530] The

same attitude was preserved at the Diet of Augsburg, where the

Lutherans were careful to avoid all appearance of friendship with the

Zwinglians lest they should compromise their standing with the

Catholics. Zwingli and his friends were hardly less intransigeant.

[Sidenote: October 11, 1531]

When Zwingli died in battle with the Catholic cantons and when

Oecolampadius succumbed to a fever a few weeks later, Luther loudly

proclaimed that was a judgment of God and a triumph for his own party.

Though there was no hope of reconciling the Swiss, the South German

Zwinglians, headed by the Strassburg Reformers Bucer and Capito,

hastened to come to an understanding with Wittenberg, without which

their position would have been extremely perilous. Bucer claimed to

represent a middle doctrine, such as was later asserted by Calvin. As

no middle ground is possible, the doctrine is unintelligible, being, in

fact, nothing but the statement, in strong terms, of two mutually

exclusive propositions. After much humiliation the divines succeeded,

however, in satisfying Luther, with whom they signed the Wittenberg

Concord on May 29, 1536. The Swiss still remained without the pale,

and Luther's hatred of them grew with the years. Shortly before his

death he wrote that he would testify before the judgment-seat of God

his loathing for the sacramentarians. He became more and more

conservative, bringing back to the sacrament some of the medieval

superstitions he had once expelled. He began again to call it an

offering and a sacrifice and again had it elevated in church for the

adoration of the faithful. He wavered on this point, because, as he

said, he doubted whether it were more his duty to "spite" the papists

or the sacramentarians. He finally decided on the latter, "and if

necessary," {111} continued he, "I will have the host elevated three,

seven, or ten times, for I will not let the devil teach me anything in

my church."

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism in middle and upper classes]

Notwithstanding the bitter controversies just related Lutheranism

flourished mightily in the body of the people who were neither peasants

nor intellectuals nor Swiss. The appeal was to the upper and middle

classes, sufficiently educated to discard some of the medievalism of

the Roman Church and impelled also by nationalism and economic

self-interest to turn from the tyranny of the pope. City after city

and state after state enlisted under the banner of Luther. He

continued to appeal to them through the press. As a popular

pamphleteer he must be reckoned among the very ablest. His faults,

coarseness and unbridled violence of language, did not alienate most of

his contemporaries. Even his Latin works, too harshly described by

Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of

the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen

before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and

vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of

illustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and

theological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hitherto

been written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And he

won his battle almost alone, for Melanchthon, though learned and

elegant, had no popular gifts, and none of his other lieutenants could

boast even second-rate ability.

[Sidenote: German Bible, 1522-32]

Among his many publications a few only can be singled out for special

mention. The continuation of the German Bible undoubtedly helped his

cause greatly. In many things he could appeal to it against the Roman

tradition, and the very fact that he claimed to do so while his

opponents by their attitude seemed to {112} shrink from this test,

established the Protestant claim to be evangelical, in the eyes of the

people. Next came his hymns, many popular, some good and one really

great. [Sidenote: Hymns, 1528] _Ein' feste Burg_ has been well called

by Heine the Marseillaise of the Reformation. The Longer and Shorter

Catechisms [Sidenote: Catechisms, 1529] educated the common people in

the evangelical doctrine so well that the Catholics were forced to

imitate their enemy, though tardily, by composing, for the first time,

catechisms of their own.

Having overthrown much of the doctrine and discipline of the old church

Luther addressed himself with admirable vigor and great success to the

task of building up a substitute for it. In this the combination of

the conservative and at the same time thoroughly popular spirit of the

movement manifested itself. In divine service the vernacular was

substituted for Latin. New emphasis was placed upon preaching,

Bible-reading and hymn-singing. Mass was no longer incomprehensible,

but was an act of worship in which all could intelligently participate;

bread and wine were both given to the laity, and those words of the

canon implying transubstantiation and sacrifice were omitted. Marriage

was relegated from the rank of a sacrament to that of a civil contract.

Baptism was kept in the old form, even to the detail of exorcizing the

evil spirit. Auricular confession was permitted but not insisted upon.

[Sidenote: Church government]

The problems of church government and organization were pressing. Two

alternatives, were theoretically possible, Congregationalism or state

churches. After some hesitation, Luther was convinced by the

extravagances of Münzer and his ilk that the latter was the only

practicable course. The governments of the various German states and

cities were now given supreme power in ecclesiastical matters. They

took over the property belonging to the old church and {113}

administered it generally for religious or educational or charitable

purposes. A system of church-visitation was started, by which the

central authority passed upon the competence of each minister. Powers

of appointment and removal were vested in the government. The title

and office of bishop were changed in most cases to that of

"superintendent," though in some German sees and generally in Sweden

the name bishop was retained.

[Sidenote: Lutheran accessions]

How genuinely popular was the Lutheran movement may be seen in the fact

that the free cities, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, Ulm, Lübeck,

Hamburg, and many others were the first to revolt from Rome. In other

states the government led the way. Electoral Saxony evolved slowly

into complete Protestantism. Though the Elector Frederic sympathized

with almost everything advanced by his great subject, he was too

cautious to interfere with vested interests of ecclesiastical property

and endowments. On his death [Sidenote: May 5, 1525] his brother John

succeeded to the title, and came out openly for all the reforms

advocated at Wittenberg. The neighboring state of Hesse was won about

1524, [Sidenote: 1424-5] though the official ordinance promulgating the

evangelical doctrine was not issued until 1526. A very important

acquisition was Prussia. [Sidenote: 1525] Hitherto it had been

governed by the Teutonic Order, a military society like the Knights

Templars. Albert of Brandenburg became Grand Master in 1511,

[Sidenote: Albert of Brandenburg, 1490-1568] and fourteen years later

saw the opportunity of aggrandizing his personal power by renouncing

his spiritual ties. He accordingly declared the Teutonic Order

abolished and himself temporal Duke of Prussia, shortly afterwards

marrying a daughter of the king of Denmark. He swore allegiance to the

king of Poland.

The growth of Lutheranism unmolested by the imperial government was

made possible by the {114} absorption of the emperor's energies in his

rivalry with France and Turkey and by the decentralization of the

Empire. [Sidenote: Leagues] Leagues between groups of German states

had been quite common in the past, and a new stimulus to their

formation was given by the common religious interest. The first league

of this sort was that of Ratisbon, [Sidenote: 1524] between Bavaria and

other South German principalities; its purpose was to carry out the

Edict of Worms. This was followed by a similar league in North Germany

between Catholic states, known as the League of Dessau, [Sidenote:

1525] and a Protestant confederation known as the League of Torgau.

[Sidenote: The Diet of Spires, 1526]

The Diet held at Spires in the summer of 1526 witnessed the strength of

the new party, for in it the two sides treated on equal terms. Many

reforms were proposed, and some carried through against the obstruction

by Ferdinand, the emperor's brother and lieutenant. The great question

was the enforcement of the Edict of Worms, and on this the Diet passed

an act, known as a Recess, providing that each state should act in

matters of faith as it could answer to God and the emperor. In effect

this allowed the government of every German state to choose between the

two confessions, thus anticipating the principle of the Religious Peace

of Augsburg of 1555.

The relations of the two parties were so delicate that it seemed as if

a general religious war were imminent. In 1528, this was almost

precipitated by a certain Otto von Pack, who assured the Landgrave of

Hesse that he had found a treaty between the Catholic princes for the

extirpation of the Lutherans and for the expropriation of their

champions, the Elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse himself. This was

false, but the Landgrave armed and attacked the Bishops of Würzburg and

Bamberg, named by Pack as parties to the treaty, and he forced them to

pay an indemnity.

{115}

[Sidenote: Recess of Spires]

The Diet which met at Spires early in 1529 endeavored to deal as

drastically as possible with the schism. The Recess passed by the

Catholic majority on April 7 was most unfavorable to the Reformers,

repealing the Recess of the last Diet in their favor. Catholic states

were commanded to execute the persecuting Edict of Worms, although

Lutheran states were forbidden to abolish the office of the (Catholic)

mass, and also to allow any further innovations in their own doctrines

or practices until the calling of a general council. The princes were

forbidden to harbor the subjects of another state. The Evangelical

members of the Diet, much aggrieved at this blow to their faith,

published a Protest [Sidenote: Protest, April 19] taking the ground

that the Recess of 1526 had been in the nature of a treaty and could

not be abrogated without the consent of both parties to it. As the

government of Germany was a federal one, this was a question of

"states' rights," such as came up in our own Civil War, but in the

German case it was even harder to decide because there was no written

Constitution defining the powers of the national government and the

states. It might naturally be assumed that the Diet had the power to

repeal its own acts, but the Evangelical estates made a further point

in their appeal to the emperor, [Sidenote: April 25] by alleging that

the Recess of 1526 had been passed unanimously and could only be

repealed by a unanimous vote. The Protest and the appeal were signed

by the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, a few smaller states,

and fourteen free cities. From the Protest they became immediately

known as "the Protesting Estates" and subsequently the name Protestant

was given to all those who left the Roman communion.

[1] Alexander Pope.

[2] Walther Köhler.

{116}

SECTION 4. THE GROWTH OF PROTESTANTISM UNTIL

THE DEATH OF LUTHER

Certain states having announced that they would not be bound by the

will of the majority, the question naturally came up as to how far they

would defend this position by arms. [Sidenote: March 6, 1530]

Luther's advice asked and given to the effect that all rebellion or

forcible resistance to the constituted authorities was wrong. Passive

resistance, the mere refusal to obey the command to persecute or to

act, otherwise contrary to God's law, he thought was right but he

discountenanced any other measures, even those taken in self-defence.

All Germans, said he, were the emperor's subjects, and the princes

should not shield Luther from him, but leave their lands open to his

officers to do what they pleased. This position Luther abandoned a

year later, when the jurists pointed out to him that the authority of

the emperor was not despotic but was limited by law.

The Protest and Appeal of 1529 at last aroused Charles, slow as he was,

to the great dangers to himself that lurked in the Protestant schism.

Having repulsed the Turk and having made peace with France and the pope

he was at last in a position to address himself seriously to the

religious problem. Fully intending to settle the trouble once for all,

he came to Germany and opened a Diet at Augsburg [Sidenote: June 20,

1530] to which were invited not only the representatives of the various

states but a number of leading theologians, both Catholic and Lutheran,

all except Luther himself, an outlaw by the Edict of Worms.

The first action taken was to ask the Lutherans to state their position

and this was done in the famous Augsburg Confession, [Sidenote: June

25] read before the Diet by the Saxon Chancellor Brück. It had been

drawn up by {117} Melanchthon in language as near as possible to that

of the old church. Indeed it undertook to prove that there was in the

Lutheran doctrine "nothing repugnant to Scripture or to the Catholic

church or to the Roman church." Even in the form of the Confession

published 1531 this Catholicizing tendency is marked, but in the

original, now lost, it was probably stronger. The reason of this was

not, as generally stated, Melanchthon's "gentleness" and desire to

conciliate all parties, for he showed himself more truculent to the

Zwinglians and Anabaptists than did Luther. It was due to the fact

that Melanchthon [Sidenote: Melanchthon] was at heart half a Catholic,

so much so, indeed, that Contarini and others thought it quite possible

that he might come over to them. In the present instance he made his

doctrine conform to the Roman tenets to such an extent that (in the

lost original, as we may judge by the Confutation) even

transubstantiation was in a manner accepted. The first part of the

Confession is a creed: the second part takes up certain abuses, or

reforms, namely: the demand of the cup for the laity, the marriage of

priests, the mass as an _opus operatum_ or as celebrated privately,

fasting and traditions, monastic vows and the power of the pope.

But the concessions did not satisfy the Catholics. A Refutation was

prepared by Eck and others, and read before the Diet on August 3.

Negotiations continued and still further concessions were wrung from

Melanchthon, concessions of so dangerous a nature that his

fellow-Protestants denounced him as an enemy of the faith and appealed

to Luther against him. Melanchthon had agreed to call the mass a

sacrifice, if the word were qualified by the term "commemorative," and

also promised that the bishops should be restored to their ancient

jurisdictions, a measure justified by him as a blow at turbulent

sectaries but one also most {118} perilous to Lutherans. On the other

hand, Eck made some concessions, mostly verbal, about the doctrine of

justification and other points.

That with this mutually conciliatory spirit an agreement failed to

materialize only proved how irreconcilable were the aims of the two

parties. [Sidenote: September 22] The Diet voted that the Confession

had been refuted and that the Protestants were bound to recant. The

emperor promised to use his influence with the pope to call a general

council to decide doubtful points, but if the Lutherans did not return

to the papal church by April 15, 1531, they were threatened with

coercion.

[Sidenote: League of Schmalkalden]

To meet this perilous situation a closer alliance was formed by the

Protestant states at Schmalkalden in February 1531. This league

constantly grew by the admission of new members, but some attempts to

unite with the Swiss proved abortive.

On January 5, 1531, Ferdinand was elected King of the Romans--the title

taken by the heir to the Empire--by six of the electors against the

vote of Saxony. Three months later when the time granted the Lutherans

expired, the Catholics were unable to do anything, and negotiations

continued. [Sidenote: July 23, 1532] These resulted in the Peace of

Nuremberg, a truce until a general council should be called. It was an

important victory for the Lutherans, who were thus given time in which

to grow.

The seething unrest which found expression in the rebellion of the

knights, of the peasants and of the Anabaptists at Münster, has been

described. One more liberal movement, which also failed, must be

mentioned at this time. It was as little connected with religion as

anything in that theological age could be. [Sidenote: Lübeck, 1533-35]

The city of Lübeck, under its burgomaster George Wullenwever, tried to

free itself from the influence of Denmark and at the same time to get a

more popular {119} government. In 1536 it was conquered by Christian

III of Denmark, and the old aristocratic constitution restored. The

time was not ripe for the people to assert its rights in North Germany.

[Sidenote: May 1534]

The growth of Protestantism was at times assisted by force of arms.

Thus, Philip of Hesse restored the now Protestant Duke Ulrich of

Wurttemberg, who had been expelled for his tyranny by the Swabian

League fifteen years before. This triumph was the more marked because

the expropriated ruler was Ferdinand, King of the Romans. If in such

cases it was the government which took the lead, in others the

government undoubtedly compelled the people to continue Catholic even

when there was a strongly Protestant public opinion. Such was the case

in Albertine Saxony,[1] whose ruler, Duke George, though an estimable

man in many ways, was regarded by Luther as the instrument of Satan

because he persecuted his Protestant subjects. When he died, his

brother, [Sidenote: April, 1539] the Protestant Henry the Pious,

succeeded and introduced the Reform amid general acclamation. Two

years later this duke was followed by his son, the versatile but

treacherous Maurice. In the year 1539 a still greater acquisition came

to the Schmalkaldic League in the conversion of Brandenburg and its

Elector Joachim II.

[Sidenote: Philip of Hesse, 1504-67]

Shortly afterwards the world was scandalized by the bigamy of Philip of

Hesse. This prince was utterly spoiled by his accession to the

governing power at the age of fifteen. Though he lived in flagrant

immorality, his religion, which, soon after he met Luther at Worms,

became the Evangelical, was real enough to make his sins a burden to

conscience. Much attracted {120} by the teachings of some of the

Anabaptists and Carlstadt that polygamy was lawful, and by Luther's

assertion in the _Babylonian Captivity_ that it was preferable to

divorce, [Sidenote: 1526] he begged to be allowed to take more wives,

but was at first refused. His conscience was quickened by an attack of

the syphilis in 1539, and at that time he asked permission to take a

second wife and received it on December 10, from Luther, Melanchthon,

and Bucer. His secret marriage to Margaret von der Saal [Sidenote:

March 4, 1540] took place in the presence of Melanchthon, Bucer, and

other divines. Luther advised him to keep the matter secret and if

necessary even to "tell a good strong lie for the sake and good of the

Christian church." Of course he was unable to conceal his act, and his

conduct, and that of his spiritual advisers, became a just reproach to

the cause. As no material advantages were lost by it, Philip might

have reversed the epigram of Francis I and have said that "nothing was

lost but honor." Neither Germany nor Hesse nor the Protestant church

suffered directly by his act. [Sidenote: 1541] Indeed it lead

indirectly to another territorial gain. Philip's enemy Duke Henry of

Brunswick, though equally immoral, attacked him in a pamphlet. Luther

answered this in a tract of the utmost violence, called _Jack Sausage_.

Henry's rejoinder was followed by war between him and the Schmalkaldic

princes, in which he was expelled from his dominions and the

Reformation introduced.

[Sidenote: 1541]

Further gains followed rapidly. The Catholic Bishop of Naumburg was

expelled by John Frederic of Saxony, and a Lutheran bishop instituted

instead. About the same time the great spiritual prince, Hermann von

Wied, Archbishop Elector of Cologne, became a Protestant, and invited

Melanchthon and Bucer to reform his territories. One of the last

gains, before the Schmalkaldic war, was the Rhenish Palatinate, under

{121} its Elector Frederic III. [Sidenote: 1545] His troops fought

then on the Protestant side, though later he turned against that church.

The opportunity of the Lutherans was due to the engagements of the

emperor with other enemies. In 1535 Charles undertook a successful

expedition against Tunis. The war with France simmered on until the

Truce of Nice, intended to be for ten years, signed between the two

powers in 1538. In 1544 war broke out again, and fortune again favored

Charles. He invaded France almost to the gates of Paris, but did not

press his advantage and on September 18 signed the Peace of Crépy

giving up all his conquests.

Unable to turn his arms against the heretics, Charles continued to

negotiate with them. The pressure he brought to bear upon the pope

finally resulted in the summoning by Paul III of a council to meet at

Mantua the following year. [Sidenote: June 2, 1536] The Protestants

were invited to send delegates to this council, and the princes of that

faith held a congress at Schmalkalden to decide on their course.

[Sidenote: February 1537] Hitherto the Lutherans had called themselves

a part of the Roman Catholic church and had always appealed to a future

oecumenical or national synod. They now found this position untenable,

and returned the papal citation unopened. Instead, demands for reform,

known as the Schmalkaldic Articles, were drawn up by Luther. The four

principal demands were (1) recognition of the doctrine of justification

by faith only, (2) abolition of the mass as a good work or _opus

operatum_, (3) alienation of the foundations for private masses, (4)

removal of the pretentions of the pope to headship of the universal

church. As a matter of fact the council was postponed.

[Sidenote: April 19, 1539]

Failing to reach a permanent solution by this method, Charles was again

forced to negotiate. The {122} Treaty of Frankfort agreed to a truce

varying in length from six to fifteen months according to

circumstances. This was followed by a series of religious conferences

with the purpose of finding some means of reconciling the two

confessions. [Sidenote: Religious Colloquies] Among the first of

these were the meetings at Worms and Hagenau. Campeggio and Eck were

the Catholic leaders, Melanchthon the spokesman for the Lutherans.

[Sidenote: 1540-1] Each side had eleven members on the commission, but

their joint efforts were wrecked on the plan for limiting the papal

power and on the doctrine of original sin. When the Diet of Ratisbon

was opened in the spring of 1541 a further conference was held at which

the two parties came closer to each other than they had done since

Augsburg. The Book of Ratisbon was drawn up, emphasizing the points of

agreement and slurring over the differences. Contarini made wide

concessions, later condemned by the Catholics, on the doctrine of

justification. Discussion of the nature of the church, the power of

the pope, the invocation of saints, the mass, and sacerdotal celibacy

seemed likely to result in some _modus vivendi_. What finally

shattered the hopes of union was the discussion of transubstantiation

and the adoration of the host. As Contarini had found in the

statements of the Augsburg Confession no insuperable obstacle to an

understanding he was astonished at the stress laid on them by the

Protestants now.

[Sidenote: 1542]

It is not remarkable that with such results the Diet of Spires should

have avoided the religious question and have devoted itself to more

secular matters, among them the grant to the emperor of soldiers to

fight the Turk. Of this Diet Bucer wrote "The Estates act under the

wrath of God. Religion is relegated to an agreement between

cities. . . . The cause of our evils is that few seek the Lord

earnestly, but {123} most fight against him, both among those who have

rejected, and of those who still bear, the papal yoke." At the Diet of

Spires two years later the emperor promised the Protestants, in return

for help against France, recognition until a German National Council

should be called. For this concession he was sharply rebuked by the

pope. [Sidenote: 1545] The Diet of Worms contented itself with

expressing its general hope for a "Christian reformation."

[Sidenote: 1545]

During his later years Luther's polemic never flagged. His last book,

_Against the Papacy of Rome, founded by the Devil_, surpassed Cicero

and the humanists and all that had ever been known in the virulence of

its invective against "the most hellish father, St. Paul, or Paula III"

and his "hellish Roman church." "One would like to curse them," he

wrote, "so that thunder and lightning would strike them, hell fire burn

them, the plague, syphilis, epilepsy, scurvy, leprosy, carbuncles, and

all diseases attack them"--and so on for page after page. Of course

such lack of restraint largely defeated its own ends. The Swiss

Reformer Bullinger called it "amazingly violent," and a book than which

he "had never read anything more savage or imprudent." Our judgment of

it must be tempered by the consideration that Luther suffered in his

last years from a nervous malady and from other painful diseases, due

partly to overwork and lack of exercise, partly to the quantities of

alcohol he imbibed, though he never became intoxicated.

Nevertheless, the last twenty years of his life were his happiest ones.

His wife, Catherine von Bora, an ex-nun, and his children, brought him

much happiness. Though the wedding gave his enemies plenty of openings

for reviling him as an apostate, [Sidenote: June 13, 1525] and though

it drew from Erasmus the scoffing jest that what had begun as a tragedy

ended as a comedy, it {124} crowned his career, symbolizing the return

from medieval asceticism to modern joy in living. Dwelling in the fine

old friary, entertaining with lavish prodigality many poor relatives,

famous strangers, and students, notwithstanding unremitting toil and

not a little bodily suffering, he expanded in his whole nature,

mellowing in the warmth of a happy fireside climate. His daily routine

is known to us intimately through the adoring assiduity of his

disciples, who noted down whole volumes of his _Table Talk_.

[Sidenote: Death and character of Luther]

On February 18, 1546, he died. Measured by the work that he

accomplished and by the impression that his personality made both on

contemporaries and on posterity, there are few men like him in history.

Dogmatic, superstitious, intolerant, overbearing, and violent as he

was, he yet had that inscrutable prerogative of genius of transforming

what he touched into new values. His contemporaries bore his invective

because of his earnestness; they bowed to "the almost disgraceful

servitude" which, says Melanchthon, he imposed upon his followers,

because they knew that he was leading them to victory in a great and

worthy cause. Even so, now, many men overlook his narrowness and

bigotry because of his genius and bravery.

His grandest quality was sincerity. Priest and public man as he was,

there was not a line of hypocrisy or cant in his whole being. A sham

was to him intolerable, the abomination of desolation standing where it

ought not. Reckless of consequences, of danger, of his popularity, and

of his life, he blurted out the whole truth, as he saw it, "despite all

cardinals, popes, kings and emperors, together with all devils and

hell." Whether his ideal is ours or not, his courage in daring and his

strength to labor for it must command our respect.

Next to his earnestness he owed his success to a {125} wonderful gift

of language that made him the tongue, as well as the spear-point, of

his people. [Sidenote: His eloquence] In love of nature, in wonder,

in the power to voice some secret truth in a phrase or a metaphor, he

was a poet. He looked out on the stars and considered the "good

master-workman" that made them, on the violets "for which neither the

Grand Turk nor the emperor could pay," on the yearly growth of corn and

wine, "as great a miracle as the manna in the wilderness," on the

"pious, honorable birds" alert to escape the fowler's net, or holding a

Diet "in a hall roofed with the vault of heaven, carpeted with the

grass, and with walls as far as the ends of the earth." Or he wrote to

his son a charming fairy-tale of a pleasant garden where good children

eat apples and pears and cherries and plums, and where they ride on

pretty ponies with golden reins and silver saddles and dance all day

and play with whistles and fifes and little cross-bows.

Luther's character combined traits not usually found in the same

nature. He was both a dreamy mystic and a practical man of affairs; he

saw visions and he knew how to make them realities; he was a

God-intoxicated prophet and a cool calculator and hard worker for

results. His faith was as simple and passionate as his dogmatic

distinctions were often sophistical and arid. He could attack his foes

with berserker fury, and he could be as gentle with a child as only a

woman can. His hymns soar to heaven and his coarse jests trail in the

mire. He was touched with profound melancholy and yet he had a

wholesome, ready laugh. His words are now brutal invectives and again

blossom with the most exquisite flowers of the soul--poetry, music,

idyllic humor, tenderness. He was subtle and simple; superstitious and

wise; limited in his cultural sympathies, but very great in what he

achieved.

[1] Saxony had been divided in 1485 into two parts, the Electorate,

including Wittenberg, Weimar and Eisenach, and the Duchy, including

Leipzig and Dresden. The former was called after its first ruler

Ernestine, the latter Albertine.

{126}

SECTION 5. THE RELIGIOUS WAR AND THE RELIGIOUS PEACE

[Sidenote: The Schmalkaldic War, 1546-7]

Hardly had Luther been laid to rest when the first general religious

war broke out in Germany. There had been a few small wars of this

character before, such as those of Hesse against Bamberg and Wurzburg,

and against Württemberg, and against Brunswick. But the conflicts had

been successfully "localized." Now at last was to come a general

battle, as a foretaste of the Thirty Years War of the next century.

It has sometimes been doubted whether the Schmalkaldic War was a

religious conflict at all. The emperor asserted that his sole object

was to reduce rebellious subjects to obedience. Several Protestant

princes were his allies, and the territories he conquered were not, for

the most part, forced to give up their faith. Nevertheless, it is

certain that the fundamental cause of the strain was the difference of

creed. A parallel may be found in our own Civil War, in which Lincoln

truly claimed that he was fighting only to maintain the union, and yet

it is certain that slavery furnished the underlying cause of the appeal

to arms.

It has recently been shown that the emperor planned the attack on his

Protestant subjects as far back, at least, as 1541. All the

negotiations subsequent to that time were a mere blind in disguise his

preparations. For he labored indefatigably to bring about a condition

in which it would be safe for him to embark on the perilous enterprise.

Though he was a dull man he had the two qualities of caution and

persistence that stood him in better stead than the more showy talents

of other statesmen. If, with his huge resources, he never did anything

brilliant, still less did he ever take a gambler's chance of failing.

{127} The opportune moment came at last in the spring of 1546. Two

years before, he had beaten France with the help of the Protestants,

and had imposed upon her as one condition of peace that she should make

no allies within the Empire. In November of the same year he made an

alliance with Paul III, receiving 200,000 ducats in support of his

effort to extirpate the heresy.

Other considerations impelled him to attack at once. The secession of

Cologne and the Palatinate from the Catholic communion gave the

Protestants a majority in the Electoral College. Still more decisive

was it that Charles was able at this time by playing upon the

jealousies and ambitions of the states, to secure important allies

within the Empire, including some of the Protestant faith. First,

Catholic Bavaria forgot her hatred of Austria far enough to make common

cause against the heretics. Then, two great Protestant princes,

Maurice of Albertine Saxony and John von Küstrin--a brother of Joachim

II, Elector of Brandenburg--abandoned their coreligionists and bartered

support to the emperor in return for promises of aggrandizement.

[Sidenote: January 1546]

A final religious conference held at Ratisbon demonstrated more clearly

than ever the hopelessness of conciliation. Whereas a semi-Lutheran

doctrine of justification was adopted, the Protestants prepared two

long memoirs rejecting the authority of the council recently convened

at Trent. And then, in the summer, war broke out. At this moment the

forces of the Schmalkaldic League were superior to those of its

enemies. But for poor leadership and lack of unity in command they

would probably have won.

Towards the last of August and early in September the Protestant troops

bombarded the imperial army at Ingolstadt, but failed to follow this up

by a decisive {128} attack, as was urged by General Schärtlin of

Augsburg. Lack of equipment was partly responsible for this failure.

When the emperor advanced, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of

Hesse retired each to his own land. Another futile attempt of the

League was a raid on the Tyrol, possibly influenced by the desire to

strike at the Council of Trent, certainly by no sound military policy.

The effect of these indecisive counsels was that Charles had little

trouble in reducing the South German rebels, Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg,

and Württemberg. The Elector Palatine hastened to come to terms by

temporarily abandoning his religion. [Sidenote: February, 1547] A

counter-reformation was also effected in Cologne. Augsburg bought the

emperor's pardon by material concessions.

[Sidenote: October 1546]

In the meantime Duke Maurice of Albertine Saxony, having made a bargain

with the emperor, attacked his second cousin the Elector. Though

Maurice was not obliged to abjure his faith, his act was naturally

regarded as one of signal treachery and he was henceforth known by the

nickname "Judas." Maurice conquered most of his cousin's lands, except

the forts of Wittenberg and Gotha. Charles's Spanish army under Alva

now turned northward, forced a passage of the Elbe and routed the

troops of John Frederic at the battle of Mülberg, near Torgau, on April

24, 1547. John Frederic was captured wounded, and kept in durance

several years. Wittenberg capitulated on May 19, and just a month

later Philip of Hesse surrendered at Halle. He also was kept a

prisoner for some years. Peace was made by the mediation of

Brandenburg. The electoral vote of Saxony was given to Maurice, and

with it the best part of John Frederic's lands, including Wittenberg.

No change of religion was required. The net result of the war was to

{129} increase the imperial power, but to put a very slight check upon

the expansion of Protestantism.

And yet it was for precisely this end that Charles chiefly valued his

authority. Immediately, acting independently of the pope, he made

another effort to restore the confessional unity of Germany. The Diet

of Augsburg [Sidenote: 1547-8] accepted under pressure from him a

decree called the Interim because it was to be valid only until the

final decisions of a general council. Though intended to apply only to

Protestant states--the Catholics had, instead, a _formula

reformationis_--the Interim [Sidenote: The Interim, June 30, 1548],

drawn up by Romanist divines, was naturally Catholic in tenor. The

episcopal constitution was restored, along with the canon of the mass,

the doctrine of the seven sacraments, and the worship of saints. On

some doctrinal points vagueness was studied. The only concessions made

to the Reformation were the _pro tempore_ recognition of the marriage

of the clergy and the giving of the cup to the laity. Various other

details of practical reform were demanded. The Interim was intensely

unpopular with both parties. The pope objected to it and German

Catholics, especially in Bavaria, strongly opposed it. The South

German Protestant states accepted it only under pressure. Maurice of

Saxony adopted it in a modified form, known as the Leipzig Interim, in

December 1548. The assistance rendered him by Melanchthon caused a

fierce attack on the theologian by his fellow-Lutherans. In enforcing

the Interim Maurice found his own profit, for when Magdeburg won the

nickname of "our Lord God's pulpit" by refusing to accept it, Maurice

was entrusted with the execution of the imperial ban, and captured the

city on November 9, 1551.

Germany now fell into a confused condition, every state for itself.

The emperor found his own {130} difficulties in trying to make his son

Philip successor to his Brother Ferdinand. His two former Protestant

allies, Maurice and John von Küstrin, made an alliance with France and

with other North German princes and forced the emperor to conclude the

Convention of Passau. [Sidenote: 1552] This guaranteed afresh the

religious freedom of the Lutherans until the next Diet and forced the

liberation of John Frederic and Philip of Hesse. Charles did not

loyally accept the conditions of this agreement, but induced Albert,

Margrave of Brandenburg-Culmbach, to attack the confederate princes in

the rear. After Albert had laid waste a portion of North Germany he

was defeated by Maurice at the battle of Sievershausen. [Sidenote:

July 9, 1553] Mortally wounded, the brilliant but utterly unscrupulous

victor died, at the age of thirty-two, soon after the battle. As the

conflict had by this time resolved itself into a duel between him and

Charles, the emperor was now at last able to put through, at the Diet

of Augsburg, a settlement of the religious question.

[Sidenote: Religious Peace of Augsburg, September 25, 1555]

The principles of the Religious Peace were as follows:

(1) A truce between states recognizing the Augsburg Confession and

Catholic states until union was possible. All other confessions were

to be barred--a provision aimed chiefly at Calvinists.

(2) The princes and governments of the Free Cities were to be allowed

to choose between the Roman and the Lutheran faith, but their subjects

must either conform to this faith--on the maxim famous as _cujus regio

ejus religio_--or emigrate. In Imperial Free Cities, however, it was

specially provided that Catholic minorities be tolerated.

(3) The "ecclesiastical reservation," or principle that when a Catholic

spiritual prince became Protestant he should be deposed and a successor

appointed {131} so that his territory might remain under the church.

In respect to this Ferdinand privately promised to secure toleration

for Protestant subjects in the land of such a prince. All claims of

spiritual jurisdiction by Catholic prelates in Lutheran lands were to

cease. All estates of the church confiscated prior to 1552 were to

remain in the hands of the spoliators, all seized since that date to be

restored.

The Peace of Augsburg, like the Missouri Compromise, only postponed

civil war and the radical solution of a pressing problem. But as we

cannot rightly censure the statesmen of 1820 for not insisting on

emancipation, for which public opinion was not yet prepared, so it

would be unhistorical and unreasonable to blame the Diet of Augsburg

for not granting the complete toleration which we now see was bound to

come and was ideally the right thing. Mankind is educated slowly and

by many hard experiences. Europe had lain so long under the domination

of an authoritative ecclesiastical civilization that the possibility of

complete toleration hardly occurred to any but a few eccentrics. And

we must not minimize what the Peace of Augsburg actually accomplished.

It is true that choice of religion was legally limited to two

alternatives, but this was more than had been allowed before.

[Sidenote: Actual results] It is true that freedom of even this choice

was complete only for the rulers of the territories or Free Cities;

private citizens might exercise the same choice only on leaving their

homes. The hardship of this was somewhat lessened by the consideration

that in any case the nonconformist would not have to go far before

finding a German community holding the Catholic or Lutheran opinions he

preferred. Finally, it must be remembered that, if the Peace of

Augsburg aligned the whole nation into two mutually hostile camps, it

at least kept them from war for more than {132} half a century. Nor

was this a mere accident, for the strain was at times severe. When the

imperial knight, Grumbach, broke the peace by sacking the city of

Würzburg, [Sidenote: 1563-7] he was put under the ban, captured and

executed. His protector, Duke John Frederic of Saxony, was also

captured and kept in confinement in Austria until his death.

Notwithstanding such an exhibition of centralized power, it is probable

that the Peace of Augsburg increased rather than diminished the

authority of the territorial states at the expense of the imperial

government. Charles V, worn out by his long and unsuccessful struggle

with heresy, after giving the Netherlands to his son Philip in 1555,

abdicated the crown of the Empire to his brother Ferdinand in 1556.

[Sidenote: Ferdinand, 1556-64] He died two years later in a monastery,

a disappointed man, having expressed the wish that he had burned Luther

at Worms. The energies of Ferdinand were largely taken up with the

Turkish war. His son, Maximilian II, [Sidenote: Maximilian II,

1564-76] was favorably inclined to Protestantism.

[Sidenote: Catholic reaction]

Before Maximilian's death, however, a reaction in favor of Catholicism

had already set in. The last important gains to the Lutheran cause in

Germany came in the years immediately following the Peace of Augsburg.

Nothing is more remarkable than the fact that practically all the

conquests of Protestantism in Europe were made within the first half

century of its existence. After that for a few years it lost, and

since then has remained, geographically speaking, stationary in Europe.

It is impossible to get accurate statistics of the gains and losses of

either confession. The estimate of the Venetian ambassador that only

one-tenth of the German empire was Catholic in 1558 is certainly wrong.

In 1570, at the height of the Protestant tide, probably 70 per cent. of

Germans--including Austrians--were Protestant. In 1910 the Germans of

the {133} German Empire and of Austria were divided thus: Protestants

37,675,000; Catholics 29,700,000. The Protestants were about 56 per

cent., and this proportion was probably about that of the year 1600.

[Sidenote: Lutheran schisms]

Historically, the final stemming of the Protestant flood was due to the

revival of energy in the Catholic Church and to the internal weakness

and schism of the Protestants. Even within the Lutheran communion

fierce conflicts broke out. Luther's lieutenants fought for his

spiritual heritage as the generals of Alexander fought for his empire.

The center of these storms was Melanchthon until death freed him from

"the rage of the theologians." [Sidenote: April 19, 1560] Always half

Catholic, half Erasmian at heart, by his endorsement of the Interim,

and by his severe criticisms of his former friends Luther and John

Frederic, he brought on himself the bitter enmity of those calling

themselves "Gnesio-Lutherans," or "Genuine Lutherans." Melanchthon

abolished congregational hymn-singing, and published his true views,

hitherto dissembled, on predestination and the sacrament. He was

attacked by Flacius the historian, and by many others. The dispute was

taken up by still others and went to such lengths that for a minor

heresy a pastor, Funck, was executed by his fellow-Lutherans in

Prussia, in 1566. "Philippism" as it was called, at first grew, but

finally collapsed when the Formula of Concord was drawn up in 1580 and

signed by over 8000 clergy. This document is to the Lutheran Church

what the decrees of Trent were to the Catholics. The "high" doctrine

of the real presence was strongly stated, and all the sophistries

advanced to support it canonized. The sacramental bread and wine were

treated with such superstitious reverence that a Lutheran priest who

accidentally spilled the latter was punished by having his fingers cut

off. Melanchthon was against such "remnants of {134} papistry" which

he rightly named "artolatry" or "bread-worship."

But the civil wars within the Lutheran communion were less bitter than

the hatred for the Calvinists. By 1550 their mutual detestation had

reached such a point that Calvin called the Lutherans "ministers of

Satan" and "professed enemies of God" trying to bring in "adulterine

rites" and vitiate the pure worship. The quarrel broke out again at

the Colloquy of Worms. Melanchthon and others condemned Zwingli, thus,

in Calvin's opinion, "wiping off all their glory." Nevertheless Calvin

himself had said, in 1539, that Zwingli's opinion was false and

pernicious. So difficult is the path of orthodoxy to find! In 1557

the Zwinglian leader M. Schenck wrote to Thomas Blaurer that the error

of the papists was rather to be borne than that of the Saxons.

Nevertheless Calvinism continued to grow in Germany at the expense of

Lutheranism. Especially after the Formula of Concord the "Philippists"

went over in large numbers to the Calvinists.

[Sidenote: Effect on the nation]

The worst thing about these distressing controversies was that they

seemed to absorb the whole energies of the nation. No period is less

productive in modern German history than the age immediately following

the triumph of the Reformation. The movement, which had begun so

liberally and hopefully, became, temporarily at least, narrower and

more bigoted than Catholicism. It seemed as if Erasmus had been quite

right when he said that where Lutheranism reigned culture perished. Of

these men it has been said--and the epigram is not a bad one--that they

made an intellectual desert and called it religious peace.

And yet we should be cautious in history of assuming _post hoc propter

hoc_. That there was nothing {135} necessarily blighting in

Protestantism is shown by the examples of England and Poland, where the

Reform was followed by the most brilliant literary age in the annals of

these peoples. [Sidenote: 16th century literature] The latter part of

the sixteenth century was also the great period of the literature of

Spain and Portugal, which remained Catholic, whereas Italy, equally

Catholic, notably declined in artistic production and somewhat also in

letters. The causes of the alterations, in various peoples, of periods

of productivity and of comparative sterility, are in part inscrutable.

In the present case, it seems that when a relaxation of intellectual

activity is visible, it was not due to any special quality in

Protestantism, but was rather caused by the heat of controversy.

SECTION 7. NOTE ON SCANDINAVIA, POLAND, AND HUNGARY

[Transcriber's note: The above section number is what appears in the

original book, but it is a case of misnumbering, and is actually the

chapter's sixth section.]

A few small countries bordering on the Empire, neither fully in the

central stream of European culture, nor wholly outside of it, may be

treated briefly. All of them were affected by the Protestant

revolution, the Teutonic peoples permanently, the others transiently.

Scandinavia looms large in the Middle Ages as the home of the teeming

multitudes of emigrants, Goths and Vandals, who swarmed over the Roman

Empire. Later waves from Denmark and the contiguous portion of Germany

flooded England first in the Anglo-Saxon conquest and then in the

Danish. The Normans, too, originally hailed from Scandinavia. But

though the sons of the North conquered and colonized so much of the

South, Scandinavia herself remained a small people, neither politically

nor intellectually of the first importance. The three kingdoms of

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden became one in 1397; and, after Sweden's

temporary separation from the other two, were again united. The

fifteenth century saw the {136} great aggrandizement of the power of

the prelates and of the larger nobles at the expense of the _bönder_,

who, from a class of free and noble small proprietors degenerated not

only into peasants but often into serfs. [Sidenote: 1513] When

Christian II succeeded to the throne, it was as the papal champion.

His attempt to consolidate his power in Sweden by massacring the

magnates under the pretext that they were hostile to the pope,

[Sidenote: November 8-11, 1520] an act called the "Stockholm bath of

blood," aroused the people against him in a war of independence.

[Sidenote: Denmark]

Christian found Denmark also insubordinate. It is true that he made

some just laws, protecting the people and building up their prosperity,

but their support was insufficient to counterbalance the hatred of the

great lords spiritual and temporal. He was quick to see in the

Reformation a weapon against the prelates, and appealed for help to

Wittenberg as early as 1519. His endeavors throughout 1520 to get

Luther himself to visit Denmark failed, but early in 1521 he succeeded

in attracting Carlstadt for a short visit. This effort, however, cost

him his throne, for he was expelled on April 13, 1523, and wandered

over Europe in exile until his death. [Sidenote: 1559]

The Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, to whom the crown was offered, reigned

for ten years as Frederic I. Though his coronation oath bound him to

do nothing against the church, he had only been king for three years

before he came out openly for the Reformation. In this again we must

see primarily a policy, rather than a conviction. He was supported,

however, by the common people, who had been disgusted by the

indulgences sold by Arcimboldi [Sidenote: 1516-19] and by the constant

corruption of the higher clergy. The cities, as in Germany, were the

strongest centers of the movement. The Diet of 1527 decreed that

Lutherans should be recognized on equal terms with Catholics, that

marriage of priests {137} and the regular clergy be allowed. In 1530 a

Lutheran confession was adopted.

Christian III, who reigned until 1559, took the final step, though at

the price of a civil war. His victory enabled him to arrest all the

bishops, August 20, 1536, and to force them to renounce their rights

and properties in favor of the crown. Only one, Bishop Rönnow of

Roskilde, refused, and was consequently held prisoner until his death.

The Diet of 1536 abolished Catholicism, confiscated all church property

and distributed it between the king and the temporal nobles.

Bugenhagen was called from Wittenberg to organize the church on

Lutheran lines. [Sidenote: 1537-9] In the immediately following years

the Catholics were deprived of their civil rights. The political

benefits of the Reformation inured primarily to the king and

secondarily to the third estate.

[Sidenote: Norway]

Norway was a vassal of Denmark from 1380 till 1814. At no time was its

dependence more complete than in the sixteenth century. Frederic I

introduced the Reformation by royal decree as early as 1528, and

Christian III put the northern kingdom completely under the tutelage of

Denmark, [Sidenote: 1536] in spiritual as well as in temporal matters.

The adoption of the Reformation here as in Iceland seemed to be a

matter of popular indifference.

[Sidenote: Sweden]

After Sweden had asserted her independence by the expulsion of

Christian II, Gustavus Vasa, an able ruler, ascended the throne.

[Sidenote: Gustavus Vasa, 1523-60] He, too, saw in the Reformation

chiefly an opportunity for confiscating the goods of the church. The

way had, indeed, been prepared by a popular reformer, Olaus Petri, but

the king made the movement an excuse to concentrate in his own hands

the spiritual power. The Diet of Westeras [Sidenote: 1527] passed the

necessary laws, at the same time expelling the chief leader of the

Romanist party, John Brask, {138} Bishop of Linköping. The Reformation

was entirely Lutheran and extremely conservative. Not only the

Anabaptists, but even the Calvinists, failed to get any hold upon the

Scandinavian peoples. In many ways the Reformation in Sweden was

parallel to that in England. Both countries retained the episcopal

organization founded upon the "apostolical succession." Olaus Magni,

Bishop of Westeras, had been ordained at Rome in 1524, and in turn

consecrated the first Evangelical Archbishop, Lawrence Petri,

[Sidenote: Petri 1499-1573] who had studied at Wittenberg, and who

later translated the Bible into Swedish [Sidenote: 1541] and protected

his people from the inroads of Calvinism. The king, more and more

absolutely the head of the church, as in England, did not hesitate to

punish even prominent reformers when they opposed him. The reign of

Gustavus's successor, Eric XIV, [Sidenote: Eric XIV, 1560-8] was

characterless, save for the influx of Huguenots strengthening the

Protestants. King John III [Sidenote: John III, 1569-92] made a final,

though futile, attempt to reunite with the Roman Church. As Finland

was at this time a dependency of Sweden, the Reformation took

practically the same course as in Sweden itself.

[Sidenote: Poland]

A complete contrast to Sweden is furnished by Poland. If in the former

the government counted for almost everything, in the latter it counted

for next to nothing. The theater of Polish history is the vast plain

extending from the Carpathians to the Düna, and from the Baltic almost

to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. This region, lacking natural

frontiers on several sides, was inhabited by a variety of races: Poles

in the west, Lithuanians in the east, Ruthenians in the south and many

Germans in the cities. The union of the Polish and Lithuanian states

was as yet a merely personal one in the monarch. Since the fourteenth

century the crown of Poland had been elective, but the grand-ducal

crown of Lithuania was {139} hereditary in the famous house of

Jagiello, and the advantages of union induced the Polish nobility

regularly to elect the heir to the eastern domain their king. Though

theoretically absolute, in practice the king had been limited by the

power of the nobles and gentry, and this limitation was given a

constitutional sanction in the law _Nihil novi_, [Sidenote: 1505]

forbidding the monarch to pass laws without the consent of the deputies

of the magnates and lesser nobles.

The foreign policy of Sigismund I [Sidenote: Sigismund I, 1506-1548]

was determined by the proximity of powerful and generally hostile

neighbors. It would not be profitable in this place to follow at

length the story of his frequent wars with Muscovy and with the Tartar

hordes of the Crimea, and of his diplomatic struggles with the Turks,

the Empire, Hungary, and Sweden. On the whole he succeeded not only in

holding his own, but in augmenting his power. He it was who finally

settled the vexatious question of the relationship of his crown to the

Teutonic Order, which, since 1466, had held Prussia as a fief, though a

constantly rebellious and troublesome one. The election of Albert of

Brandenburg as Grand Master of the Order threatened more serious

trouble, [Sidenote: 1511] but a satisfactory solution of the problem

was found when Albert embraced the Lutheran faith and secularized

Prussia as an hereditary duchy, at the same time swearing allegiance to

Sigismund as his suzerain. [Sidenote: 1525] Many years later

Sigismund's son conquered and annexed another domain of the Teutonic

order further north, namely Livonia. [Sidenote: 1561] War with Sweden

resulted from this but was settled by the cession of Esthonia to the

Scandinavian power.