engaged in new undertakings with as much alacrity as if life were still
beginning, and the race of fortune still to run. He enriched Serravalle,
Braganza, Milan, and Brescia, with splendid works, besides painting a
great number for the churches of Venice, for different noblemen, and for
his friends. Philip II. of Spain showed no less anxiety to possess his
works, than Charles, his father, had done: and nowhere perhaps, not even
in Venice, are so many of his pictures to be found, as in the palaces of
Madrid and the Escurial. When Rubens was in Spain, he copied Titian’s
picture of Eve tempting Adam with the fatal fruit, nobly acknowledging
that he had only made a Flemish translation of an elegant Italian poem.
It is said by some of Titian’s biographers, that he himself made a visit
to Spain; but this has been clearly disproved. The most important works
which he executed for Philip II. are the pictures of the Martyrdom of
St. Lorenzo, and the Last Supper. In the first, three different effects
of light are admirably expressed; the fire which consumes the saint, the
flame of a tripod placed before a pagan deity, and the glory of a
descending angel. This picture is said to be equal to any of his earlier
productions. The Last Supper betrays signs of a feebler execution, which
is, however, atoned for by more than usual purity of design. Titian in
this work partially imitated Lionardo da Vinci, but in the spirit of
congenial feeling, not as a plagiarist. To this picture, which he began
at the age of eighty, he devoted the labour of nearly seven years. For
Mary of England, Philip II.’s consort, he painted four mythological
subjects, Prometheus, Tityus, Sisiphus, and Tantalus, the figures as
large as life, and conceived in the highest style of grandeur.
In 1570 died Sansovino the sculptor. Aretine had paid the debt of nature
some years before, an event which sensibly affected Titian; and this
second loss plunged him into such affliction, that his powers, it is
said, from that time perceptibly gave way. We learn, however, from
Ridolfi, that the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, which he saw when in
good condition, was ably executed. Some visions from the Apocalypse, in
the monastery of St. John, painted about the same time, exhibit vivid
imagination and fine colouring.
Henry III. of France, being in Venice in 1574, paid Titian a visit,
accompanied by a numerous train. The venerable artist, then in his
ninety-fifth year, received the monarch with dignified respect; his fine
person was scarcely touched by decrepitude, his manners were still noble
and prepossessing. In a long conversation with the King, he adverted,
with the complacency natural to an old man at the close of so splendid a
career, to honours which he had received from the Emperor Charles and
King Ferdinand. When Henry, in walking through the galleries, demanded
the prices of some of the pictures, he begged his Majesty’s acceptance
of them as a free gift. In the mean time the courtiers and attendants
were entertained with a magnificence, which might have become the
establishment of a great prince.
Titian had nearly attained his hundredth year, when the plague, which
had been raging some time in Trent, made its appearance in Venice, and
swept him off, together with a third part of the inhabitants, within
three months. He was buried in the church of the Frari; but the
consternation and disorders prevalent at such a period, prevented his
receiving those funeral honours which would otherwise have attended him
to the tomb.
In comparing Titian with the great artists of the Roman and Florentine
schools, it has been usual to describe him as the painter of physical
nature, while to those masters has been assigned the loftier and
exclusive praise of depicting the mind and passions. The works on which
Titian was most frequently employed, appertaining to public edifices and
the pomp of courts, were certainly of a class in which splendid effect
is the chief requisite; but can it be said that the painter of the
Ascension of the Virgin, and the S. Pietro Martire, was unequal to cope
with subjects of sublimity and pathos? May it not be asked with greater
justice, on the evidence of those pictures, whether any artist has
surpassed him in those qualities? Even in design, on which point his
capacity has been especially arraigned, Titian knew how to seize the
line of grandeur without swelling into exaggeration, and to unite truth
with ideality. Of all painters he was most above the ostentation of art;
like Nature herself, he worked with such consummate skill that we are
sensible of the process only by its effect. Rubens, Tintoret, Paul
Veronese, were proud of their execution; few painters are not,—but the
track of Titian’s pencil is scarcely ever discernable. His chiaroscuro,
or disposition of light and shade, is never artificially concentrated;
it is natural, as that of a summer’s day. His colouring, glorious as it
is, made up of vivid contrasts, and combining the last degree of
richness and depth with freshness and vivacity, is yet so graduated to
the modesty of nature, that a thought of the painter’s palette never
disturbs the illusion. Were it required to point out, amidst the whole
range of painting, one performance as a proof of what art is capable of
accomplishing, it is surely from among the works of Titian that such an
example would be selected.
There is scarcely any large collection in which the works of Titian are
not to be found. The pictures of Actæon and Callisto in the possession
of Lord F. L. Gower, and the four subjects in the National Gallery, are
among the finest in this country. The Venus in the Dulwich Gallery must
have been fine; but the glazing, a very essential part of Titian’s
process, has flown.
Details of the life of Titian will be found in Vasari, Lanzi, Ridolfi,
but more especially in Ticozzi, whose memoir is at once diffuse and
perspicuous. There is a life of Titian, in English, by Northcote.
[Illustration: Titian and Francisco di Mosaico, from a picture by
Titian.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff_
LUTHER.
_From the original Picture by Holbein
in his Majesty’s Collection at Windsor._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
LUTHER.
Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Saxony in the year 1483, on the
10th of November; and if in the histories of great men it is usual to
note with accuracy the day of their nativity, that of Luther has a
peculiar claim on the biographer, since it has been the especial object
of horoscopical calculations, and has even occasioned some serious
differences among very profound astrologers. Luther has been the subject
of unqualified admiration and eulogy: he has been assailed by the most
virulent calumnies; and, if any thing more were wanted to prove the
_personal_ consideration in which he was held by his contemporaries, it
would be sufficient to add, that he has also been made a mask for their
follies.
He was of humble origin. At an early age he entered with zeal into the
Order of Augustinian Hermits, who were Monks and Mendicants. In the
schools of the Nominalists he pursued with acuteness and success the
science of sophistry. And he was presently raised to the theological
chair at Wittemberg: so that his first prejudices were enlisted in the
service of the worst portion of the Roman Catholic Church; his opening
reason was subjected to the most dangerous perversion; and a sure and
early path was opened to his professional ambition. Such was _not_ the
discipline which could prepare the mind for any independent exertion;
such were not the circumstances from which an ordinary mind could have
emerged into the clear atmosphere of truth. In dignity a Professor, in
theology an Augustinian, in philosophy a Nominalist, by education a
Mendicant Monk, Luther seemed destined to be a pillar of the Roman
Catholic Church, and a patron of all its corruptions.
But he possessed a genius naturally vast and penetrating, a memory quick
and tenacious, patience inexhaustible, and a fund of learning very
considerable for that age: above all, he had an erect and daring spirit,
fraught with magnanimity and grandeur, and loving nothing so well as
truth; so that his understanding was ever prepared to expand with the
occasion, and his principles to change or rise, according to the
increase and elevation of his knowledge. Nature had endued him with an
ardent soul, a powerful and capacious understanding; education had
chilled the one and contracted the other; and when he came forth into
the fields of controversy, he had many of those trammels still hanging
about him, which patience, and a succession of exertions, and the
excitement of dispute, at length enabled him for the most part to cast
away.
In the year 1517, John Tetzel, a Dominican Monk, was preaching in
Germany the indulgences of Pope Leo X.; that is, he was publicly selling
to all purchasers remission of all sins, past, present, or future,
however great their number, however enormous their nature. The
expressions with which Tetzel recommended his treasure appear to have
been marked with peculiar impudence and indecency. But the act had in
itself nothing novel or uncommon: the sale of indulgences had long been
recognized as the practice of the Roman Catholic Church, and even
sometimes censured by its more pious, or more prudent members. But the
crisis was at length arrived in which the iniquity could no longer be
repeated with impunity. The cup was at length full; and the hand of
Luther was destined to dash it to the ground. In the schools of
Wittemberg the Professor publicly censured, in ninety-five propositions,
not only the extortion of the Indulgence-mongers, but the co-operation
of the Pope in seducing the people from the true faith, and calling them
away from the only road to salvation.
This first act of Luther’s evangelical life has been hastily ascribed by
at least three eminent writers of very different descriptions, (Bossuet,
Hume, and Voltaire,) to the narrowest monastic motive, the jealousy of a
rival order. It is asserted that the Augustinian Friars had usually been
invested in Saxony with the profitable commission, and that it only
became offensive to Luther when it was transferred to a Dominican. There
is no ground for that assertion. The Dominicans had been for nearly
three centuries the peculiar favourites of the Holy See, and objects of
all its partialities; and it is particularly remarkable, that, after the
middle of the fifteenth century, during a period scandalously fruitful
in the abuse in question, we very rarely meet with the name of any
Augustinian as employed in that service. Moreover, it is almost equally
important to add, that none of the contemporary adversaries of Luther
ever advanced the charge against him, even at the moment in which the
controversy was carried on with the most unscrupulous rancour.
The matter in dispute between Luther and Tetzel went in the first
instance no farther than this—whether the Pope had authority to remit
the divine chastisements denounced against offenders in the present and
in a future state—or whether his power only extended to such human
punishments, as form a part of ecclesiastical discipline—for the latter
prerogative was not yet contested by Luther. Nevertheless, his office
and his talents drew very general attention to the controversy; the
German people, harassed by the exactions, and disgusted with the
insolence of the papal emissaries, declared themselves warmly in favour
of the Reformer; while on the other hand, the supporters of the abuse
were so violent and clamorous, that the sound of the altercation
speedily disturbed the festivities of the Vatican.
Leo X., a luxurious, indolent, and secular, though literary pontiff,
would have disregarded the broil, and left it, like so many others, to
subside of itself, had not the Emperor Maximilian assured him of the
dangerous impression it had already made on the German people.
Accordingly he commanded Luther to appear at the approaching diet of
Augsburg, and justify himself before the papal legate. At the same time
he appointed the Cardinal Caietan, a Dominican and a professed enemy of
Luther, to be arbiter of the dispute. They met in October, 1518; the
legate was imperious; Luther was not submissive. He solicited reasons;
he was answered only with authority. He left the city in haste, and
appealed “to the Pope _better informed_,”—yet it was still to the Pope
that he appealed, he still recognized his sovereign supremacy. But in
the following month Leo published an edict, in which he claimed the
power of delivering sinners from _all_ punishments due to every sort of
transgression; and thereupon Luther, despairing of any reasonable
accommodation with the pontiff, published an appeal from the Pope to a
General Council.
The Pope then saw the expediency of conciliatory measures, and
accordingly despatched a layman, named Miltitz, as his legate, with a
commission to compose the difference by private negotiations with
Luther. Miltitz united great dexterity and penetration with a temper
naturally moderate, and not inflamed by ecclesiastical prejudices.
Luther was still in the outset of his career. His opinions had not yet
made any great progress towards maturity; he had not fully ascertained
the foundations on which his principles were built; he had not proved by
any experience the firmness of his own character. He yielded—at least so
far as to express his perfect submission to the commands of the Pope, to
exhort his followers to persist in the same obedience, and to promise
silence on the subject of indulgences, provided it were also imposed
upon his adversaries.
It is far too much to say (as some have said) that had Luther’s
concession been carried into effect, the Reformation would have been
stifled in its birth. The principles of the Reformation were too firmly
seated in reason and in truth, and too deeply ingrafted in the hearts of
the German people, to remain long suppressed through the infirmity of
any individual advocate. But its progress might have been somewhat
retarded, had not the violence of its enemies afforded it seasonable
aid. A doctor named Eckius, a zealous satellite of papacy, invited
Luther to a public disputation in the castle of Pleissenburg. The
subject on which they argued was the supremacy of the Roman pontiff; and
it was a substantial triumph for the Reformer, and no trifling insult to
papal despotism, that the appointed arbiters left the question
undecided.
Eckius repaired to Rome, and appealed in person to the offended
authority of the Vatican. His remonstrances were reiterated and inflamed
by the furious zeal of the Dominicans, with Caietan at their head. And
thus Pope Leo, whose calmer and more indifferent judgment would probably
have led him to accept the submission of Luther, and thus put the
question for the moment at rest, was urged into measures of at least
unseasonable vigour. He published a bull on the 15th of June, 1520, in
which he solemnly condemned forty-one heresies extracted from the
writings of the Reformer, and condemned these to be publicly burnt. At
the same time he summoned the author, on pain of excommunication, to
confess and retract his pretended errors within the space of sixty days,
and to throw himself upon the mercy of the Vatican.
Open to the influence of mildness and persuasion, the breast of Luther
only swelled more boldly when he was assailed by menace and insult. He
refused the act of humiliation required of him; more than that, he
determined to anticipate the anathema suspended over him, by at once
withdrawing himself from the communion of the church; and again, having
come to that resolution, he fixed upon the manner best suited to give it
efficacy and publicity. With this view, he caused a pile of wood to be
erected without the walls of Wittemberg, and there, in the presence of a
vast multitude of all ranks and orders, he committed the bull to the
flames; and with it, the Decree, the Decretals, the Clementines, the
Extravagants, the entire code of Romish jurisprudence. It is necessary
to observe, that he had prefaced this measure by a renewal of his former
appeal to a General Council; so that the extent of his resistance may be
accurately defined: he continued a faithful member of the Catholic
Church, but he rejected the despotism of the Pope, he refused obedience
to an unlimited and usurped authority. The bull of excommunication
immediately followed (January 6, 1521), but it fell without force; and
any dangerous effect, which it might otherwise have produced, was
obviated by the provident boldness of Luther.
Here was the origin of the Reformation. This was the irreparable breach,
which gradually widened to absolute disruption. The Reformer was now
compromised, by his conduct, by his principles, perhaps even by his
passions. He had crossed the bounds which divided insubordination from
rebellion, and his banners were openly unfurled, and his legions pressed
forward on the march to Rome. Henceforward the champion of the Gospel
entered with more than his former courage on the pursuit of truth; and
having shaken off one of the greatest and earliest of the prejudices in
which he had been educated, he proceeded with fearless independence to
examine and dissipate the rest.
Charles V. succeeded Maximilian in the empire in the year 1519; and
since Frederic of Saxony persisted in protecting the person of the
Reformer, Leo X. became the more anxious to arouse the imperial
indignation in defence of the injured majesty of the Church. In 1521 a
diet was assembled at Worms, and Luther was summoned to plead his cause
before it. A safe-conduct was granted him by the Emperor; and on the
17th of April he presented himself before the august aristocracy of
Germany. This audience gave occasion to the most splendid scene in his
history. His friends were yet few, and of no great influence; his
enemies were numerous, and powerful, and eager for his destruction: the
cause of truth, the hopes of religious regeneration, appeared to be
placed at that moment in the discretion and constancy of one man. The
faithful trembled. But Luther had then cast off the encumbrances of
early fears and prepossessions, and was prepared to give a free course
to his earnest and unyielding character. His manner and expressions
abounded with respect and humility; but in the matter of his public
apology he declined in no one particular from the fulness of his
conviction. Of the numerous opinions which he had by this time adopted
at variance with the injunctions of Rome, there was not one which in the
hour of danger he consented to compromise. The most violent exertions
were made by the papal party to effect his immediate ruin; and there
were some who were not ashamed to counsel a direct violation of the
imperial safe-conduct: it was designed to re-enact the crimes of
Constance, after the interval of a century, on another theatre. But the
infamous proposal was soon rejected; and it was on this occasion that
Charles is recorded to have replied with princely indignation, that if
honour were banished from every other residence, it ought to find refuge
in the breasts of kings.
Luther was permitted to retire from the diet; but he had not proceeded
far on his return when he was surprised by a number of armed men, and
carried away into captivity. It was an act of friendly violence. A
temporary concealment was thought necessary for his present security,
and he was hastily conveyed to the solitary Castle of Wartenburg. In the
mean time the assembly issued the declaration known in history as the
“Edict of Worms,” in which the Reformer was denounced as an
excommunicated schismatic and heretic; and all his friends and
adherents, all who protected or conversed with him, were pursued by
censures and penalties. The cause of papacy obtained a momentary,
perhaps only a seeming triumph, for it was not followed by any
substantial consequences; and while the anathematized Reformer lay in
safety in his secret _Patmos_, as he used to call it, the Emperor
withdrew to other parts of Europe to prosecute schemes and interests
which then seemed far more important than the religious tenets of a
German Monk.
While Luther was in retirement, his disciples at Wittemberg, under the
guidance of Carlostadt, a man of learning and piety, proceeded to put
into force some of the first principles of the Reformation. They would
have restrained by compulsion the superstition of private masses, and
torn away from the churches the proscribed images. Luther disapproved of
the violence of these measures; or it may also be, as some impartial
writers have insinuated, that he grudged to any other than himself the
glory of achieving them. Accordingly, after an exile of ten months, he
suddenly came forth from his place of refuge, and appeared at
Wittemberg. Had he then confined his influence to the introduction of a
more moderate policy among the reformers, many plausible arguments might
have been urged in his favour. But he also appears, unhappily, to have
been animated by a personal animosity against Carlostadt, which was
displayed both then and afterwards in some acts not very far removed
from persecution.
The marriage of Luther, and his marriage to a nun, was the event of his
life which gave most triumph to his enemies, and perplexity to his
friends. It was in perfect conformity with his masculine and daring
mind, that having satisfied himself of the nullity of his monastic vows,
he should take the boldest method of displaying to the world how utterly
he rejected them. Others might have acted differently, and abstained,
either from conscientious scruples, or, being satisfied in their own
minds, from fear to give offence to their weaker brethren; and it would
be presumptuous to condemn either course of action. It is proper to
mention that this marriage did not take place till the year 1525, after
Luther had long formally rejected many of the observances of the Roman
Catholic Church; and that the nun whom he espoused had quitted her
convent, and renounced her profession some time before.
The war of the peasants, and the fanaticism of Munster and his
followers, presently afterwards desolated Germany; and the papal party
did not lose that occasion to vilify the principles of the reformers,
and identify the revolt from a spiritual despotism with general
insurrection and massacre. It is therefore necessary here to observe,
that the false enthusiasm of Munster was perhaps first detected and
denounced by Luther; and that the pen of the latter was incessantly
employed in deprecating every act of civil insubordination. He was the
loudest in his condemnation of some acts of spoliation by laymen, who
appropriated the monastic revenues; and at a subsequent period so far
did he carry his principles, so averse was he, not only from the use of
offensive violence, but even from the employment of force in the defence
of his cause, that on some later occasions he exhorted the Elector of
Saxony by no means to oppose the imperial edicts by arms, but rather to
consign the persons and principles of the reformers to the protection of
Providence. For he was inspired with a holy confidence that Christ would
not desert his faithful followers; but rather find means to accomplish
his work without the agitation of civil disorders, or the intervention
of the sword. That confidence evinced the perfect earnestness of his
professions, and his entire devotion to the truth of his principles. It
also proved that he had given himself up to the cause in which he had
engaged, and that he was elevated above the consideration of personal
safety. This was no effeminate enthusiasm, no passionate aspiration
after the glory of martyrdom! It was the working of the Spirit of God
upon an ardent nature, impressed with the divine character of the
mission with which it was intrusted, and assured, against all obstacles,
of final and perfect success.