Chapter II. From The Beginning of the Indulgence Controversy to the Diet

of Worms.(152)

§ 1. The Theory and Practice of Indulgences in the Sixteenth Century.

The practice of _Indulgences_ pervaded the whole penitential system of the

later mediæval Church, and had done so from the beginning of the

thirteenth century. Its beginnings go back a thousand years before

Luther’s time.

In the ancient Church, lapse into serious sin involved separation from the

Christian fellowship, and readmission to communion was only to be had by

public confession made in presence of the whole congregation, and by the

manifestation of a true repentance in performing certain

_satisfactions_,(153) such as the manumission of slaves, prolonged

fasting, extensive almsgiving, etc. These _satisfactions_ were the open

signs of heartfelt sorrow, and were regarded as at once well-pleasing to

God and evidence to the Christian community that the penitent had true

repentance, and might be received back again into their midst. The

confession was made to the whole congregation; the amount of

_satisfaction_ deemed necessary was estimated by the congregation, and

readmission was also dependent on the will of the whole congregation. It

often happened that these _satisfactions_ were mitigated or exchanged for

others. The penitent might fall sick, and the fasting which had been

prescribed could not be insisted upon without danger of death; in such a

case the external sign of sorrow which had been demanded might be

exchanged for another. Or it might happen that the community became

convinced of the sincerity of the repentance without insisting that the

whole of the prescribed _satisfaction_ need be performed.(154) These

exchanges and mitigations of _satisfactions_ were the small beginnings of

the later system of Indulgences.

In course of time the public confession of sins made to the whole

congregation was exchanged for a private confession made to the priest,

and instead of the public _satisfaction_ imposed by the whole

congregation, it was left to the priest to enjoin a _satisfaction_ or

external sign of sorrow which he believed was appropriate to the sin

committed and confessed. The substitution of a private confession to the

priest for a public confession made to the whole congregation, enlarged

the circle of sins confessed. The _secret_ sins of the heart whose

presence could be elicited by the questions of the confessor were added to

the open sins seen of men. The circle of _satisfactions_ was also widened

in a corresponding fashion.

When the imposition of _satisfactions_ was left in the hands of the

priest, it was felt necessary to provide some check against the

arbitrariness which could not fail to result. So books were published

containing lists of sins with the corresponding appropriate

_satisfactions_ which ought to be demanded from the penitents. If it be

remembered that some of the sins mentioned were very heinous (murders,

incests, outrages of all kinds), it is not surprising that the appropriate

_satisfactions_ or _penances_, as they came to be called, were very severe

in some cases, and extended over a course of years. From the seventh

century there arose a practice of commuting _satisfactions_ or penances. A

penance of several years’ practice of fasting might be commuted into

saying so many prayers or psalms, into giving a definite amount of alms,

or even into a money fine—and in this last case the analogy of the

_Wehrgeld_ of the Germanic tribal codes was frequently followed.(155)

These customary commutations were frequently inserted in the

_Penitentiaries_ or books of discipline. This new custom commonly took the

form that the penitent, who visited a certain church on a prescribed day

and gave a contribution to its funds, had the penance, which had been

imposed upon him by the priest in the ordinary course of discipline,

shortened by one-seventh, one-third, one-half, as the case might be. This

was in every case the commutation or relaxation of the penance or outward

sign of sorrow which had been imposed according to the regulations of the

Church, laid down in the _Penitentiaries (relaxatio de injuncta

pœnitentia)._ This was the real origin of Indulgences, and these earliest

examples were invariably a relaxation of ecclesiastical penalties which

had been imposed according to the regular custom in cases of discipline.

It will be seen that Luther expressly excluded this kind of Indulgence

from his attack. He declared that what the Church had a right to impose,

it had a right to relax. It was at first believed that this right to relax

or commute imposed penances was in the hands of the priests who had charge

of the discipline of the members of the Church; but the abuses of the

system by the priests ended by placing the power to grant Indulgences in

the hands of the bishops, and they used the money procured in building

many of the great mediæval cathedrals. Episcopal abuse of Indulgences led

to their being reserved for the Popes.

Three conceptions, all of which belong to the beginning of the thirteenth

century, combined to effect a great change on this old and simple idea of

Indulgences. These were—(1) the formulation of the thought of a _treasury

of merits_ (_thesaurus meritorum_); (2) the change of the _institution_

into the _Sacrament_ of Penance; and (3) the distinction between

_attrition_ and _contrition_ in the thought of the kind of sorrow God

demands from a real penitent.

The conception of a storehouse of merits (_thesaurus meritorum_ or

_indulgentiarum_) was first formulated by Alexander of Hales(156) in the

thirteenth century, and his ideas were accepted, enlarged, and made more

precise by succeeding theologians.(157) Starting with the existing

practice in the Church that some penances (such as pilgrimages) might be

vicariously performed, and bringing together the several thoughts that the

faithful are members of one body, that the good deeds of each of the

members are the common property of all, and therefore that the more sinful

can benefit by the good deeds of their more saintly brethren, and that the

sacrifice of Christ was sufficient to wipe out the sins of all,

theologians gradually formulated the doctrine that there was a common

storehouse which contained the good deeds of living men and women, of the

saints in heaven and the inexhaustible merits of Christ, and that all

these merits accumulated there had been placed under the charge of the

Pope, and could be dispensed by him to the faithful. The doctrine was not

very precisely defined by the beginning of the sixteenth century, but it

was generally believed in, taught, and accepted. It went to increase the

vague sense of supernatural, spiritual powers attached to the person of

the Bishop of Rome. It had one important consequence on the doctrine of

Indulgences. They might be the payment out of this treasury of an absolute

equivalent for the _satisfaction_ due by the penitent for his sins; they

were no longer merely the substitution of one form of penance for another,

or the relaxation of a penance enjoined.

The _institution_ of Penance contained within it the four practices of

_Sorrow_ for the sins committed (_contritio_); the _Confession_ of these

sins to the priest; _Satisfaction_, or the due manifestation of sorrow in

the ways prescribed by the Church through the command of the confessor;

and the _Pardon_ (_absolutio_) pronounced by the priest in God’s name. The

pardon followed the _satisfaction_. But when the _institution_ became the

_Sacrament of Penance_, the order was changed: absolution followed

confession and came before satisfaction, which it had formerly followed.

Satisfaction lost its old meaning. It was no longer the outward sign of

sorrow and the necessary precedent of pardon or absolution. According to

the new theory, the absolution which immediately followed confession had

the effect of removing the whole guilt of the sins confessed, and with the

guilt the whole of the eternal punishment due. This cancelling of guilt

and of eternal punishment did not, however, forthwith open the gates of

heaven to the pardoned sinner. It was felt that the justice of God could

not permit the baptized sinner to escape from all punishment whatever.

Hence it was said that although eternal punishment had disappeared with

the absolution, there remained temporal punishment due for the sins, and

that heaven could not be entered until this temporal punishment had been

endured.(158) Temporal punishments might be of two kinds—those endured in

this life, or those suffered in a place of punishment after death. The

penance imposed by the priest, the satisfaction, now became the temporal

punishment due for sins committed. If the priest had imposed the due

amount, and if the penitent was able to perform all that had been imposed,

the sins were expiated. But if the priest had imposed less than the

justice of God actually demanded, then these temporal pains had to be

completed in Purgatory. This gave rise to great uncertainty; for who could

feel assured that the priest had calculated rightly, and had imposed

satisfactions or temporal penalties which were of the precise amount

demanded by the justice of God? Hence the pains of Purgatory threatened

every man. It was here that the new idea of Indulgences came in to aid the

faithful by securing him against the pains of Purgatory, which were not

included in the absolution obtained in the _Sacrament of Penance_.

Indulgences in the sense of relaxations of imposed penances went into the

background, and the really valuable Indulgence was one which, because of

the merits transferred from the storehouse of merits, was an equivalent in

God’s sight for the temporal punishments due for sins. Thus, in the

opinion of Alexander of Hales, of Bonaventura,(159) and, above all, of

Thomas Aquinas, the real value of Indulgences was that they procured the

remission of penalties due after absolution, whether these penalties were

penances imposed by the priest or not; and when the uncertainty of the

imposed penalties is remembered, the most valuable of all Indulgences were

those which had regard to the unimposed penalties; the priest might make a

mistake, but God did not blunder.

While Indulgences were always connected with satisfactions, and changed

with the changes in the meaning of the latter term, they were not the less

influenced by a distinction which came to be drawn between _attrition_ and

_contrition_, and by the application of the distinction to the theory of

the Sacrament of Penance. During the earlier Middle Ages and down to the

thirteenth century, it was always held that _contrition_ (sorrow prompted

by love) was the one thing taken into account by God in pardoning the

sinner. The theologians of the thirteenth century, however, began to draw

a distinction between this godly sorrow and a certain amount of sorrow

which might arise from a variety of causes of a less worthy nature, and

especially from servile fear. This was called _attrition_; and it was held

that this _attrition_, though of itself too imperfect to win the pardon of

God, might become perfected through the confession heard by the priest,

and in the sacramental absolution pronounced by him. Very naturally,

though perhaps illogically, it was believed that an imperfect sorrow,

though sufficient to procure absolution, and, therefore, the blotting out

of eternal punishment, merited more temporal punishment than if it had

been sorrow of a godly sort. But it was these temporal penalties

(including the pains of Purgatory) that Indulgences provided for. Hence,

Indulgences appealed more strongly to the indifferent Christian, who knew

that he had sinned, and at the same time felt that his sorrow was not the

effect of his love to God. He knew that his sins deserved _some_

punishment. His conscience, however weak, told him that he could not sin

with perfect impunity, and that something more was needed than his

perfunctory confession to a priest. He felt that he must do

_something_—fast, or go on a pilgrimage, or purchase an Indulgence. It was

at this point that the Church intervened to show him how his poor

performance could be transformed by the power of the Church and its

treasury of merits into something so great that the penalties of Purgatory

could be actually evaded. His cheap sorrow, his careless confession, need

not trouble him. Hence, for the ordinary indifferent Christian,

_Attrition_, _Confession_, and _Indulgence_ became the three heads of the

scheme of the Church for his salvation. The one thing that satisfied his

conscience was the burdensome thing he had to do, and that was to procure

an Indulgence—a matter made increasingly easy for him as time went on.

It must not be supposed that this doctrine of _Attrition_, and its evident

effect in deadening the conscience and in lowering the standard of

morality, had the undivided support of the theologians of the later Middle

Ages, but it was the doctrine taught by most of the Scotist theologians,

who took the lead in theological thinking during these times. It was set

forth in its most extravagant form by such a representative man as John of

Paltz in Erfurt; it was preached by the pardon-sellers; it was eagerly

welcomed by _indifferent_ Christians, who desired to escape the penalties

of sin without abandoning its enjoyments; it exalted the power of the

priesthood; and it was specially valuable in securing good sales of

Indulgences, and therefore in increasing the papal revenues. It lay at the

basis of the whole theory and practice of Indulgences, which confronted

Luther when he issued his _Theses_.

History shows us that gross abuses had always gathered round the practice

of Indulgences, even in their earlier and simpler forms. The priests had

abused the system, and the power of issuing Indulgences had been taken

from them and confined to the bishops. The bishops, in turn, had abused

the privilege, and the Popes had gradually assumed that the power to grant

an Indulgence belonged to the Bishop of Rome exclusively, or to those to

whom he might delegate it; and this assumption seemed both reasonable and

salutary. The power was at first sparingly used. It is true that Pope

Urban II., in 1095, promised to the Crusaders an Indulgence such as had

never before been heard of—a complete remission of all imposed canonical

penances; but it was not until the thirteenth and fourteen centuries that

Indulgences, now doubly dangerous to the moral life from the new theories

which had arisen, were lavished even more unsparingly than in the days

when any bishop had power to grant them. From the beginning of the

fourteenth century they were given to raise recruits for papal wars. They

were lavished on the religious Orders, either for the benefit of the

members or for the purpose of attracting strangers and their gifts to

their churches. They were bestowed on cathedrals and other churches, or on

individual altars in churches, and had the effect of endowments. They were

joined to special collections of relics, to be earned by the faithful who

visited the shrines. They were given to hospitals, and for the upkeep of

bridges and of roads. Wherever they are met with in the later Middle Ages,

and it would be difficult to say where they are not to be found, they are

seen to be associated with sordid money-getting, and, as Luther remarked

in an early sermon on the subject, they were a very grievous instrument

placed in the hand of avarice.

The practice of granting Indulgences was universally prevalent and was

universally accepted; but it was not easy to give an explanation of the

system, in the sense of showing that it was an essential element in

Christian discipline. No mediæval theologian attempted to do any such

thing. Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas, the two great Schoolmen who did

more than any others to provide a theological basis for the system, tell

us quite frankly that it is their business to accept the fact that

Indulgences do exist as part of the penitentiary discipline of the Church,

and, accepting it, they thought themselves bound to construct a reasonable

theory.(160) The practice altered, and new theories were needed to explain

the variations. It is needless to say that these explanations did not

always agree; and that there were very great differences of opinion about

what an Indulgence really effected for the man who bought it.

Of all these disputed questions the most important was: Did an Indulgence

give remission for the guilt of sin, or only for certain penalties which

followed the sinful deed? This is a question about which modern Romanists

are extremely sensitive.

The universal answer given by all defenders of Indulgences who have

written on the subject since the Council of Trent, is that guilt (_culpa_)

and eternal punishment (_pœnæ eternæ_) are dealt with in the Sacrament of

Penance, and that Indulgences relate only to temporal punishments,

including under that designation the pains of Purgatory. This modern

opinion is confirmed by the most eminent authorities of the mediæval

Church. It has been accepted in the description of the theory of

Indulgences given above, since it has been said that the principal use of

Indulgences was to secure against Purgatory. But these statements do not

exhaust the question. Mediæval theology did not create Indulgences, it

only followed and tried to justify the practices of the Pope and of the

Roman Curia,—a rather difficult task. The question still remains whether

some of the Papal Bulls promulgating Indulgences did not promise the

removal of guilt as well as security against temporal punishments. If

these be examined, spurious Bulls being set aside, it will be found that

many of them make no mention of the need of previous confession and of

priestly absolution; that one or two expressly make mention of a remission

of guilt as well as of penalty; and that many (especially those which

proclaim a Jubilee Indulgence) use language which inevitably led

intelligent laymen like Dante to believe that the Popes did proclaim the

remission of guilt as well as of penalty. Of course, it may be said that

in those days the distinction between guilt (_culpa_) and penalty (_pœna_)

had not been very exactly defined, and that the phrase _remission of sins_

was used to denote both remission of guilt and remission of penalty; still

it is difficult to withstand the conclusion that, even in theory,

Indulgences had been declared to be efficacious for the removal of the

guilt of sin in the presence of God.

These questions of the theological meaning of an Indulgence, though

necessary to understand the whole situation, had after all little to do

with Luther’s action. He approached the whole matter from the side of the

practical effect of the proclamation of an Indulgence on the minds of

common men who knew nothing of refined theological distinctions; and the

evidence that the common people did generally believe that an Indulgence

did remove the guilt of sin is overwhelming. Contemporary chroniclers are

to be found who declare that Indulgences given to Crusaders remit the

guilt as well as the punishment; contemporary preachers assert that

plenary Indulgences remit guilt, and justify their opinion by declaring

that such Indulgences were supposed to contain within them the Sacrament

of Penance. The popular guide-books written for pilgrims to Rome and

Compostella spread the popular idea that Indulgences acquired by such

pilgrimages do remit guilt as well as penalty. The popular belief was so

thoroughly acknowledged, that even Councils had to throw the blame for it

on the pardon-sellers, or, like the Council of Constance, impeached the

Pope and compelled him to confess that he had granted Indulgences for the

remission of guilt as well as of penalty. This widespread popular belief

of itself justified Luther in calling attention to this side of the

matter.

Moreover, it is well to see what the theory of the most respected

theologians actually meant when looked at practically. Since the

formulation of the Sacrament of Penance, the theory had been that all

guilt of sin and all eternal punishment were remitted in the priestly

absolution which followed the confession of the penitent. The Sacrament of

Penance had abolished guilt and Hell. But there remained the actual sins

to be punished, because the justice of God demanded it, and this was done

in the temporal pains of Purgatory. The “common man,” if he thought at all

about it, may be excused if he considered that guilt and Hell, taken away

by the one hand, were restored by the other. There remained for him the

sense that God’s justice demanded _some_ punishment for the sins he had

committed; and if this was not guilt according to theological definition,

it was probably all that he could attain to. He was taught and believed

that punishment awaited him for these actual sins of his; and a punishment

which might last thousands of years in Purgatory was not very different

from an eternal punishment in his eyes. The Indulgence came to him filled

as he was with these vague thoughts, and offered him a sure way of easing

his conscience and avoiding the punishment he knew he deserved. He had

only to pay the price of a _Papal Ticket_, perform the canonical good deed

required, whatever it might be, and he was assured that his punishment was

remitted, and God’s justice satisfied. This may not involve the thought of

the remission of guilt in the theological sense of the word, but it

certainly misled the moral instincts of the “common man” about as much as

if it did. It is not surprising that the common people made the

theological mistake, if mistake it was, and saw in every plenary

Indulgence the promise of the remission of guilt as well as of

penalty,(161) for with them remission of guilt and quieting of conscience

were one and the same thing. It was this practical moral effect of

Indulgences, and not the theological explanation of the theory, which

stirred Luther to make his protest.

§ 2. Luther’s Theses.(162)

Luther’s _Theses_ are singularly unlike what might have been expected from

a Professor of Theology. They lack theological definition, and contain

many repetitions which might have been easily avoided. They are simply

ninety-five sturdy strokes struck at a great ecclesiastical abuse which

was searing the consciences of many. They look like the utterances of a

man who was in close touch with the people; who had been greatly shocked

at reports brought to him of what the pardon-sellers had said; who had

read a good many of the theological explanations of the practice of

Indulgence, and had noted down a few things which he desired to

contradict. They read as if they were meant for laymen, and were addressed

to their common sense of spiritual things. They are plain and easily

understood, and keep within the field of simple religion and plain moral

truths.

The _Theses_ appealed irresistibly to all those who had been brought up in

the simple evangelical faith which distinguished the quiet home life of so

many German families, and who had not forsaken it. They also appealed to

all who had begun to adopt that secular or non-ecclesiastical piety which,

we have seen, had been spreading quietly but rapidly throughout Germany at

the close of the Middle Ages. These two forces, both religious, gathered

round Luther. The effect of the _Theses_ was almost immediate: the desire

to purchase Indulgences cooled, and the sales almost stopped.

The Ninety-five _Theses_ made six different assertions about Indulgences

and their efficacy:

i. An Indulgence is and can only be the remission of a merely

ecclesiastical penalty; the Church can remit what the Church has imposed;

it cannot remit what God has imposed.

ii. An Indulgence can never remit guilt; the Pope himself cannot do such a

thing; God has kept that in His own hand.

iii. It cannot remit the divine punishment for sin; that also is in the

hands of God alone.

iv. It can have no efficacy for souls in Purgatory; penalties imposed by

the Church can only refer to the living; death dissolves them; what the

Pope can do for souls in Purgatory is by prayer, not by jurisdiction or

the power of the keys.

v. The Christian who has true repentance has already received pardon from

God altogether apart from an Indulgence, and does not need one; Christ

demands this true repentance from every one.

vi. The Treasury of Merits has never been properly defined, it is hard to

say what it is, and it is not properly understood by the people; it cannot

be the merits of Christ and of His saints, because these act of themselves

and quite apart from the intervention of the Pope; it can mean nothing

more than that the Pope, having the power of the keys, can remit

ecclesiastical penalties imposed by the Church; the true Treasure-house of

merits is the Holy Gospel of the grace and glory of God.

The Archbishop of Mainz, finding that the publication of the _Theses_

interfered with the sale of the Indulgences, sent a copy to Rome. Pope

Leo, thinking that the whole thing was a monkish quarrel, contented

himself with asking the General of the Augustinian Eremites to keep his

monks quiet. Tetzel, in conjunction with a friend, Conrad Wimpina,

published a set of counter-theses. John Mayr of Eck, professor at

Ingolstadt, by far the ablest opponent Luther ever had, wrote an answer to

the _Theses_ which he entitled _Obelisks_;(163) and Luther replied in a

tract with the title _Asterisks_. At Rome, Silvester Mazzolini (1460-?) of

Prierio, a Dominican monk, papal censor for the Roman Province and an

Inquisitor, was profoundly dissatisfied with the _Ninety-five Theses_, and

proceeded to criticise them severely in a _Dialogue about the Power of the

Pope; against the Presumptuous Conclusions of Martin Luther_. The book

reached Germany by the middle of January 1518. The Augustinian Eremites

held their usual annual chapter at Heidelberg in April 1518, and Luther

heard his _Theses_ temperately discussed by his brother monks. He found

the opposition to his views much stronger than he had expected; but the

discussion was fair and honest, and Luther enjoyed it after the ominous

silence kept by most of his friends, who had thought his action rash. When

he returned from Heidelberg he began a general answer to his opponents.

The book, _Resolutiones_, was probably the most carefully written of all

Luther’s writings. He thought long over it, weighed every statement

carefully, and rewrote portions several times. The preface, addressed to

his Vicar-General, Staupitz, contains some interesting autobiographical

material; it was addressed to the Pope; it was a detailed defence of his

_Theses_.(164)

The _Ninety-five Theses_ had a circulation which was, for the time,

unprecedented. They were known throughout Germany in a little over a

fortnight; they were read over Western Europe within four weeks “as if

they had been circulated by angelic messengers,” says Myconius

enthusiastically. Luther was staggered at the way they were received; he

said that he had not meant to determine, but to debate. The controversy

they awakened increased their popularity. In the _Theses_, and especially

in the _Resolutiones_, Luther had practically discarded all the practices

which the Pope and the Roman Curia had introduced in the matter of

Indulgences from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and all the

ingenious explanations Scholastic theologians had brought forward to

justify these practices. The readiest way to refute him was to assert the

power of the Roman Bishop; and this was the line taken by his critics.

Their arguments amount to this: the power to issue an Indulgence is simply

a particular instance of the power of papal jurisdiction, and Indulgences

are simply what the Pope proclaims them to be. Therefore, to attack

Indulgences is to attack the power of the Pope, and that cannot be

tolerated. The Roman Church is virtually the Universal Church, and the

Pope is practically the Roman Church. Hence, as the representative of the

Roman Church, which in turn represents the Church Universal, the Pope,

when he acts officially, cannot err. Official decisions are given in

actions as well as in words, custom has the force of law. Therefore,

whoever objects to such a long-established system as Indulgences is a

heretic, and does not deserve to be heard.(165)

But the argument which appealed most powerfully to the Roman Curia was the

fact that the sales of the _Papal Tickets_ had been declining since the

publication of the _Theses_. Indulgences were the source of an enormous

revenue, and anything which checked their sale would cause financial

embarrassment. Pope Leo X. in his “enjoyment of the Papacy” lived

lavishly. He had a huge income, much greater than that of any European

monarch, but he lived beyond it. His income amounted to between four and

five hundred thousand ducats; but he had spent seven hundred thousand on

his war about the Duchy of Urbino; the magnificent reception of his

brother Julian and his bride in Rome (1514) had cost him fifty thousand

ducats; and he had spent over three hundred thousand on the marriage of

his nephew Lorenzo (1518). Voices had been heard in Rome as well as in

Germany protesting against this extravagance. The Pope was in desperate

need of money. It is scarcely to be wondered that Luther was summoned to

Rome (summons dated July 1518, and received by Luther on August 7th) to

answer for his attack on the Indulgence system. To have obeyed would have

meant death.

The peremptory summons could be construed as an affront to the University

of Wittenberg, on whose boards the _Ninety-five Theses_ had been posted.

Luther wrote to his friend Spalatin (George Burkhardt of Spalt,

1484-1545), who was chaplain and private secretary to the Elector

Frederick, suggesting that the prince ought to defend the rights of his

University. Spalatin wrote at once to the Elector and also to the Emperor

Maximilian, and the result was that the summons to Rome was cancelled, and

it was arranged that the matter was to be left in the hands of the Papal

Legate in Germany, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan(166) (1470-1553), and

Luther was ordered to present himself before that official at Augsburg.

The interview (October 1518) was not very satisfactory. The cardinal

demanded that Luther should recant his heresies without any argument. When

pressed to say what the heresies were, he named the statement in the 58th

Thesis that the merits of Christ work effectually without the intervention

of the Pope, and that in the _Resolutiones_ which said that the sacraments

are not efficacious apart from faith in the recipient. There was some

discussion notwithstanding the Legate’s declaration; but in the end Luther

was ordered to recant or depart. He wrote out an appeal from the Pope

ill-informed to the Pope well-informed, also an appeal to a General

Council, and returned to Wittenberg.

When Luther had posted his _Theses_ on the doors of the Church of All

Saints, he had been a solitary monk with nothing but his manhood to back

him; but nine months had made a wonderful difference in the situation. He

now knew that he was a representative man, with supporters to be numbered

by the thousand. His colleagues at Wittenberg were with him; his students

demonstratively loyal (they had been burning the Wimpina-Tetzel

counter-theses); his theology was spreading among all the cloisters of his

Order in Germany, and even in the Netherlands; and the rapid circulation

of his _Theses_ had shown him that he had the ear of Germany. His first

task, on his return to Wittenberg, was to prepare for the press an account

of his interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and this was published

under the title, _Acta Augustana_.

Luther was at pains to take the people of Germany into his confidence; he

published an account of every important interview he had; the people were

able to follow him step by step, and he was never so far in advance that

they were unable to see his footprints. The immediate effect of the _Acta

Augustana_ was an immense amount of public sympathy for Luther. The

people, even the Humanists who had cared little for the controversy, saw

that an eminently pious man, an esteemed teacher who was making his

obscure University famous, who had done nothing but propose a discussion

on the notoriously intricate question of Indulgences, was peremptorily

ordered to recant and remain silent. They could only infer that the

Italians treated the Germans contemptuously, and wished simply to drain

the country of money to be spent in the luxuries of the papal court. The

Elector Frederick shared the common opinion, and was, besides, keenly

alive to anything which touched his University and its prosperity. There

is no evidence to show that he had much sympathy with Luther’s views. But

the University of Wittenberg, the seat of learning he had founded, so long

languishing with a very precarious life and now flourishing, was the apple

of his eye; and he resolved to defend it, and to protect the teacher who

had won renown for it.

The political situation in Germany was too delicate, and the personal

political influence of Frederick too great, for the Pope to act rashly in

any matter in which that prince took a deep interest. The country was on

the eve of an election of a King of the Romans; Maximilian was old, and an

imperial election might occur at any time; and Frederick was one of the

most important factors in either case. So the Pope resolved to act

cautiously. The condemnation of Luther by the Cardinal-Legate was held

over, and a special papal delegate was sent down to Germany to make

inquiries. Every care was taken to select a man who would be likely to be

acceptable to the Elector. Charles von Miltitz, a Saxon nobleman belonging

to the Meisen district, a canon of Mainz, Trier, and Meissen, a papal

chamberlain, an acquaintance of Spalatin’s, the Elector’s own agent at the

Court of Rome, was sent to Germany. He took with him the “Golden Rose” as

a token of the Pope’s personal admiration for the Elector. He was

furnished with numerous letters from His Holiness to the Elector, to some

of the Saxon councillors, to the magistrates of Wittenberg, in all of

which Luther figured as a child of the Devil. The phrase was probably

forgotten when Leo wrote to Luther some time afterwards and called him his

dear son.

When Miltitz got among German speaking people he found that the state of

matters was undreamt of at the papal court. He was a German, and knew the

Germans. He could see, what the Cardinal-Legate had never perceived, that

he had to deal not with the stubbornness of a recalcitrant monk, but with

the slow movement of a nation. When he visited his friends and relations

in Augsburg and Nürnberg, he found that three out of five were on Luther’s

side. He came to the wise resolution that he would see both Luther and

Tetzel privately before producing his credentials. Tetzel he could not

see. The unhappy man wrote to Miltitz that he dared not stir from his

convent, so greatly was he in danger from the violence of the people.

Miltitz met Luther in the house of Spalatin; he at once disowned the

speeches of the pardon-sellers; he let it be seen that he did not think

much of the Cardinal-Legate’s methods of action; he so prevailed on Luther

that the latter promised to write a submissive letter to the Pope, to

advise people to reverence the Roman See, to say that Indulgences were

useful in the remission of canonical penances. Luther did all this; and if

the Roman Curia had supported Miltitz there is no saying how far the

reconciliation would have gone. But the Roman Curia did not support the

papal chamberlain, and Miltitz had also to reckon with John Eck, who was

burning to extinguish Luther in a public discussion.

The months between his interview at Augsburg (October 1518) and the

Disputation with John Eck at Leipzig (June 1519) had been spent by Luther

in hard and disquieting studies. His opponents had confronted him with the

Pope’s absolute supremacy in all ecclesiastical matters. This was one of

Luther’s oldest inherited beliefs. The Church had been for him “the Pope’s

House,” in which the Pope was the house-father, to whom all obedience was

due. It was hard for him to think otherwise. He had been re-examining his

convictions about justifying faith and attempting to trace clearly their

consequences, and whether they did lead to his declarations about the

efficacy of Indulgences. He could come to no other conclusion. It became

necessary to investigate the evidence for the papal claim to absolute

authority. He began to study the Decretals, and found, to his amazement

and indignation, that they were full of frauds; and that the papal

supremacy had been forced on Germany on the strength of a collection of

Decretals many of which were plainly forgeries. It is difficult to say

whether the discovery brought more joy or more grief to Luther. Under the

combined influences of historical study, of the opinions of the early

Church Fathers, and of the Holy Scriptures, one of his oldest landmarks

was crumbling to pieces. His mind was in a whirl of doubt. He was

half-exultant and half-terrified at the result of his studies; and his

correspondence reveals how his mood of mind changed from week to week. It

was while he was thus “on the swither,” tremulously on the balance, that

John Eck challenged him to dispute at Leipzig on the primacy and supremacy

of the Roman Pontiff. The discussion might clear the air, might make

himself see where he stood. He accepted the challenge almost feverishly.

§ 3. The Leipzig Disputation.(167)

Leipzig was an enemies’ country, and his Wittenberg friends would not

allow Luther to go there unaccompanied. The young Duke Barnim, who was

Rector of the University of Wittenberg, accompanied Carlstadt and Luther,

to give them the protection of his presence. Melanchthon, who had been a

member of the teaching staff of Wittenberg since August 1518, Justus

Jonas, and Nicholas Amsdorf went along with them. Two hundred Wittenberg

students in helmets and halberts formed a guard, and walked beside the two

country carts which carried their professors. An eye-witness of the scenes

at Leipzig has left us sketches of what he saw:

“In the inns where the Wittenberg students lodged, the landlord

kept a man standing with a halbert near the table to keep the

peace while the Leipzig and the Wittenberg students disputed with

each other. I have seen the same myself in the house of

Herbipolis, a bookseller, where I went to dine ... for there was

at table a Master Baumgarten ... who was so hot against the

Wittenbergers that the host had to restrain him with a halbert to

make him keep the peace so long as the Wittenbergers were in the

house and sat and ate at the table with him.”

The University buildings at Leipzig did not contain any hall large enough

for the audience, and Duke George lent the use of his great

banqueting-room for the occasion. The discussions were preceded by a

service in the church.

“When we got to the church ... they sang a Mass with twelve voices

which had never been heard before. After Mass we went to the

Castle, where we found a great guard of burghers in their armour

with their best weapons and their banners; they were ordered to be

there twice a day, from seven to nine in the morning and from two

to five in the afternoon, to keep the peace while the Disputation

lasted.”(168)

First, there was a Disputation between Carlstadt and Eck, and then, on the

fourth of July, Eck and Luther faced each other—both sons of peasants, met

to protect the old or cleave a way for the new.

It was the first time that Luther had ever met a controversialist of

European fame. John Eck came to Leipzig fresh from his triumphs at the

great debates in Vienna and Bologna, and was and felt himself to be the

hero of the occasion.

“He had a huge square body, a full strong voice coming from his

chest, fit for a tragic actor or a town crier, more harsh than

distinct; his mouth, eyes, and whole aspect gave one the idea of a

butcher or a soldier rather than of a theologian. He gave one the

idea of a man striving to overcome his opponent rather than of one

striving to win a victory for the truth. There was as much

sophistry as good reasoning in his arguments; he was continually

misquoting his opponents’ words or trying to give them a meaning

they were not intended to convey.”

“Martin,” says the same eye-witness,

“is of middle height; his body is slender, emaciated by study and

by cares; one can count almost all the bones; he stands in the

prime of his age; his voice sounds clear and distinct ... however

hard his opponent pressed him he maintained his calmness and his

good nature, though in debate he sometimes used bitter words....

He carried a bunch of flowers in his hand, and when the discussion

became hot he looked at it and smelt it.”(169)

Eck’s intention was to force his opponent to make some declaration which

would justify him in charging Luther with being a partisan of the mediæval

heretics, and especially of the Hussites. He continually led the debate

away to the Waldensians, the followers of Wiclif, and the Bohemians. The

audience swayed with a wave of excitement when Luther was gradually forced

to admit that there might be some truth in some of the Hussite opinions:

“One thing I must tell which I myself heard in the Disputation,

and which took place in the presence of Duke George, who came

often to the Disputation and listened most attentively; once Dr.

Martin spoke these words to Dr. Eck when hard pressed about John

Huss: ‘Dear Doctor, the Hussite opinions are not all wrong.’

Thereupon said Duke George, so loudly that the whole audience

heard, ‘God help us, the pestilence!’ (Das walt, die Sucht), and

he wagged his head and placed his arms akimbo. That I myself heard

and saw, for I sat almost between his feet and those of Duke

Barnim of Pomerania, who was then the Rector of Wittenberg.”(170)

So far as the dialectic battle was concerned, Eck had been victorious. He

had done what he had meant to do. He had made Luther declare himself. All

that was now needed was a Papal Bull against Luther, and the world would

be rid of another pestilent heretic. He had done what the more politic

Miltitz had wished to avoid. He had concentrated the attention of Germany

on Luther, and had made him the central figure round which all the

smouldering discontent could gather. As for Luther, he returned to

Wittenberg full of melancholy forebodings. They did not prevent him

preparing and publishing for the German people an account of the

Disputation, which was eagerly read. His arguments had been historical

rather than theological. He tried to show that the acknowledgment of the

supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was barely four hundred years old in

Western Europe, and that it did not exist in the East. The Greek Church,

he said, was part of the Church of Christ, and it would have nothing to do

with the Pope; the great Councils of the Early Christian centuries knew

nothing about papal supremacy. Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories, Cyprian

himself, had all taken Luther’s own position, and were heretics, according

to Eck. Luther’s speeches at Leipzig laid the foundation of that modern

historical criticism of institutions which has gone so far in our own

days.

In some respects the Leipzig Disputation was the most important point in

the career of Luther. It made him see for the first time what lay in his

opposition to Indulgences. It made the people see it also. His attack was

no criticism, as he had at first thought, of a mere excrescence on the

mediæval ecclesiastical system. He had struck at its centre; at its ideas

of a priestly mediation which denied the right of every believer to

immediate entrance into the very presence of God. It was after the

Disputation at Leipzig that the younger German Humanists rallied round

Luther to a man; that the burghers saw that religion and opposition to

priestly tyranny were not opposite things; and that there was room for an

honest attempt to create a Germany for the Germans independent of Rome.

Luther found himself a new man after Leipzig, with a new freedom and wider

sympathies. His depression fled. Sermons, pamphlets, letters from his

tireless pen flooded the land, and were read eagerly by all classes of the

population.

§ 4. The Three Treatises.(171)

Three of these writings stand forth so pre-eminently that they deserve

special notice: _The Liberty of a Christian Man_, _To the Christian

Nobility of the German Nation_, and _On the Babylonian Captivity of the

Church_. These three books are commonly called in Germany the _Three Great

Reformation Treatises_, and the title befits them well. They were all

written during the year 1520, after three years spent in controversy, at a

time when Luther felt that he had completely broken from Rome, and when he

knew that he had nothing to expect from Rome but a sentence of

excommunication. His teaching may have varied in details afterwards, but

in all essential positions it remained what is to be found in these books.

The tract on _The Liberty of a Christian Man_, “a very small book so far

as the paper is concerned,” said Luther, “but one containing the whole sum

of the Christian life,” had a somewhat pathetic history. Miltitz, hoping

against hope that the Pope would not push things to extremities, had asked

Luther to write out a short summary of his inmost beliefs and send it to

His Holiness. Luther consented, and this little volume was the result. It

has for preface Luther’s letter to Pope Leo X., which concludes thus: “I,

in my poverty, have no other present to make you, nor do you need to be

enriched by anything but a spiritual gift.” It was probably the last of

the three published (Oct. 1520), but it contains the principles which

underlie the other two.

The booklet is a brief statement, free from all theological subtleties, of

the priesthood of all believers which is a consequence of the fact of

justification by faith alone. Its note of warning to Rome, and its

educational value for pious people in the sixteenth century, consisted in

its showing that the man who fears God and trusts in Him need not fear the

priests nor the Church. The first part proves that every spiritual

possession which a man has or can have must be traced back to his faith;

if he has faith, he has all; if he has not faith, he has nothing. It is

the possession of faith which gives liberty to a Christian man; God is

with him, who can be against him?

“Here you will ask, ‘If all who are in the Church are priests, by

what character are those whom we now call priests to be

distinguished from the laity?’ I reply, By the use of those words

_priests_, _clergy_, _spiritual person_, _ecclesiastic_, an

injustice has been done, since they have been transferred from the

remaining body of Christians to those few who are now, by a

hurtful custom, called ecclesiastics. For the Holy Scripture makes

no distinction between them, except that those who are now

boastfully called Popes, Bishops, and Lords, it calls ministers,

servants, and stewards, who are to serve the rest in the ministry

of the Word, for teaching the faith of Christ and the liberty of

believers. For though it is true that we are all equally priests,

yet cannot we, nor ought we if we could, all to minister and teach

publicly.”

The second part shows that everything that a Christian man does must come

from his faith. It may be necessary to use all the ceremonies of divine

service which past generations have found useful to promote the religious

life; perhaps to fast and practise mortifications of the flesh; but if

such things are to be really profitable, they must be kept in their proper

place. They are good deeds not in the sense of making a man good, but as

the signs of his faith; they are to be practised with joy because they are

done for the sake of the God who has united Himself with man through Jesus

Christ.

Nothing that Luther has written more clearly manifests that combination of

revolutionary daring and wise conservatism which was characteristic of the

man. There is no attempt to sweep away any ecclesiastical machinery,

provided only it be kept in its proper place as a means to an end. But

religious ceremonies are not an end in themselves; and if through human

corruption and neglect of the plain precepts of God’s word they hinder

instead of help the true growth of the soul, they ought to be swept away;

and the fact that the soul of man needs absolutely nothing in the last

resort but the word of God dwelling in him, gives men courage and calmness

in demanding their reformation.

Luther applied those principles to the reformation of the Church in his

book on the _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_ (Sept.-Oct. 1520). He

subjected the elaborate sacramental system of the Church to a searching

criticism, and concluded that there are only two, or perhaps three,

scriptural sacraments—the Eucharist, Baptism, and Penance. He denounced

the doctrine of Transubstantiation as a “monstrous phantom” which the

Church of the first twelve centuries knew nothing about, and said that any

endeavour to define the precise manner of Christ’s Presence in the

sacrament is simply indecent curiosity. Perhaps the most important

practical portion of the book deals with the topic of Christian marriage.

In no sphere of human life has the Roman Church done more harm by

interfering with simple scriptural directions:

“What shall we say of those impious human laws by which this

divinely appointed manner of life has been entangled and tossed up

and down? Good God! it is horrible to look upon the temerity of

the tyrants of Rome, who thus, according to their caprices, at one

time annul marriages and at another time enforce them. Is the

human race given over to their caprice for nothing but to be

mocked and abused in every way, that these men may do what they

please with it for the sake of their own fatal gains? ... And what

do they sell? The shame of men and women, a merchandise worthy of

these traffickers, who surpass all that is most sordid and most

disgusting in their avarice and impiety.”

Luther points out that there is a clear scriptural law on the degrees

within which marriage is unlawful, and says that no human regulations

ought to forbid marriages outside these degrees or permit them within. He

also comes to the conclusion that divorce _a mensa et thoro_ is clearly

permitted in Scripture; though he says that personally he hates divorce,

and “prefers bigamy to it.”

The appeal _To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation_ made the

greatest immediate impression. It was written in haste, but must have been

long thought over. Luther began the introduction on June 23rd (1520); the

book was ready by the middle of August; and by the 18th, four thousand

copies were in circulation throughout Germany, and the presses could not

print fast enough for the demand. It was a call to all Germany to unite

against Rome.

It was nobly comprehensive: it grasped the whole situation, and summed up

with vigour and clearness all the German grievances which had hitherto

been stated separately and weakly; it brought forward every partial

proposal of reform, however incomplete, and quickened it by setting it in

its proper place in one combined scheme. All the parts were welded

together by a simple and courageous faith, and made living by the moral

earnestness which pervaded the whole.

Luther struck directly at the imaginary mysterious semi-supernatural power

supposed to belong to the Church and the priesthood which had held Europe

in awed submission for so many centuries. Reform had been impossible, the

appeal said, because the walls behind which Rome lay entrenched had been

left standing—walls of straw and paper, but in appearance formidable.

These sham fortifications are: the _Spiritual Power_ which is believed to

be superior to the temporal power of kings and princes, the conception

that _no one can interpret Scripture but the Pope_, the idea that _no one

can summon a General Council but the Bishop of Rome_. These are the

threefold lines of fortification behind which the Roman Curia has

entrenched itself, and the German people has long believed that they are

impregnable. Luther sets to work to demolish them.

The Romanists assert that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks belong to

and constitute the _spiritual estate_, while princes, lords, artisans, and

peasants are the _temporal estate_, which is subject to the spiritual. But

this _spiritual estate_ is a mere delusion. The real _spiritual estate_ is

the whole body of believers in Jesus Christ, and they are spiritual

because Jesus has made all His followers priests to God and to His Christ.

A cobbler belongs to the _spiritual estate_ as truly as a bishop. The

clergy are distinguished from the laity not by an indelible character

imposed upon them in a divine mystery called ordination, but because they

have been set apart to do a particular kind of work in the commonwealth.

If a Pope, bishop, priest, or monk neglects to do the work he is there to

do, he deserves to be punished as much as a careless mason or tailor, and

is as accountable to the civil authorities. The _spiritual priesthood of

all believers_, the gift of the faith which justifies, has shattered the

first and most formidable of these papal fortifications.

It is foolish to say that the _Pope alone can interpret Scripture_. If

that were true, where is the need of Holy Scriptures at all?

“Let us burn them, and content ourselves with the unlearned

gentlemen at Rome, in whom the Holy Ghost alone dwells, who,

however, can dwell in pious souls only. If I had not read it, I

could never have believed that the devil should have put forth

such follies at Rome and find a following.”

The Holy Scripture is open to all, and can be interpreted by all true

believers who have the mind of Christ and approach the word of God humbly

seeking enlightenment.

The third wall falls with the other two. It is nonsense to say that _the

Pope alone can call a Council_. We are plainly taught in Scripture that if

our brother offends we are to tell it to the Church; and if the Pope

offends, and he often does, we can only obey Scripture by calling a

Council. Every individual Christian has a right to do his best to have it

summoned; the temporal powers are there to enforce his wishes; Emperors

called General Councils in the earlier ages of the Church.

The straw and paper walls having been thus cleared away, Luther proceeds

to state his indictment. There is in Rome one who calls himself the Vicar

of Christ, and who lives in a state of singular resemblance to our Lord

and to St. Peter, His apostle. For this man wears a triple crown (a single

one does not content him), and keeps up such a state that he needs a

larger personal revenue than the Emperor. He has surrounding him a number

of men, called cardinals, whose only apparent use is that they serve to

draw to themselves the revenues of the richest convents, endowments, and

benefices in Europe, and spend the money thus obtained in keeping up the

state of a great monarch in Rome. When it is impossible to seize the whole

revenue of an ecclesiastical benefice, the Curia joins some ten or twenty

together, and mulcts each in a good round sum for the benefit of the

cardinal. Thus the priory of Würzburg gives one thousand gulden yearly,

and Bamberg, Mainz, and Trier pay their quotas. The papal court is

enormous,—three thousand papal secretaries, and hangers-on innumerable;

and all are waiting for German benefices, whose duties they never fulfil,

as wolves wait for a flock of sheep. Germany pays more to the Curia than

it gives to its own Emperor. Then look at the way Rome robs the whole

German land. Long ago the Emperor permitted the Pope to take the half of

the first year’s income from every benefice—the _Annates_—to provide for a

war against the Turks. The money was never spent for the purpose destined;

yet it has been regularly paid for a hundred years, and the Pope demands

it as a regular and legitimate tax, and uses it to pay posts and offices

at Rome.

“Whenever there is any pretence of fighting the Turk, they send

out commissions for collecting money, and often proclaim

Indulgences under the same pretext.... They think that we,

Germans, will always remain such great fools, and that we will go

on giving money to satisfy their unspeakable greed, though we see

plainly that neither _Annates_ nor _Indulgence-money_ nor

anything—not one farthing—goes against the Turks, but all goes

into their bottomless sack, ... and all this is done in the name

of Christ and of St. Peter.”

The chicanery used to get possession of German benefices for officials of

the Curia, the exactions on the bestowal of the _pallium_, the trafficking

in exemptions and permissions to evade laws ecclesiastical and moral, are

all trenchantly described. The most shameless are those connected with

marriage. The Curial Court is described as a place

“where vows are annulled; where a monk gets leave to quit his

cloister; where priests can enter the married life for money;

where bastards can become legitimate, and dishonour and shame may

arrive at high honours, and all evil repute and disgrace is

knighted and ennobled; where a marriage is suffered that is in a

forbidden degree, or has some other defect.... There is a buying

and selling, a changing, blustering, and bargaining, cheating and

lying, robbing and stealing, debauchery and villainy, and all

kinds of contempt of God, that Antichrist himself could not reign

worse.”

The plan of reform sketched includes—the complete abolition of the power

of the Pope over the State; the creation of a national German Church, with

an ecclesiastical Council of its own to be the final court of appeal for

Germany, and to represent the German Church as the Diet did the German

State; some internal religious reforms, such as the limitation of the

number of pilgrimages, which were destroying morality and creating a

distaste for honest work; reductions in the mendicant orders and in the

number of vagrants who thronged the roads, and were a scandal in the

towns.

“It is of much more importance to consider what is necessary for

the salvation of the common people than what St. Francis, or St.

Dominic, or St. Augustine, or any other man laid down, especially

as things have not turned out as they expected.”

He proposes the inspection of all convents and nunneries, and permission

given to those who are dissatisfied with their monastic lives to return to

the world; the limitation of ecclesiastical holy days, which are too often

nothing but scenes of drunkenness, gluttony, and debauchery; a married

priesthood, and an end put to the degrading concubinage of the German

priests.

“We see how the priesthood is fallen, and how many a poor priest

is encumbered with a woman and children, and burdened in his

conscience, and no one does anything to help him, though he might

very well be helped.... I will not conceal my honest counsel, nor

withhold comfort from that unhappy crowd who now live in trouble

with wife and children, and remain in shame with a heavy

conscience, hearing their wife called a priest’s harlot, and their

children bastards.... I say that these two (who are minded in

their hearts to live together in conjugal fidelity) are surely

married before God.”

The appeal concludes with some solemn words addressed to the luxury and

licensed immorality of the German towns.

None of Luther’s writings produced such an instantaneous effect as this.

It was not the first programme urging common action in the interests of a

united Germany, but it was the most complete, and was recognised to be so

by all who were working for a Germany for the Germans.

The three “Reformation treatises” were the statement of Luther’s case laid

before the people of the Fatherland, and were a very effectual antidote to

the Papal Bull excommunicating him, which was ready for publication in

Germany.

§ 5. The Papal Bull.

The Bull, _Exurge Domine_, was scarcely worthy of the occasion. The Pope

seems to have left its construction in the hands of Prierias, Cajetan, and

Eck, and the contents seem to show that Eck had the largest share in

framing it. Much of it reads like an echo of Eck’s statements at Leipzig a

year before. It began pathetically: “Arise, O Lord, plead Thine own cause;

remember how the foolish man reproacheth Thee daily; the foxes are wasting

Thy vineyard, which Thou hast given to Thy Vicar Peter; the boar out of

the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.”

St. Peter is invoked, and the Pope’s distress at the news of Luther’s

misdeeds is described at length. The most disturbing thing is that the

errors of the Greeks and of the Bohemians were being revived, and that in

Germany, which had hitherto been so faithful to the Holy See. Then came

forty-one propositions, said to be Luther’s, which are condemned as

“heretical or scandalous, or false or offensive to pious ears, or seducing

to simple minds, and standing in the way of the Catholic faith.”(172) All

faithful people were ordered to burn Luther’s books wherever they could

find them. Luther himself had refused to come to Rome and submit to

instruction; he had even appealed to a General Council, contrary to the

decrees of Julius II. and Pius II.; he was therefore inhibited from

preaching; he and all who followed him were ordered to make public

recantation within sixty days; if they did not, they were to be treated as

heretics, were to be seized and imprisoned by the magistrates, and all

towns or districts which sheltered them were to be placed under an

interdict.

Among the forty-one propositions condemned was one—that the burning of

heretics was a sin against the Spirit of Christ—to which the Pope seemed

to attach special significance, so often did he repeat it in letters to

the Elector Frederick and other authorities in Germany. The others may be

arranged in four classes—against Luther’s opinions about Indulgences; his

statements about Purgatory; his declarations that the efficacy of the

sacraments depended upon the spiritual condition of those who received

them; that penance was an outward sign of sorrow, and that good works

(ecclesiastical and moral) were to be regarded as the signs of faith

rather than as making men actually righteous; his denial of the later

_curial_ assertions of the nature of the papal monarchy over the Church.

Luther’s opinions on all these points could be supported by abundant

testimony from the earlier ages of the Church, and most of his criticisms

were directed against theories which had not been introduced before the

middle of the thirteenth century. The Bull made no attempt to argue about

the truth of the positions taken in its sentences. There was nothing done

to show that Luther’s opinions were wrong. The one dominant note running

all through the papal deliverance was the simple assertion of the Pope’s

right to order any discussion to cease at his command.

This did not help to commend the Bull to the people of Germany, and was

specially unsuited to an age of restless mental activity. The method

adopted for publishing it in Germany was still less calculated to win

respect for its decisions. The publication was entrusted to John Eck of

Ingolstadt, who was universally recognised as Luther’s personal enemy; and

the hitherto unheard of liberty was granted to him to insert at his

pleasure the names of a certain number of persons, and to summon them to

appear before the Roman Curia. He showed how unfit he was for this

responsible task by inserting the names of men who had criticised or

satirised him—Adelmann, Pirkheimer, Carlstadt, and three others.(173)

Eck discovered that it was an easier matter to get permission from the

Roman Curia to frame a Bull against the man who had stopped the sale of

Indulgences, and was drying up a great source of revenue, than to publish

the Bull in Germany. It was thought at Rome that no man had more influence

among the bishops and Universities, but the Curia soon learnt that it had

made a mistake. The Universities stood upon their privileges, and would

have nothing to do with John Eck. The bishops made all manner of technical

objections. Many persons affected to believe that the Bull was not

authentic; and Luther himself did not disdain to take this line in his

tract, _Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist_. Eck, who had come down

to Germany inflated with vanity, found himself mocked and scorned.

Pirkheimer dubbed him _gehobelter Eck_, Eck with the swelled head, and the

epithet stuck. Nor was the publication any easier when the pretence of

unauthenticity could be maintained no longer. The University of Wittenberg

refused to publish the Bull, on the ground that the Pope would not have

permitted its issue had he known the true state of matters, and they

blamed Eck for misinforming His Holiness: the Council of Electoral Saxony

agreed with the Senate; and their action was generally commended. Spalatin

said that he had seen at least thirty letters from great princes and

learned men of all districts in Germany, from Pomerania to Switzerland,

and from the Breisgau to Bohemia, encouraging Luther to stand firm. Eck

implored the bishops of the dioceses surrounding Wittenberg—Merseburg,

Meissen, and Brandenburg—to publish the Bull. They were either unwilling

or powerless.

Luther had been expecting a Bull against him ever since the Leipzig

Disputation. His correspondence reveals that he met it undismayed. What

harm could a papal Bull do to a man whose faith had given him fellowship

with God? What truth could there be in a Bull which clearly contradicted

the Holy Scriptures? St. Paul has warned us against believing an angel

from heaven if he uttered words different from the Scriptures, which are

our strength and our consolation; why should we pin our faith to a Pope or

a Council? The Bull had done one thing for him, it had made him an

excommunicated man, and therefore had freed him from his monastic vows. He

could leave the convent when he liked, only he did not choose to do so.

When he heard that his writings had been burnt as heretical by order of

the Papal Legates, he resolved to retaliate. It was no sudden decision.

Eleven months previously he had assured Spalatin (January 1520) that if

Rome condemned and burnt his writings he would condemn and burn the papal

Decretal Laws. On December 10th (1520) he posted a notice inviting the

Wittenberg students to witness the burning of the papal Constitutions and

the books of Scholastic Theology at nine o’clock in the morning.(174) A

multitude of students, burghers, and professors met in the open space

outside the Elster Gate between the walls and the river Elbe. A great

bonfire had been built. An oak tree planted long ago still marks the spot.

One of the professors kindled the pile; Luther laid the books of the

Decretals on the glowing mass, and they caught the flames; then amid

solemn silence he placed a copy of the Bull on the fire, saying in Latin:

_As thou hast wasted with anxiety the Holy One of God, so may the eternal

flames waste thee_ (_Quia tu conturbasti Sanctum Domini, ideoque te

conturbet ignis eternus_). He waited till the paper was consumed, and then

with his friends and fellow-professors he went back to the town. Some

hundreds of students remained standing round the fire. For a while they

were sobered by the solemnity of the occasion and sang the _Te Deum_. Then

a spirit of mischief seized them, and they began singing funeral dirges in

honour of the burnt Decretals. They got a peasant’s cart, fixed in it a

pole on which they hung a six-foot-long banner emblazoned with the Bull,

piled the small cart with the books of Eck, Emser, and other Romish

controversialists, hauled it along the streets and out through the Elster

Gate, and, throwing books and Bull on the glowing embers of the bonfire,

they burnt them. Sobered again, they sang the _Te Deum_ and finally

dispersed.

It is scarcely possible for us in the twentieth century to imagine the

thrill that went through Germany, and indeed through all Europe, when the

news sped that a poor monk had burnt the Pope’s Bull. Papal Bulls had been

burnt before Luther’s days, but the burners had been for the most part

powerful monarchs. This tune it was done by a monk, with nothing but his

courageous faith to back him. It meant that the individual soul had

discovered its true value. If eras can be dated, modern history began on

December 10th, 1520.

§ 6. Luther the Representative of Germany.

Hitherto we have followed Luther’s personal career exclusively. It may be

well to turn aside for a little to see how the sympathy of many classes of

the people was gathering round him.

The representatives of foreign States who were present at the Diet of

Worms, of England, Spain, and Venice, all wrote home to their respective

governments about the extraordinary popularity which Luther enjoyed among

almost every class of his fellow-countrymen; and, as we shall see, the

despatches of Aleander, the papal nuncio at the Diet, are full of

statements and complaints which confirm these reports. This popularity had

been growing since 1517, and there are traces that many thoughtful men had

been attracted to Luther some years earlier. The accounts of Luther’s

interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and his attitude at the

Leipzig Disputation, had given a great impulse to the veneration with

which people regarded him; but the veneration itself had been quietly

growing, apart from any striking incidents in his career. The evidence for

what follows has been collected chiefly from such private correspondence

as has descended to us; and most stress has been laid on letters which

were not addressed to Luther, and which were never meant to be seen by

him. Men wrote to each other about him, and described the impression he

was making on themselves and on the immediate circle of their

acquaintances. We learn from such letters not merely the fact of the

esteem, but what were the characteristics in the man which called it

forth.(175)

A large part of the evidence comes from the correspondence of educated

men, who, if they were not all Humanists strictly so called, belonged to

that increasing class on whom the New Learning had made a great

impression, and had produced the characteristic habit of mind which

belonged to its possessors. The attitude and work of Erasmus had prepared

them to appreciate Luther. The monkish opponents of the great Humanist had

been thoroughly in the right when they feared the effects of his

revolutionary ways of thinking, however they might be accompanied with

appeals against all revolutionary action. He had exhibited his idea of

what a life of personal religion ought to be in his _Enchiridion_; he had

exposed the mingled Judaism and paganism of a great part of the popular

religion; he had poured scorn on the trifling subtleties of scholastic

theology, and had asked men to return to a simple “Christian Philosophy”;

above all, he had insisted that Christianity could only renew its youth by

going back to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and especially of the New

Testament; and he had aided his contemporaries to make this return by his

edition of the New Testament, and by his efforts to bring within their

reach the writings of the earlier Church Fathers. His Humanist followers

in Germany believed that they saw in Luther a man who was doing what their

leader urged all men to do. They saw in Luther an Erasmus, who was going

to the root of things. He was rejecting with increasing determination the

bewildering sophistries of Scholasticism, and, what was more, he was

showing how many of these had arisen by exalting the authority of the

pagan Aristotle over that of St. Paul and St. Augustine. He had painfully

studied these Schoolmen, and could speak with an authority on this matter;

for he was a learned theologian. The reports of his lectures, which were

spreading throughout Germany, informed them that he based his teaching on

a simple exposition of the Holy Scriptures in the Vulgate version, which

was sanctioned by the mediæval Church. He had revolted, and was

increasingly in revolt, against those abuses in the ordinary religious

life which were encouraged from sordid motives by the Roman Curia,—abuses

which Erasmus had pierced through and through with the light darts of his

sarcasm; and Luther knew, as Erasmus did not, what he was speaking about,

for he had surrendered himself to that popular religion, and had sought in

it desperately for a means of reconciliation with God without succeeding

in his quest. They saw him insisting, with a strenuousness no Humanist had

exhibited, on the Humanist demand that every man had a right to stand true

to his own personal conscientious convictions. If some of them, like

Erasmus, in spite of their scorn of monkery, still believed that the

highest type of the religious life was a sincere self-sacrificing

Franciscan monk, they saw their ideal in the Augustinian Eremite, whose

life had never been stained by any monkish scandal, and who had been

proclaimed by his brother monks to be a model of personal holiness. They

were sure that when he pled heroically for the freedom of the religious

life, his courage, which they could not emulate, rested on a depth and

strength of personal piety which they sadly confessed they themselves did

not possess. If they complained at times that Luther spoke too strongly

against the Pope, they admitted that he was going to the root of things in

his attack. All clear-sighted men perceived that the _one_ obstacle to

reform was the theory of the papal monarchy, which had been laboriously

constructed by Italian canonists after the failure of Conciliar reform,—a

theory which defied the old mediæval ecclesiastical tradition, and

contradicted the solemn decisions of the great German Councils of

Constance and Basel. Luther’s attacks on the Papacy were not stronger than

those of Gerson and d’Ailly, and his language was not more unmeasured than

that of their common master, William of Occam. There was nothing in these

early days to prevent men who were genuinely attached to the mediæval

Church, its older theology and its ancient rites, from rallying round

Luther. When the marches began to be redd, and the beginnings of a

Protestant Church confronted the mediæval, the situation was changed. Many

who had enthusiastically supported Luther left him.

Conrad Mutianus, canon of Gotha, and the veteran leader of the Erfurt

circle of Humanists, wrote admiringly of the originality of Luther’s

sermons as early as 1515. He applauded the stand he took at Leipzig, and

spoke of him as _Martinum, Deo devotissimum doctorem_. His followers were

no longer contented with a study of the classical authors. Eobanus Hessus,

crowned “poet-king” of Germany, abandoned his _Horace_ for the

_Enchiridion_ of Erasmus and the Holy Scriptures. Justus Jonas (Jodocus

Koch of Nordlingen) forsook classical Greek to busy himself with the

Epistles to the Corinthians. The wicked satirist, Curicius Cordus, betook

himself to the New Testament. They did this out of admiration for Erasmus,

“their father in Christ.” But when Luther appeared, when they read his

pamphlets circulating through Germany, when they followed, step by step,

his career, they came under the influence of a new spell. The _Erasmici_,

to use the phrases of the times, diminished, and the _Martiniani_

increased in numbers. One of the old Erfurt circle, Johannes Crotus

Rubeanus, was in Rome. His letters, passed round among his friends, made

no small impression upon them. He told them that he was living in the

centre of the plague-spot of Europe. He reviled the Curia as devoid of all

moral conscience. “The Pope and his carrion-crows” were sitting content,

gorged on the miseries of the Church. When Crotus received from Germany

copies of Luther’s writings, he distributed them secretly to his Italian

friends, and collected their opinions to transmit to Germany. They were

all sympathetically impressed with what Luther said, but they pitied him

as a man travelling along a very dangerous road; no real reform was

possible without the destruction of the whole curial system, and that was

too powerful for any man to combat. Yet Luther was a hero; he was the

_Pater Patriæ_ of Germany; his countrymen ought to erect a golden statue

in his honour; they wished him God-speed. When Crotus returned to Germany

and got more in touch with Luther’s work, he felt more drawn to the

Reformer, and wrote enthusiastically to his friends that Luther was the

personal revelation of Christ in modern times. So we find these Humanists

declaring that Luther was the St. Paul of the age, the modern Hercules,

the Achilles of the sixteenth century.

No Humanist circle gave Luther more enthusiastic support than that of

Nürnberg. The soil had been prepared by a few ardent admirers of Staupitz,

at the head of whom was Wenceslas Link, prior of the Augustinian-Eremites

in Nürnberg, and a celebrated preacher. They had learned from Staupitz

that blending of the theology of Augustine with the later German mysticism

which was characteristic of the man, and it prepared them to appreciate

the deeper experimental teaching of Luther. Among these Nürnberg Humanists

was Christopher Scheurl, a jurist, personally acquainted with Luther and

with Eck. The shortlived friendship between the two antagonists had been

brought about by Scheurl, whose correspondence with Luther began in 1516.

Scheurl was convinced that Luther’s cause was the “cause of God.” He told

Eck this. He wrote to him (February 18th, 1519) that all the most

spiritually minded clergymen that he knew were devoted to Luther; that

“they flew to him in dense troops, like starlings”; that their deepest

sympathies were with him; and that they confessed that their holiest

desires were prompted by his writings. Albert Dürer expressed his

admiration by painting Luther as St. John, the beloved disciple of the

Lord. Caspar Nützel, one of the most dignified officials of the town,

thought it an honour to translate Luther’s _Ninety-five Theses_ into

German. Lazarus Sprengel delighted to tell his friends how Luther’s tracts

and sermons were bringing back to a living Christianity numbers of his

acquaintances who had been perplexed and driven from the faith by the

trivialities common in ordinary sermons. Similar enthusiasm showed itself

in Augsburg and other towns. After the Leipzig Disputation, the great

printer of Basel, Frobenius, became an ardent admirer of Luther; reprinted

most of his writings, and despatched them to Switzerland, France, the

Netherlands, Italy, England, and Spain. He delighted to tell of the

favourable reception they met with in these foreign countries,—how they

had been welcomed by Lefèvre in France, and how the Swiss Cardinal von

Sitten had said that Luther deserved all honour, for he spoke the truth,

which no special pleading of an Eck could overthrow. The distinguished

jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg said that Luther was an “angel

incarnate,” and while he deprecated his strong language against the Pope,

he called him the “Phœnix among Christian theologians,” the “flower of the

Christian world,” and the “instrument of God.” Zasius was a man whose

whole religious sympathies belonged to the mediæval conception of the

Church, yet he spoke of Luther in this way.

It is perhaps difficult for us now to comprehend the state of mind which

longed for the new and yet clung to the old, which made the two Nürnberg

families, the Ebners and the Nützlers, season the ceremonies at their

family gathering to celebrate their daughters taking the veil with

speeches in praise of Luther and of his writings. Yet this was the

dominant note in the vast majority of the supporters of Luther in these

earlier years.

Men who had no great admiration for Luther personally had no wish to see

him crushed by the Roman Curia by mere weight of authority. Even Duke

George of Saxony, who had called Luther a pestilent fellow at the Leipzig

Disputation, had been stirred into momentary admiration by the _Address to

the Christian Nobility of the German Nation_, and had no great desire to

publish the Bull within his dominions; and his private secretary and

chaplain, Jerome Emser, although a personal enemy who never lost an

opportunity of controverting Luther, nevertheless hoped that he might be

the instrument of effecting a reformation in the Church. Jacob Wimpheling

of Strassburg, a thoroughgoing mediævalist who had manifested no sympathy

for Reuchlin, and his friend Christopher of Utenheim, Bishop of Basel,

hoped that the movement begun by Luther might lead to that reformation of

the Church on mediæval lines which they both earnestly desired.

Perhaps no one represented better the attitude of the large majority of

Luther’s supporters, in the years between 1517 and 1521, than did the

Prince, who is rightly called Luther’s protector, Frederick the Elector of

Saxony. It is a great though common mistake to suppose that Frederick

shared those opinions of Luther which afterwards grew to be the Lutheran

theology. His brother John, and in a still higher degree his nephew John

Frederick, were devoted Lutherans in the theological sense; but there is

no evidence to show that Frederick ever was.

Frederick never had any intimate personal relations with Luther. At

Spalatin’s request, he had paid the expenses of Luther’s _promotion_ to

the degree of Doctor of the Holy Scriptures; he had, of course, acquiesced

in his appointment to succeed Spalatin as Professor of Theology; and he

must have appreciated keenly the way in which Luther’s work had gradually

raised the small and declining University to the position it held in 1517.

A few letters were exchanged between Luther and Frederick, but there is no

evidence that they ever met in conversation; nor is there any that

Frederick had ever heard Luther preach. When he lay dying he asked Luther

to come and see him; but the Reformer was far distant, trying to dissuade

the peasants from rising in rebellion, and when he reached the palace his

old protector had breathed his last.

The Elector was a pious man according to mediæval standards. He had

received his earliest lasting religious impressions from intercourse with

Augustinian Eremite monks when he was a boy at school at Grimma, and he

maintained the closest relations with the Order all his life. He valued

highly all the external aids to a religious life which the mediæval Church

had provided. He believed in the virtue of pilgrimages and relics. He had

made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and had brought back a great many

relics, which he had placed in the Church of All Saints in Wittenberg, and

he had agents at Venice and other Mediterranean ports commissioned to

secure other relics for his collection. He continued to purchase them as

late as the year 1523. He believed in Indulgences of the older

type,—Indulgences which remitted in whole or in part ecclesiastically

imposed _satisfactions_,—and he had procured two for use in Saxony. One

served as an endowment for the upkeep of his bridge at Torgau, and he had

once commissioned Tetzel to preach its virtues; the other was to benefit

pilgrims who visited and venerated his collection of relics on All Saints’

Day. But it is clear that he disliked Indulgences of the kind Luther had

challenged, and had small belief in the good faith of the Roman Curia. He

had prevented money collected for one plenary Indulgence leaving the

country, and he had forbidden Tetzel to preach the last Indulgence within

his territories. His sympathies were all with Luther on this question. He

was an esteemed patron of the pious society called _St. Ursula’s

Schifflein_. He went to Mass regularly, and his attendances became

frequent when he was in a state of hesitation or perplexity. When he was

at Köln (November 1520), besieged by the papal nuncios to induce him to

permit the publication of the Bull against Luther within his lands,

Spalatin noted that he went to Mass three times in one day. His reverence

for the Holy Scriptures must have created a bond of sympathy between

Luther and himself. He talked with his private secretary about the

incomparable majesty and power of the word of God, and contrasted its

sublimities with the sophistries and trivialities of the theology of the

day. He maintained firmly the traditional policy of his House to make the

decisions of the Councils of Constance and of Basel effective within

Electoral Saxony, in spite of protests from the Curia and the higher

ecclesiastics, and was accustomed to consider himself responsible for the

ecclesiastical as well as for the civil good government of his lands.

Aleander had considered it a master-stroke of policy to procure the

burning of Luther’s books at Köln while the Elector was in the city.

Frederick only regarded the deed as a petty insult to himself. He was a

staunch upholder of the rights and liberties of the German nation, and

remembered that by an old concordat, which every Emperor had sworn to

maintain, every German had the right to appeal to a General Council, and

could not be condemned without a fair trial; and this Bull had made

Luther’s appeal to a Council one of the reasons for his condemnation. So,

in spite of the “golden rose” and other blandishments, in spite of threats

that he might be included in the excommunication of his subject and that

the privileges of his University might be taken away, he stood firm, and

would not withdraw his protection from Luther. He was a pious German

prince of the old-fashioned type, with no great love for Italians, and was

not going to be browbeaten by papal nuncios. His attitude towards Luther

represents very fairly that of the great mass of the German people on the

eve of the Diet of Worms.