Chapter III. The Diet Of Worms.(176)

§ 1. The Roman Nuncio Aleander.

Rome had done its utmost to get rid of Luther by ecclesiastical measures,

and had failed. If he was to be overthrown, if the new religious movement

and the national uprising which enclosed it were to be stifled, this could

only be done by the aid of the supreme secular authority. The Curia turned

to the Emperor.

Maximilian had died suddenly on the 12th of January 1519. After some

mouths of intriguing, the papal diplomacy being very tortuous, his

grandson Charles, the young King of Spain, was unanimously chosen to be

his successor (June 28th, 1519). Troubles in Spain prevented him leaving

that country at once to take possession of his new dignities. He was

crowned at Aachen on the 23rd of October 1520, and opened his first German

Diet on January 22nd, 1521, at Worms.

The Pope had selected two envoys to wait on the young Emperor, the

Protonotary Marino Caraccioli (1469-1530), who was charged with the

ordinary diplomatic business, and Jerome Aleander, the Director of the

Vatican Library, who was appointed to secure the outlawry of Luther.

The Roman Curia had in Aleander one of the most clear-sighted, courageous,

and indefatigable of diplomatists. He was an Italian, born of a burgher

family in the little Venetian town of Motta (1480-1542), educated at Padua

and Venice; he had begun life as a Humanist, had lectured on Greek with

distinction in Paris, and had been personally acquainted with many of the

German Humanists, who could not forgive the “traitor” who had deserted

their ranks to serve an obscurantist party. His graphic letters, full of

minute details, throb with the hopes and fears of the papal diplomacy. The

reader has his fingers on the pulse of those momentous mouths. The Legate

was in a land where “every stone and every tree cried out, ‘Luther.’ ”

Landlords refused him lodging. He had to shiver during these winter months

in an attic without a stove. The stench and dirt of the house were worse

than the cold. When he appeared on the streets he saw scowling faces,

hands suddenly carried to the hilts of swords, heard curses shrieked after

him. He was struck on the breast by a Lutheran doorkeeper when he tried to

get audience of the Elector of Saxony, and no one in the crowd interfered

to protect him. He saw caricatures of himself hanging head downwards from

a gibbet. He received the old deadly German feud-letters from Ulrich von

Hutten, safe in the neighbouring castle of Ebernberg, about a day’s ride

distant.(177) The imperial Councillors to whom he complained had neither

the men nor the means to protect him. When he tried to publish answers to

the attacks on the Papacy which the Lutheran presses poured forth, he

could scarcely find a printer; and when he did, syndicates bought up his

pamphlets and destroyed them. As the weeks passed he came to understand

that there was only one man on whom he could rely—the young Emperor,

believed by all but himself to be a puppet in the hands of his

Councillors, whom Pope Leo had called a “good child,” but whom Aleander

from his first interview at Antwerp had felt to be endowed with “a

prudence far beyond his years,” and to “have much more at the back of his

head than he carried on his face.” He also came to believe that the one

man to be feared was the old Elector of Saxony, “that basilisk,” that

“German fox,” that “marmot with the eyes of a dog, who glanced obliquely

at his questioners.”

Aleander was a pure worldling, a man of indifferent morals, showing traces

of cold-blooded cruelty (as when he slew five peasants for the loss of one

of his dogs, or tried to get Erasmus poisoned). He believed that every man

had his price, and that low and selfish motives were alone to be reckoned

with. But he did the work of the Curia at Worms with a thoroughness which

merited the rewards he obtained afterwards.(178) He had spies

everywhere—in the households of the Emperor and of the leading princes,

and among the population of Worms. He had no hesitation in lying when he

thought it useful for the “faith,” as he frankly relates.(179) The Curia

had laid a difficult task upon him. He was to see that Luther was put

under the ban of the Empire at once and unheard. The Bull had condemned

him: the secular power had nothing to do but execute the sentence.

Aleander had little difficulty in persuading the Emperor to this course

within his hereditary dominions. An edict was issued ordering Luther’s

books to be burnt, and the Legate had the satisfaction of presiding at

several literary _auto-da-fés_ in Antwerp and elsewhere. He was also

successful with some of the ecclesiastical princes of Germany.(180) But it

was impossible to get this done at Worms. Failing this, it was Aleander’s

business to see that Luther’s case was kept separate from the question of

German national grievances against the Papacy, and that, if it proved to

be impossible to prevent Luther appearing before the Diet, he was to be

summoned there simply for the purpose of making public recantation. With

the assistance of the Emperor he was largely successful.(181)

§ 2. The Emperor Charles V.

Aleander was not the real antagonist of Luther at Worms; he was not worthy

of the name. The German Diet was the scene of a fight of faiths; and the

man of faith on the mediæval side was the young Emperor. He represented

the believing past as Luther represented the believing future.(182) “What

my forefathers established at Constance and other Councils,” he said, “it

is my privilege to uphold. A single monk, led astray by private judgment,

has set himself against the faith held by all Christians for a thousand

years and more, and impudently concludes that all Christians up till now

have erred. I have therefore resolved to stake upon this cause all my

dominions, my friends, my body and my blood, my life and soul.”(183) The

crisis had not come suddenly on him. As early as May 12th, 1520, Juan

Manuel, his ambassador at Rome, had written to him asking him to pay some

attention to “a certain Martin Luther, who belongs to the following of the

Elector of Saxony,” and whose preaching was causing some discontent at the

Roman Curia. Manuel thought that Luther might prove useful in a diplomatic

dispute with the Curia.(184) Charles had had time to think over the matter

in his serious, reserved way; and this was the decision he had come to.

The declaration was all the more memorable when it is remembered that

Charles owed his election to that rising feeling of nationality which

supported Luther,(185) and that he had to make sure of German assistance

in his coming struggle with Francis I. A certain grim reality lurked in

the words, that he was ready to stake his dominions on the cause he

adopted. There is much to be said for the opinion that “the Lutheran

question made a man of the boy-ruler.”(186)

On the other hand, it is well to remember that the young Emperor did not

take the side of the Pope nor commit himself to the Curial ideas of the

absolute character of papal supremacy. He laid stress on the unity of the

Catholic (mediæval) Church, on the continuity of its rites, and on the

need of maintaining its authority; but the seat of that authority was for

him a General Council. The declaration in no way conflicts with the

changes in imperial policy which may be traced during the opening weeks of

the Diet, nor with that future action which led to the Sack of Rome and to

the Augsburg Interim (1548). It is possible that the young ruler had read

and admired Luther’s earlier writings, and that he had counted on him as

an aid in bringing the Church to a better condition. It is more than

probable that he already believed that it was his duty to free the Church

from the abuses which abounded;(187) but Luther’s fierce attack on the

Pope disgusted him, and a reformation which came from the people

threatened secular as well as ecclesiastical authority. He had made up his

mind that Luther must be condemned, and told the German princes that he

would not change one iota of his determination. But this did not prevent

him making use of Luther to further his diplomatic dealings with the Pope

and wring concessions from the Curia. For one thing, the Pope had been

interfering with the Inquisition in Spain, trying to mitigate its

severity; and Charles, like his maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon,

believed that the Holy Office was a help in curbing the freedom-loving

people of Spain, and had no wish to see his instrument of punishment made

less effectual. For another, it was evident that Francis I. was about to

invade Italy, and Charles wished the Pope to take his side. If the Pope

gave way to him on both of these points, he was ready to carry out his

wishes about Luther as far as that was possible.(188)

§ 3. In the City of Worms.

The city of Worms was crowded with men of diverse opinions and of many

different nationalities. The first Diet of the youthful Emperor (Charles

was barely one and twenty), from whom men of all parties expected so much,

had attracted much larger numbers than usually attended these assemblies.

Weighty matters affecting all Germany were down on the _agenda_. There was

the old constitutional question of monarchy or oligarchy bequeathed from

the Diets of Maximilian; curiosity to see whether the new ruler would

place before the Estates a truly imperial policy, or whether, like his

predecessors, he would subordinate national to dynastic considerations;

the deputies from the cities were eager to get some sure provisions made

for ending the private wars which disturbed trade; all classes were

anxious to provide for an effective central government when the Emperor

was absent from Germany; local statesmen felt the need of putting an end

to the constant disputes between the ecclesiastical and secular powers

within Germany; but the hardest problem of all, and the one which every

man was thinking, talking, disputing about, was: “To take notice of the

books and descriptions made by Friar Martin Luther against the Court of

Rome.”(189) Other exciting questions were stirring the crowds met at Worms

besides those mentioned on the _agenda_ of the Diet. Men were talking

about the need of making an end of the papal exactions which were draining

Germany of money, and the air was full of rumours of what Sickingen and

the knights might attempt, and whether there was going to be another

peasant revolt. These questions were instinctively felt to hang together,

and each had an importance because of the way in which it was connected

with the religious and social problems of the day. For the people of

Germany and for the foreign representatives who were gathered together at

Worms, it is unquestionable that the Lutheran movement, and how it was to

be dealt with, was the supreme problem of the moment. All these various

things combined to bring together at Worms a larger concourse of people

than had been collected in any German town since the meeting of the

General Council at Constance in 1414.

Worms was one of the oldest towns in Germany. Its people were turbulent,

asserting their rights as the inhabitants of a free imperial city, and in

constant feud with their bishop. They had endured many an interdict, were

fiercely anti-clerical, and were to a man on Luther’s side. The crowded

streets were thronged with princes, their councillors and their retinues;

with high ecclesiastical dignitaries and their attendant clergy; with

nobles and their “riders”; with landsknechts, artisans, and peasants.

Spanish, French, and Italian merchants, on their way home-wards from the

Frankfurt fair, could be seen discussing the last phase of the Lutheran

question, and Spanish nobles and Spanish merchants more than once came to

blows in the narrow thoroughfares. The foreign merchants, especially the

Spaniards, all appeared to take the Lutheran side; not because they took

much interest in doctrines, but because they felt bound to stand up for

the man who had dared to say that no one should be burned for his

opinions. These Spanish merchants made themselves very prominent. They

joined in syndicates with the more fervent German partisans of Luther to

buy up and destroy papal pamphlets; they bought Luther’s writings to carry

home. Aleander curses these _marrani_,(190) as he calls them, and relates

that they are getting Luther’s works translated into Spanish. It is

probable that many of them had Moorish blood in them, and knew the horrors

of the Inquisition. Aleander’s spies told him that caricatures of himself

and other prominent papalists were hawked about, and that pictures of

Luther with the Dove hovering over his head, Luther with his head crowned

with a halo of rays, Luther and Hutten,(191) the one with a Bible and the

other with a sword, were eagerly bought in the streets. These pictures

were actually sold in the courts and rooms of the episcopal palace where

the Emperor was lodged. On the steps of the churches, at the doors of

public buildings, colporteurs offered to eager buyers the tracts of Luther

against the Pope, and the satires of Ulrich von Hutten in Latin and in

German. On the streets and in open spaces like the Market, crowds of keen

disputants argued about the teaching of Luther, and praised him in the

most exaggerated ways.

Inside the Electoral College opinion was divided. The Archbishop of Köln,

the Elector of Brandenburg, and his brother the Archbishop of Mainz, were

for Luther’s condemnation, while the Elector of Saxony had great influence

over the Archbishop of Trier and the Count Palatine of the Rhine. The

latter, says Aleander, scarcely opened his mouth during the year, but now

“roared like ten bulls” on Luther’s behalf. Aleander had his first

opportunity of addressing the Diet on February 13th. He spoke for three

hours, and made a strong impression. He dwelt on Luther’s doctrinal

errors, which he said were those of the Waldenses, of Wiclif, and of the

Hussites. He said that Luther denied the Presence of Christ in the Holy

Supper, and that he was a second Arius.(192) During the days that followed

the members of the Diet came to a common understanding. They presented a

memorial in German (February 19th) to the Emperor, in which they reminded

him that no imperial edict could be published against Luther without their

consent, and that to do so before Luther had a hearing would lead to

bloodshed; they proposed that Luther should be invited to come to Worms

under a safe conduct, and in the presence of the Diet be asked whether he

was the author of the books that were attributed to him, and whether he

could clear himself of the accusation of denying fundamental articles of

the faith; that he should also be heard upon the papal claims, and the

Diet would judge upon them; and, finally, they prayed the Emperor to

deliver Germany from the papal tyranny.(193) The Emperor agreed that

Luther should be summoned under a safe conduct and interrogated about his

books, and whether he had denied any fundamental doctrines. But he utterly

refused to permit any discussion on the authority of the Pope, and

declared that he would himself communicate with His Holiness about the

complaints of Germany.(194)

The documents in the _Reichstagsakten_ reveal not only that there was a

decided difference of opinion between the Emperor and the majority of the

Estates about the way in which Luther ought to be treated, but that the

policy of the Emperor and his advisers had changed between November 1520

and February 1521. Aleander had found no difficulty in persuading Charles

and his Flemish councillors that, so far as the Emperor’s hereditary

dominions were concerned, the only thing that the civil power had to do

was to issue an edict homologating the Papal Bull banning Luther and his

adherents, and ordering his books to be burnt. This had been done in the

Netherlands. They had made difficulties, however, about such summary

action within the German Empire. Aleander was told that the Emperor could

do nothing until after the coronation at Aachen (October 1520);(195) and

in November, much to the nuncio’s disgust, the Emperor had written to the

Elector of Saxony (November 28th, 1520) from Oppenheim asking him to bring

Luther with him to the Diet.(196) At that time Luther had no great wish to

go to the Diet, unless it was clearly understood that he was summoned not

for the purpose of merely making a recantation, but in order that he might

defend his views with full liberty of speech. He was not going to recant,

and he could say so as easily and clearly at Wittenberg as at Worms. The

situation had changed at Worms. The Emperor had come over to the nuncio’s

side completely. He now saw no need for Luther’s appearance. The Diet had

nothing to do but to place Luther under the ban of the Empire, because he

had been declared to be a heretic by the Roman Pontiff. Aleander claimed

all the credit for this change; but it is more than probable that the

explanation lies in the shifting imperial and papal policy. In the end of

1520 the policy of the Roman Curia was strongly anti-imperialist. The

Emperor’s ambassador at Rome, Don Manuel, had been warning his master of

the papal intrigues against him, and suggesting that Charles might show

some favour to a “certain Martin Luther”; and this advice might easily

have inspired the letter of the 28th of November. At all events the papal

policy had been changing, and showing signs of becoming less hostile to

the Emperor. However the matter be accounted for, Aleander found that

after the Emperor’s presence within Worms it was much more easy for him to

press the papal view about Luther upon Charles and his advisers.(197)

On the other hand, the Germans in the Diet held stoutly to the opinion

that no countryman of theirs should be placed under the ban of the Empire

without being heard in his defence, and that they and not the Bishop of

Rome were to be the judges in the matter.

The two months before Luther’s appearance saw open opposition between the

Emperor and the Diet, and abundant secret intrigue—an edict proposed

against Luther,(198) which the Diet refused to accept;(199) an edict

proposed to order the burning of Luther’s books, which the Diet also

objected to;(200) this edict revised and limited to the seizure of

Luther’s writings, which was also found fault with by the Diet; and,

finally, the Emperor issuing this revised edict on his own authority and

without the consent of the Diet.(201)

The command to appear before the Diet on April 16th, 1521, and the

imperial safe conduct were entrusted to the imperial herald, Caspar Strum,

who delivered them at Wittenberg on the 26th of March.(202) Luther calmly

finished some literary work, and left for the Diet on April 2nd. He

believed that he was going to his death. “My dear brother,” he said to

Melanchthon at parting, “if I do not come back, if my enemies put me to

death, you will go on teaching and standing fast in the truth; if you

live, my death will matter little.” The journey seemed to the indignant

Papists like a royal progress; crowds came to bless the man who had stood

up for Germany against the Pope, and who was going to his death for his

courage; they pressed into the inns where he rested, and often found him

solacing himself with music. His lute was always comforting to him in

times of excitement. Justus Jonas, the famous German Humanist, who had

turned theologian much to Erasmus’ disgust, joined him at Erfurt. The

nearer he came to Worms, the sharper became the disputes there. Friends

and foes feared that his presence would prove oil thrown on the flames.

The Emperor began to wish he had not sent the summons. Messengers were

despatched secretly to Sickingen, and a pension promised to Hutten to see

whether they could not prevent Luther’s appearance.(203) Might he not take

refuge in the Ebernberg, scarcely a day’s journey from Worms? Was it not

possible to arrange matters in a private conference with Glapion, the

Emperor’s confessor? Bucer was sent to persuade him. The herald

significantly called his attention to the imperial edict ordering

magistrates to seize his writings. But nothing daunted Luther. He would

not go to the Ebernberg; he could see Glapion at Worms, if the confessor

wished an interview; what he had to say would be said publicly at Worms.

Luther had reached Oppenheim, a town on the Rhine about fifteen miles

north from Worms, and about twenty east from the Ebernberg, on April 14th.

There he for the last time rejected the insidious temptations of his

enemies and the distracted counsels of his friends, that he should turn

aside and seek shelter with Francis von Sickingen. There he penned his

famous letter to Spalatin, that he would come to Worms if there were as

many devils as tiles on the house roofs to prevent him, and at the same

time asked where he was to lodge.(204)

The question was important. The Romanists had wished that Luther should be

placed under the Emperor’s charge as a prisoner of State, or else lodged

in the Convent of the Augustinian Eremites, where he could be under

ecclesiastical surveillance. But the Saxon nobles and their Elector had

resolved to trust no one with the custody of their countryman. The Elector

Frederick and part of his suite had found accommodation at an inn called

_The Swan_, and the rest of his following were in the House of the Knights

of St. John. Both houses were full; but it was arranged that Luther was to

share the room of two Saxon gentlemen, v. Hirschfeld and v. Schott, in the

latter building.(205) Next morning, Justus Jonas, who had reached Worms

before Luther, after consultation with Luther’s friends, left the town

early on Tuesday morning (April 16th) to meet the Reformer, and tell him

the arrangements made. With him went the two gentlemen with whom Luther

was to lodge.(206) A large number of Saxon noblemen with their attendants

accompanied them. When it was known that they had set out to meet Luther,

a great crowd of people (nearly two thousand, says Secretary Vogler), some

on horseback and some on foot, followed to welcome Luther, and did meet

him about two and a half miles from the town.(207)

§ 4. Luther in Worms.

A little before eleven o’clock the watcher on tower by the Mainz Gate blew

his horn to announce that the procession was in sight, and soon afterwards

Luther entered the town. The people of Worms were at their _Morgenimbiss_

or _Frühmahl_, but all rushed to the windows or out into the streets to

see the arrival.(208) Caspar Sturm, the herald, rode first, accompanied by

his attendant, the square yellow banner, emblazoned with the black

two-headed eagle, attached to his bridle arm. Then came the cart,—a

genuine Saxon _Rollwegelin_,—Luther and three companions sitting in the

straw which half filled it. The waggon had been provided by the good town

of Wittenberg, which had also hired Christian Goldschmidt and his three

horses at three gulden a day.(209) Luther’s companions were his _socius

itinerarius_, Brother Petzensteiner of Nürnberg;(210) his colleague

Nicholas Amsdorf; and a student of Wittenberg, a young Pomeranian noble,

Peter Swaven, who had been one of the Wittenberg students who had

accompanied Luther with halbert and helmet to the Leipzig Disputation

(July 1519). Justus Jonas rode immediately behind the waggon, and then

followed the crowd of nobles and people who had gone out to meet the

Reformer.

Aleander in his attic room heard the shouts and the trampling in the

streets, and sent out one of his people to find out the cause, guessing

that it was occasioned by Luther’s arrival. The messenger reported that

the procession had made its way through dense crowds of people, and that

the waggon had stopped at the door of the House of the Knights of St.

John. He also informed the nuncio that Luther had got out, saying, as he

looked round with his piercing eyes, _Deus erit pro me_, and that a priest

had stepped forward, received him in his arms, then touched or kissed his

robe thrice with as much reverence as if he were handling the relics of a

saint. “They will say next,” says Aleander in his wrath, “that the

scoundrel works miracles.”(211)

After travel-stains were removed, Luther dined with ten or twelve friends.

The early afternoon brought crowds of visitors, some of whom had come

great distances to see him. Then came long discussions about how he was to

act on the morrow before the Diet. The Saxon councillors v. Feilitzsch and

v. Thun were in the same house with him: the Saxon Chancellor, v. Brück,

and Luther’s friend Spalatin, were at _The Swan_, a few doors away. Jerome

Schurf, the Professor of Law in Wittenberg, had been summoned to Worms by

the Elector to act as Luther’s legal adviser, and had reached the town

some days before the Reformer.

How much Luther knew of the secret intrigues that had been going on at

Worms about his affairs it is impossible to say. He probably was aware

that the Estates had demanded that he should have a hearing, and should be

confronted by impartial theologians, and that the complaints of the German

nation against Rome should be taken up at the same time; also that the

Emperor had refused to allow any theological discussion, or that the

grievances against Rome should be part of the proceedings. All that was

public property. The imperial summons and safe conduct had not treated him

as a condemned heretic.(212) He had been addressed in it as _Ehrsamer_,

_lieber_, _andächtiger_—terms which would not have been used to a heretic,

and which were ostentatiously omitted from the safe conduct sent him by

Duke George of Saxony.(213) He knew also that the Emperor had nevertheless

published an edict ordering the civil authorities to seize his books, and

to prevent more from being printed, published, or sold, and that such an

edict threw doubts upon the value of the safe conduct.(214) But he

probably did not know that this edict was a third draft issued by the

Emperor without consulting the Diet. Nor is it likely that he knew how

Aleander had been working day and night to prevent his appearance at the

Diet from being more than a mere formality, nor how far the nuncio had

prevailed with the Emperor and with his councillors. His friends could

tell him all this—though even they were not aware until next morning how

resolved the Emperor was that Luther should not be permitted to make a

speech.(215) They knew enough, however, to be able to impress on Luther

that he must restrain himself, and act in such a way as to force the hands

of his opponents, and gain permission to speak at length in a second

audience. The Estates wished to hear him if the Emperor and his entourage

had resolved to prevent him from speaking. These consultations probably

settled the tactics which Luther followed on his first appearance before

the Diet.(216)

Next morning (Wednesday, April 17th), Ulrich von Pappenheim, the marshal

of ceremonies, came to Luther’s room before ten o’clock, and, greeting him

courteously and with all respect, informed him that he was to appear

before the Emperor and the Diet that day at four o’clock, when he would be

informed why he had been summoned.(217) Immediately after the marshal had

left, there came an urgent summons from a Saxon noble, Hans von Minkwitz,

who was dying in his lodgings, that Luther would come to hear his

confession and administer the sacrament to him. Luther instantly went to

soothe and comfort the dying man, notwithstanding his own troubles.(218)

We have no information how the hours between twelve and four were spent.

It is almost certain that there must have been another consultation.

Spalatin and Brück had discovered that the conduct of the audience was not

to be in the hands of Glapion, the confessor of the Emperor, as they had

up to that time supposed, but in those of John Eck, the Orator or Official

of the Archbishop of Trier.(219) This looked badly for Luther. Eck had

been officiously busy in burning Luther’s books at Trier; he lodged in the

same house and in the room next to the papal nuncio.(220) Aleander,

indeed, boasts that Eck was entirely devoted to him, and that he had been

able to draft the question which Eck put to Luther during the first

audience.(221)

§ 5. Luther’s first Appearance before the Diet of Worms.(222)

A little before four o’clock, the marshal and Caspar Sturm, the herald,

came to Luther’s lodging to escort him to the audience hall. They led the

Reformer into the street to conduct him to the Bishop’s Palace, where the

Emperor was living along with his younger brother Ferdinand, afterwards

King of the Romans and Emperor, and where the Diet met.(223) The streets

were thronged; faces looked down from every window; men and women had

crowded the roofs to catch a glimpse of Luther as he passed. It was

difficult to force a way through the crowd, and, besides, Sturm, who was

responsible for Luther’s safety, feared that some Spaniard might deal the

Reformer a blow with a dagger in the crowd. So the three turned into the

court of the Swan Hotel; from it they got into the garden of the House of

the Knights of St. John; and, as most of the courts and gardens of the

houses communicated with each other, they were able to get into the court

of the Bishop’s Palace without again appearing on the street.(224)

The court of the Palace was full of people eager to see Luther, most of

them evidently friendly. It was here that old General Frundsberg, the most

illustrious soldier in Germany, who was to be the conqueror in the famous

fight at Pavia, clapped Luther kindly on the shoulder, and said words

which have been variously reported. “My poor monk! my little monk! thou

art on thy way to make a stand as I and many of my knights have never done

in our toughest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause,

then forward in the name of God, and be of good courage: God will not

forsake thee.” From out the crowd, “here and there and from every corner,

came voices saying, ‘Play the man! Fear not death; it can but slay the

body: there is a life beyond.’ ”(225) They went up the stair and entered

the audience hall, which was crammed. While the marshal and the herald

forced a way for Luther, he passed an old acquaintance, the deputy from

Augsburg. “Ah, Doctor Peutinger,” said Luther, “are you here too?”(226)

Then he was led to where he was to stand before the Emperor; and these two

lifelong opponents saw each other for the first time. “The fool entered

smiling,” says Aleander (perhaps the lingering of the smile with which he

had just greeted Dr. Peutinger): “he looked slowly round, and his face

sobered.” “When he faced the Emperor,” Aleander goes on to say, “he could

not hold his head still, but moved it up and down and from side to

side.”(227) All eyes were fixed on Luther, and many an account was written

describing his appearance. “A man of middle height,” says an unsigned

Spanish paper preserved in the British Museum, “with a strong face, a

sturdy build of body, with eyes that scintillated and were never still. He

was clad in the robe of the Augustinian Order, but with a belt of hide,

with a large tonsure, newly shaven, and a coronal of short thick

hair.”(228) All noticed his gleaming eyes; and it was remarked that when

his glance fell on an Italian, the man moved uneasily in his seat, as if

“the evil eye was upon him.” Meanwhile, in the seconds before the silence

was broken, Luther was making _his_ observations. He noticed the swarthy

Jewish-looking face of Aleander, with its gleam of hateful triumph. “So

the Jews must have looked at Christ,” he thought.(229) He saw the young

Emperor, and near him the papal nuncios and the great ecclesiastics of the

Empire. A wave of pity passed through him as he looked. “He seemed to me,”

he said, “like some poor lamb among swine and hounds.”(230) There was a

table or bench with some books upon it. When Luther’s glance fell on them,

he saw that they were his own writings, and could not help wondering how

they had got there.(231) He did not know that Aleander had been collecting

them for some weeks, and that, at command of the Emperor, he had handed

them over to John Eck, the Official of Trier, for the purposes of the

audience.(232) Jerome Schurf made his way to Luther’s side, and stood

ready to assist in legal difficulties.

The past and the future faced each other—the young Emperor in his rich

robes of State, with his pale, vacant-looking face, but “carrying more at

the back of his head than his countenance showed,” the descendant of long

lines of kings, determined to maintain the beliefs, rites, and rules of

that Mediæval Church which his ancestors had upheld; and the monk, with

his wan face seamed with the traces of spiritual conflict and victory, in

the poor dress of his Order, a peasant’s son, resolute to cleave a way for

the new faith of evangelical freedom, the spiritual birthright of all men.

The strained silence(233) was broken by the Official of Trier, a man of

lofty presence, saying, in a clear, ringing voice so that all could hear

distinctly, first in Latin and then in German:

“ ‘Martin Luther, His Imperial Majesty, Sacred and Victorious

(_sacra et invicta_), on the advice of all the Estates of the Holy

Roman Empire, has ordered you to be summoned here to the throne of

His Majesty, in order that you may recant and recall, according to

the force, form, and meaning of the citation-mandate decreed

against you by His Majesty and communicated legally to you, the

books, both in Latin and in German, published by you and spread

abroad, along with their contents: Wherefore I, in the name of His

Imperial Majesty and of the Princes of the Empire, ask you: First,

Do you confess that these books exhibited in your presence (I show

him a bundle of books written in Latin and in German) and now

named one by one, which have been circulated with your name on the

title-page, are yours, and do you acknowledge them to be yours?

Secondly, Do you wish to retract and recall them and their

contents, or do you mean to adhere to them and to reassert

them?’ ”(234)

The books were not named; so Jerome Schurf called out, “Let the titles be

read.”(235) Then the notary, Maximilian Siebenberger (called

Transilvanus),(236) stepped forward and, taking up the books one by one,

read their titles and briefly described their contents.(237) Then Luther,

having briefly and precisely repeated the two questions put to him, said:

“ ‘To which I answer as shortly and correctly as I am able. I

cannot deny that the books named are mine, and I will never deny

any of them:(238) they are all my offspring; and I have written

some others which have not been named.(239) But as to what

follows, whether I shall reaffirm in the same terms all, or shall

retract what I may have uttered beyond the authority of

Scripture,—because the matter involves a question of faith and of

the salvation of souls, and because it concerns the Word of God,

which is the greatest thing in heaven and on earth, and which we

all must reverence,—it would be dangerous and rash in me to make

any unpremeditated declaration, because in unpremeditated speech I

might say something less than the fact and something more than the

truth; besides, I remember the saying of Christ when He declared,

“Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before

My Father which is in heaven, and before His angels.” For these

reasons I beg, with all respect, that your Imperial Majesty give

me time to deliberate, that I may answer the question without

injury to the Word of God and without peril to my own

soul.’ ”(240)

Luther made his answer in a low voice—so low that the deputies from

Strassburg, who were sitting not far from him, said that they could not

hear him distinctly.(241) Many present inferred from the low voice that

Luther’s spirit was broken, and that he was beginning to be afraid. But

from what followed it is evident that Luther’s whole procedure on this

first appearance before the Diet was intended to defeat the intrigues of

Aleander, which had for their aim to prevent the Reformer addressing the

Diet in a long speech; and in this he succeeded, as Brück and Spalatin

hoped he would.

The Estates then proceeded to deliberate on Luther’s request. Aleander

says that the Emperor called his councillors about him; that the Electors

talked with each other; and that the separate Estates deliberated

separately.(242) We are informed by the report of the Venetian ambassadors

that there was some difficulty among some of them in acceding to Luther’s

request. But at length the Official of Trier again addressed Luther:

“ ‘Martin, you were able to know from the imperial mandate why you

were summoned here, and therefore you do not really require any

time for further deliberation, nor is there any reason why it

should be granted. Yet His Imperial Majesty, moved by his natural

clemency, grants you one day for deliberation, and you will appear

here tomorrow at the same hour,—but on the understanding that you

do not give your answer in writing, but by word of mouth.’ ”(243)

The sitting, which, so far as Luther was concerned, had occupied about an

hour, was then declared to be ended, and he was conducted back to his room

by the herald. There he sat down and wrote to his friend Cuspinian in

Vienna “from the midst of the tumult”:

“This hour I have been before the Emperor and his brother, and

have been asked whether I would recant my books. I have said that

the books were really mine, and have asked for some delay about

recantation. They have given me no longer space and time than till

to-morrow for deliberation. Christ helping me, I do not mean to

recant one jot or tittle.”(244)

§ 6. Luther’s Second Appearance before the Diet.

The next day, Thursday, April 18th, did not afford much time for

deliberation. Luther was besieged by visitors. Familiar friends came to

see him in the morning; German nobles thronged his hostel at midday; Bucer

rode over from the Ebernberg in the afternoon with congratulations on the

way that the first audience had been got through, and bringing letters

from Ulrich von Hutten. His friends were almost astonished at his

cheerfulness. “He greeted me and others,” said Dr. Peutinger, who was an

early caller, “quite cheerfully—‘Dear Doctor,’ he said, ‘how is your wife

and child?’ I have never found or seen him other than the right good

fellow he is.”(245) George Vogler and others had “much pious conversation”

with him, and wrote, praising his thorough heroism.(246) The German nobles

greeted Luther with a bluff heartiness—“Herr Doctor, How are you? People

say you are to be burnt; that will never do; that would ruin

everything.”(247)

The marshal and the herald came for Luther a little after four o’clock,

and led him by the same private devious ways to the Bishop’s Palace. The

crowds on the streets were even larger than on the day before. It was said

that more than five thousand people, Germans and foreigners, were crushed

together in the street before the Palace. The throng was so dense that

some of the delegates, like Oelhafen from Nürnberg, could not get through

it.(248) It was six o’clock before the Emperor, accompanied by the

Electors and princes, entered the hall. Luther and the herald had been

kept waiting in the court of the Palace for more than an hour and a half,

bruised by the dense moving crowd. In the hall the throng was so great

that the princes had some difficulty in getting to their seats, and found

themselves uncomfortably crowded when they reached them.(249) Two notable

men were absent. The papal nuncios refused to be present when a heretic

was permitted to speak. Such proceedings were the merest tomfoolery

(_ribaldaria_), Aleander said. When Luther reached the door, he had still

to wait; the princes were occupied in reaching their places, and it was

not etiquette for him to appear until they were seated.(250) The day was

darkening, and the gloomy hall flamed with torches.(251) Observers

remarked Luther’s wonderful cheerful countenance as he made his way to his

place.(252)

The Emperor had intrusted the procedure to Aleander, to his confessor

Glapion, and to John Eck, who had conducted the audience on the previous

day.(253) The Official was again to have the conduct of matters in his

hands. As soon as Luther was in his place, Eck “rushed into words”

(_prorupit in verba_)(254) He began by recapitulating what had taken place

at the first audience; and in saying that Luther had asked time for

consideration, he insinuated that every Christian ought to be ready at all

times to give a reason for the faith that is in him, much more a learned

theologian like Luther. He declared that it was now time for Luther to

answer plainly whether he adhered to the contents of the books he had

acknowledged to be his, or whether he was prepared to recant them. He

spoke first in Latin and then in German, and it was noticed that his

speech in Latin was very bitter.(255)

Then Luther delivered his famous speech before the Diet. He had freed

himself from the web of intrigue that Aleander had been at such pains to

weave round him to compel him to silence, and stood forth a free German to

plead his cause before the most illustrious audience the Fatherland could

offer to any of its sons.

Before him was the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria,

destined to be King of the Romans and Emperor in days to come, and beside

them, seated, all the Electors and the great Princes of the Empire, lay

and ecclesiastical, among them four Cardinals. All round him standing, for

there was no space for seats, the Counts, Free Nobles and Knights of the

Empire, and the delegates of the great cities, were closely packed

together.(256) Ambassadors and the political agents of almost all the

countries in Europe were there to swell the crowd—ready to report the

issue of this momentous day. For all believed that whatever weighty

business for Germany was discussed at this Diet, the question raised by

Luther was one of European importance, and affected the countries which

they represented. The rumour had gone about, founded mainly on the serene

appearance of Luther, that the monk was about to recant;(257) and most of

the political agents earnestly hoped it might be true. That and that only

would end, they believed, the symptoms of disquiet which the governments

of every land were anxiously watching.

The diligence of Wrede has collected and printed in the

_Reichstagsakten_(258) several papers, all of which profess to give

Luther’s speech; but they are mere summaries, some longer and some

shorter, and give no indication of the power which thrilled the audience.

Its effect must be sought for in the descriptions of the hearers.

The specimens of his books which had been collected by Aleander were so

representative that Luther could speak of all his writings. He divided

them into three classes. He had written books for edification which he

could truly say had been approved by all men, friends and foes alike, and

it was scarcely to be expected that he, the author, should be the only man

to recant the contents of such writings as even the Papal Bull had

commended. In a second class of writings he had attacked the papal tyranny

which all Germany was groaning under; to recant the contents of these

books would be to make stronger and less endurable the monstrous evil he

had protested against; he therefore refused to recall such writings; no

loyal German could do so. He had also written against individual persons

who had supported the Papacy; it was possible that he had written too

strongly in some places and against some men; he was only a man and not

God, and was liable to make mistakes; he remembered how Christ, who could

not err, had acted when He was accused, and imitating Him, he was quite

ready, if shown to be wrong, by evangelical or prophetic witnesses, to

renounce his errors, and if he were convinced, he assured the Emperor and

princes assembled that he would be the first to throw his books into the

fire. He dwelt upon the power of the word of God which must prevail over

everything, and showed that many calamities in times past had fallen upon

nations who had neglected its teachings and warnings. He concluded as

follows:

“I do not say that there is any need for my teaching or warning

the many princes before me, but the duty I owe to _my_ Germany

will not allow me to recant. With these words I commend myself to

your most serene Majesty and to your principalities, and humbly

beg that you will not permit my accusers to triumph over me

causelessly. I have spoken (_Dixi_).”

Luther had spoken in Latin; he was asked to repeat what he had said in

German. The Hall had been packed; the torches gave forth warmth as well as

light. Luther steamed with perspiration, and looked wan and overpowered;

the heat was intense. Friends thought that the further effort would be too

much for his strength. The Saxon councillor, Frederick von Thun,

regardless of etiquette, called out loudly, “If you cannot do it you have

done enough, Herr Doctor.”(259) But Luther went on and finished his

address in German. His last words were. “Here I stand (_Hic bin Ich_).”

Aleander, the papal nuncio, who was not present, relates that while Luther

was speaking of the books in which he had attacked the Papacy, and was

proceeding “with great venom” to denounce the Pope,(260) the Emperor

ordered him to pass from that subject and to proceed with his other

matters. The Emperor had certainly told the Estates that he would not

allow the question of Luther’s orthodoxy and complaints against the Holy

See to be discussed together; and that lends some support to Aleander’s

statement.(261) But when it is seen that not one of the dozen deputies

present who write accounts of the scene mentions the interruption; when it

is not found in the official report; when it is remembered that Charles

could not understand either German or Latin, the story of the interruption

is a very unlikely one. Aleander was not remarkable for his veracity—“a

man, to say the least, not bigotedly truthful (_non superstitiose verax_)”

says Erasmus;(262) and the nuncio on one occasion boasted to his masters

in Rome that he could lie well when occasion required it.(263)

Several letters descriptive of the scene, written by men who were present

in the Diet, reveal the intense interest taken by the great majority of

the audience in the appearance and speech of Luther. His looks, his

language, the attitude in which he stood, are all described. When artists

portray the scene, either on canvas or in bronze, Luther is invariably

represented standing upright, his shoulders squared, and his head thrown

back. That was not how he stood before Charles and the Diet. He was a

monk, trained in the conventional habits of monkish humility. He stood

with a stoop of the head and shoulders, with the knees slightly bent, and

without gestures. The only trace of bodily emotion was betrayed by bending

and straightening his knees.(264) He addressed the Emperor and the Estates

with all respect,—“Most serene Lord and Emperor, most illustrious Princes,

most clement Lords,”—and apologised for any lack of etiquette on the

ground that he was convent-bred and knew nothing of the ways of Courts;

but it was noticed by more than one observer that he did not address the

spiritual princes present.(265) Many a witness describes the charm of his

cheerful, modest, but undaunted bearing.(266) The Saxon official account

says, “Luther spoke simply, quietly, modestly, yet not without Christian

courage and fidelity—in such a way, too, that his enemies would have

doubtless preferred a more abject spirit and speech”; and it goes on to

relate that his adversaries had confidently counted on a recantation, and

that they were correspondingly disappointed.(267) Many expected that, as

he had never before been in such presence, the strange audience would have

disconcerted him; but, to their surprise and delight, he spoke

“confidently, reasonably, and prudently, as if he were in his own

lecture-room.”(268) Luther himself was surprised that the unaccustomed

surroundings affected him so little. “When it came to my turn,” he says,

“I just went on.”(269) The beauty of his diction pleased his

audience—“many fair and happy words,” say Dr. Peutinger and others.(270)

When Luther had finished, the Official, mindful that it was his duty to

extract from Luther a distinct recantation, addressed him in a threatening

manner (_increpabundo similis_), and told him that his answer had not been

to the point. The question was that Luther, in some of his books, denied

decisions of Councils: Would he reaffirm or recant what he had said about

these decisions? the Emperor demanded a plain (_non cornutum_) answer. “If

His Imperial Majesty desires a plain answer,” said Luther, “I will give it

to him, _neque cornutum neque dentatum_, and it is this: It is impossible

for me to recant unless I am proved to be in the wrong by the testimony of

Scripture or by evident reasoning; I cannot trust either the decisions of

Councils or of Popes, for it is plain that they have not only erred, but

have contradicted each other. My conscience is thirled to the word of God,

and it is neither safe nor honest to act against one’s conscience. God

help me! Amen!”(271)

When he had finished, the Emperor and the princes consulted together; then

at a sign from Charles,(272) the Official addressed Luther at some length.

He told him that in his speech he had abused the clemency of the Emperor,

and had added to his evil deeds by attacking the Pope and Papists

(_papistæ_) before the Diet. He briefly recapitulated Luther’s speech, and

said that he had not sufficiently distinguished between his books and his

opinions; there might be room for discussion had Luther brought forward

anything new, but his errors were old—the errors of the Poor Men of Lyons,

Wiclif, of John and Jerome Huss (the learned Official gave Huss a brother

unknown to history),(273) which were decided upon at the Council of

Constance, where the whole German nation had been gathered together; he

again asked him to retract such opinions. To this Luther replied as

before, that General Councils had erred, and that his conscience did not

allow him to retract. By this time the torches had burnt to their sockets,

and the hall was growing dark.(274) Wearied with the crowd and the heat,

numbers were preparing to leave. The Official, making a last effort,

called out loudly, “Martin, let your conscience alone; recant your errors

and you will be safe and sound; you can never show that a Council has

erred.” Luther declared that Councils had erred, and that he could prove

it.(275) Upon this the Emperor made a sign to end the matter.(276) The

last words Luther was heard to say were, “God come to my help” (_Got kum

mir zu hilf_).(277)

It is evident from almost all the reports that from the time that Luther

had finished his great speech there was a good deal of confusion, and

probably of conversation, among the audience. All that the greater portion

of those present heard was an altercation between Luther and the Official,

due, most of the Germans thought, to the overbearing conduct of Eck, and

which the Italians and Spaniards attributed to the pertinacity of

Luther.(278) “Luther asserted that Councils had erred several times, and

had given decisions against the law of God. The Official said No; Luther

said Yes, and that he could prove it. So the matter came to an end for

that time.”(279) But all understood that there was a good deal said about

the Council of Constance.

The Emperor left his throne to go to his private rooms; the Electors and

the princes sought their hotels. A number of Spaniards, perceiving that

Luther turned to leave the tribunal, broke out into hootings, and followed

“the man of God with prolonged howlings.”(280) Then the Germans, nobles

and delegates from the towns, ringed him round to protect him, and as they

passed from the hall they all at once, and Luther in the midst of them,

thrust forward arms and raised hands high above their heads, in the way

that a German knight was accustomed to do when he had unhorsed his

antagonist in the tourney, or that a German landsknecht did when he had

struck a victorious blow. The Spaniards rushed to the door shouting after

Luther, “To the fire with him, to the fire!”(281) The crowd on the street

thought that Luther was being sent to prison, and thought of a

rescue.(282) Luther calmed them by saying that the company were escorting

him home. Thus, with hands held high in stern challenge to Holy Roman

Empire and mediæval Church, they accompanied Luther to his lodging.

Friends had got there before him—Spalatin, ever faithful; Oelhafen, who

had not been able to reach his place in the Diet because of the throng.

Luther, with beaming face, stretched out both his hands, exclaiming, “I am

through, I am through!”(283) In a few minutes Spalatin was called away. He

soon returned. The old Elector had summoned him only to say, “How well,

father, Dr. Luther spoke this day before the Emperor and the Estates; but

he is too bold for me.” The sturdy old German prince wrote to his brother

John, “From what I have heard this day, I will never believe that Luther

is a heretic”; and a few days later, “At this Diet, not only Annas and

Caiaphas, but also Pilate and Herod, have conspired against Luther.”

Frederick of Saxony was no Lutheran, like his brother John and his nephew

John Frederick; and he was the better able to express what most German

princes were thinking about Luther and his appearance before the Diet.

Even Duke George was stirred to a momentary admiration; and Duke Eric of

Brunswick, who had taken the papal side, could not sit down to supper

without sending Luther a can of Einbecker beer from his own table.(284) As

for the commonalty, there was a wild uproar in the streets of Worms that

night—men cursing the Spaniards and Italians, and praising Luther, who had

compelled the Emperor and the prelates to hear what he had to say, and who

had voiced the complaints of the Fatherland against the Roman Curia at the

risk of his life. The voice of the people found utterance in a placard,

which next morning was seen posted up on the street corners of the town,

“Woe to the land whose king is a child.” It was the beginning of the

disillusion of Germany. The people had believed that they were securing a

German Emperor when, in a fit of enthusiasm, they had called upon the

Electors to choose the grandson of Maximilian. They were beginning to find

that they had selected a Spaniard.

§ 7. The Conferences.

Next day (April 19th) the Emperor proposed that Luther should be placed

under the ban of the Empire. The Estates were not satisfied, and insisted

that something should be done to effect a compromise. Luther had not been

treated as they had proposed in their memorandum of the 19th February. He

had been peremptorily ordered to retract. The Emperor had permitted

Aleander to regulate the order of procedure on the day previous (April

18th), and the result had not been satisfactory. Even the Elector of

Brandenburg and his brother, the hesitating Archbishop of Mainz, did not

wish matters to remain as they were. They knew the feelings of the German

people, if they were ignorant of the Emperor’s diplomatic dealings with

the Pope. The Emperor gave way, but told them that he would let them hear

his own view of the matter. He produced a sheet of paper, and read a short

statement prepared by himself in the French tongue—the language with which

Charles was most familiar. It was the memorable declaration of his own

religious position, which has been referred to already.(285) Aleander

reports that several of the princes became pale as death when they heard

it.(286) In later discussions the Emperor asserted with warmth that he

would never change one iota of his declaration.

Nevertheless, the Diet appointed a Commission (April 22nd) to confer with

Luther, and at its head was placed the Archbishop of Trier, who was

perhaps the only one among the higher ecclesiastics of Germany whom Luther

thoroughly trusted. They had several meetings with the Reformer, the first

being on the 24th of April. All the members of the Commission were

sincerely anxious to arrange a compromise; but after the Emperor’s

declaration that was impossible, as Luther himself clearly saw. No set of

resolutions, however skilfully framed, could reconcile the Emperor’s

belief that a General Council was infallible and Luther’s phrase, “a

conscience bound to the Holy Scriptures.” No proposals to leave the final

decision to the Emperor and the Pope, to the Emperor alone, to the Emperor

and the Estates, to a future General Council (all of which were made),

could patch up a compromise between two such contradictory standpoints.

Compromise must fail in a fight of faiths, and that was the nature of the

opposition between Charles V. and Luther throughout their lives. What

divided them was no subordinate question about doctrine or ritual; it was

fundamental, amounting to an entirely different conception of the whole

round of religion. The moral authority of the individual conscience

confronted the legal authority of an ecclesiastical assembly. In after

days the monk regretted that he had not spoken out more boldly before the

Diet. Shortly before his death, the Emperor expressed his regret that he

had not burned the obstinate heretic. When the Commission had failed,

Luther asked leave to reveal his whole innermost thoughts to the

Archbishop of Trier, under the seal of confession, and the two had a

memorable private interview. Aleander fiercely attacked the Archbishop for

refusing to disclose what passed between them; but the prelate was a

German bishop with a conscience, and not an unscrupulous dependant on a

shameless Curia. No one knew what Luther’s confession was. The Commission

had to report that its efforts had proved useless. Luther was ordered to

leave Worms and return to Wittenberg, without preaching on the journey;

his safe conduct was to expire in twenty-one days after the 26th of April.

At their expiry he was liable to be seized and put to death as a pestilent

heretic. There remained only to draft and publish the edict containing the

ban. The days passed, and it did not appear.

Suddenly the startling news reached Worms that Luther had disappeared, no

one knew where. Aleander, as usual, had the most exact information, and

gives the fullest account of the rumours which were flying about.

Cochlæus, who was at Frankfurt, sent him a man who had been at Eisenach,

had seen Luther’s uncle, and had been told by him about the capture. Five

horsemen had dashed at the travelling waggon, had seized Luther, and had

ridden off with him. Who the captors were or by whose authority they had

acted, no one could tell. “Some blame me,” says Aleander, “others the

Archbishop of Mainz: would God it were true!” Some thought that Sickingen

had carried him off to protect him; others, the Elector of Saxony; others,

the Count of Mansfeld. One persistent rumour declared that a personal

enemy of the Elector of Saxony, one Hans Beheim, had been the captor; and

the Emperor rather believed it. On May 14th a letter reached Worms saying

that Luther’s body had been found in a silver-mine pierced with a dagger.

The news flew over Germany and beyond it that Luther had been done to

death by emissaries of the Roman Curia; and so persistent was the belief,

that Aleander prepared to justify the deed by alleging that the Reformer

had broken the imperial safe conduct by preaching at Eisenach and by

addressing a concourse of people at Frankfurt.(287) Albert Dürer, in

Ghent, noted down in his private diary that Luther, “the God-inspired

man,” had been slain by the Pope and his priests as our Lord had been put

to death by the priests in Jerusalem. “O God, if Luther is dead, who else

can expound the Holy Gospel to us!”(288) Friends wrote distracted letters

to Wittenberg imploring Luther to tell them whether he was alive or

imprisoned.(289) The news created the greatest consternation and

indignation in Worms. The Emperor’s decision had been little liked even by

the princes most incensed against Luther. Aleander could not get even the

Archbishop of Mainz to promise that he would publish it. When the

Commission of the Diet had failed to effect a compromise, the doors of the

Rathhaus and of other public buildings in Worms had been placarded with an

intimation that four hundred knights had sworn that they would not leave

Luther unavenged, and the ominous words _Bundschuh_, _Bundschuh_,

_Bundschuh_ had appeared on it. The Emperor had treated the matter

lightly; but the German Romanist princes had been greatly alarmed.(290)

They knew, if he did not, that the union of peasants with the lower

nobility had been a possible source of danger to Germany for nearly a

century; they remembered that it was this combination which had made the

great Bohemian rising successful. Months after the Diet had risen,

Romanist partisans in Germany sent anxious communications to the Pope

about the dangers of a combination of the lesser nobility with the

peasants.(291) The condition of Worms had been bad enough before, and when

the news of Luther’s murder reached the town the excitement passed all

bounds. The whole of the Imperial Court was in an uproar. When Aleander

was in the royal apartments the highest nobles in Germany pressed round

him, telling him that he would be murdered even if he were “clinging to

the Emperor’s bosom.” Men crowded his room to give him information of

conspiracies to slay both himself and the senior Legate Caraccioli.(292)

The excitement abated somewhat, but the wiser German princes recognised

the abiding gravity of the situation, and how little the Emperor’s

decision had done to end the Lutheran movement. The true story of Luther’s

disappearance was not known until long afterwards. After the failure of

the conferences, the Elector of Saxony summoned two of his councillors and

his chaplain and private secretary, Spalatin, and asked them to see that

Luther was safely hidden until the immediate danger was past. They were to

do what they pleased and inform him of nothing. Many weeks passed before

the Elector and his brother John knew that Luther was safe, living in

their own castle on the Wartburg. This was his “Patmos,” where he doffed

his monkish robes, let the hair grow over his tonsure, was clad as a

knight, and went by the name of Junker Georg. His disappearance did not

mean that he ceased to be a great leader of men; but it dates the

beginning of the national opposition to Rome.

§ 8. The Ban.

After long delay, the imperial mandate against Luther was prepared. It was

presented (May 25th) to an informal meeting of some members of the Diet

after the Elector of Saxony and many of Luther’s staunchest supporters had

left Worms.(293) Aleander, who had a large share in drafting it, brought

two copies, one in Latin and the other in German, and presented them to

Charles on a Sunday (May 26th) after service. The Emperor signed them

before leaving the church. “Are you contented now?” said Charles, with a

smile to the Legate; and Aleander overflowed with thanks. Few State

documents, won by so much struggling and scheming, have proved so futile.

The uproar in Germany at the report of Luther’s death had warned the

German princes to be chary of putting the edict into execution.

The imperial edict against Luther threatened all his sympathisers with

extermination. It practically proclaimed an Albigensian war in Germany.

Charles had handed it to Aleander with a smile. Aleander despatched the

document to Rome with an exultation which could only find due expression

in a quotation from Ovid’s _Art of Love_. Pope Leo celebrated the arrival

of the news by comedies and musical entertainments. But calm observers,

foreigners in Germany, saw little cause for congratulation and less for

mirth. Henry VIII. wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz congratulating him on

the overthrow of the “rebel against Christ”; but Wolsey’s agent at the

Diet informed his master that he believed there were one hundred thousand

Germans who were still ready to lay down their lives in Luther’s

defence.(294) Velasco, who had struck down the Spanish rebels in the

battle of Villalar, wrote to the Emperor that the victory was God’s

gratitude for his dealings with the heretic monk; but Alfonso de Valdès,

the Emperor’s secretary, said in a letter to a Spanish correspondent:

“Here you have, as some imagine, the end of this tragedy; but I am

persuaded it is not the end, but the beginning of it. For I see

that the minds of the Germans are greatly exasperated against the

Roman See, and they do not seem to attach great importance to the

Emperor’s edicts; for since their publication, Luther’s books are

sold with impunity at every step and corner of the streets and

market-places. From this you will easily guess what will happen

when the Emperor leaves. This evil might have been cured with the

greatest advantage to the Christian commonwealth, had not the Pope

refused a General Council, had he preferred the public weal to his

own private interests. But while he insists that Luther shall be

condemned and burnt, I see the whole Christian commonwealth

hurried to destruction unless God Himself help us.”

Valdès, like Gattinara and other councillors of Charles, was a follower of

Erasmus. He lays the blame of all on the Pope. But what a disillusion this

Diet of Worms ought to have been to the Erasmians! The Humanist young

sovereigns and the Humanist Pope, from whom so much had been expected,

congratulating each other on Luther’s condemnation to the stake!

The foreboding of Alfonso de Valdès was amply justified. Luther’s books

became more popular than ever, and the imperial edict did nothing to

prevent their sale either within Germany or beyond it. Aleander was soon

to learn this. He had retired to the Netherlands, and busied himself with

_auto-da-fés_ of the prohibited writings; but he had to confess that they

were powerless to prevent the spread of Luther’s opinions, and he declared

that the only remedy would be if the Emperor seized and burnt half a dozen

Lutherans, and confiscated all their property.(295) The edict had been

published or repeated in lands outside Germany and in the family

possessions of the House of Hapsburg. Henry VIII. ordered Luther’s books

to be burnt in England;(296) the Estates of Scotland prohibited their

introduction into the realm under the severest penalties in 1525.(297) But

such edicts were easily evaded, and the prohibited writings found their

way into Spain, Italy, France, Flanders, and elsewhere, concealed in bales

of merchandise. In Germany there was no need for concealment; the imperial

edict was not merely disregarded, but was openly scouted. The great

Strassburg publisher, Gruniger, apologised to his customers, not for

publishing Luther’s books, but for sending forth a book against him; and

Cochlæus declared that printers gladly accepted any MS. against the

Papacy, printed it _gratis_, and spent pains in issuing it with taste,

while every defender of the established order had to pay heavily to get

his book printed, and sometimes could not secure a printer at any cost.

§ 9. Popular Literature.

The Reformation movement may almost be said to have created the German

book trade. The earliest German printed books or rather booklets were few

in number, and of no great importance—little books of private devotion, of

popular medicine, herbals, almanacs, travels, or public proclamations. Up

to 1518 they barely exceeded fifty a year. But in the years 1518-1523 they

increased enormously, and four-fifths of the increase were controversial

writings prompted by the national antagonism to the Roman Curia. This

increase was at first due to Luther alone;(298) but from 1521 onwards he

had disciples, fellow-workers, opponents, all using in a popular way the

German language, the effective literary power of which had been discovered

by the Reformer.(299) These writers spread the new ideas among the people,

high and low, throughout Germany.(300)

There are few traces of combined action in the anti-Romanist writings in

the earlier stages of the controversy; it needed literary opposition to

give them a semblance of unity. Each writer looks at the general question

from his own individual point of view. Luther is the hero with nearly all,

and is spoken about in almost extravagant terms. He is the prophet of

Germany, the Elias that was to come, the Angel of the Revelation “flying

through the mid-heaven with the everlasting Gospel in his hands,” the

national champion who was brought to Worms to be silenced, and yet was

heard by Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios. Some of the authors were

still inclined to make Erasmus their leader, and declared that they were

fighting under the banner of that “Knight of Christ”; others looked on

Erasmus and Luther as fellow-workers, and one homely pamphlet compares

Erasmus to the miller who grinds the flour, and Luther to the baker who

bakes it into bread to feed the people. Perhaps the most striking feature

of the times was the appearance of numberless anonymous pamphlets,

purporting to be written by the unlearned for the unlearned. They are

mostly in the form of dialogues, and the scene of the conversations

recorded was often the village alehouse, where burghers, peasants,

weavers, tailors, and shoemakers attack and vanquish in argument priests,

monks, and even bishops. One striking feature of this new popular

literature is the glorification of the German peasant. He is always

represented as an upright, simple-minded, reflective, and intelligent

person skilled in Bible lore, and even in Church history, and knowing as

much of Christian doctrine “as three priests and more.” He may be compared

with the idealised peasant of the pre-revolution literature in France,

although he lacks the refinement, and knows nothing of high-flown moral

sentiment; but he is much liker the Jak Upland or Piers Plowman of the

days of the English Lollards. Jak Upland and Hans Mattock (_Karsthans_),

both hate the clergy and abominate the monks and the begging friars, but

the German exhibits much more ferocity than the Englishman. The Lollard

describes the fat friar of the earlier English days with his swollen

dewlap wagging under his chin “like a great goose-egg,” and contrasts him

with the pale, poverty-stricken peasant and his wife, going shoeless to

work over ice-bound roads, their steps marked with the blood which oozed

from the cut feet; the German pamphleteer pours out an endless variety of

savage nicknames—cheese-hunters, sausage-villains, begging-sacks, sourmilk

crocks, the devil’s fat pigs, etc. etc. It is interesting to note that

most of this coarse controversial literature, which appeared between 1518

and 1523, came from those regions in South Germany where the social

revolution had found an almost permanent establishment from the year 1503.

It was the sign that the old spirit of communist and religious enthusiasm,

which had shown itself spasmodically since the movement under Hans Böhm,

had never been extinguished, and it was a symptom that a peasants’ war

might not be far off. Very little was needed to kindle afresh the

smouldering hatred of the peasant against the priests. When German

patriots declaimed against the exactions of the Roman Curia, the peasant

thought of the great and lesser tithes, of the marriage, baptismal, and

burial fees demanded from him by his own parish priest. When Reformers and

popular preachers denounced the scandals and corruptions in the Church,

the peasant applied them to some drunken, evil-living, careless priest

whom he knew. It should be remembered that the character _Karsthans_ was

invented in 1520, not by a Lutheran sympathiser, but by Thomas Murner, one

of Luther’s most determined opponents,(301) when he was still engaged in

writing against the clerical disorders of the times. This virulent attack

on priests and monks had other sources than the sympathy for Luther.(302)

It was the awakening of old memories, prompted partly by an underground

ceaseless Hussite propaganda, and partly, no doubt, by the new ideas so

universally prevalent.

Some of this coarse popular literature had a more direct connection with

the Lutheran movement. A booklet which appeared in 1521, entitled _The New

and the Old God_, and which had an immense circulation, may be taken as an

example. Like many of its kind, it had an illustrated title-page, which

was a graphic summary of its contents. There appeared as the

representatives of the New God, the Pope, some Church Fathers, and beneath

them, Cajetan, Silvester Prierias, Eck, and Faber; over-against them were

the Old God as the Trinity, the four Evangelists, St. Paul with a sword,

and behind him Luther. It attacked the ceremonies, the elaborate services,

the obscure doctrines which had been thrust on the Church by bloody

persecutions, and had changed Christianity into Judaism, and contrasted

them with the unchanging Word of the Old God, with its simple story of

salvation and its simple doctrines of faith, hope, and love. To the same

class belong the writings of the voluminous controversialist, John Eberlin

of Günzburg, whom his opponents accused of seducing whole provinces, so

effective were his appeals to the “common” man. He began by a pamphlet

addressed to the young Emperor, and published, either immediately before

or during the earlier sitting of the Diet of Worms in 1521, a daring

appeal, in which Luther and Ulrich von Hutten are called the messengers of

God to their generation. It was the first of a series of fifteen, all of

which were in circulation before the beginning of November of the same

year.(303) They were called the “Confederates” (_Bundsgenossen_). The

contents of these and other pamphlets by Eberlin may be guessed from their

titles—_Of the forty days’ fast before Easter and others which pitifully

oppress Christian folk._ _An exhortation to all Christians that they take

pity on Nuns._ _How very dangerous it is that priests have not wives_ (the

frontispiece represents the marriage of a priest by a bishop, in the

background the marriage of two monks, and two musicians on a raised seat).

_Why there is no money in the country._ _Against the false clergy,

bare-footed monks, and Franciscans_, etc., etc. He exposes as trenchantly

as Luther did the systematic robbery of Germany to benefit the Roman

Curia—300,000 gulden sent out of the country every year, and a million

more given to the begging friars. He wrote fiercely against the monks who

take to this life, because they were too lazy to work like honest people,

and called them all sorts of nicknames—_cloister swine_, _the Devil’s

landsknechts_, etc., twenty-four thousand of them sponge on Germany and

four hundred thousand on the rest of Europe. He tells of a parish priest

who thought that he must really begin to read the Scriptures: his

parishioners are reading it, the mothers to the children and the

house-fathers to the household; they trouble him with questions taken from

it, and he is often at his wit’s end to answer; he asked a friend where he

ought to begin, and was told that there was a good deal about priests and

their duties in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus; he read, and was

horrified to find that bishops and priests ought to be “husbands of one

wife,” etc. Eberlin had been a Franciscan monk, and was true to the

revolutionary traditions of his Order. He preached a social as well as an

evangelical reformation. The Franciscan Order sent forth a good many

Reformers: men like Stephen Kampen, who had come to adopt views like those

of Eberlin without any teaching but the leadings of his heart; or John

Brissmann, a learned student of the Scholastic Theology, who like Luther

had found that it did not satisfy the yearnings of his soul; or like

Frederick Mecum (Myconius), whose whole spiritual development was very

similar to that of Luther. Pamphlets like those of Eberlin, and preaching

like that of Kampen, had doubtless some influence in causing popular

risings against the priests that were not uncommon throughout Germany in

1521, after the Diet of Worms had ended its sittings—the Erfurt tumult,

which lasted during the months of April, May, June, and July, may be

instanced as an example.

§ 10. The Spread of Luther’s Teaching.

It may be said that the very year in which the imperial edict against

Luther was published (1521) gave evidence that a silent movement towards

the adoption of the principles for which Luther was testifying had begun

among monks of almost all the different Orders. The Augustinian Eremites,

Luther’s own Order, had been largely influenced by him. Whole communities,

with the prior at their head, had declared for the Reformation both in

Germany and in the Low Countries. No other monastic Order was so decidedly

upon the side of the Reformer, but monks of all kinds joined in preaching

and teaching the new doctrines. Martin Bucer had been a Dominican, Otto

Braunfells a Carthusian, Ambrose Blauer a Benedictine. The case of

Oecolampadius (John Hussgen (?) Hausschein) was peculiar. He had been a

distinguished Humanist, had come under serious religious impressions, and

had entered the Order of St. Bridget; but he was not long there when he

joined the ranks of the Reformers, and was sheltered by Franz von

Sickingen in his castle at Ebernberg.(304) Urban Rhegius, John Eck’s most

trusted and most talented student at Ingolstadt, had become a Carmelite,

and had quitted his monastery to preach the doctrines of Luther. John

Bugenhagen belonged to the Order of the Præmonstratenses. He was a learned

theologian. Luther’s struggle against Indulgences had displeased him. He

got hold of _The Babylonian Captivity of the Christian Church_, and

studied it for the purpose of refuting it. The study so changed him that

he felt that “the whole world may be wrong, but Luther is right”; he won

over his prior and most of his companions, and became the Reformer of

Pomerania.

Secular priests all over Germany declared for the new evangelical

doctrines. The Bishop of Samlund in East Prussia boldly avowed himself to

be on Luther’s side, and was careful to have the Lutheran doctrines

preached throughout his diocese; and other bishops showed themselves

favourable to the new evangelical faith. Many of the most influential

parish priests did the like, and their congregations followed them.

Sometimes the superior clergy forbade the use of the church, and the

people followed their pastor while he preached to them in the fields.

Sometimes (as in the case of Hermann Tast) the priest preached under the

lime trees in the churchyard, and his parishioners came armed to protect

him. If priests were lacking to preach the Lutheran doctrines, laymen came

forward. If they could not preach, they could sing hymns. Witness the poor

weaver of Magdeburg, who took his stand near the statue of Kaiser Otto in

the market-place, and sang two of Luther’s hymns, “Aus tiefer Not schrei

Ich zu dir,” and “Es woll’ uns Gott gnädig sein,” while the people crowded

round him on the morning of May 6th, 1524. The Burgermeister coming from

early Mass heard him, and ordered him to be imprisoned, but the crowd

rescued him. Such was the beginning of the Reformation in Magdeburg.(305)

When men dared not, women took their place. Argula Grunbach, a student of

the Scriptures and of Luther’s writings, challenged the University of

Ingolstadt, under the eyes of the great Dr. Eck himself, to a public

disputation upon the truth of Luther’s position.

Artists lent their aid to spread the new ideas, and many cartoons made the

doctrines and the aims of the Reformers plain to the common people. These

pictures were sometimes used to illustrate the title-pages of the

controversial literature, and were sometimes published as separate

broadsides. In one, Christ is portrayed standing at the _door_ of a house,

which represents His Church. He invites the people to enter by the door;

and Popes, cardinals, and monks are shown climbing the walls to get

entrance in a clandestine fashion.(306) In another, entitled the _Triumph

of Truth_, the common folk of a German town are represented singing songs

of welcome to honour an approaching procession. Moses, the patriarchs, the

prophets, and the apostles, carry on their shoulders the Ark of the Holy

Scriptures. Hutten comes riding on his warhorse, and to the tail of the

horse is attached a chain which encloses a crowd of ecclesiastics—an

archbishop with his mitre fallen off, the Pope with his tiara in the act

of tumbling and his pontifical staff broken; after them, cardinals, then

monks figured with the heads of cats, pigs, calves, etc. Then comes a

triumphal car drawn by the four living creatures, who represent the four

evangelists, on one of which rides an angel. Carlstadt stands upright in

the front of the car; Luther strides alongside. In the car, Jesus sits

saying, _I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life_. Holy martyrs follow,

singing songs of praise. German burghers are spreading their garments on

the road, and boys and girls are strewing the path with flowers.(307)

Perhaps the most important work of this kind was the _Passional Christi et

Antichristi_.(308) Luther planned the book, Luke Cranach designed the

pictures, and Melanchthon furnished the texts from Scripture and the

quotations from Canon Law. It is a series of pairs of engravings

representing the lives of our Lord and of the Pope, so arranged that

wherever the book opened two contrasting pictures could be seen at the

same time. The contrasts were such as these:—Jesus washing the disciples’

feet; the Pope holding out his toe to be kissed: Jesus healing the wounded

and the sick; the Pope presiding at a tournament: Jesus bending under His

Cross; the Pope carried in state on men’s shoulders: Jesus driving the

money-changers out of the Temple; the Pope and his servants turning a

church into a market for Indulgences, and sitting surrounded with strong

boxes and piles of coin. It was a “good book for the laity,” Luther said.

One of the signs of the times was the enthusiasm displayed in the imperial

cities for the cause of Luther. The way had been prepared. Burgher songs

had for long described the ecclesiastical abuses, and had borne witness to

the widespread hatred of the clergy shared in by the townsfolk. Wolfgang

Capito and Frederick Mecum (Myconius), both sons of burghers, inform us

that their fathers taught them when they were boys that Indulgences were

nothing but a speculation on the part of cunning priests to get their

hands into the pockets of simple-minded laity. Keen observers of the trend

of public feeling like Wimpheling and Pirkheimer had noticed with some

alarm the gradual spread of the Hussite propaganda in the towns, and had

made the fact one of their reasons for desiring and insisting on a

reformation of the Church. The growing sympathy for the Hussite opinions

in the cities is abundantly apparent. Some leading Reformers, Capito for

instance, told their contemporaries that they had frequently listened to

Hussite discourses when they were boys; and the libraries of burghers not

infrequently contained Hussite pamphlets. Men in the towns had been

reading, thinking, and speaking in private to their familiar friends about

the disorders in the life and doctrine of the Church of their days, and

were eager to welcome the first symptoms of a genuine attempt at reform.

The number of editions of the German Vulgate, rude as many of these

versions were, shows what a Bible-reading people the German burghers had

become, enables us to wonder less at the way in which the controversial

writers assume that the laity knew as much of the Scriptures as the

clergy, and lends credibility to contemporary assertions that women and

artisans knew their Bibles better than learned men at the Universities.

These things make us understand how the townsmen were prepared to welcome

Luther’s simple scriptural teaching, how his writings found such a sale

all over Germany, how they could say that he taught what all men had been

thinking, and said out boldly what all men had been whispering in private.

They explain how the burghers of Strassburg nailed Luther’s Ninety-five

Theses to the doors of every church and parsonage in the city in 1518; how

the citizens of Constance drove away with threats the imperial messenger

who came to publish the Edict of Worms in their town; how the people of

Basel applauded their pastor when he carried a copy of the Scriptures

instead of the Host in the procession on Corpus Christi Day; how the

higher clergy of Strassburg could not expel the nephew and successor of

the famed Geiler of Keysersberg although he was accused of being a

follower of Luther; and how his friend Matthew Zell, when he was

prohibited from preaching in the pulpit from which Geiler had thundered,

was able to get carpenters to erect another in a corner of the great

cathedral, from which he spoke to the people who crowded to hear him. When

the clergy persuaded the authorities in many towns (Goslar, Danzig, Worms,

etc.) to close the churches against the evangelical preachers, the

townspeople listened to their sermons in the open air; but generally from

the first the civic authorities sided with the people in welcoming a

powerful evangelical preacher. Matthew Zell and, after him, Martin Bucer

became the Reformers of Strassburg; Kettenbach and Eberlin, of Ulm;

Oecolampadius and Urbanus Rhegius, of Augsburg; Andrew Osiander, of

Nürnberg; John Brenz, of Hall, in Swabia; Theobald Pellicanus (Pellicanus,

_i.e._ of Villigheim), of Nördlingen; Matthew Alber, of Reutlingen; John

Lachmann, of Heilbron; John Wanner, of Constance; and so on. The gilds of

_Mastersingers_ welcomed the Reformation. The greatest of the civic poets,

Hans Sachs of Nürnberg, was a diligent collector and reader of Luther’s

books. He published in 1523 his famous poem, “The Wittenberg Nightingale”

(_Die Wittembergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetz höret überall_). The

nightingale was Luther, and its song told that the moonlight with its pale

deceptive gleams and its deep shadows was passing away, and the glorious

sun was rising. The author praises the utter simplicity of Luther’s

scriptural teaching, and contrasts it with the quirks and subtleties of

Romish doctrine. Even a peasant, he says, can understand and know that

Luther’s teaching is good and sound. In a later short poem he contrasts

evangelical and Romish preaching. The original edition was illustrated by

a woodcut showing two preachers addressing their respective audiences. The

one is saying, _Thus saith the Lord_; and the other, _Thus saith the

Pope_.

§ 11. Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt.(309)

Every great movement for reform bears within it the seeds of revolution,

of the “tumult,” as Erasmus called it, and Luther’s was no exception to

the general rule. Every Reformer who would carry through his reforming

ideas successfully has to struggle against men and circumstances making

for the “tumult,” almost as strenuously as against the abuses he seeks to

overcome. We have already seen how these germs of revolution abounded in

Germany, and how the revolutionists naturally allied themselves with the

Reformer, and the cause he sought to promote.

While Luther was hidden away in the Wartburg, the revolution seized on

Wittenberg. At first his absence did not seem to make any difference. The

number of students had increased until it was over a thousand, and the

town itself surprised eye-witnesses who were acquainted with other

University towns in Germany. The students went about unarmed; they mostly

carried Bibles under their arms; they saluted each other as “brothers at

one in Christ.” No rift had yet appeared among the band of leaders,

although his disappointment in not obtaining the Provostship of All Saints

had begun to isolate Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. Unanimity did not

mean dulness; Wittenberg was seething with intellectual life. Since its

foundation the University had been distinguished for weekly Public

Disputations in which students and professors took part. In the earlier

years of its existence the theses discussed had been suggested by the

Scholastic Theology and Philosophy in vogue; but since 1518 the new

questions which were stirring Germany had been the subjects of debate, and

this had given a life and eagerness to the University exercises. When

Justus Jonas came to Wittenberg from Erfurt, he wrote enthusiastically to

a friend about the “unbelievable wealth of spiritual interests in the

little town of Wittenberg.” None of the professors took a keener interest

in these Public Discussions than Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. He had

been a very successful teacher; had come under Luther’s magnetic

influence; and had accepted the main ideas of the new doctrines. He had

not the full-blooded humanity of Luther, nor his sympathetic tact, nor his

practical insight into how things would work. He lacked altogether

Luther’s solid basis of conservative feeling, which made him know by

instinct that new ideas and new things could only flourish and grow if

they were securely rooted in what was old. It was enough for Carlstadt

that his own ideas, however hastily evolved, were clear, and his aims

beneficent, to make him eager to see them at once reduced to practice. He

had the temperament of a revolutionary rather than that of a Reformer.

He was strongly impressed with the fundamental contradictions which he

believed to exist between the new evangelical doctrines preached by Luther

and the theories and practices of the mediæval religious life and worship.

This led him to attack earnestly and bitterly monastic vows, celibacy, a

distinctive dress for the clergy, the idea of a propitiatory sacrifice in

the Mass, and the presence and use of images and pictures in the churches.

He introduced all these questions of practical interest into the

University weekly Public Discussions; he published theses upon them; he

printed two books—one on monastic vows and the other on the Mass—which had

an extensive circulation both in German and in Latin (four editions were

speedily exhausted). The prevailing idea in all these publications,

perhaps implied rather than expressed, was that the new evangelical

liberty could only be exercised when everything which suggested the

ceremonies and usages of the mediæval religious life was swept away. His

strongest denunciations were reserved for the practice of celibacy; he

dwelt on the divine institution of marriage, its moral and spiritual

necessity, and taught that the compulsory marriage of the clergy was

better than the enforced celibacy of the mediæval Church. Zwilling, a

young Augustinian Eremite, whose preaching gifts had been praised by

Luther, went even further than Carlstadt in his fiery denunciation of the

Mass as an idolatrous practice.

The movement to put these exhortations in practice began first among the

clergy. Two priests in parishes near Wittenberg married; several monks

left their cloisters and donned lay garments; Melanchthon and several of

his students, in semi-public fashion, communicated in both kinds in the

parish church on Michaelmas Day (Sept. 29th), 1521, and his example seems

to have been followed by other companies.

Zwilling’s fiery denunciations of the idolatry of the Mass stirred the

commonalty of the town. On Christmas Eve (Dec. 24-25), 1521, a turbulent

crowd invaded the parish church and the Church of All Saints. In the

former they broke the lamps, threatened the priests, and in mockery of the

worship of praise they sang folk-songs, one of which began: “There was a

maid who lost a shoe”—so the indignant clergy complained to the

Elector.(310)

Next day, Christmas, Carlstadt, who was archdeacon, conducted the service

in All Saints’ Church. He had doffed his clerical robes, and wore the

ordinary dress of a layman. He preached and then dispensed the Lord’s

Supper in an “evangelical fashion.” He read the usual service, but omitted

everything which taught a propitiatory sacrifice; he did not elevate the

Host; and he placed the Bread in the hands of every communicant, and gave

the Cup into their hands. On the following Sundays and festival days the

Sacrament of the Supper was dispensed in the same manner, and we are told

that “hic pæne urbs et cuncta civitas communicavit sub utraque specie.”

During the closing days of the year 1521, so full of excitement for the

people of Wittenberg, three men, known in history as the _Zwickau

Prophets_, came to the town (Dec. 27th). Zwickau, lying about sixty-four

miles south of Wittenberg, was the centre of the weaving trade of Saxony,

and contained a large artisan population. We have seen that movements of a

religious-communistic kind had from time to time appeared among the German

artisans and peasants since 1476. Nicolaus Storch, a weaver in Zwickau,

proclaimed that he had visions of the Angel Gabriel, who had revealed to

him: “Thou shalt sit with me on my throne.” He began to preach. Thomas

Münzer, who had been appointed by the magistrates to be town preacher in

St. Mary’s, the principal church in Zwickau, praised his discourses,

declaring that Storch expounded the Scriptures better than any priest.

Some writers have traced the origin of this Zwickau movement to Hussite

teachings. Münzer allied himself with the extreme Hussites _after_ the

movement had begun, and paid a visit to Bohemia, taking with him some of

his intimates; but our sources of information, which are scanty, do not

warrant any decided opinion about the origin of the outbreak in Zwickau.

After some time Storch and others were forced to leave the town. Three of

them went to Wittenberg—Storch himself, the seer of heavenly visions,

another weaver, and Marcus Thomä Stubner, who had once been a pupil of

Melanchthon, and was therefore able to introduce his companions to the

Wittenberg circle of Reformers. Their arrival and addresses increased the

excitement both in the town and in the University. Melanchthon welcomed

his old pupil, and was impressed by the presence of a certain spiritual

power in Stubner and in his companions. Some of their doctrines, however,

especially their rejection of infant baptism, repelled him, and he

gradually withdrew from their companionship.

Carlstadt took advantage of the strong excitement in Wittenberg to press

on the townspeople and on the magistrates his scheme of reformation; and

on Jan. 24th, 1522, the authorities of the town of Wittenberg published

their famous ordinance.

This document, the first of numerous civic and territorial attempts to

express the new evangelical ideas in legislation, deserves careful

study.(311) It concerns itself almost exclusively with the reform of

social life and of public worship. It enjoins the institution of a common

chest to be under the charge of two of the magistrates, two of the

townsmen, and a public notary. Into this the revenues from ecclesiastical

foundations were to be placed, the annual revenues of the guilds of

workmen, and other specified monies. Definite salaries were to be paid to

the priests, and support for the poor and for the monks was to be taken

from this common fund. Begging, whether by ordinary beggars, monks, or

poor students, was strictly prohibited. If the common chest was not able

to afford sufficient for the support of the helpless and orphans, the

townsfolk had to provide what was needed. No houses of ill-fame were

allowed within the town. Churches were places for preaching; the town

contained enough for the population; and the building of small chapels was

prohibited. The service of the Mass was shortened, and made to express the

evangelical meaning of the sacrament, and the elements were to be placed

in the hands of the communicants. All this was made law within the town of

Wittenberg; and the reformation was to be enforced. Not content with these

regulations, Carlstadt engaged in a crusade against the use of pictures

and images in the churches (the regulations had permitted three altars in

every church and one picture for each altar). Everything which recalled

the older religious usages was to be done away with, and flesh was to be

eaten on fast days.

This excitement bred fanaticism. Voices were raised declaring that, as all

true Christians were taught by the Spirit of God, there was no need either

for civil rulers or for carnal learning. It is believed by many that

Carlstadt shared these fancies, and it has been said that in his desire to

“simplify” himself, he dressed as a peasant and worked as a labourer (he

had married) on his father-in-law’s farm. It is more probable that he

found himself unable to rule the storm his hasty measures had raised, and

that he saw many things proposed with which he had no sympathy.

§ 12. Luther back in Wittenberg.

Melanchthon felt himself helpless in presence of the “tumult,” declared

that no one save Luther himself could quell the excitement, and eagerly

pressed his return. The revolutionary movement was extending beyond

Wittenberg, in other towns in Electoral Saxony such as Grimma and

Altenberg. Duke George of Saxony, the strenuous defender of the old faith,

had been watching the proceedings from the beginning. As early as Nov.

21st, 1521, he had written to John Duke of Saxony, the brother of the

Elector, warning him that, against ecclesiastical usage, the Sacrament of

the Supper was being dispensed in both kinds in Wittenberg; he had

informed him (Dec. 26th) that priests were threatened while saying the

Mass; he had brought the “tumultuous deeds” in Electoral Saxony before the

_Reichsregiment_ in January, with the result that imperial mandates were

sent to the Elector Frederick and to the Bishops of Meissen, Merseburg,

and Naumburg, requiring them to take measures to end the disturbances. The

Elector was seriously disquieted. His anxieties were increased by a letter

from Duke George (Feb. 2nd, 1522), declaring that Carlstadt and Zwilling

were the instigators of all the riotous proceedings. He had commissioned

one of his councillors, Hugold of Einsiedel, to try to put matters right;

but the result had been small. It was probably in these circumstances that

he wrote his _Instruction_ to Oswald, a burgher of Eisenach, with the

intention that the contents should be communicated to Luther in the

Wartburg. The _Instruction_ may have been the reason why Luther suddenly

left the asylum where he had remained since his appearance at Worms by the

command and under the protection of his prince.(312)

If this _Instruction_ did finally determine him, it was only one of many

things urging Luther to leave his solitude. He cared little for the

influence of the Zwickau Prophets,(313) estimating them at their true

value, but the weakness of Melanchthon, the destructive and dangerous

impetuosity of Carlstadt, the spread of the tumult beyond Wittenberg, the

determination of Duke George to make use of these outbursts to destroy the

whole movement for reformation, and the interference of the

_Reichsregiment_ with its mandates, made him feel that the decisive moment

had come when he must be again among his own people.

He started on his lonely journey, most of it through an enemy’s country,

going by Erfurt, Jena, Borna, and Leipzig. He was dressed as “Junker

Georg,” with beard on his chin and sword by his side. At Erfurt he had a

good-humoured discussion with a priest in the inn; and Kessler, the Swiss

student, tells how he met a stranger sitting in the parlour of the “Bear”

at Jena with his hand on the hilt of his sword, and reading a small Hebrew

Psalter. He got to Wittenberg on Friday, March 7th; spent that afternoon

and the next day in discussing the situation with his friends Amsdorf,

Melanchthon, and Jerome Schurf.(314)

On Sunday he appeared in the pulpit, and for eight successive days he

preached to the people, and the plague was stayed. Many things in the

movement set agoing by Carlstadt met with his approval. He had come to

believe in the marriage of the clergy; he disapproved strongly of private

Masses; he had grave doubts on the subject of monastic vows; but he

disapproved of the violence, of the importance attached to outward

details, and of the use of force to advance the Reformation movement:

“The Word created heaven and earth and all things; the same Word

will also create now, and not we poor sinners. _Summa summarum_, I

will preach it, I will talk about it, I will write about it, but I

will not use force or compulsion with anyone; for faith must be of

freewill and unconstrained, and must be accepted without

compulsion. To marry, to do away with images, to become monks or

nuns, or for monks and nuns to leave their convents, to eat meat

on Friday or not to eat it, and other like things—all these are

open questions, and should not be forbidden by any man. If I

employ force, what do I gain? Changes in demeanour, outward shows,

grimaces, shams, hypocrisies. But what becomes of the sincerity of

the heart, of faith, of Christian love? All is wanting where these

are lacking; and for the rest I would not give the stalk of a

pear. What we want is the heart, and to win that we must preach

the gospel. Then the word will drop into one heart to-day, and

to-morrow into another, and so will work that each will forsake

the Mass.”

He made no personal references; he blamed no individuals; and in the end

he was master of the situation.

When he had won back Wittenberg he made a tour of those places in

Electoral Saxony where the Wittenberg example had been followed. He went

to Zwickau, to Altenberg, and to Grimma—preaching to thousands of people,

calming them, and bringing them back to a conservative reformation.