This, however, makes some of Luther’s admonitions in his preface to

the regulations for the Leisnig common fund sound somewhat strange,

for instance, his injunction that everything be carried out according

to the law of love. “Christian charity must here act and decide; laws

and enactments cannot settle the difficulties. Indeed I write this

counsel only out of Christian charity for the Christians.” Whoever

refuses to accept his advice, he says at the conclusion, may go his

own way; only a few would accept it, but one or two were quite enough

for him. “The world must remain the world and Satan its Prince. I

have done what I could and what it was my duty to do.” He was half

conscious of the unpractical character of his proposals, yet any

failure he was determined to attribute to the devil’s doing.

His premonition of failure was only too soon realised at Leisnig. The

new scheme could not be made to work. The magistrates refused to resign

the rights they claimed of disposing of the foundations and similar

charitable sources of revenue or to hand over the incomings to the

coffer-masters, for the latter, they argued, were representatives, not

of the congregation but of the Church. Hence the fund had to go begging.

Luther came to words with the town-council, but was unable to have his

own way, even though he appealed to the Elector.[149] He lamented in 1524

that the example of Leisnig had been a very sad one, though, as the first

of its kind,[150] it should have served as a model. Of Tileman Schnabel,

an ex-Augustinian and college friend of Luther’s at Erfurt, who had been

working at Leisnig as preacher and “deacon,” Luther wrote, that he would

soon find himself obliged to leave if he did not wish to die of hunger.

“Incidents such as these deprive the parsonages of their best managers.

Maybe they want to drive them back to their old monasteries.”[151]

Thus the parochial fund of Leisnig, which some writers have extolled so

highly, really never came into existence. It lives only in the directions

given by Luther.

So ill were parson and schoolmaster cared for at Leisnig, in spite of

all the Church property that had been sequestered, that, according to

the Visitation of 1529, the preacher there had been obliged to ply a

trade and gain a living by selling beer. In 1534, so the records of the

Visitations of that date declare, the schoolmaster had for five years

been paid no salary.

Link, the Altenburg preacher, was also unsuccessful in his efforts to

carry out a similar scheme. He complained as early as 1523, in a writing

entitled “Von Arbeyt und Betteln,” that this Christian undertaking had

so far “not only not been furthered but had actually gone backward” in

spite of all his efforts from the pulpit. He, too, addresses himself to

the “rulers” and reminds them that it is their duty “to the best of their

ability to provide for the poverty of the masses.”[152]

To Luther’s bitter grief and disappointment Wittenberg (see above,

p. 49) also furnished anything but an encouraging example. Here the

incentive to the introduction of the common fund by Carlstadt had been

the resolve of the town council “to seize on the revenues of the Church,

the brotherhoods and guilds and divert them into the common fund, to be

employed for general purposes, and for paying the Church officials.…

No less than twenty-one pious guilds were to be mulcted.”[153] Yet the

Wittenberg measures were so little a success, in spite of all Luther’s

efforts, that in his sermons he could not sufficiently deplore the

absence of charity and prevalence of avarice and greed amongst both

burghers and councillors.[154] The Beutelordnung continued indeed in

existence, but merely as an administrative department of the town council.

It is not surprising therefore that Luther gave up for the while any

attempt at putting into practice the Leisnig project elsewhere; his

scheme for assembling the true Christians into a community had also

perforce to betake itself unto the land of dreams. Only in his “Deudsche

Messe” of 1526 does the old idea again force itself to the front: “Here

a general collection for the poor might be made among the congregation;

it should be given willingly and distributed amongst the needy after the

example of St. Paul, 2 Cor. ix.… If only we had people earnestly desirous

of being Christians, the manner and order would soon be settled.”[155]

Subsequent to 1526, however, Bugenhagen drafted better regulations and

poor laws for Wittenberg and other Protestant towns, founded this time on

a more practical basis. (See below, p. 57 f.)

* * * * *

Luther, nevertheless, continued to complain of the Wittenbergers. The

indignation he expresses at the lack of all charitable endeavours

throughout the domain of the new Evangel serves as a suitable background

for these complaints.

Want of charity and of neighbourly love was the primary and most

important cause of the failure of Luther’s efforts.

“Formerly, when people served the devil and outraged the Blood of

Christ,” he says in 1530 in “Das man die Kinder zur Schulen halten

solle” (see above, p. 6), “all purses were open and there was no end

to the giving, for churches, schools and every kind of abomination;

but now that it is a question of founding true schools and churches

every purse is closed with iron chains and no one is able to give.”

So pitiful a sight made him beg of God a happy death so that he might

not live to see Germany’s punishment: “Did my conscience allow of it I

would even give my help and advice so as to bring back the Pope with

all his abominations to rule over us once more.”[156]

What leads him to such admissions as, that, the Christians, “under the

plea of freedom are now seven times worse than they were under the

Pope’s tyranny,” is, in the first place, his bitter experience of the

drying up of charity, which now ceases to care even for the parsonages

and churches. Under the Papacy people had been eager to build churches

and to make offerings to be distributed in alms among the poor, but,

now that the true religion is taught, it is a wonder how everyone has

grown so cold.—Yet the people were told and admonished that it was

well pleasing to God and all the angels, but even so they would not

respond.—Now a pastor could not even get a hole in his roof mended

to enable him to lie dry, whereas in former days people could erect

churches and monasteries regardless of cost.—“Now there is not a

single town ready to support a preacher and there is nothing but

robbery and pilfering amongst the people and no one hinders them.

Whence comes this shameful plague? ‘From the doctrine,’ say the

bawlers, ‘which you teach, viz. that we must not reckon on works or

place our trust in them.’ This is, however, the work of the tiresome

devil who falsely attributes such things to the pure and wholesome

teaching,” etc.[157]

He is so far from laying the blame on his teaching that he exclaims:

What would our forefathers, who were noted for their charity, not have

done “had they had the light of the Evangel which is now given to us”?

Again and again he comes back to the contrast between his and older

times: “Our parents and forefathers put us to shame for they gave

so generously and charitably, nay even to excess, to the churches,

parsonages and schools, foundations, hospitals,” etc.[158]—“Indeed

had we not already the means, thanks to the charitable alms and

foundations of our forefathers, the Gospel itself would long since

have been wiped out by the burghers in the towns, and the nobles and

peasants in the country, so that not one poor preacher would have

enough to eat and drink; for we refuse to supply them, and, instead,

rob and lay violent hands on what others have given and founded for

the purpose.”[159]

To sum up briefly other characteristic complaints which belong

here, he says: Now that in accordance with the true Evangel we are

admonished “to give without seeking for honour or merit, no one can

spare a farthing.”[160]—No one now will give, and, “unless we had

the lands we stole from the Pope, the preachers would have but scant

fare”; they even try “to snatch the morsels out of the parson’s

mouth.” The way in which the “nobles and officials” now treat what

was formerly Church property amounts to “a devouring of all beggars,

strangers and poor widows; we may indeed bewail this, for they eat

up the very marrow of the bones. Since they raise a hue and cry

against the Papists let them also not forget us.… Woe to you peasants,

burghers and nobles who grab everything, hoard and scrape, and pretend

all the time to be good Evangelicals.”[161]

He is only too well acquainted with the evils of mendicancy and

idleness, and knows that they have not diminished but rather

increased. Even towards the end of his life he alludes to the

“innumerable wicked rogues who pretend to be poor, needy beggars and

deceive the people”; they deserve the gallows as much as the “idlers,”

of whom there are “even many more” than before, who are well able

to work, take service and support themselves, but prefer to ask for

alms, and, “when these are not esteemed enough, to supplement them by

pilfering or even by open, bare-faced stealing in the courtyards, the

streets and in the very houses, so that I do not know whether there

has ever been a time when robbery and thieving were so common.”[162]

Finally he recalls the enactments against begging by which the

“authorities forbade foreign beggars and vagabonds and also idlers.” This

brings us back to the attempts made, with the consent of the authorities

in the Lutheran districts, to obviate the social evils by means similar

to those adopted at Leisnig.

_A Second Stumbling Block: Lack of Organisation_

It was not merely lack of charity that rendered nugatory all attempts

to put in force regulations such as those drafted for Leisnig, but also

defects in the inner organisation of the schemes. First, to lump all

sorts of monies intended for different purposes into a single fund could

prove nothing but a source of confusion and diminish the amount to be

devoted directly to charitable purposes; this, too, was the effect of

keeping no separate account of the expenditure for the relief of the poor.

Then, again, the intermingling of secular and spiritual which the

arrangement involved was very unsatisfactory. We can trace here more

clearly than elsewhere the quasi-mystic idea of the congregation of true

believers which retained so strong a hold on Luther’s imagination till

about 1525. With singular ignorance of the ways of the world he wished to

set up the common fund on a community based on faith and charity in which

the universal priesthood was supposed to have abolished all distinction

between the spiritual and secular authorities, nay, between the two very

spheres themselves. He took for granted that Evangelical rulers would be

altogether spiritual simply because they possessed the faith; faith, so

he seemed to believe, would of itself do everything in the members of the

congregation; under the guidance of the spirit everything would be “held

in common, after the example of the Apostles,” as he says in the preface

of the Leisnig regulations. But what was possible of accomplishment owing

to abundance of grace in Apostolic times was an impossible dream in the

16th century. “The old ideal of an ecclesiastical commonwealth on which,

according to the preface, Luther wished to construct a kind of insurance

society for the relief of the poor, could not subsist for a moment in the

keen atmosphere of a workaday world where men are what they are.”[163]

Hence the latest writer on social politics and the poor law, from whom

the above words are taken, openly expresses his wonder at the “utopian,

religio-communistic foundation on which the Wittenberg and Leisnig

schemes, and those drawn up on similar lines, were based,” at the

“utopian efforts” with their “absurd system of expenditure,” which, owing

to their “fundamental defects and the mixing of the funds, were doomed

sooner or later to fail.” This “travesty of early Christianity” tended

neither to promote the moral and charitable sense of the people nor to

further benevolent organisation. “Any rational policy of poor law” was,

on the contrary, shut out by these early Lutheran institutions; the

relief of the poor was thereby placed on an “eminently unstable basis”;

the poor-boxes only served “to encourage idleness.” “Not in such a way

could the modern poor-law system, based as it is on impersonal, legal

principles, be called into being.”

“No system of poor law has ever had less claim to be placed at the head

of a new development than this one [of Leisnig].”[164]

The years 1525 and 1526 brought the turning point in Luther’s attitude

towards the question of poor relief, particularly owing to the effect of

the Peasant War on his views of society and the Church.

The result of the war was to bring the new religious system into much

closer touch with the sovereigns and “thus practically to give rise to a

theocracy.”[165] In spite of the changes this produced, Luther’s schemes

for providing for the poor continued to display some notable defects.

For all “practical purposes Luther threw over the principle of

the universal priesthood which the peasants had embraced as a

socio-political maxim, and, by a determined effort, cut his cause

adrift from the social efforts of the day.… He worked himself up

into a real hatred of the mob, of ‘Master Omnes,’ the ‘many-headed

monster,’ and indeed came within an ace of the socio-political

ideas of Machiavelli, who advised the rulers to treat the people so

harshly that they might look upon those lords as liberal who were not

extortionate.” After the abrogation of episcopal authority and canon

law, of hierarchy and monasteries “there came an urgent call for the

establishment of new associations with practical aims and for the

construction of the skeleton of the new Christian community; we now

hear no more of that ideal community of true believers which, thanks

to its heartfelt faith, was to carry on the social work of preventing

and alleviating poverty.”

The whole of the outward life of the Church being now under the direction

of the Protestant sovereign, the system of poor relief began to assume

a purely secular character, having nothing but an outward semblance

of religion. The new regulations were largely the work of Bugenhagen,

who was a better organiser than Luther. The many enactments he was

instrumental in drafting for the North German towns embody necessary

provisions for the relief of the poor.

Officials appointed by the sovereign or town-council directed, or

at least supervised, the management, while the “deacons,” i.e. the

ecclesiastical guardians of the fund, were obliged to find the necessary

money and, generally, to bear all the odium for the meagreness and

backwardness of the distribution. The members of the congregation had

practically no longer any say in the matter. The parish’s share in the

relief of the poor was made an end of even before it had lost the other

similar rights assigned to it by Luther, such as that of promulgating

measures of discipline, appointing clergy, administering the Church’s

lands, etc. Just as the organisation of the Church was solely in the

hands of the authorities to the complete exclusion of the congregations,

so poor relief and the ecclesiastical regulations on which it was based

became merely a government concern.

What Bugenhagen achieved, thanks to the ecclesiastical regulations

for poor relief, for which he was directly or indirectly responsible,

gave “good hopes, at least at first, of bringing the difficult social

problem of those days nearer to a solution.” At any rate they were a

“successful attempt to bring some order into the whole system of relief,

by means of the authorities and on a scale not hitherto attempted by

the Church.”[166] It is true that he, like those who were working on

the same lines, e.g. Hedio, Rhegius, Hyperius, Lasco and others, often

merely transplanted into a new soil the rules already in vogue in the

Catholic Netherlands and the prosperous South German towns. Hedio of

Strasburg, for instance, translated into German the entire work of Vives,

the opponent of Lutheranism, and exploited it practically and also sought

to enter into epistolary communication with Vives. The prohibition of

mendicancy, the establishment of an independent poor-box apart from

the rest of the Church funds, and many other points were borrowed by

Bugenhagen and others from the olden Catholic regulations.

Such efforts were in many localities supplemented by the kindliness of

the population and, thanks to a spirit of Christianity, were not without

fruit.

As, however, everybody, Princes, nobles, townships and peasants, were

stretching out greedy hands towards the now defenceless possessions

of the olden Church, a certain reaction came, and the State, in the

interests of order, saw fit to grant a somewhat larger share to the

ecclesiastical authorities in the administration of Church property and

relief funds. The Lutheran clergy and the guardians of the poor were

thus allowed a certain measure of free action, provided always that

what they did was done in the name of the sovereign, i.e. the principal

bishop. The new institutions created by such men as Bugenhagen soon lost

their public, communal or State character, and sank back to the level

of ecclesiastical enterprises. Institutions of this stamp had, however,

“been more numerous and better endowed in the Middle Ages and were so

later in the Catholic districts.”

Owing in part to a technical defect in the Protestant regulations,

dishonesty and carelessness were not excluded from the management and

distribution of the poor fund, the administration falling, as a matter

of course, into the hands of the lowest class of officials. Catholics

had good reason for branding it as a “usury and parson’s box.”[167] The

reason why, in Germany, Protestant efforts for poor relief never issued

in a satisfactory socio-political system capable of relieving the poor

and thus improving the condition of both Church and State, lay, not

merely in the economic difficulties of the time, but, “what is more

important, in the social and moral working of the new religion and new

piety which Luther had established.”[168]

_Influence of Luther’s Ethics. Robbery of Church Property Proves a Curse_

Not only had the Peasant Rising and the reprisals taken by the rulers

and the towns brought misery on the land and hardened the hearts of the

princes and magistrates, not only had the means available for the relief

of the poor been diminished, first by the founding of new parishes in

place of the old ones, which had in many cases been supported by the

monasteries and foundations, secondly, by the demands of Protestants for

the restitution of many ecclesiastical benefices given by their Catholic

forefathers, thirdly, by the drying up of the spring of gifts and

donations, but “the common fund, which had been swelled by the shekels of

the Church, had now to bear many new burdens and only what remained—which

often enough was not much—was employed for charitable purposes.” In

the same way, and to an even greater extent, must the Lutheran ethics

be taken into account. Luther’s views on justification by faith alone

destroyed “that impulse of the Middle Ages towards open-handed charity.”

This was “an ethical defect of the Lutheran doctrine”; it was only owing

to his “utter ignorance of the world” that Luther persisted in believing

that faith would, of itself and without any “law,” beget good works and

charity.[169] “It was a cause of wonder and anxiety to him throughout his

life that his assumption, that faith would be the best ‘taskmaster and

the strongest incentive to good works and kindliness,’ never seemed to

be realised.… The most notable result of Luther’s doctrine of grace and

denial of all human merit was, at least among the masses, an increase of

libertinism and of the spirit of irresponsibility.”[170]

The dire effects of the new principles were also evident in the large

and wealthy towns, the exemplary poor-law regulations of which we have

considered above. After the innovations had made their way among them we

hear little more of provisions being made against mendicancy, for the

promotion of work and for the relief of poverty. Hence, as regards these

corporations … the change of religion meant, according to Feuchtwanger,

“a decline in the quality of their social philanthropy.” (Cp. above, vol.

iv., p. 477 ff.)

From some districts, however, we have better reports of the results

achieved by the relief funds. In times of worst distress good Christians

were always ready to help. Much depended on the spirit of those concerned

in the work. In general, however, the complaints of the preachers of the

new faith, including Melanchthon, wax louder and louder.[171] They tell

us that the patrimony of the poor was being carried off by the rapacity

of the great or disappearing under the hands of avaricious and careless

administrators, whilst new voluntary contributions were no longer

forthcoming. We find no lack of those, who, like Luther’s friend Paul

Eber, are given to noting the visible, palpable consequences of the wrong

done to the monasteries, brotherhoods and churches.[172]

A long list of statements from respected Protestant contemporaries

is given by Janssen, who concludes: “The whole system of poor relief

was grievously affected by the seizure and squandering of Church

goods and of innumerable charitable bequests intended not only for

parochial and Church use but also for the hospitals, schools and

poor-houses.”[173] The testimonies in question, the frankness of

which can only be explained by the honourable desire to make an end

of the crying evil, come, for instance, from Thomas Rorarius, Andreas

Musculus, Johann Winistede, Erasmus Sarcerius, Ambrose Pape and the

General Superintendent, Cunemann Flinsbach.[174] They tend to show

that the new doctrine of faith alone had dried up the well-spring of

self-sacrifice, as indeed Andreas Hyperius, the Marburg theologian,

Christopher Fischer, the General Superintendent, Daniel Greser, the

Superintendent, Sixtus Vischer and others state in so many words.

The incredible squandering of Church property is proved by official

papers, was pilloried by the professors of the University of Rostock,

also is clear from the minutes of the Visitations of Wesenberg in

1568 and of the Palatinate in 1556 which bewail “the sin against

the property set aside for God and His Church.”[175] And again,

“The present owners have dealt with the Church property a thousand

times worse than the Papists,” they make no conscience of “selling

it, mortgaging it and giving it away.” Princes belonging to the new

faith also raised their voice in protest, for instance, Duke Barnim

XI in 1540, Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg in 1540 and Elector

Johann George, 1573. But the sovereigns were unable to restrain their

rapacious nobles. “The great Lords,” the preacher Erasmus Sarcerius

wrote of the Mansfeld district in 1555, “seek to appropriate to

themselves the feudal rights and dues of the clergy and allow their

officials and justices to take forcible action.… The revenues of the

Church are spent in making roads and bridges and giving banquets, and

are lent from hand to hand without hypothecary security.”[176] The

Calvinist, Anton Prætorius, and many others not to mention Catholic

contemporaries, speak in similar terms.

Of the falling off in the Church funds and poor-boxes in the 16th

century in Hesse, in the Saxon Electorate, in Frankfurt-on-the-Main,

in Hamburg and elsewhere abundant proof is met with in the official

records, and this is the case even with regard to Würtemberg in

the enactments of the Dukes from 1552 to 1562, though that country

constituted in some respects an exception;[177] at a later date Duke

Johann Frederick hazarded the opinion that the regulations regarding

the fund “had fallen into oblivion.”

The growth of the proletariate, to remedy the impoverishment of which

no means had as yet been discovered, was in no small measure promoted

by Luther’s facilitation of marriage.

Luther himself had written, that “a boy ought to have recourse to

matrimony as soon as he is twenty and a maid when she is from fifteen

to eighteen years of age, and leave it to God to provide for their

maintenance and that of their children.”[178] Other adherents of the

new faith went even further, Eberlin of Günsburg simply declared:

“As soon as a girl is fifteen, a boy eighteen, they should be given

to each other in marriage.” There were others like the author of a

“Predigt über Hunger- und Sterbejahre, von einem Diener am Wort”

(1571), who raised strong objections against such a course. Dealing

with the causes of the evident increase of “deterioration and ruin” in

“lands, towns and villages,” he says, that “a by no means slight cause

is the countless number of lightly contracted marriages, when people

come together and beget children without knowing where they will get

food for them, and so come down themselves in body and soul, and bring

up their children to begging from their earliest years.” “And I cannot

here approve of this sort of thing that Luther has written: A lad

should marry when he is twenty, etc. [see above]. No, people should

not think of marrying and the magistrates should not allow them to

do so before they are sure of being able at least to provide their

families with the necessaries of life, for else, as experience shows,

a miserable, degenerate race is produced.”[179]

What this old writer says is borne out by modern sociologists. One

of them, dealing with the 16th and 17th centuries, says: “These

demands [of Luther and Eberlin] are obviously not practicable from

the economic point of view, but from the ethical standpoint also they

seem to us extremely doubtful. To rush into marriage without prospect

of sufficient maintenance is not trusting God but tempting Him.

Such marriages are extremely immoral actions and they deserve legal

punishment on account of their danger to the community.” “Greater evil

to the world can scarcely be caused in any way than by such marriages.

Even in the most favourable cases such early marriages must have a

deteriorating influence on the physical and intellectual culture of

posterity.”[180]

Owing to the neglect of any proper care for the poor the plague of

vagabondage continued on the increase. Luther’s zealous contemporary,

Cyriacus Spangenberg, sought to counteract it by reprinting the

Master’s edition of the “_Liber vagatorum_.” He says: “False begging

and trickery has so gained the upper hand that scarcely anybody is

safe from imposture.” The Superintendent, Nicholas Selnecker, again

republished the writing with Luther’s preface in 1580, together with

some lamentations of his own. He complains that “there are too many

tramps and itinerant scholars who give themselves up to nothing but

knavery,” etc.[181]

Adolf Harnack is only re-echoing the complaints of 16th century

Protestants when he writes: “We may say briefly that, alas, nothing of

importance was achieved, nay, we must go further: the Catholics are

quite right when they assert that they, not we, lived to see a revival

of charitable work in the 16th century, and, that, where Lutheranism

was on the ascendant, social care of the poor was soon reduced to a

worse plight than ever before.”[182] The revival in Catholic countries

to which Harnack refers showed itself particularly in the 17th century

in the activity of the new Orders, whereas at this time the retrograde

movement was still in progress in the opposite camp. “For a long time the

Protestant relief system produced only insignificant results.” It was not

till the rise of Pietism and Rationalism, i.e. until the inauguration

of the admirable Home Missions, that things began to improve. But

Pietism and Rationalism are both far removed from the original Lutheran

orthodoxy.[183]

_Some Recent Excuses_

It has been remarked in excuse of Luther and his want of success, that,

“with merit and the hope of any reward, there also vanished the stimulus

to strive after the attainment of salvation by means of works,” and that

this being so, it was “not surprising” that charity—the selfless fruit of

faith—was wanting in many; “for new, albeit higher moral motives, cannot

at once come into play with the same facility as the older ones which

they displace; there comes a time when the old motives have gone and when

the new ones are operative only in the case of a few; the leaven at first

only works gradually.” The history of the spread of “the higher motives

of morality” not only at the outset of Christianity but at all times,

shows, however, as a rule these to be most active under the Inspiration

of the Divine Spirit at the time when first accepted. Nor does the

comparison with the leaven in the passage quoted apply to a state of

decline and decay, where, for a change to be effected, outside and

entirely different elements were needed. We are told that the new motives

could not at once take effect, but, where the delay extends over quite a

century and a half, the blame surely cannot be laid on the shortness of

the time of probation.

Again, when we hear great stress laid on the fact that Luther at least

paved the way for State relief of the poor and, thus, far outstrode

the mediæval Church, one is justified in asking, whether in reality

State relief of the poor, with compulsory taxation, non-intervention of

Christian charity, or individual effort, or without any morally elevating

influence, is something altogether ideal; whether, on the other hand,

voluntary charity, as practised particularly by associations, Orders or

ecclesiastics, does not deserve a much higher place and take precedence

of, or at least stand side by side with, the forced “charity” of the

State. Even to-day Protestantism is seeking to reserve a place for

voluntary charitable effort. Considerations as to the value of mere State

charity would, however, carry us too far. We must refer this matter to

experts.[184]

That, before Luther’s day, the authorities took a reasonable and even

larger share in the relief of the poor than he himself demanded, is

evident from what has been said above (p. 43 ff.).

As a matter of fact, judging by what has gone before, the assertion that

the system of State relief of the poor was originated by Luther or by

Protestantism calls for considerable “revision.” “The reformation,” so

the sociological authority we have so frequently quoted says, “created

neither the communal nor the governmental system of poor relief.”[185]

This he finds borne out by the different schemes for the relief of the

poor contained in the old ecclesiastical constitutions. It is true, he

says, that, “according to the idea in vogue, the origin of our present

Poor Law can be traced back directly” to the Reformation. Nevertheless,

the changes that took place in the social care of the poor subsequent to

Luther’s day, though certainly “far-reaching enough,” were “exclusively

negative”;[186] owing to his exertions the Church property and that

set aside for the relief of the poor was secularised, and the previous

free-handed method of distribution ceased; all further growth of

legislation on the subject in the prosperous and independent townships

was effectually hindered; out of the mass of property that passed into

alien hands only a few scraps could be spared by the secular rulers and

handed over to the ministers for the benefit of the poor.

This was no State-regulation of poor relief as we now understand it.

Still, the way was paved for it in so far as the props of the olden

ecclesiastical system of relief had been felled and had eventually to be

replaced by something new. In this sense it may be said that Luther’s

work “paved the way” for the new conditions.[187]

5. Luther’s Attitude towards Worldly Callings

An attempt has been made to prove the truth of the dictum so often met

with on the lips of Protestants, viz. that “Luther was the creator

of those views of the world and life on which both the State and our

modern civilisation rest,” by arguing, that, at least, he made an end

of contempt for worldly callings and exalted the humbler as well as

the higher spheres of life at the expense of the ecclesiastical and

monastic. What Luther himself frequently states concerning his discovery

of the dignity of the secular callings has elsewhere been placed in its

true light (and the unhistoric accounts of his admirers are all in last

resort based on his). This was done in the most suitable place, viz. when

dealing with “Luther and Lying,” and with his spiteful caricature of the

mediæval Church.[188] Still, for the sake of completeness, the claims

Luther makes in this respect, and some new proofs in refutation of them,

must be briefly called to mind in the present chapter. It is not unusual

for his admirers to speak with a species of awe of Luther’s achievements

in this respect:

“_One of the most Momentous Achievements of the Reformation_”

The claims Luther makes in respect of his labours on behalf of the

worldly callings are even greater than his admirers would lead one to

suppose. His actual words reveal their hyperbolical character, or rather

untruth, by their very extravagance.

Luther we have heard say: “Such honour and glory have I by the grace of

God, that, since the time of the Apostles no doctor … has confirmed and

instructed the consciences of the secular estates so well and lucidly

as I.”[189]—It was quite different with the “monks and priestlings”!

They “damned both the laity and their calling.” These “revolutionary

blasphemers” condemned “all the states of life that God instituted and

ordained”; on the other hand, they extol their self-chosen and accursed

state as though outside of it no one could be saved.[190]

The phantom of a Popish, monkish holiness-by-works never left him. In his

Commentary on Genesis, though he holds that he has already taught the

Papists more than they deserve on the right appreciation of the lower

callings and labours, yet he once more informs them of his discovery,

“that the work of the household and of the burgher,” such as hospitality,

the training of children, the supervision of servants, “despised though

they be as common and worthless,” are also well-pleasing to God. “Such

things must be judged according to the Word [of God], not according

to reason!… Let us therefore thank God that we, enlightened by the

Word, now perceive what are really good works, viz. obedience to those

in authority, respect for parents, supervision of the servants and

assistance of our brethren.” “These are callings instituted by God.”

“When the mother of a family provides diligently for her family, looks

after the children, feeds them, washes them and rocks them in the

cradle,” this calling, followed for God’s sake, is “a happy and a holy

one.”[191]

Luther is never tired of claiming as his peculiar teaching that even

the most humble calling—that of the maid or day-labourer—may prove a

high and exalted road to heaven and that every kind of work, however

insignificant, performed in that position of life to which a man is

called is of great value in God’s sight when done in faith. He is fond

of repeating, that a humble ploughman can lay up for himself as great

a treasure in heaven by tilling his field, as the preacher or the

schoolmaster, by their seemingly more exalted labours.

There is no doubt, that, by means of this doctrine, which undoubtedly

is not without foundation, he consoled many of the lower classes, and

brought them to a sense of their dignity as Christians. It is true that

it was his polemics against monasticism and the following of the counsels

of perfection which led him to make so much of the ordinary states of

life and to paint them in such glowing colours. Nevertheless, we must

admit that he does so with real eloquence and by means of comparisons and

figures taken from daily life which could not but lend attraction to the

truth and which differ widely from the dry, scholastic tone of some of

his Catholic predecessors in this field.

He does not, however, really add a single fresh element to the olden

teaching, or one that cannot be traced back to earlier times.

Either Luther was not aware of this, or else he conceals it from his

hearers and readers. It would have been possible to confront him with a

whole string of writers, ancient and mediæval, and even from the years

when he himself began his work, whose writings teach the same truths,

often, too, in language which leaves nothing more to be wished for on the

score of impressiveness and feeling.[192] So many proofs, from reason

as well as from revelation, had always been forthcoming in support of

these truths that it is hard for us now to understand how the idea gained

ground that Christians had forgotten them. Those who, down to the

present day, repeat Luther’s assertions make too little account of this

psychological riddle.

Here we shall merely add to what has already been brought forward a few

further proofs from Luther’s own day.

Andreas Proles (†1503), Vicar General of the Saxon Augustinian

Congregation and founder of the reformed branch which Luther himself

joined on entering the monastery, reminds the working classes in one

of his sermons of the honour, the duty, and the worth of work. “Since

man is born to labour as the bird to fly, he must work unceasingly

and never be idle.” He warmly exhorts the secular authorities to

prayer, but reminds them still more emphatically of the requirements

and the dignity of their calling: “The life of the mighty does not

consist in parade but in ruling and discharging their duties towards

their people.” He praises voluntary chastity and clerical celibacy,

but also points out powerfully that the married state “is for many

reasons honourable and praiseworthy in the sight of God and all

Christians.”[193]

Gottschalk Hollen, the preacher of Westphalia, was also an

Augustinian. In his sermons published at Hagenau in 1517 he displays

the highest esteem for the worldly callings. Those classes who worked

with their hands did not seem to him in the least contemptible, on the

contrary the Christian could give glory to God even by the humblest

work; ordinary believers frequently allowed their calling to absorb

them in worldly things, but these are not evil or blameworthy. In

a special sermon on work he represents such cares as a means of

attaining to everlasting salvation. He insists everywhere on a man’s

performing the duties of his calling and will not allow of their being

neglected for the sake of prayer or of out-of-the-way practices, such

as pilgrimages.[194]

Just before Luther made his public appearance two German works of

piety described the dignity and the honour of the working state and

at the same time insisted on the obligation of labour. They speak of

the secular callings as a source of moral and religious duty and the

foundation of a happy life well pleasing to God.

The “Wyhegertlin,” printed at Mayence in 1509, says: “When work is

done diligently and skilfully both God and man take pleasure in it,

and it is a real good work when skilful artisans contribute to God’s

glory by their handicraft, by beautiful buildings and images of

every kind, and soften men’s hearts so that they take pleasure in the

beautiful, and regard every art and handicraft as a gift of God for

the profit, comfort and edification of man.”—“For seeing that the

Saints also worked and laboured, so shall the Christian learn from

their example that by honourable labour he can glorify God, do good

and, through God’s mercy, save his own soul.”[195]

In an “Ermanung” of 1513, which also appeared at Mayence, we read:

“To work is to serve God according to His command and therefore all

must work, the one with his hands, in the field, the house or the

workshop, others by art and learning, others again as rulers of

the people or other authorities, others by fighting in defence of

their country, others again as ghostly ministers of Christ in the

churches and monasteries.… Whoever stands idle is a despiser of God’s

commands.”[196]

These instances must suffice. Though many others could be quoted,

Protestants will, nevertheless, still be found to repeat such

statements as the following: “Any appreciation of secular work as

something really moral was impossible in the Catholic Church.” “The

Catholic view of the Church belittled the secular callings.” “The

ethical appreciation of one’s calling is a significant achievement

of the reformation on which rests the present division of society.”

Luther it was who “discovered the true meaning of callings … which has

since become the property of the civilised world.” “The modern ethical

conception of one’s calling, which is common to all Protestant nations

and which all others lack, was a creation of the reformation,” etc.

Others better acquainted with the Middle Ages have argued, that,

though the olden theologians expressed themselves correctly on the

importance of secular callings, yet theirs was not the view of

the people.—But the above passages, like those previously quoted

elsewhere, do not hail from theologians quite ignorant of the world,

but from sermons and popular writings. What they reflect is simply the

popular ideas and practice.

That errors were made is, of course, quite true. That, at a time

when the Church stood over all, the excessive and ill-advised zeal

of certain of the clergy and religious did occasionally lead them to

belittle unduly the secular callings may readily be admitted; what

they did furnished some excuse for the Lutheran reaction.

What above all moved Luther was, however, the fact that he himself had

become a layman.

To assert that even the very words “calling” or “vocation” in their

modern sense were first coined by him is not in agreement with the

facts of the case.

On the contrary, Luther found the German equivalents already current,

otherwise he would probably not have introduced them into his

translation of the Bible, as he was so anxious to adapt himself to

the language in common use amongst the people so as to be perfectly

understood by them.[197] It is true that Ecclus. xi. 22, in the

pre-Lutheran Bible, e.g. that of Augsburg dating from 1487, was

rendered: “Trust God and stay in thy _place_,” whereas in Luther’s—and

on this emphasis has been laid—we read: “Trust in God and abide by

thy _calling_.” All that can be said is, however, that Luther’s

translation here brings out the same meaning rather better. That the

word was not coined by Luther, but was common with the people, is

clear from what Luther himself says incidentally when speaking of 1

Cor. vii. 20, where the word _vocatio_ (κλῆσις) is used of the call

to faith. “And you must know,” he writes, “that the word ‘calling’

does not here mean the state to which a man is called, as when we

say your calling is the married state, your calling is the clerical

state, etc., each one having his calling from God. It is not of such a

calling that the Apostle here speaks,” etc. The expression “as we say”

shows plainly that Luther is speaking of a quite familiar term which

there was no need for him to invent when translating Ecclus. xi. 22.

Much less did he, either then or at any time, invent the “conception

of a calling.”

_Luther’s Pessimism Regarding Various Callings. The Peasants_

When olden writers dealt with the relation between the Gospel and the

worldly callings as a rule they pointed out with holy pride, that

Christianity does not merely esteem every calling very highly but

embraces them all with holy charity and cherishes and fosters the various

states as sons of a common father. Nothing was so attractive in the

great exponents of the Gospel teaching and renovators of the Christian

people—for instance in St. Francis of Assisi—as their sympathy, respect

and tenderness for every class without exception. The Church’s great men

knew how to discover the good in every class, to further it with the

means at their disposal and indulgently to set it on its guard against

its dangers. They wished to place everything lovingly at the service of

the Creator.

Had Luther in reality brought back to humanity the Gospel true and

undefiled, as he was so fond of saying, then he should surely have

striven, in the spirit of charity and good will, to make known its

supernatural social forces to all classes of men, and to become, as the

Apostle says, “All things to all men.”

Now, although Luther uses powerful words to describe the dignity of the

different worldly callings, on the other hand, he tends at times to

depreciate whole classes, this being especially the case when he allows

his disappointment to get the better of him. Nor is the contempt openly

expressed here counterbalanced by any sufficient recognition of the

good, such as might have mollified his hearers and made them forget the

ungracious abuse he thundered from his pulpit.

He speaks bitterly of the common people, the proletariate of to-day,

to which, according to him, belonged all the lower classes in the

towns. Although himself of low extraction he displays very little

sympathy for the people. “We must not pipe too much to the mob, for

they are fond of raging.… They have no idea of self-restraint or how

to exercise it, and each one’s skin conceals five tyrants.”[198] “A

donkey must taste the stick and the mob must be ruled by force; of

this God was well aware, hence in the hands of the authorities He

placed, not a fox’s brush, but a sword.”[199]

He only too frequently accuses the artisan and merchant class, as

a whole, of cheating, avarice and laziness. At Wittenberg they

may possibly have been exceptionally bad, yet he does not speak

sufficiently of their less blameworthy side.

For the soldiers, it is true, he has friendly words of appreciation of

their calling; it was for them that he wrote in 1526 a special work,

where he replied in the affirmative to the question contained in the

title: “Can even men-at-arms be in a state of grace?” Yet even here he

does not shrink from bringing forward charges against their calling:

“A great part of the men-at-arms are the devil’s own and some of them

are actually crammed with devils.… They imagine themselves fire-eaters

because they swear shamefully, perpetrate atrocities, and curse and

defy the God of Heaven.”[200]

Of the nobles he says in 1523, wishing to promote more frequent

marriages between them and those of lower birth:[201] “Must all

princes and nobles who are born princes and nobles remain for ever

such? What harm is there if a prince takes a burgher’s daughter to

wife and contents himself with a burgher’s modest dowry? Or, why

should not a noble maid give her hand to a burgher? In the long run it

will not do for the nobles always to intermarry with nobles. Although

we are not all equal in the sight of the world yet before God we all

are equal, all of us children of Adam, creatures of God, and one man

as good as another.” These words certainly do not express any lively

conviction of the importance of the existing distinctions of rank for

society.

It is perfectly true, that, occasionally, Luther has words of praise

and recognition for the good qualities of the “fine, pious nobles,”

if only on account of those who were inclined to accept his teaching.

But far more often he trounces them unmercifully because they either

failed to respond or were set on thwarting him. The language in

which he writes of them sometimes becomes unspeakably coarse. “They

are called nobles and ‘von so-and-so.’ But merd also comes ‘von’

the nobles and might just as well boast of coming from their noble

belly, though it stinks and is of no earthly use. Hence this too has

a claim to nobility.” Then follows his favourite saying: “We Germans

are Germans and Germans we shall remain, i.e. swine and senseless

brutes.”[202]

The rulers and the great ones of the Empire were the first to win

his favour. The writing “An den Adel,” the first of his so-called

“reformation writings,” he addresses to the nobles in the hope of

thus attaining his aims by storm. When, however, he was disappointed,

and they refused to meet him half-way, he abused the princes and all

the secular authorities in Germany and wrote: “God Almighty has made

our princes mad”; “such men were formerly rated as knaves, now we are

obliged to call them obedient, Christian princes.” To him they were

“fools,” simply because they were against him and thus belonged to the

multitude who “blasphemed” the Divine Majesty.[203]

After the defeat of the peasants in 1525 he supported those princes

favourable to his teaching at the expense of the peasants, so that the

latter were loud in their complaints of him. In this connection, looking

back at the overthrow of the Peasant Revolt, he wrote to those in power:

“Who opposed the peasants more vigorously by word and writing than I? …

and, if it comes to boasting, I do not know who else was the first to

vanquish the peasants, or to do so most effectually. But now those who

did the least claim all the honour and glory of it.”[204]

After the Peasant War he was so filled with hatred of the peasant class

and so conscious of their dislike for himself personally, as to be hardly

able to speak of them without blame and reproach. “The peasants do not

deserve,” he says, “the harvests and fruits that the earth brings forth

and provides.”

Of all classes the peasants around Wittenberg incurred his displeasure

most severely. “They are all going to the devil,” he says when lamenting

that, “out of so many villages, only one man taught his household from

the Word of God”; with the young country folk “something” could be

done, but the old peasants had been utterly corrupted by the Pope; this

was also the complaint of the Evangelical deacons who came in touch

with them.[205]—“I am very angry with the peasants,” he wrote in 1529,

“who are anxious to govern themselves and who do not appreciate their

good fortune in being able to sleep in peace owing to the help and

protection of the rulers. You helpless, boorish yokels and donkeys,” he

says to them, “will you never learn to understand? May the lightning

blast you!—You have the best of it.… You have the Mark and yet are

so ungrateful as to refuse to pray for the rulers or to give them

anything.”[206]

As a matter of fact, however, the great ones did not wait for the

peasants to “give” anything.

They oppressed the country people and plundered them. Melanchthon wrote,

particularly after 1525, of the boundless despotism of the authorities

over the people on the land. Since the overthrow of the social revolution

very sad changes had taken place among the agriculturists. The violent

“laying of the yokels” became a general evil, and, in place of the small

holdings of the peasant class—the most virile and largest portion of

the nation—arose the large estates of the nobles. Not merely where the

horrors of war had raged, but even elsewhere, e.g. in the north-east

of Germany, the peasant found himself deprived of his rights and

left defenceless in the hands of the Junkers and knights.[207] “The

reformation-age made his rights to his property and his standing more

parlous than before.”[208]

What Luther says of serfdom, the oppression and abuse of which had

led to the Peasant Rising, is worthy of record: “Serfdom,” he says,

“is not contrary to Christianity, and whoever says it is tells a

lie!”[209]—“Christ does not wish to abolish serfdom. What cares He how

the lords or princes rule [in secular matters]?”[210]

He makes a strict application of this in his sermons on Genesis, where

he even represents serfdom as a desirable state. Luther delivered these

sermons in 1524 and they were printed from notes in 1527. In his preface

he declares, that he was “quite willing” they should be published

because they express his “sense and mind.” He relates in one passage how

Abimelech had bestowed “sheep and oxen, men-servants and maid-servants”

on Abraham (xx. 14), and then goes on to say of the people made over:

“They too were all personal property like other cattle, so that their

owners might sell them as they liked, and it would verily be almost best

that this stage of things should be revived, for nobody can control

or tame the populace in any other way.” Abraham did not set free the

men-servants and maid-servants given him, and yet he was accounted

amongst the “pious and holy” and was “a just ruler.” He proceeds: “They

[the patriarchs] might easily have abolished it so far as they were

concerned, but that would not have been a good thing, for the serfs would

have become too proud had they been given so many rights, and would have

thought themselves equal to the patriarchs or to their children. Each

one must be kept in his place, as God has ordained, sons and daughters,

servants, maids, husbands, wives, etc.… If compulsion and the law of the

strong arm still ruled (in the case of servants and retainers) as in the

past, so that if a man dared to grumble he got a box on the ear—things

would fare better; otherwise it is all of no use. If they take wives,

these are impertinent people, wild and dissolute, whom no one can use or

have anything to do with.”[211]

_The Psychological Background. Luther’s Estrangement from Whole Classes

of Society_

Both in Luther’s treatment of the peasants of his day and in his whole

attitude to different classes of society, we find the traces of a

profound and general depression which had seized upon him and which

seems to accord ill with the sense of triumph one would have expected in

him at the continued progress of his work, and at the apostasy from the

Roman Church. Such expressions of dissatisfaction become more frequent as

years go by and serve to some extent to explain and excuse his pessimism

concerning the different classes.

This feeling had its origin, apart from other causes, in the fact that

Luther little by little lost touch with whole classes of the people,

while to many of the new conditions he remained a stranger. He, who had

held in his hands the destiny of so many, was, in fact, becoming to a

great extent isolated, particularly since the actual direction of the

new Church had been taken out of his hands and vested in the princes or

municipal authorities.

Not only did the rift which separated him from the peasants subsequent

to 1525 become ever more pronounced, but he found hostility and dislike

growing between himself and other classes of society.

Under the influence of the adverse wind blowing from Wittenberg many of

the Humanists had given up their at one time enthusiastic friendship

and turned against him. Catholic scholars who had once been disposed

to favour the reform but had been disappointed in their hopes withdrew

from him in increasing numbers. In other districts which had been

recently Protestantised the country clergy remained faithful to the

olden Church, as we see, for instance, from a letter of Luther’s dated

Sep. 19, 1539, where he speaks of “over five hundred parsons, poisonous

Papists,” who had “been left unexamined and now are raising their horns

in defiance”—but who, he hopes, will soon be forcibly sent about their

business.[212] In his own camp, again, there were Anabaptists and other

sectarians; there were also theologians who refused to fall into line and

either failed to preach on faith and works as harshly as he wished, or,

running to the opposite extreme like the Antinomians, went much further

than he himself. In the Saxon Electorate Luther felt grievously the

decease of those Councillors, like Pfeffinger and Feilitzsch, who had

been well disposed towards him, whose places were now taken by “greedy

Junkers and skinflints, who looked upon the ecclesiastical revolution as

a good opportunity for increasing their family estates and for running

riot at others’ expense.”[213] Among the princes who had apostatised

from the Church he also detected to his bitter vexation an ever-growing

tendency to separate themselves from Wittenberg, partly owing to the

influence of Zwinglianism, partly in consequence of their independent

Church regulations. Such was, for instance, the action of Berlin, where

the Protestant Elector, Joachim II of Brandenburg, declared in an address

to his clergy: “As little as I mean to be bound to the Roman Church,

so little do I mean to be bound to the Church of Wittenberg. I do not

say: ‘_credo sanctam Romanam_’ or ‘_Wittenbergensem_,’ but ‘_catholicam

ecclesiam_,’ and my Church here at Berlin or at Cöllen is just as much a

true Christian Church as that of the Wittenbergers.”[214]

In the sermon Luther preached at Wittenberg on June 18, 1531, he pours

forth the vials of his wrath on the nobles and peasants of the new

faith. He was then doing duty for Bugenhagen, the absent pastor, and

devoting himself to preaching, though he describes himself in a letter

as “old, sickly and tired of life,” and elsewhere, alluding to his many

employments, says: “I am not only Luther, but Pomeranus, Vicar-General,

Moses, Jethro and I know not who else besides.”[215]

In this sermon the Gospel of Dives and Lazarus recalls to his mind the

fact that, in the Saxon Electorate, he and his preachers were being

treated very much as Lazarus, whom the rich man left lying at his gate

and who had to get his fill of the crumbs that fell from the rich

man’s table. “When we complain to the great, we get only kicks,” he

exclaims indignantly; “our foes would gladly put a stop to the Evangel

with the sword, whilst our own people would no less gladly cut off our

head, like John the Baptist, only that the sword they use is want,

misery and hunger.” If we preach against their wickedness they say

we are trying to defy and contradict them! Let the devil defy them.

They declare we want to set ourselves up against them, and to rule,

and to bring them under our feet. For preaching against the rebellious

peasants we are thanked by being called the Pope of Germany, as though

we were playing the master. Not indeed that they mean this in earnest,

but they are anxious to bring us to preach as they wish, otherwise

they punish us with starvation. “The poor preachers they tread

under foot, take the bread out of their mouths and abuse them most

shamefully.” “This ingratitude is worse than any tyranny!” He tells

them finally that their fate will be that of Dives, viz. hell-fire;

then they will long in vain even for a drop of water.[216]

The world hates me, we read in another sermon, for it ever “hates the

good.” “They refuse to have anything to do with the ministers [of

religion], there is hardly a place where they suffer the preacher,

much less support him. My opponents declare that: Did I preach the

truth, the people would become pious.” This is the Anabaptists’ way of

concealing their own errors. “But do not wonder,” so he consoles his

hearers, for “the purer the Word, the worse almost all become; only a

few become good. This is a sure sign that the doctrine is true; … for

Satan, who is stung by the truth, tries to wreck it by corruption of

morals.… He it is who sets himself up in defiance of it.” “But there

are some few who are faithful and in earnest.” Nevertheless, the world

must heap ingratitude and bitterness upon us otherwise it would not be

the world. “By my preaching I have helped several, but what can I do?

If you wait till the world honours you, then you wait a long time and

only prepare a cross for yourself.”[217]

In a sermon on Jan. 22 of the same year he had quoted a saying current

at that time about Rome, applying it to Wittenberg: “The nearer

to Rome, the worse the Christians.” “For wherever the Evangel is,

there it is despised.” “The Lord Himself says in to-day’s Gospel: ‘I

have not found such faith as this in Israel.’ The chosen people do

not believe, though some few do.… In other regions Christ may find

adherents with a stronger faith than any in our principalities.” “At

Court and elsewhere things go ill.… We tread the pearls under foot.”

“So great is their shamelessness, ingratitude and hate that it is a

sign that God is getting ready to show us something; the persecution

of the Evangel in our principality is worse than ever. I am already

sick of preaching (‘_iam tædet me prædicatio_’).” “Those who refuse

the offered kingdom may go to the devil, etc.”[218] The faults of the

government and the increase in the prices of necessaries drew from him

bitter words in a sermon of April 23 of the same year: “There is no

government, the biggest criminals (‘_pessimi nebulones_’) rule; this

we have deserved by our sins.” “When things become cheaper then war

and pestilence will come upon us.”[219]

Thus the ill will gathering within him was poured forth, as occasion

offered, on the various classes indiscriminately.

It seemed to him as though little by little the whole world was becoming

a hostel of which the devil was the landlord and where wickedness and

lust reigned supreme—above all because it was so slow to receive his

preaching.[220] Even the supreme Court of Justice of the Empire became in

1541 a “devil’s whore,”[221] because the judges and imperial authorities

were against him and stood for the old order of things. It was also at

this time that his pent-up anger broke out against the Jews.[222] Here it

will be sufficient to give a few new quotations.

He put himself in the place of a ruler in whose lands the Jews

blasphemed Christianity and exclaimed: “I would summon all the

Jews and ask them,” whether they could prove their insulting

assertions. “If they could, I would give them a thousand florins;

if not I would have their tongues torn out by the root. In short,

we ought not to suffer Jews to live amongst us, nor eat or drink

with them.”[223]—“They are a shameful people,” he says on another

occasion, “they swallow up everything with their usury; where they

give a gentleman a thousand florins, they suck twenty thousand out of

his poor underlings.”[224] The demands with which his anger against

the Jews inspires him found only too strong an echo amongst his

followers. “It would be well,” wrote the Lutheran preacher Jodokus

Ehrhardt in 1558, after complaining of the usury of the Jews, “if

in all places they were proceeded with as Father Luther advised and

enjoined when, amongst other things, he wrote: ‘Let their synagogues

and schools be set on fire … and let who can throw brimstone.… Refuse

them safe conduct and all freedom to travel. Let all their ready money

and treasures of gold and silver, etc., be taken from them,’ etc.

Such faithful counsels and regulations were given by our divinely

enlightened Luther.”[225]

After all that has been said it would be very rash to apply to Luther’s

attitude towards the different callings and professions the words which

St. Paul wrote of himself when considering humanity as a whole, i.e.

of the power of God by which he had striven with endless patience and

charity to bring home the Gospel to both Jew and Greek: “To the Greeks

and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the foolish I am a debtor.” “I

have become all things to all men in order to save all.”

_The Merchant Class_

The opening up of many previously unknown countries, the discovery

of new trade routes, and the new industries called forth by new

inventions brought about a sudden and quite unforeseen revival in trade

and prosperity at the time of the religious schism. An alteration in

the earlier ideas on political economy was bound to supervene. The

upsetting of the mediæval notions which now could no longer hold and the

uncertainty as to what to build on in future led to a deal of confusion

in that period of transition.

What was chiefly needed in the case of one anxious to judge of things

from their ethical and social side was experience and knowledge of

the world joined with prudence and the spirit of charity. Annoyance

was out of place; what was called for was a capacity to weigh matters

dispassionately.

Among the Humanists there were some, who, because the new era of commerce

turned men’s minds from learning, condemned it absolutely. Thus Eobanus

Hessus of Nuremberg laments, that, there, people were bent on acquiring

riches rather than learning; the world dreamt of nothing but saffron and

pepper; he lived, as it were, among “empurpled monkeys” and would rather

make his home with the peasants of his Hessian fatherland than in his

present surroundings.[226]—What was Luther’s attitude towards the rising

merchant class and its undertakings?

In his case it was not merely the injury done to the schools and to

“Christian” posterity, and the ever growing luxury that prejudiced

him against commerce, but, above all, the constant infringement of

the principles of morality, which, according to him, was a necessary

result of the new economic life and its traffic in wares and money. He

exaggerated the moral danger and failed entirely to see the economic side

of the case. We do not find in him, says Köstlin-Kawerau, “a sufficient

insight into the existing conditions and problems,”[227] nevertheless he

did not shrink from the harshest and most uncharitable censure.

It was his deliberate intention, so he says, “to give scandal to many

more people on this point by setting up the true doctrine of Christ.”

This we find in a letter he wrote after the Leipzig Disputation when

putting the finishing touch to his first works on usury (1519).[228]

Because no attention was paid to his “Evangelical” ideas on usury he

came to the conclusion that, “now, in these days, clergy and seculars,

prelates and subjects are alike bent on thwarting Christ’s life, doctrine

and Gospel.”[229] Hence he must once again vindicate the Gospel. He,

however, distorts the Christian idea by making into strict commands

what Christ had proposed as counsels of perfection. There is reason to

believe that the mistake he here makes under the plea of zeal for the

principles of the Gospel is bound up not merely with his antipathy to the

idea of Evangelical Counsels,[230] but also with his older, pseudo-mystic

tendency and with his conception of the true Christian. We cannot help

thinking of his fanciful plan of assembling apart the real Christians

when we hear him in these very admonitions bewailing that “there are so

few Christians”; if anyone refused to lend gratis it was “a sign of his

deep unbelief,” since we are assured that by so doing “we become children

of the Most High and that our reward is great. Of such a consoling

promise he is not worthy who will not believe and act accordingly.”[231]

In any case it was a quite subjective and unfounded application of Holy

Scripture, when, in his sermon on usury, he makes the following the chief

point to be complied with:

“Christian dealings with temporal possessions,” he there says, “consist

in three things, in giving for nothing, lending free of interest and

lovingly allowing our belongings to be taken from us [Matt. v. 40, 42;

Luke vi. 30]; for there is no merit in your buying something, inheriting

it, or gaining possession of it in some other honest way, since, if this

were piety, then the heathen and Turks would also be pious.”[232]

This extravagant notion of the Christian’s duties led to his rigid and

untimely vindication of the mediæval prohibition of the charging of

interest, of which we shall have to speak more fully later. It also led

him to assail all commercial enterprise.

Greatly incensed at the action of the trading companies he set about

writing his “Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher” (1524).

Here, speaking of the wholesale traders and merchants, he says: “The

foreign trade that brings wares from Calicut, India and so forth, such

as spices and costly fabrics of silk and cloth of gold, which serve

only for display and are of no use, but merely suck the money out of

our country and people, would not be allowed had we a government and

real rulers.” The Old Testament patriarchs indeed bought and sold, he

says, but “only cattle, wool, grain, butter, milk and such like; these

are God’s gifts which He raises from the earth and distributes among

men”; but the present trade means only the “throwing away of our gold

and silver into foreign countries.”[233]

Traders were, according to him, in a bad case from the moral point

of view: “Let no one come and ask how he may with a good conscience

belong to one of these companies. There is no other counsel than

this: ‘Drop it’; there is no other way. If the companies are to go

on, then that will be the end of law and honesty; if law and honesty

are to remain, then the companies must cease.” The companies, so

he had already said, are through and through “unstable and without

foundation, all rank avarice and injustice, so that they cannot even

be touched with a good conscience.… They hold all the goods in their

hands and do with them as they please.” They aim “at making sure of

their profit in any case, which is contrary to the nature, not only of

commercial wares but of all temporal goods which God wishes to be ever

in danger and uncertainty. They, however, have discovered a means of

securing a sure profit even on uncertain temporal goods.” A man can

thus “in a short time become so rich as to be able to buy up kings and

emperors”; such a thing cannot possibly be “right or godly.”[234]

As a further reason for condemning profit from trade and money

transactions he points out, that such profit does not arise from the

earth or from cattle.[235]

With both these arguments he is, however, on purely mediæval ground.

He pays but little regard to the new economic situation, though he

has a keen eye for the abuses and the injustice which undoubtedly

accompanied the new commerce. Instead, however, of confining his

censure to these and pointing out how things might be improved,

he prefers to take his stand on an already obsolete theory—one,

nevertheless, which many shared with him—and condemn unconditionally

all such commercial undertakings with the violence and lack of

consideration usual in him.[236]

In his remarks we often find interesting thoughts on the economic

conditions; we see the remarkable range of his intellect and occasionally

we may even wonder whence he had his vast store of information. It is

also evident, however, that the other work with which he was overwhelmed

did not leave him time to digest his matter. Often enough he is right

when he stigmatises the excesses, but on the whole he goes much too

far. As Frank G. Ward says: “Because he was incapable of passing a

discriminating judgment on the abuses that existed he simply condemned

all commerce off-hand.”[237] He was too fond of scenting evil usury

everywhere. A contemporary of his, the merchant Bonaventura Furtenbach,

of Nuremberg, having come across one of Luther’s writings on the subject,

possibly his “Von Kauffshandlung,” remarked sarcastically: “Were I to

try to write a commentary on the Gospel of Luke everyone would say, you

are not qualified to do so. So it is with Luther when he treats of the

interest on money; he has never studied such matters.”[238] A Hamburg

merchant also made fun of Luther’s economics, and, as the Hamburg

Superintendent Æpinus (Johann Hock) reported, quoted the instance of the

Peripatetician Phormion, who gave Hannibal a scholastic lecture on the

art of war, for which reason it is usual to dub him who tries to speak

of things of which he knows nothing, a new Phormion.[239]

In his “An den Adel” Luther had shown himself more reticent, though even

here he inveighs against interest and trading companies, and says: “I am

not conversant with figures, but I cannot understand how, with a hundred

florins, it is possible to gain twenty annually.… I leave this to the

worldly wise. I, as a theologian, have only to censure the appearance of

evil concerning which St. Paul says [1 Thess. v. 22] ‘from all appearance

of evil refrain!’ This I know very well,” he continues, speaking from

the traditional standpoint, “that it would be much more godly to pay

more attention to tilling the soil and less to trade.” Yet, even in this

writing, he goes so far as to say: “It is indeed high time that a bit

were put in the mouth of the Fuggers and such-like companies.”[240]

More and more plainly he was, however, forced to realise that it was

not within his power to check the new development of commerce; he,

nevertheless, stuck by his earlier views. He was also, and to some extent

justifiably, shocked at the growing luxury which had made its way into

the burgher class and into the towns generally in the train of foreign

trade. Instead of “staying in his place and being content with a moderate

living,” “everyone wants to be a merchant and to grow rich.”[241]

“We despise the arts and languages,” he says, “but refuse to do

without the foreign wares which are neither necessary nor profitable

to us, but [the expenses of] which lay our very bones bare. Do

we not thereby show ourselves to be true Germans, i.e. fools and

beasts?”[242] God “has given us, like other nations, sufficient wool,

hair, flax and everything else necessary for suitable and becoming

clothing, but now men squander fortunes on silk, satin, cloth of gold

and all sorts of foreign stuffs.… We could also do with less spices.”

People might say he was trying to “put down the wholesale trade

and commerce. But I do my duty. If things are not improved in the

community, at least let whoever can amend.”[243]

“I cannot see that much in the way of good has ever come to a country

through commerce.”[244]

He refused to follow the more luxurious mode of living which had

become the rule in the towns as a result of trade, but insisted

on leading the more simple life to which he had throughout been

accustomed. For the good of the people, poverty or simplicity was

on the whole more profitable than riches. “People say, and with

truth, ‘It takes a strong man to bear prosperity,’ and ‘A man can

endure many things but not good fortune.’ … If we have food and

clothing let us esteem it enough. For the cities of the plain which

God destroyed it would have been better, if, instead of abounding in

wealth, everything had been of the dearest, and there had been less

superfluity.”[245]—“What worse and more wanton can be conceived of

than the mad mob and the yokels when they are gorged with food and

have the reins in their hands.”[246]

Hence he took a “tolerable maintenance” as he expresses it, i.e. the

mode of living suitable to a man’s state, as the basis of a fair wage.

The question of wages must in the last instance, he thinks, depend on

the question of maintenance. Luther, like Calvin, did not go any further

in this matter. “Their conservative ideas saw in high wages only the

demoralisation of the working classes.”[247]

Luther’s remarks on this subject “recall the words of Calvin, viz. that

the people must always be kept in poverty in order that they may remain

obedient.”[248]

According to his view “the price of goods was synonymous with their

barter value expressed in money; money was the fixed, unchangeable

standard of things; it never occurred to anyone that an alteration in the

value of money might come, a mistake which led to much confusion. Again,

the barter value of a commodity was its worth calculated on the cost of

the material it contained and of the trouble and labour expended on its

manufacture. This calculation excluded the subjective element, just as

it ignored competition as a factor in the determining of prices.”[249]

Thus, according to Luther, the merchant had merely to calculate “how

many days he had spent in fetching and acquiring the goods, and how

great had been the work and danger involved, for much labour and time

ought to represent a higher and better wage”; he should in this “compare

himself to the common day-labourer or working-man, see what he earns in

a day, and calculate accordingly.” More than a “tolerable maintenance”

was, however, to be avoided in commerce, and likewise all such profit

“as might involve loss to another.”[250] It would have pleased him best

had the authorities fixed the price of everything, but, owing to their

untrustworthiness, this appeared to him scarcely to be hoped for. The

principle: “I shall sell my goods as dear as I can,” he opposed with

praiseworthy firmness; this was “to open door and window to hell.”[251]

He also inveighed rightly and strongly against the artificial creation of

scarcity. Here, too, we see that his ideas were simply those in vogue in

the ranks from which he came.

“His economic views in many particulars display a retrograde

tendency.”[252]—“In the history of economics he cannot be considered

as either an original or a systematic thinker. We frequently find him

adopting views which were current without seriously testing their truth

or their grounds.… His exaggerations and inconsequence must be explained

by the fact that he took but little interest in worldly business. His

interpretation of things depended on his own point of view rather than on

the actual nature of the case.”[253]

The worst of it is that his own “point of view” intruded itself far too

often into his criticisms of social conditions.

_Influence of Old-Testament Ideas_

Excessive regard for the Old-Testament enactments helped Luther to adopt

a peculiar outlook on things social and ethical.

He says in praise of the Patriarchs: “They were devout and holy men

who ruled well even among the heathen; now there is nothing like

it.”[254] He often harks back to the social advantages of certain

portions of the Jewish law, and expressly regrets that there were no

princes who had the courage to take steps to reintroduce them for the

benefit of mankind.

In 1524, under the influence of his Biblical studies, he wrote to

Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony, praising the institution of tithes

and even of fifths: “It would be a grand thing if, according to

ancient usage, a tenth of all property were annually handed over to

the authorities; this would be the most Godly interest possible.…

Indeed it would be desirable to do away with all other taxes and

impose on the people a payment of a fifth or sixth, as Joseph did in

Egypt.”[255] At the same time he is quite aware that such wishes are

impracticable, seeing that, “not the Mosaic, but the Imperial law is

now accepted by the world and in use.”

Partly owing to the impossibility of a return to the Old Covenant,

partly out of a spirit of contradiction to the new party, he opposed

the fanatics’ demand that the Mosaic law should be introduced as

near as possible entire, and the Imperial, Roman law abrogated as

heathenish and the Papal, Canon law as anti-Christian. Duke Johann,

the Elector’s brother, was soon half won over to these fantastic ideas

by the Court preacher, Wolfgang Stein, but Luther and Melanchthon

succeeded in making him change his mind.[256] The necessity Luther

was under of opposing the Anabaptists here produced its fruits; his

struggle with the fanatics preserved him from the consequences of his

own personal preference for the social regulations of the Old Covenant.

In what difficulties his Old-Testament ideas on polygamy involved him

the history of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse has already shown.[257]

Had such ideas concerning marriage been realised in society the

revolution in the social order would indeed have been great.

Luther’s esteem for the social laws of the Old Testament finds its

best expression in his sermons on Genesis, which first saw the light

in 1527.

He says, for instance, of the Jewish law of restitution and general

settlement of affairs, in the Jubilee Year: “It is laid down in Moses

that no one can sell a field in perpetuity but only until the Jubilee

Year, and when this came each one recovered possession of his field or

the property he had sold, and thus the lands remained in the family.

There are also some other fine laws in the Books of Moses which well

might be adopted, made use of and put in force.” He even wishes that

the Imperial Government would take the lead in re-enacting them “for

as long as is desired, but without compulsion.”[258]

His views on interest and usury were likewise influenced by his one-sided

reading of certain Old- and New-Testament statements.

_Usury and Interest_

On the question of the lawfulness of charging interest Luther not only

laid down no “new principles” which might have been of help for the

future, but, on the contrary, he paved the way for serious difficulties.

He was not to be moved from the traditional, mediæval standpoint which

viewed the charging of any interest whatever on loans as something

prohibited. His foe, Johann Eck, on the other hand, in a Disputation at

Bologna, had defended the lawfulness of moderate interest.[259]

After having repeatedly attacked by word and pen usury and the charging

of any interest[260]—led thereto, as he says, by the grievous abuses in

the commercial and financial system, he published in 1539 his “An die

Pfarherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen,” whence most of what follows has

been taken. As it was written towards the end of his life, we may assume

it to represent the result of his experience and the final statement of

his convictions.

In this writing, after a sad outburst on the increase of usury in

Germany, he begins his “warnings” by urging that “the people should be

told firmly and plainly concerning lending and borrowing, and that when

money is lent and a charge made or more taken back than was originally

made over, this is usury, and as such is condemned by every law. Hence

those are usurers who charge 5, or 6, or more on the hundred on the

money they lend, and should be called idolatrous ministers of avarice or

Mammon, nor can they be saved unless they do penance.… To lend is to give

a man my money, property or belongings so that he may use them.… Just

as one neighbour lends another a dish, a can, a bed, or clothes, and in

the same way money, or money’s worth, in return for which I may not take

anything.”[261]

The writer of these words, like so many others who, in his day and

later, still adhered to the old canonical standpoint, failed to see,

that, as things then were, to lend money was to surrender to the

borrower a commodity which was already bringing in some return, and

that, in consequence of this, the lender had a right to demand some

indemnification. As this had not generally speaking been the case in the

Middle Ages, the prohibition of charging interest was then a just one.

Nevertheless, within certain limits, it was slowly becoming obsolete and,

as the economic situation changed for that of modern times and money

became more liquid, the more general did lending at interest become.

Luther was well aware that to lend at interest was already “usual”

and even “common in all classes.”[262] It was also, as a Protestant

contemporary complained in 1538, twice as prevalent in the Lutheran

communities than among the Catholics.[263] Still Luther insists

obstinately that, “it was a very idle objection, and one that any village

sexton could dispose of when people pleaded the custom of the world

contrary to the Word of God, or against what was right.… It is nothing

new or strange that the world should be hopeless, accursed, damned; this

it had always been and would ever remain. If you obey its behests, you

also will go with it into the abyss of hell.”[264]

Though in his instructions to the pastors he condemns

indiscriminately, as a “thief, robber and murderer,” everyone who

charges interest, still he wants his teaching to be applied above

all to the “great ogres in the world, who can never charge enough

per cent.” “The sacrament and absolution” were to be denied them,

and “when about to die they were to be left like the heathen and not

granted Christian burial” unless they had first done penance. To the

“small usurer it is true my sentence may sound terrible, I mean to

such as take but five or six on the hundred.”[265]

All, however, whether the percentage they charge be small or great, he

advises to bring their objections to him, or to some other minister,

“or to a good lawyer,”[266] so as to learn the further reasons

and particulars concerning the prohibition of receiving interest.

Every pastor was to preach strongly and fearlessly on its general

unlawfulness in order that he may not “go to the devil” with those of

his flock who charge interest.

Not that Luther was very hopeful about the results of such preaching.

“The whole world is full of usurers,” he said in 1542 in the

Table-Talk, and to a friend who had asked him: “Why do not the princes

punish such grievous usury and extortion?” Luther answers: “Surely,

the princes and kings have other things to do; they have to feast,

drink and hunt, and cannot attend to this.” “Things must soon come to

a head and a great and unforeseen change take place! I hope, however,

that the Last Day will soon make an end of it all.”[267]

As to his grounds for condemning interest, he declares in the same

conversation: “Money is an unfruitful commodity which I cannot sell

in such a way as to entitle me to a profit.” He is but re-echoing

the axiom “_Pecunia est sterilis_,” etc., maintained all too long in

learned Catholic circles. Hence, as he says in 1540, “Lending neither

can nor ought to be a true trade or means of livelihood; nor do I

believe the Emperor thinks so either.” Besides, “it is not enough in

the sight of heaven to obey the laws of the Emperor.”[268] According

to him God had positively forbidden in the Old Testament the charging

of any interest, as contrary to the natural law and as oppressive and

unlawful usury (Ex. xxii. 25; Lev. xxv. 36; Deut. xxiii. 19, etc.).

In the New Testament Christ, so Luther thinks, solemnly confirmed the

prohibition when He said in St. Matthew’s gospel: “Give to him that

asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away” (v.

42), and in St. Luke (vi. 35) still more emphatically: “Lend, hoping

for nothing.”[269]

In the Old Law, however, the charging of interest was by no means

absolutely forbidden to the Jews (Deut. xxiii. 19 f.), so that it

could not be regarded as a thing repugnant to the natural law, though

the Mosaic Code interdicted it among the Jews themselves. As for the

New-Testament passages Luther had no right to infer any prohibition

from them. Our Saviour, after speaking of offering the other cheek

to the smiter, of giving also our cloak to him who would take away

our coat, and of other instances of the exercise of extraordinary

virtue, goes on to advise our lending without hope of return. But many

understood this as a counsel, not as a command. Luther indeed says

that thereby they were making nought of Christ’s doctrine. He insists

that all these counsels were real commands, viz. commands to be ever

ready to suffer injustice and to do good; the secular authorities

were there to see that human society thereby suffered no harm. The

Papists, however, and the scholastics looked upon these things in a

different light. “The sophists had no reason for altering our Lord’s

commands and for making out that they were ‘_consilia_’ as they term

them.”[270] “They teach that Christ did not enjoin these things on

all Christians, but only on the perfect, each one being free to keep

them if he desires.” In this way the Papists do away with the doctrine

of Christ; they thereby condemn, destroy and get rid of good works,

whilst all the time accusing us of forbidding them; “hence it is that

the world has got so full of monks, tonsures and Masses.”[271]—Yet,

even if we take the words of Christ, as quoted, let us say, by St.

Luke, and see in them a positive command, yet they would refer only

to the social and economic conditions prevailing among the Jews at

the time the words were spoken. According to certain commentators,

moreover, the words have no reference to the question of interest,

because, so they opine, “it was a question of relinquishing all claim

not merely on the interest but on the capital itself.”[272]

The Jesuit theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries as a rule were

careful to instance a number of cases in which the canonical prohibition

of charging even a moderate rate of interest does not apply. They thus

paved the way for the abrogation of the prohibition. Of this we have

an instance in Iago Lainez, who in principle was strongly averse to

the charging of interest. This theologian, who later became General

of the Jesuits, when a preacher at the busy commercial city of Genoa,

wrote (1553-1554) an essay on usury embodying the substance of his

addresses to the merchants.[273] Lainez there points out that any damage

accruing to the lender from the loan, and also the temporary absence of

profit on it, constitutes a sufficient ground for demanding a moderate

interest.[274] He also strongly insists that the lender, in compensation

for his willingness to lend, may accept from the borrower a “voluntary”

premium;[275] the lender, moreover, has a perfect right to safeguard

himself by stipulating for a fine (_pœna conventionalis_) from the

borrower should repayment be delayed. All this comes under the instances

of “apparent usury,” which he enumerates: “_Casus qui videntur usurarii

et non sunt_” (cap. 10).

Luther devotes no such prudent consideration to those exceptional cases.

He was more inclined by nature harshly to vindicate the principles he

had embraced than to seek how best to limit them in practice. “He did

not take into account loans asked for, not from necessity, but for the

purpose of making profit on the borrowed money”;[276] yet, after all,

this was the very point on which the question turned in the early days of

economic development. He discusses the lawfulness of a voluntary premium

and comes to the conclusion that it is wrong. He scoffs at the lender, as

a mere hypocrite, who argues: “The borrower is very thankful for such a

loan and freely and without compulsion offers me 5, 6 or even 10 florins

on the hundred.” “But even an adulteress and an adulterer,” says Luther

in his usual vein, “are thankful and pleased with each other; a robber,

too, does an assassin a great service when he helps him to commit highway

robbery.” The borrower does the lender a similar criminal service and

spiritual injury, for which no premium can make compensation.[277] As

regards the case where the loan is not repaid at the specified time,

Luther is, of course, of opinion that any real loss to the owner must be

made good by the borrower. But now, he says, “they accept reimbursement

for losses which they never suffered at all,” they simply calculate the

interest on a loss which they may possibly suffer from not having back

the money when the time comes for buying or paying. “In its efforts to

make a certainty of what is uncertain, will not usury soon be the ruin of

the world!”[278]

In the Table-Talk a friend, in 1542, raised an objection: If a man trades

with the money lent him and makes 15 florins yearly, he must surely pay

the lender something for this. Of this Luther, however, will not hear.

“No, this is merely an accidental profit, and on accidentals no rule can

be based.”[279] That the profit was “accidental” was, however, simply his

theory.

In spite of all this Luther did make exceptions, though, in view of

his rigid theory and reading of the Bible, it is difficult to see how

he could justify them.

Thus, he is willing to allow usury in those cases where the charging

of interest is “in reality a sort of work of mercy to the needy, who

would otherwise have nothing, and where no great injury is done to

another.” Thus, when “old people, poor widows or orphans, or other

necessitous folk, who have learned no other way of making a living,”

were only able to support themselves by lending out their money, in

such cases the “lawyers might well seek to mitigate somewhat the

severity of the law.” “Should an appeal be made to the ruler,” then

the proverb “Necessity knows no law” might be quoted. “It might

here serve to call to mind that the Emperor Justinian had permitted

such mitigated usury [he had sanctioned the taking of 4, 6 or 8 per

cent], and in such a case I am ready to agree and to answer for it

before God, particularly in the case of needy persons and where usury

is practised out of necessity or from charity. If, however, it was

wanton, avaricious, unnecessary usury, merely for the purpose of trade

and profit, then I would not agree”; even the Emperor himself could

not make this legitimate; for it is not the laws of the Emperor which

lead us to heaven, but the observance of the laws of God.[280]

It follows from this that even the so-called “_titulus legis_” found

no favour in his sight in the case of actual money loans, for it is of

this, not of “purchasable interest,” that he speaks in the writing to

the pastors. A real, honest purchase, so he there says quite truly, is

no usury.[281]

A remarkable deflection from his strict principles is to be found

not only in the words just quoted but also in his letter to the town

council of Erfurt sent in 1525 at the time of the rising in that

town and the neighbourhood. The mutineers refused among other things

to continue paying interest on the sums borrowed. For this refusal

Luther censures them as rebels, and also refuses to hear of their

“deducting the interest from the sum total” (i.e. the capital). He

here vindicates the lenders as follows: “Did I wish yearly to spend

some of the total amount I should naturally keep it by me. Why should

I hand it over to another as though I were a child, and allow another

to trade with it? Who can dispose of his money even at Erfurt in such

a way that it shall be paid out to him yearly and bit by bit? This

would really be asking too much.”[282]

Luther also relaxed his principles in favour of candidates for the

office of preacher. When, in 1532, the widow of Wolfgang Jörger, an

Austrian Governor, offered him 500 florins for stipends for “poor

youths prosecuting their studies in Holy Scripture” at Wittenberg, at

the same time asking him how to place it, he unhesitatingly replied

that it should be lent out at interest; “I, together with Master

Philip and other good friends and Masters, have thought this best

because it is to be expended on such a good, useful and necessary

work.” He suggested that the money “should be handed in at the

Rathaus” at Nuremberg to Lazarus Spengler, syndic of that town; if

this could not be, then he would have it “invested elsewhere.” Such

“good works in Christ” are, he says, unfortunately not common amongst

us “but rather the contrary, so that they leave the poor ministers to

starve; the nobles as well as the peasants and the burghers are all

of them more inclined to plunder than to help.”[283] Thus it was his

desire to help the preachers that determined his action here.

A writer, who, as a rule, is disposed to depict Luther’s social ethics

in a very favourable light, remarks: “When his attention was riveted

on the abuses arising from the lending of money [and the charging of

interest] he could see nothing but evil in the whole thing; on the

other hand, if some good purpose was to be served by the money, he

regarded this as morally quite justifiable.”[284] That Luther “was not

always true to his theories,” and that he is far from displaying any

“striking originality” in his economic views, cannot, according to

this author, be called into question.[285]

_Luther on Unearned Incomes and Annuities_

A great change took place in Luther’s views concerning the buying of the

right to receive a yearly interest, nor was the change an unfortunate

one. He was induced to abandon his earlier standpoint that such purchase

was wrong and to recognise, that, within certain limits, it could be

perfectly lawful.

The nature of this sort of purchase, then very common, he himself

explains in his clear and popular style: “If I have a hundred florins

with which I might gain five, six or more florins a year by means of

my labour, I can give them to another for investment _in some fertile

land_ in order that, not I, but he, may do business with them; hence I

receive from him the five florins I might have made, and thus he sells

me the interest, five florins per hundred, and I am the buyer and he

the seller.”[286] It was an essential point in the arrangement that the

money should be employed in an undertaking in some way really fruitful

or profitable to the receiver of the capital, i.e. in real estate,

which he could farm, or in some other industry; the debtor gave up the

usufruct to the creditor together with the interest agreed upon, but was

able to regain possession of it by repayment of the debt. The creditor,

according to the original arrangement, was also to take his share in the

fluctuations in profit, and not arbitrarily to demand back his capital.

At first Luther included such transactions among the “fig-leaves” behind

which usury was wont to shelter itself; they were merely, so he declared

in 1519 in his Larger Sermon on Usury, “a pretty sham and pretence by

which a man can oppress others without sin and become rich without labour

or trouble.”[287] In the writing “An den Adel” he even exclaimed: “The

greatest misfortune of the German nation is undoubtedly the traffic in

interest.… The devil invented it and the Pope, by sanctioning it, has

wrought havoc throughout the world.”[288] It is quite true that the

arrangement, being in no wise unjust, had received the conditional

sanction of the Church and was widely prevalent in Christendom. Many

abuses and acts of oppression had, indeed, crept into it, particularly

with the general spread of the practice of charging interest on money

loans, but they were not a necessary result of the transaction. Luther,

in those earlier days, demanded that such “transactions should be utterly

condemned and prevented for the future, regardless of the opposition of

the Pope and all his infamous laws [to the condemnation], and though

he might have erected his pious foundations on them.… In truth, the

traffic in interest is a sign and a token that the world is sold into the

devil’s slavery by grievous sins.”[289] Yet Luther himself allows the

practice under certain conditions in the Larger Sermon on Usury published

shortly before, from which it is evident that here he is merely voicing

his detestation of the abuses, and probably, too, of the “Pope and his

infamous laws.”

In fact his first pronouncements against the investing of money are

all largely dictated by his hostility to the existing ecclesiastical

government; “that churches, monasteries, altars, this and that,” should

be founded and kept going by means of interest, is what chiefly arouses

his ire. In 1519 he busies himself with the demolition of the objection

brought forward by Catholics, who argued: “The churches and the clergy

do this and have the right to do it because such money is devoted to the

service of God.”

In his Larger Sermon on Usury he gives an instance where he is ready to

allow transactions at interest, viz. “where both parties require their

money and therefore cannot afford to lend it for nothing but are obliged

to help themselves by means of bills of exchange. Provided the ghostly

law be not infringed, then a percentage of four, five or six florins may

be taken.”[290] Thus he here not only falls back on the “ghostly law,”

but also deviates from the line he had formerly laid down. In fact we

have throughout to deal more with stormy effusions than with a ripe,

systematic discussion of the subject.

Later on, his general condemnations of the buying of interest-rights

become less frequent.

He even wrote in 1524 to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony: Since the

Jewish tithes cannot be re-introduced, “it would be well to regulate

everywhere the purchase of interest-rights, but to do away with them

altogether would not be right since they might be legalised.”[291] As

a condition for justifying the transaction he requires above all that

no interest should be charged without “a definitely named and stated

pledge,” for to charge on a mere money pledge would be usury. “What is

sterile cannot pay interest.”[292] Further the right of cancelling the

contract was to remain in the hands of the receiver of the capital. The

interest once agreed upon was to be paid willingly. He himself relied

on the practice and once asked: “If the interest applied to churches

and schools were cut off, how would the ministers and schools be

maintained?”[293]

With regard to the rate of interest allowable in his opinion, he says in

his sermons on Matt. xviii. (about 1537): “We would readily agree to the

paying of six or even of seven or eight on the hundred.”[294] As a reason

he assigns the fact that “the properties have now risen so greatly in

value,” a remark to which he again comes back in 1542 in his Table-Talk

in order to justify his not finding even seven per cent excessive.[295]

He thus arrives eventually at the conclusion of the canonists who, for

certain good and just reasons, allowed a return of from seven to eight

per cent.

In his “An die Pfarherrn” he took no account of such purchases but

merely declared that he would find some other occasion “of saying

something about this kind of usury”; at the same time a “fair, honest

purchase is no usury.”[296]

All the more strongly in this writing, the tone of which is only

surpassed by the attacks on the usury of the Jews contained in his

last polemics, does he storm against the evils of that usury which

was stifling Germany. The pastors and preachers were to “stick to the

text,” where the Gospel forbids the taking of anything in return for

loans.[297] That this will bring him into conflict with the existing

custom he takes for granted. In his then mood of pessimistic defiance

he was anxious that the preachers should boldly hurl at all the

powers that be the words of that Bible which cannot lie: where evil

is so rampant “God must intervene and make an end, as He did with

Sodom, with the world at the Deluge, with Babylon, with Rome and such

like cities, that were utterly destroyed. This is what we Germans are

asking for, nor shall we cease to rage until people shall say: Germany

_was_, just as we now say of Rome and of Babylon.”[298]

He nevertheless gives the preachers a valuable hint as to how they

were to proceed in order to retain their peace of mind and get over

difficulties. Here “it seems to me better … for the sake of your own

peace and tranquillity, that you should send them to the lawyers

whose duty and office it is to teach and to decide on such wretched,

temporal, transitory, worldly matters, particularly when they [your

questioners] are disposed to haggle about the Gospel text.”[299] “For

this reason, according to our preaching, usury with all its sins

should be left to the lawyers, for, unless they whose duty it is to

guard the dam help in defending it, the petty obstacles we can set up

will not keep back the flood.” But, after all, “the world cannot go on

without usury, without avarice, without pride … otherwise the world

would cease to be the world nor would the devil be the devil.”[300]

The difficulties which beset Luther’s attitude on the question of

interest were in part of his own creation.

“In the question of commerce and the charging of interest,” says

Julius Köstlin in his “Theologie Luthers,” “he displays, for all

his acumen, an unmistakable lack of insight into the true value for

social life of trade—particularly of that trade on a large scale with

which we are here specially concerned—in spite of all the sins and

vexations which it brings with it, or into the importance of loans

at interest—something very different from loans to the poor—for the

furthering of work and the development of the land.”[301]

With reference to what Köstlin here says it must, however, be again

pointed out that Luther’s lack of insight may be explained to some

extent “by the great change which was just then coming over the

economic life of Germany.” It must also be added, that, in Luther’s

case, the struggle against usury was in itself a courageous and

deserving work, and, that, hand in hand with it, went those warm

exhortations to charity which he knew so well how to combine with

Christ’s Evangelical Counsels.

In his attack on the abuses connected with usury his indignation at

the mischief, and his ardent longing to help the oppressed, frequently

called forth impressive and heart-stirring words. Though, in what

Luther said about usury and on the economic conditions of his day, we

meet much that is vague, incorrect and passionate, yet, on the other

hand, we also find some excellent hints and suggestions.[302]

It is notorious that the controversy regarding the lawfulness of

interest, even of 5 per cent, on money loans, went on for a long time

among theologians both Catholic and Protestant. The subject was also

keenly debated among the 16th-century Jesuits. No theologian, however,

succeeded in proving the sinfulness of the charging of a five per cent

interest under the circumstances which then obtained in Germany. Attempts

to have this generally prohibited under severe penalties were rejected

by eminent Catholic theologians, for instance, in a memorandum of the

Law and Divinity Faculties at Ingolstadt, dated August 2, 1580, which

bore the signatures of all the professors.[303] On the Protestant side

the contest led to disagreeable proceedings at Ratisbon, where, in 1588,

five preachers, true to Luther’s injunctions, insisted firmly on the

prohibition on theological grounds. They were expelled from the town by

the magistrates, though this did not end the controversy.[304]

There was naturally no question at any time of enforcing the severe

measures which Luther had advocated against those who charged interest;

on the contrary the social disorders of the day promoted not merely

the lending at moderate interest, but even actual usury of the worst

character. When even Martin Bucer showed himself disposed to admit the

lawfulness of taking twelve per cent interest George Lauterbecken, the

Mansfeld councillor, wrote of him in his “Regentenbuch”: “What has become

of the book Dr. Luther of blessed memory addressed to the ministers on

the subject of usury, exhorting them most earnestly,” etc., etc.? Nobody

now dreamt, so he complains, of putting in force the penalties decreed

by Luther. “Where do we see in any of our countries which claim to be

Evangelical anyone refused the Sacrament of the altar or Holy Baptism on

account of usury? Where, agreeably to the Canons, are they forbidden to

make a will? Where do we see one of them buried on the dungheap?”[305]