VOICES FROM THE CAMP OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE CHURCH
1. Luther’s “demoniacal” storming. A man “possessed”
WE have plenty descriptions of Luther from the pen of literary
opponents, and they have a perfect right to be taken into account, for
they are so many voices courageously raised in defence of the heirloom
of the faith. What has led to this being so often passed over is the
fear lest their censure should be taken as prejudice, and, needless to
say, what they tell us must be carefully weighed. Much depends on the
circumstances in which they wrote, on the character of the writers,
on the content of their statements and on how far they differ from
or agree with other witnesses and the known facts. Several striking
passages from their writings, in so far as they are confirmed either by
Luther himself or by his followers, have already been utilised in the
present work and have served to complete our picture of Luther’s mind.
Catholic polemists all agree on one point, viz. that the bitter and
unkindly ways of their adversary were a clear proof that he had no
Divine call. Like Erasmus, they too contend that no man who excited
such great commotion and was so insatiable in abuse and vituperation
could be honestly furthering God’s cause. Like Erasmus, they too
question whether such unheard-of presumption could “be combined with
an apostolic spirit or did not rather denote madness.” They compare
his inconstancy, his passion and his fickleness to a “restless, stormy
sea.” His slanderous tongue, which so unsparingly lashed the olden
Church and its doctrines, reminds them of the “roaring lion,” who,
according to St. Peter, “goeth about seeking whom he may devour,” or
of the “fiery darts” of the wicked one against whom St. Paul utters
a warning. With pain and horror they call to mind the seven-headed
beast of the Apocalypse, that rises out of the deep, bearing names of
blasphemy and with a “mouth that speaks great things and profanities.”
Their strictures cannot be examined in detail here, but we may instance
a trait which is common to many of these writers and which, though kept
in the background as not altogether relevant to the discussion, yet
deserves consideration as a proof of the effect that Luther’s unbounded
hate, his abuse and his arrogance had on the feelings and judgment
of contemporaries. Their keen sense of religion made them ascribe
his behaviour to the devil, and to assume, or at least to suspect,
that he was in some way possessed. It is curious to note how many
unhesitatingly have recourse to this explanation.
“We must regard it as a sure sign of demoniacal possession,” wrote
Johann Hoffmeister, Prior of the Colmar Augustinians, “that Luther
should thus persistently enjoin on preachers as a duty to go on
cursing and denouncing from the pulpit, though he himself sees and
bewails the fact, that contempt for religion, godlessness and every
vice is steadily gaining ground in Germany. What can we expect
unfortunate youths to learn from such abuse and reviling in the
churches?”[1253]
“Luther is the devil’s own bellows,” wrote Paul Bachmann, Abbot of
Altzelle, in 1534, “with which the devil blows up a whirlwind of
error, scandal and heresy.”[1254] He goes even further and appeals to
what he had heard from Luther’s brother monks concerning the scene in
choir, when, falling into a fit, Luther had frantically protested that
he was not the man possessed (vol. i., p. 17).[1255]
Bachmann adds: “Luther is the cruel monster that John the Apostle saw
rising out of the deep, with open jaws to utter abuse and blasphemy.”
“This is no mere mistaken man, but the wicked devil himself to whom no
lying, deceit or falsehood is too much.”[1256]
Even from men who had long sided with Luther we hear similar things;
for instance, Willibald Pirkheimer of Nüremberg says bluntly: “Luther,
with his impudent and defiant tongue, betrays plainly enough what is
in his heart; he seems to have gone quite mad, or to be agitated by
some wicked demon.”[1257]
Erasmus declared that people, rather than credit his calumnies,
would say that he was steeped in vengefulness, mentally deranged, or
possessed by some sinister spirit.[1258]
Even Luther’s brother monk at Erfurt, Johann Nathin, who had been
struck with wonder at the young monk’s sudden conversion, remarked
later, when the two had gone different ways, that “a spirit of
apostasy had entered him,” which was corrupting all the clergy.[1259]
Johann Cochlæus thinks that Luther’s unholy doctrine resembles a
dragon with seven heads; such a monster hailed, not from God, but
from the devil.[1260] He allows himself to be carried so far away by
his conviction that Luther was possessed, as to scorn all caution and
to take literally a certain rhetorical statement of Luther’s, where
he tells us that he had eaten more than a bushel of salt with the
devil, and that he had held a disputation with him on the Mass.[1261]
Cochlæus here lays great stress on the views and reports of Luther’s
former associates in the monastery.[1262]
Under the impression made on him by the vehemence of Luther’s language
and his whole conduct, Hieronymus Emser declared subsequently to
Luther’s so-called “great Reformation Writings”: “This monk who has
gone astray differs from the devil only in that he carries out what
the wicked one inspires him with.”[1263] Emser, too, appeals to
Luther’s former associates in the monastery: Luther “was possessed by
the evil spirit from his youth upwards,” he says, “as is well known in
his monastery at Erfurt, where he made his profession.”[1264]
Kilian Leib, a contemporary defender of the Church in the Eichstätt
district, tells in his Annals of the impression made upon those
present by Luther’s behaviour at the Diet of Worms: He displayed such
pride in his manner and conduct that we seemed to have before us the
image of the enemy of mankind. The latter must have dwelt within him
and instructed him, if indeed he does not still do so.[1265] He quotes
with approval Emser’s first statement, and, from Cochlæus, the passage
where Luther speaks of his eating salt with the devil.[1266]
Hieronymus Dungersheim, the opponent to whom we owe Nathin’s remark,
given above, upbraids Luther, the “child of Belial,” for his “devilish
writings” “whereby he, and Satan through him, blasphemes Christ.”[1267]
Aleander the Nuncio reported on April 17, 1521, from the Diet of
Worms, that some regarded Luther as mad, others as “possessed”; he
also mentions on the testimony of others how Luther, on his arrival,
“had gazed about him with the eyes of a demon.”[1268]
The Reichstagsabschied of Worms speaks of Luther as “led by the evil
spirit,” nay, “as the wicked enemy himself clad in human form.”[1269]
In the tract against a pamphlet of Luther’s published by Duke George
of Saxony, in 1531 under Franz Arnoldi’s name, we read at the very
commencement, that Luther was losing many of his adherents because he
showed his hand “so clearly and plainly in his writings, that, as they
said, Luther must certainly be possessed of the devil, indeed of the
whole legion that Christ drove out of the man possessed and into the
herd of swine who forthwith went raving mad and ran headlong into the
sea”: “By the fruits [of his words] we may recognise the spirit.”[1270]
Johann Dietenberger, as early as 1524, in his “Against the unchristian
book of Martin Luther on the abuse of the Mass,” says: “There is no
doubt whatever that the horrid, damnable Lutheran doctrine has been
brought into the world by the devil, otherwise it would not be so
utterly beastly and contentious, quarrelsome and fickle, and so fitted
for everything evil.” “These are all manifest lies, nothing but abuse,
slander and blasphemy, devilish lies and works by which Luther the
arch-liar has driven the world to the devil.” He calls Luther “the
devil’s hired messenger” and says of his manner of writing: “Here
everything reeks of devils; nothing that the devilish man writes can
stand without the devil who endevils all his products.”[1271]
The Ratisbon Benedictine, Christopher Hoffmann († 1534), in his
sermons to the Chapter preached before 1525 represents Luther as an
apostate and as “_dæmone plenus_.”[1272]
The anonymous “_Iudicium de Luthero_” included in a German codex
at Munich and dating from the early years of the controversy, also
deserves to be mentioned. The author indeed praises Luther’s learning
all too generously, but then goes on to say, that he looked on him
as “no Christian,” and to speak of the “devil’s brood” by whom Martin
Luther is possessed.[1273]
Berthold of Chiemsee in his “Tewtsche Theologey” considers that in
his day false teaching has been spread abroad “by a horrid devil,”
who makes use of wicked men; the “devil, with his wicked company, has
stirred up heresy.”[1274]
Petrus Sylvius, in 1534, after a lengthy discourse on Luther’s
“seductive and damnable” manner of “slandering and blaspheming,” says,
that he was “in very truth a possessed and devilish man.”[1275]
In order the better to explain how these and many other of Luther’s
contemporaries came to see a diabolical influence in his work, we
may quote a few words from Johann Adam Möhler’s lectures on Church
History (published posthumously): “We find Luther in 1520 and 1521
displaying a feverish literary activity that arouses in the reader a
horrible misgiving. An uneasy sense of discomfort oppresses us, and a
secret shudder runs through our frame when we think of the boundless
selfishness and presumption which holds sway in this man; we seem to
be standing within the inner circle where that sinister power rules,
which, from the beginning of the world, has ever been seeking to taint
the history of our race.”[1276]
Luther himself, as early as 1518, alludes to opponents of his who
descried in him the influence of the devil. In a letter to Trutfetter,
his old master, he says: “They speak of me from the pulpit as a
heretic, a madman, a tempter and one possessed by I know not how many
devils”; but “let people say, hearken to and believe what, where and
as much as they will, I shall do what God inspires me to do.”[1277]
* * * * *
Paolo Vergerio, the Nuncio, whose detailed account of his interview
with Luther has already been related (vol. iii., p. 426 ff.), speaks,
like Aleander, of his “strange look,” which, the longer he observed
it, the more it reminded him of persons he had formerly seen whom
some regarded as possessed; his eyes were restless and uncanny, and
bore the stamp of rage and anger. “Whether he be possessed or not,”
he says, “in his behaviour he is the personification of presumption,
wickedness and indiscretion.”[1278]
The statements regarding Luther’s eyes made by various persons who
knew him would appear to have furnished many with a ground for
thinking him under some diabolical spell. “Luther’s dark and sparkling
eyes, deep-set and keen ... must indeed have made an even greater
impression than the best of Cranach’s portraits.”[1279]
While his friends, Melanchthon for instance, saw in them the
expression of a high-minded and noble nature and a “leonine
glance,”[1280] many Catholics, like Vergerio, saw the reflection of
a spirit hostile to God. At Worms, as already related, Aleander had
said, though only on the strength of hearsay, that Luther had “the
eyes of a demon,” and a Spanish account from Worms also remarks: “his
eyes forebode no good.”[1281] Cardinal Cajetan, in his examination of
Luther at Augsburg, stated, that he would confer no more with him;
“he has deep-set eyes and strange fancies in his head.”[1282] The
University Professor, Martin Pollich, of Melrichstatt (Mellerstadt),
seems to have let fall a similar remark during Luther’s early years
at Wittenberg; he too mentioned his “deep-set eyes” and “strange
fancies.” It may be, however, that Luther, who tells us this,
erroneously puts into Pollich’s mouth the remark actually made by
Cajetan.[1283] It was Pollich also who often declared, that this monk
would one day overthrow the system of teaching which had hitherto
prevailed in all the Universities.[1284] Johannes Dantiscus, a
Pole, who visited Luther during a journey through Germany and who
subsequently became Bishop of Culm and Ermeland, expresses himself
very frankly. He says: His eyes were keen and sparkled strangely, as
is sometimes the case with those possessed.[1285] Luther’s own pupil,
Johann Kessler, also found something uncomfortable about his glance:
He had “jet-black brows and eyes that sparkled and twinkled like
stars, so that it was no easy thing to fix them.”[1286]
In the above statement concerning Luther’s look and the likelihood of
his being possessed, Vergerio also has a passing allusion to a certain
crude tale then current which quite befitted the taste of the age and
which he gives for what it may be worth in his official report, viz.
that Luther was begotten of the devil.[1287] This tale also found its
way into several Catholic works written in that credulous and deeply
agitated period.
It was not the first time such things had been invented concerning a
person who was an object of ill-will in that age when prejudice told
so strongly.
Luther himself was in the habit of speaking of the actual occurrence
of diabolical births and of the “_diabolus incubus_”;[1288] he not
only did not rise above the vulgar beliefs handed down by a credulous
past, but even imparted to them, at least so far as the power of
the devil went, a still worse shape. He never tired of filling the
imagination of the reader with diabolical images (vol. v., xxxi., 4);
and he spoke of persons possessed as though the world were replete
with them.
If we could trust Cochlæus, Luther’s brother monks would seem
to have partly been responsible for the report not merely of a
diabolical possession (“_obsessio_, _circumsessio_”), but also of
a certain wilful league with the devil entered into by the young
Augustinian. They could not forget the “singularity” of the young
monk, particularly that once, during his fit in choir whilst the
Gospel of the man possessed was being read, he had cried out, “I am
not he.” Cochlæus, who had some intercourse with the Augustinians at
Nuremberg, hints in his Commentaries at the “secret intercourse with
the demon” of which Luther was suspected, and immediately afterwards
refers, though under a misapprehension, to Luther’s own remark about
eating salt with the devil, and holding a disputation with him.[1289]
The passage frequently attributed to Cochlæus, viz. that it was
notorious “the devil Incubus was Luther’s father,” and son of the
devil his “real name, therefore remain the devil’s son as long as you
live,”[1290] was, however, never penned by him. But he was aware of
the reports on this subject already in circulation and never saw fit
to treat them with the contempt they deserved.
All the passages quoted above regarding Luther’s being possessed of
the devil are in every instance quite independent of this stupid tale:
they are based throughout on the character of Luther’s writings and on
his public behaviour.
The first to relate anything concerning Luther’s diabolical parentage
was, according to N. Paulus, Petrus Sylvius in his polemics of
1531-1534.[1291] He recounts with perfect seriousness the information
which he says he had from an “honest, god-fearing woman,” who had
heard it from some former female friends of Luther’s mother to whom
the latter had herself disclosed the fact: “At night time, when the
doors were locked, a beautiful youth dressed in red had frequently
visited her before the Carnival,” etc. Some such idle tale may have
reached the ears of the Legate Vergerio during his travels through
Germany in that same decade. Possibly he may have expressed himself
in private with greater credulity concerning this story than in his
official report, for Contarini goes so far as to write that Vergerio
“had found that Martin was begotten of the devil.”[1292]
The silly story ought to have made all Luther’s later critics more
cautious, even with regard to the statements regarding Luther’s
obsession by the Evil One. The few Catholic writers, who have ventured
even in our own day to assert that Luther was possessed, should have
been deterred from entering a region so obscure and where the danger
of missing one’s way is so great. Even in the case of persons still
living it is rash and often morally impossible to diagnose a case of
possession; much more is this the case when the person in question has
so long been dead.
2. Voices of Converts
Of the Catholic writers, those in particular were sure of a hearing
amongst the educated, who for a long while and until it revealed itself
in its true colours, had been inclined to Lutheranism. Such was, for
instance, the case with several of the pupils and admirers of Erasmus.
Among these were Ulrich Zasius and Silvius Egranus, who, though ready
to criticise Luther severely, were not wanting in words of praise. The
latter was a good type of the half-fledged convert.
Silvius Egranus (see vol. iii., p. 402), for instance, wrote: “I do
not deny that Luther has spirit and inventive genius, but I find
him utterly wanting in judgment, learning and prudence.... Luther’s
foolhardy abuse, his defiance and violence, breed nothing but
unutterable confusion. Nowhere do I see Christian godliness flourishing
in the hearts of men, nay, owing to Luther, it is not safe even to
speak of the Gospel of Christ or of Paul.”[1293] “I declare that
Luther’s doctrine is a web of sophisms, is neither ecclesiastical nor
Apostolic, but closely related to that sophistical buffoonery and
strong language to which he is ever having recourse.”[1294]--Ulrich
Zasius, a Humanist, and at the same time learned in the law, after
changing his views, publicly took the field against Luther even in
official academical discourses; he maintained nevertheless that he
had been led by Luther to a deeper knowledge of the spirit of Christ;
his skill and talent he never even questioned; he declared: “There is
something in Luther’s spirit that meets with my approval.”[1295] What
alienated him from Luther was not only his attack on the authority
of the Pope--with the grounds of which Zasius was well acquainted
from his study of Canon Law--but his denial of the merit of good
works. This contention seemed to him diametrically opposed to Holy
Scripture. “You reject [meritorious] good works,” he says to Luther’s
followers, “and yet I know One Who says: Their works shall follow
them.”[1296] He finds it necessary to reprove Luther sharply for
his unmeasured, nay, shameless boasting of his gifts, for exciting
enmity, strife, dissension and factions, and for inciting to ill-will
and murder. “What shall I say,” he exclaims, “of the boldness and
impudence with which Luther interprets the Testaments, both Old and
New, from the first chapter of Genesis to the very end, as a tissue
of menaces and imprecations against Popes, bishops and priests, as
though through all the ages God had had nothing to do but to thunder
at the priesthood.”[1297] Elsewhere he bewails with noble indignation
the fate of his beloved fatherland: “Luther, the foe of peace, and the
most worthless of men, has let loose the furies over Germany so that we
must regard it as a real mercy if speedy destruction does not ensue.
I should have much to write upon the subject if only my grief allowed
me.”[1298]
Zasius and Egranus, however, like others in a similar walk of life
and who were disposed to seek a compromise, never attacked the new
teachers, their reputation and their supposed wisdom as decidedly as
did those whose deeper knowledge of theology taught them how dangerous
the errors were.
* * * * *
One well equipped for the literary struggle with Luther was the convert
George Wicel, a priest who had married and settled down as a Lutheran
pastor and then, after a thorough study of holy Scripture and the
Fathers, had resigned his post and published an “_Apologia_” at Leipzig
in 1533 to justify his return to the Church of his Fathers.
In a multitude of polemical treatises, often couched in caustic
language, he exposed the untenability and the innate contradictions
of the Wittenberg doctrines. Of this hated “apostate” Luther speaks
in a characteristic letter of 1535.[1299] He writes to the Mansfeld
Chancellor, Caspar Müller, about a new work of Wicel’s: This
Masterlet, as he hears--for he himself “read none of their books”--has
again been throwing sweetmeats to his swine, the Catholics. “Such
guests are well served by such a cook.”
Owing to his stay at Wittenberg and Eisleben, Wicel was well fitted to
paint a reliable picture of the morals there prevailing. He utilised
his experiences in his “_Retectio Lutheranismi_” (1538), and summed
up his case against Luther as follows: “The life of the great mass
of Evangelicals is so little Evangelical that I have thousands and
thousands of times felt most heartily ashamed of it.... Only too
quickly have most of them sucked in the poisonous doctrine, that works
are of no avail and that sin is not imputed to the believer.”[1300]
Concerning one phenomenon, which Luther himself bewails as a very
pest, viz. the fear of death, which had become the rule since the
prevalence of the new teaching, Wicel had some severe things to say;
this was strangely at variance with the confidence which Luther’s
Evangel was supposed to impart. “Is it not a deep disgrace,” he says,
“that those who, formerly, when they were the followers of Antichrist,
to use their own Lutheran phrase, did not fear the plague at all,
or at any rate not much, now, as ‘Christians,’ display such abject
terror when it comes? Hardly anyone visits the sick and no one dares
to assist those stricken with the plague. No one will even look at
them from a distance, and all are seized with a strange panic. Where
is that all-prevailing faith that is now so often extolled, where is
their love for their neighbour? Tell me, I adjure you in the name of
Christ, whether there has ever been less trust or less charity amongst
Christians?”[1301]
In the conversations held in that same year in the intimate circle
at Wittenberg, and preserved for us by Lauterbach the Deacon, Luther
frequently alluded to Wicel; at that time the latter was in the midst
of his successful literary labours against the Lutherans, and his
proposals for reunion, though by no means wholly satisfactory, had
even led Duke George of Saxony to summon him to his Court. Luther,
with a hatred quite comprehensible under the circumstances, calls him,
according to Lauterbach, “the most treacherous of men, insatiable in
his jealousy, a scoundrel who does not even deserve an answer”; Wicel
himself, he tells us, was well aware he was defending, against his
better feelings, a cause altogether wrong; the ungrateful slanderer
richly deserved death; only thanks to Luther’s kindness, had he
found a decent means of livelihood. “Let us despise him! We must be
silent, pray and bless,” so he concludes, “and not bring new faggots
to feed the flames.”[1302] Luther knew perfectly well that any “new
faggots” he might have brought would have burst into flame under
Wicel’s ardent pen, to his own disadvantage. He does not shrink from
indignantly describing Wicel elsewhere as a “sycophant and venomous
traitor,”[1303] and as “a man full of malice and presumption.”[1304]
He comes along and “boasts of the Fathers. I do not even read his
works, for I know his Fathers well; but we have one only Father,
Who is in Heaven and Who is over all Fathers.”[1305] Particularly
sensitive was he to Wicel’s strictures on his doctrine of good
works, that heel of Achilles of the new Evangel. Wicel, “with scorn
and mockery,” says, “that we have taught that, ‘whoever has once been
converted can sin no more, and whatever he does is right and good.’
But the same thing happened to St. Paul and he too had to listen to
slanderers, who, because he taught that people might be saved without
the works of the law and merely by faith in Christ, said: ‘Then let us
do what is evil and sin lustily that good may come of it,’ etc. Let us
pray against such blasphemy.”[1306]
Of the consequences of the new teaching levelled at the meritorious
nature of good works, Wicel had said at the end of his “_Apologia_”:
“The Lutheran sect has opened wide the flood-gates to immorality and
disorder, so that everybody laments and sighs over it. If there be
anything god-fearing, good, moral or right to be found in this sect,
then it was there before, and did not originate with it. For, show me
seven men in seven thousand, who, having been formerly godless and
wicked, have now, because they are Lutherans, become good and full
of the fear of God. I could, however, point out some, such as had
previously led a devout, peaceable, inward and harmless life, who are
now quite changed by this Evangel. May but the Lord grant them to
see and acknowledge what misery they have excited within the German
nation. Amen.”[1307]
Among Wicel’s “blasphemies,” as Luther calls them, were some that
traversed the latter’s assertions that the holy works of penitents
and ascetics were utterly worthless, and that the business of a
house-agent or tax-collector, provided one went about it in faith,
ranked higher than all the pious works of any monk or hermit.[1308]
“The wretched man,” exclaims Luther, angry because of his inability to
answer the objection, “most idly attacks us; he has no respect for the
labours of their calling which God has commanded each man to perform
in his state of life; all this he disregards and merely gapes at
superstitious, grand and showy works”;[1309] “and yet Paul extols the
ordinary works of the faithful and lays great stress on them.”[1310]
This was one of his habitual falsehoods, viz. to make out that Wicel
and his other opponents looked down on lowly and commonplace works
and the unobtrusive performance of the duties of one’s calling, more
particularly in the life of the world. In reality, however, they
recognised in the most large-minded way the high value of the duties
of any worldly calling when done in a religious spirit, and repudiated
with perfect justice the charge brought against Catholicism of
undervaluing the ordinary virtues of the good citizen.
The zealous Wicel was not perturbed by Luther’s attacks. He continued
to damage the Lutheran cause by his writings, though the position he
took up in ecclesiastical matters was not always well advised.
Another convert, Veit Amerbach (Amorbach), one of the most capable
Humanists of the day, after abandoning the Catholic communion lectured
first at Eisleben and then in the philosophical faculty at Wittenberg,
till, owing to his patristic studies and after personal conferences
with Luther and Melanchthon, he returned to the bosom of the Church
in 1543, and at once found a post as lecturer at the University
of Ingolstadt. As he declared in a written statement handed to
Melanchthon, it was particularly the doctrines of Justification and
of the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome that compelled him to side with
antiquity and to oppose the innovations.
Too high-minded to abuse his former associates (he even refrained
from writing against them), Luther nevertheless, on hearing of his
conversion, declared that he would surely turn out later a blasphemer.
“You know,” Luther wrote to Lauterbach, “Vitus Amerbach, who left
us to go to Ingolstadt, was a man who was never really one of us (1
John ii. 19); he will imitate Eck in his blasphemy of our Word, and
perhaps do even worse things.”[1311] Amerbach having pointed out
that the greatest authorities both of East and West had acknowledged
the Pope’s leadership in the Church, Luther replies in Table-Talk in
1544: “Whence do they get the rotten argument, that the Church must
have Rome for its outward head? All history is against anything of
the kind. The whole of the West was never under the Pope, nor the
whole of the East. It is mere pride on Amerbach’s part! O God, this
is indeed a fall beyond all other falls! I am sorry about him, for he
will occasion great scandal. Poor people, they think not of their last
hour.”[1312] “Ah, it is said of them: They went out from us, from the
Apostles. But whence came the devil? From the angels surely. Whence
the prostitutes if not from virgins? Whence the knaves if not from the
ranks of the pious? Evil must needs come from good.”[1313]
Amerbach’s opinion of the innovations and of the work of the devil was
a different one.
In the Preface to his collection of the Capitularies of Charles the
Great and Lothair,--the solitary passage in which he alludes to the
upheaval he had witnessed, though he refrains from any reference to
his former colleagues--he expresses his cherished hope that the
Church will ultimately be restored to unity under the successor
of Peter; the most pressing thing was to set some bounds to the
extraordinary and utterly unrestrained abuse and vituperation, which
was not a little promoted by the avarice and filthy venality of the
printers, but which the authorities did nothing to prevent. “At times,
when I reflect on this disorder,” he says, “it seems to me that men
are not filled merely with gall and wormwood, but are verily led and
set in motion by devils incarnate. But otherwise it cannot be, so
long as, within the Church, the faithful are split up into opposing
factions. And would that the populace alone were to blame! I am very
much deceived if in any of the books of history even one other example
is to be met with of such madness, such furious, poisonous railing and
drunken invective.”[1314]
3. Lamentations over the Wounds of the Church and over Her Persecutions
With the defenders of the Church the depravity of Luther’s teaching,
and the immense injury which his work of apostasy was doing to souls,
weighed far more heavily than any of the charges we have heard advanced
against his person.
In the beginning, it is true, they were chiefly concerned in refuting
his new and daring propositions. But, as the years passed and the
ruin increased, startling accounts of the sad state of religion more
and more often find a place in their polemics, the writers urging
against Lutheranism the decay of faith and morals which had followed
in its train. In their words we can feel even to-day the fervour
and the profound anxiety with which they sought to admonish their
contemporaries against the destroyer of the Sanctuary and his seductive
ways.
When Johann Cochlæus composed the Preface to his “_Commentaria de
actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri_,” he could not refrain, at the
sight of the state of Germany, from giving lively expression to his
grief.
To him “the greatest misfortune, which no tears can sufficiently
deplore,” is “the fall of so many immortal souls, destined by the
grace of baptism for life everlasting.” “This unhappy strife regarding
belief,” he writes at the commencement, “has torn them from the
bosom and the unity of the Church and will bring them to eternal
destruction!” In addition to this there is “a frightful subversion
of all things such as no previous heresy had ever brought about.”
The bond of charity and concord which unites Christian people has
been loosened, discipline undermined, reverence for God destroyed,
wholesome fear extinguished, obedience cast aside, and in their lieu
prevails “sinfulness and a freedom that is alien to God.”[1315] In
the body of the work he describes with pain and indignation how the
uncalled preachers behaved. “They come,” so he says in one passage,
“and prate of that false freedom which is to set us free from all laws
of Church, Pope, bishops and Councils. With a cloud of Scriptural
texts they undertake to prove, that fasting, prayers, vigils and other
penitential works are no good whatever, that Christ has sufficiently
atoned for our sins, that faith alone suffices, that our good works,
far from being deserving, are really sinful, and so forth. In glibness
of tongue and in energy they are not to be outdone.”[1316]
Johann Wild, Cathedral preacher at Mayence, also describes in moving
words the grievous wounds that were being inflicted on the Church. He
was a Franciscan Observantine and was distinguished in his Order for
his learning and success. After having been from 1528 preacher at the
friary church at Mayence, he was appointed in 1539 to the pulpit of
the Cathedral, which he retained till his death in 1554. To him it was
in part due that what was then the ecclesiastical metropolis of the
Rhine Province was preserved in the Catholic faith. He was a type of
those men who attempted to meet the spiritual needs of the day, not
by loud-voiced polemics, but in a conciliatory and peaceable fashion,
and who insisted that the first requirement was to instruct the people
thoroughly in the faith, and to raise the moral tone of the faithful.
Luther’s name he does not mention once in the many volumes of his
sermons, but the complaints are none the less heart-felt that he pours
forth concerning the devastation wrought in the Lord’s vineyard,
warning his hearers and exhorting them to pity, labour and prayer in
the interests of Catholicism, now in such dire straits.
“Woe to all those,” he cries, “who by their preaching have made the
world so frivolous and fearless of God! Our forefathers were better
advised in this matter. They too preached grace, but they did not
forget penance.”[1317] “But now we see, how, by dint of sermons
lacking all sense of modesty and urging faith alone, all fear of God
is driven out of the hearts of men.”[1318] “One thing, viz. faith,
has been extolled to the skies, the other, viz. good works, has been
trodden in the mire. The result is that we are now for the most part
merely Christians in name, but, so far as works are concerned, more
depraved and wicked than even Jews or Turks. Yet they expect it to
be said of them: These are Evangelical preachers, comforting folk,
who know how to quiet people’s consciences.”[1319] “All sorts of
wickedness, injustice and frivolity increase from day to day.” “Since
ever there were Christians in the world a godly life has never been
so little esteemed as now.”[1320] This, according to him, is the
chief cause of all the “very grievous sufferings of the Church,” in
comparison with which the spoliation of the clergy was nothing, of the
loss of souls, and ruin of religious life. “The cause of the Church’s
pain is that her children have been and are so lamentably led astray,
that they refuse any longer to acknowledge their own mother, but
avoid and flee from her, despise her old age, mock at her wrinkles,
laugh at her feebleness, pay no heed to her admonitions, transgress
her laws, forsake her doctrine, reject her commands, despise her
sacraments, cling to her enemies, wallow in every sort of sin and
defile themselves with all kinds of errors. Who can tell all the
misery which is now to be met with among Christians by reason of their
sins and errors?” How should this not cause pain to the Church, our
loving Mother?[1321]--When the discord was on the point of breaking
out into an armed conflict, this patriot, deeply moved at the sight of
the dissensions that ravaged the Fatherland, exclaimed: Germany has
become a byword to her neighbours. “Everybody wants a bit of us.” We
have to submit to bitter scorn. They say: “Ha, these are the haughty
Germans who help to destroy all other countries and have a finger
in every war; now they are going to set to on each other.... Is it
not a lamentable thing that foreigners and aliens should speak thus
derisively of us?... We must lay it before God and beg Him to forgive
those whose fault it is that we cannot reach any agreement. I have
always feared this outcome, yet I ever furthered and counselled peace
and unity.”[1322]
In a writing presented at the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541 by Duke
William of Bavaria, the acts of violence committed by the protesting
Estates for years past were thus summarised: “The Protestants clamour
for peace and justice, but in their actions they violate both.”
The Catholic Estates “are continually molested on account of their
religion, and great loss and injury are inflicted on them. Contrary
to the commandment of God, in defiance of law and Christian usages,
the Protestants forbid them to preach the Gospel and the Word of God
openly; their churches and monasteries are seized by force, their
subjects enticed away from them by all manner of devices and taken
under the shelter of the Protestants; their religious foundations and
property are torn from them mercilessly and used for alien purposes,
the graves and monuments of the pious dead, both high and low, are
desecrated and destroyed; the pictures and images of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, of the chaste Virgin Mary and the dear Saints are pitifully
damaged and smashed to pieces.” “The Catholics have no dearer wish
than for peace and order and justice; they too were clamouring for
these, and not like the Protestants, trying at the same time to upset
them. All they asked was to be left in the enjoyment of their holy
Christian faith and the ordinances of the Christian Church, and
not to have their goods violently taken from them.”[1323]--These
complaints were, however, ineffective, as the Protestant party had
already the upper hand in the College of Electors.
At the Diet of Worms in 1545 the complaints were renewed on the
Catholic side: “The Protestants have made themselves masters of
churches and monasteries and have driven into misery all who wished
to abide by the old faith. They have invaded bishoprics and have been
reckless of justice and peace; have constrained the poor inhabitants
to embrace their religion, as, for instance, in the land of Brunswick,
where they had no other right than the might of the sword. They
trample under foot and oppress everything, and then complain of being
themselves oppressed.” “They are insatiable in their demands and are
for ever producing fresh cards to play, at every Diet putting forward
fresh claims which they insist on having conceded to them before
they will take part in the transactions or vote supplies.”[1324] The
Catholics further declared in the sittings of a committee at Worms, in
answer to the charges of their opponents concerning the real abuses
which prevailed among the bishops and elsewhere: “Scandals and abuses
innumerable certainly existed and were openly flaunted, and were
growing worse and worse nowadays, because, owing to the perilous times
and the teaching of novel sects and preachers, all good works were
being abandoned, and unbelief and contempt for religion was becoming
the custom among high and low. Many thousand livings stood vacant and
the people were without helm or rudder.” “Where were the schools and
the Divine worship? Where the foundations and endowments for the poor
which had been so numerous twenty or thirty years ago?” “What the
Protestants call proclaiming the Word of God is for the most part, as
they themselves complain, mere slander and abuse of the Pope and the
clergy and a general reviling of mankind.” The pulpit has “degenerated
into a chair of scurrility at which foreign nations are shuddering.”
Not many years before Luther had openly exhorted the preachers to
“denounce the Duke of Brunswick in their sermons as a servant of the
devil, likewise the Archbishop of Mayence and all followers of the
Pope.”[1325]
“If we wish to discover the causes of the war which is undoubtedly
at hand,” so the Cologne doctor, Carl van der Plassen, who was well
acquainted with the conditions in Germany, wrote from the Diet
of Worms, “we must bear in mind all that has happened in Germany
since the subjugation of the peasants by the Princes and municipal
authorities, all the countless violations of human and Divine law, of
the public peace, of property, civic rights, conscience and honour.
Let us but reckon up the number of churches and monasteries which
have been destroyed and pillaged during these twenty years, and
all the accompanying crime and iniquity. And to what purpose have
these stolen goods been applied? What has become of all the Church
property, all the treasures?... A new religion has been forced upon
the people by might and by stratagem, and they have been forbidden
under threat of punishment to carry on the old service of God, with
its rites and Christian usages. Is this the vaunted freedom of the
Gospel, to persecute and coerce others, to imprison them or drive them
into exile? Everything that was formerly reverenced has now fallen
into contempt, with the result that right and property are no longer
respected; the endless disturbances in matters of religion have upset
the whole national equilibrium; discipline, loyalty and respectability
have vanished.... What misery results from want of clergy and schools
even in the lands which have remained Catholic! Princes and towns,
making their boast of the Gospel, have not been satisfied with
introducing the new Church system into their own territories, but
have invaded the Catholic bishoprics and secular dominions and turned
everything topsy-turvy in order to set up their own institutions. The
Schmalkalden confederates extend their operations from year to year
and grow more and more audacious. At this moment they are actually
preaching a war of extermination against the Pope and his adherents.
There will be no checking them if the sword of the Emperor is not used
to restrain them, as it ought to have been long ago.”[1326]
Another Catholic contemporary complains in similar fashion: “Religion
is perverted, all obedience to the Emperor destroyed, justice
set aside and insolence of all sorts everywhere encouraged.” The
Emperor “has tried many and various means of putting a stop to this
insubordination, but all measures have been fruitless and he must
now wield in earnest the sword that God put into his hands to bring
back his and our fatherland to peace, order and unity.”[1327] In the
Emperor’s own circle the conviction had ripened that so much injustice
had been done to Catholics and so much detriment to the Church, that
armed intervention was the only course that remained. “Things had come
to such a pass in Germany,” said the Imperial Chancellor Granvell to
Farnese, the Papal Legate, about the time of the Diet of Worms, “that
neither the Emperor’s nor the Pope’s name any longer carried any
weight; indeed, it was to be feared that the Protestants looked upon
the opening of the Council as a signal for war, and that they would at
once begin to equip themselves not merely for the sake of being ready
for any emergency, but rather in order to suppress the Catholics and
to make an attack on Italy, the object of their bitter hatred.”[1328]
4. The Literary Opposition
Most of those who opposed Luther in the literary field have already
made their appearance in the various episodes narrated in the foregoing
pages. In the present section, which is in the nature of a retrospect
and amplification of certain points, we must first touch on the
charge frequently put forward by Luther, viz. that it was the furious
polemics of his foes which drew from him his violent rejoinders, and,
particularly in the earlier part of his career, drove him to take the
field against Rome.
We have already repeatedly admitted the too great acrimony of some
of the writings against Luther, the exasperation they frequently ill
conceal and their needlessly strong and insulting language; of this
we saw instances in the case of Tetzel, Eck, Prierias, Emser and many
others.[1329]
It can, however, readily be proved by a comparison with Luther’s
own writings, that the champions of the Church fell far short of
their opponent, generally speaking, in the matter of violence and
contemptuous satire. Luther not only maintained in this respect his
supremacy as a speaker, but the small account he made of truth[1330]
lent an immense advantage to his overwhelming invective. It is
also easy to discern a difference in the writings directed against
his revolutionary movement, according as they were written earlier
or later. At first, when it was merely a question of exposing his
theological errors, his opponents were comparatively calm; the first
counter theses and the discussions to which they led are replete with
the ponderous learning of the Schoolmen, though, even there, we find
occasional traces of the indignation felt that the sanctuary of the
faith should have been attacked in so wanton a fashion. But after the
actual subversion of the Church had begun and the social peril of
the radical innovations had revealed itself, the voices of Luther’s
opponents grow much harsher. Many, in their anguish at the growing
evil, do not spare the person of the man responsible for it all, whose
own methods of controversy, unfortunately, became a pattern even to his
foes. At no time, not even in a warfare such as that then going on, can
all the things be justified which were said by Augustine Alveld, Franz
Arnoldi, Johann Cochlæus, Paul Bachmann, Duke George, King Henry VIII
and even, occasionally, by Sir Thomas More.
What helped to poison the language was, on the one hand, the coarse
tone then generally prevalent amongst the German people, which
contrived to find its way into the literary treatment of theological
questions to an extent never heard of before, and, on the other,
the love of the Humanists for mockery and satire, to which end they
ransacked the storehouse of antiquity, classical or otherwise. Among
earnest Catholics the most powerful factor was overpowering indignation
at the sight of such ruthless trampling under foot of the religion of
their forefathers and of a faith so closely bound up with the greatness
of the fatherland and with every phase of life. Their indignation led
them to utter things that were less praiseworthy than the feeling which
inspired them.
Besides this, there was a great temptation to use, as the best way of
testifying to their abhorrence for the opponent of religious truth,
that drastic language handed down by past ages, indeed largely borrowed
from the Bible, particularly from the Prophets of the Old Testament. Of
this, not theological writers only, but even official ecclesiastical
documents, had made such liberal use, that scholars had it at their
finger-tips. Even in our own day such mediæval thunders are still
sometimes heard rumbling, particularly among the Latin races. When
dealing with the Bull of Excommunication against Luther, we already
had occasion to remark that much in it was due to the after-effects
of the older habits of speech usual in earlier condemnations.[1331]
It may be mentioned of Hadrian VI that in a stern missive addressed
in 1522 to Frederick the Elector of Saxony, he denounced Luther as a
“serpent” infecting heaven and earth with the venom of its tongue, as
a “boar” laying waste the vineyard of the Lord, as a “thief” who broke
in pieces the cross of Christ, as a man with “diabolical, impious and
pestilential lips.” He also, in the words of Scripture, tells the
Prince that Luther, whom he was protecting, is a devil who has assumed
the appearance of an angel of light.[1332]
As regards the beginnings of the controversy, both series of Theses
advanced by Johann Tetzel in 1517 against Luther’s attack on the system
of indulgences, are exclusively of a technical nature and never even
mention by name the originator of the controversy.[1333]
Luther, on the other hand, after the publication of the ninety-five
Theses, in his German sermon on Indulgences and Grace,[1334] addressed
himself directly to the populace. He poured out his scorn on the
school-opinions of the theologians and the “bawling” of the envious;
they seek, he says, your “pennies,” not your souls, and preach for the
sake of their “money-box.” He appealed very cleverly to their more
sordid instincts, hinting that the money might be better spent on the
poor in their own neighbourhood than on the building of St. Peter’s;
at the end, sure of his success with the multitude, he abused those
who called him a heretic, as “darkened intellects who had never even
sniffed a Bible ... and had never grasped their own teaching.”
What was the nature of Tetzel’s reply? His “Vorlegung” of the
Sermon,[1335] being intended for the people, was naturally written
in German, but in the wearisome style of the Latin theology of the
Schools. In point of matter and logical accuracy it was indeed far
superior to Luther’s superficialities, but the clumsy German in which
it was couched and the number of quotations it borrowed from the
Fathers could only make it distasteful to the reader. It is hardly
possible to recognise in its language the popular orator who was such
a favourite with the people. The seriousness of his tone contrasts
strangely with Luther’s airy style. It is easy to believe his honest
assurance, that he was ready to submit his views to the judgment of
the learned and to the ecclesiastical authorities, and to risk even
life itself for the holy Faith of the Catholic past. Only towards the
end of the short work, when refuting Luther’s twentieth proposition,
does Tetzel, not very skilfully, retaliate upon his opponent--though
even here he does not name him--for the coarse and abusive language
he had used in this thesis. Tetzel says, it would be seen from a
consideration of their reasons which of the two it was who had “never
sniffed a Bible,” never grasped his own teaching and applied to the
study of theology “a brain like a sieve”; which of the two was the
schismatic, heretic, etc.
In his reply to the “Vorlegung,” which he published in his own name
under the title “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bebstlichen Ablass,”[1336]
Luther spared no venom: Sun and moon might well wonder at the light of
wisdom displayed by such a poetaster; evidently he had a superabundance
of paper and leisure; but his artificial flowers and withered leaves
must be scattered to the winds; he had dared to treat “the scriptural
text, which is our comfort (Rom. xv. 4), as a sow would treat a sack of
oats.” His opponent’s offer to risk a trial by fire or water for the
Faith, he treats with the utmost scorn and derision: “My honest advice
to him would be, modestly to restrict himself to the juice of the grape
and to the steam that arises from the roast goose to which he is so
partial.”--Some Protestants have urged that Luther’s rudeness of tone,
here displayed for the first time, may be explained by his opponent’s
example. How little this defence of Luther accords with the true state
of the case is plain from the above.
As regards Silvester Prierias the matter stands somewhat differently.
The “_Dialogus_,” composed by the Master of the Palace in hot haste
in reply to Luther’s “arrogant Theses on the power of the Pope” (the
ninety-five Indulgence Theses he had nailed to the door of the Castle
Church at Wittenberg), a work written with all the weighty scholarship
of the Schoolmen and criticising each thesis in detail, contained in
its thirty-three octavo pages a number of exaggerations and words
calculated to offend.
The lively Southerner was not content with proving that much in
Luther’s Theses was provocative, contrary to dogma, criminal,
seductive, sarcastic, etc., but, even in the Dedication to Leo X, he
starts off by saying that: Luther had dared to rise up against the
truth and the Holy See, but that he, the writer, would see whether
“his iron nose and brazen neck were really unbreakable.”[1337]
Luther preferred to “snap secretly” rather than to put forward plain
doctrines.[1338] “If it is in the nature of dogs to snap, then I
feel sure you must have had a dog for your father, for you are ever
ready to bite.”[1339] Luther having in one passage put forward a
statement that was true, Prierias tells him: “You mix a little truth
with much that is false, and thus you are a spiritual leper, for you
have a spotted skin that shines partly with true, partly with false
colours.”[1340] Referring to the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, he
says to Luther rather maliciously: “You blame in the case of the first
church of Christendom what was extolled when other churches were being
built. Had you received a fat bishopric from the Pope with a plenary
indulgence for the erection of your church, then, perhaps, you would
have found friendly words in plenty and have belauded the Indulgences
on which now you pour contempt.”[1341]
These are lapses in style which a high official of the Pope should
have known better than to commit.
Yet it is clear from Luther’s reply that they did not exasperate him
nearly so much as did Prierias’s energetic repudiation of his teaching
and his calm exposure of the untenable nature of his assertions. What
alarmed him was the fact that a highly placed Papal dignitary should
have shown the contrast between his innovations and the theology
and practice of the Church; he now perceived clearly the practical
consequences of his undertaking and the direct entanglement it would
involve with Rome. Hence the frame of mind in which he composed his
“_Responsio ad Dialogum_,” etc. (1518),[1342] was not due so much to
his opponent’s personalities as to the whole aspect of affairs, to the
shakiness of his own position and to his fierce determination to win
respect for and to further at the expense of Rome the new doctrine
which he now had ready-made in his mind. Whoever recalls the spirit
which breathes in his Commentary on Romans and the violent language
found in his sermons and letters even before 1518, will readily
estimate at its true worth the statement, that what drove him onwards
was the insolence of Prierias. Unfortunately, Prierias’s “Dialogue”
shares the fate of the Latin works which appeared in Germany in
defence of Catholicism in the early days of the struggle with Luther:
Save by a few theologians, they are never read, and, indeed, even were
they read, it is doubtful whether they would be rightly understood
except by those familiar with Scholasticism; hence discretion in
passing judgment is doubly necessary.
In the Reply of 1518 now under consideration, Luther, in view of the
person and position of his opponent, and of the possible consequences,
is more restrained in his abuse than in other writings soon to follow.
Yet, anxious as he was to furnish a real answer to the criticisms of
an author so weighty, we find irony, rudeness and attempts to render
ridiculous the “senile” objections of the “Thomaster,” the “sophist”
and all his “taratantara,” intermingled with unwarrantable attacks on
“Thomistic” theology, that storehouse whence his opponent purloined
“his phrases and his shouting.” The reply opens with the words: “Your
Dialogue, Reverend Father, has reached me; it is a rather high-flown
writing, quite Italian and Thomistic.” It also ends in the same vein.
“If for the future you don’t bring into the arena a Thomas armed with
better weapons, then don’t expect to find again such consideration as I
have just shown you. I have bridled myself so as not to return evil for
evil. Good-bye.”
When, in 1519, the Dominican whom he had thus insulted published,
first a “_Replica_” in the form of a short letter addressed to Luther,
and then the “_Epitome_” (an abstract of his investigations into
the theological questions then under discussion), it was impossible
for Luther to complain of any too harsh treatment; the tone of the
“_Replica_,” although dealing with Luther’s attacks on the person of
the Roman scholar, falls immeasurably short of his assailant’s in point
of bitterness. It is conciliatory, indeed proffers an olive-branch,
should the Wittenberg professor retract the new doctrines which Rome
was determined to condemn.[1343] As for the “_Epitome_,” it is merely
a theological review of the doctrines involved, which it clearly
states and establishes whilst vigorously refuting all opinions to the
contrary. It is accompanied by a grave warning to Luther not to impugn
the authority of the Roman Church.[1344]
This was, however, sufficient to let loose the anger of the German
Reformer, who meanwhile had advanced considerably, and whose wrath now
manifested itself in his rejoinders. Such was his presumption that he
actually reprinted in Germany both works of Prierias as soon as they
had been published; the “_Replica_” he introduced with the derisive
remark, that, as the author had threatened to give birth to more, they
must pray that he might suffer no abortions.[1345] His reprint of the
“_Epitome_” in 1520 was accompanied by contemptuous and satirical
annotations, and by a preface and postscript where he breaks out into
the language already described, about Antichrist seated in the Temple
of God in the Roman Babylon, about the happiness of the separated
Greeks and Bohemians and about the washing of hands in the blood of the
Popish Sodom.[1346] It was the seething ferment in Luther’s own mind,
not anything that Prierias had said, that was really responsible for
such outbursts. The flood-gates had now been thrown open, and even from
the Catholic side came many a wave of indignation to lend acrimony to
the contest.
Referring to Luther’s words on bloodshed, we hear, for instance, Thomas
Murner speaking of “the furious bloodhound, Martin Luther of execrable
memory, the blasphemous, runaway monk and murderous bloodhound, who
wants to wash his hands in the blood of the priests!”[1347]
How far Hieronymus Emser allowed himself to go in his hostility
to Luther is plain from his first tract, “_A venatione Luteriana
Ægocerotis assertio_,” of Nov., 1519, in which he replies to an attack
of Luther’s on an epistle he (Emser) had sent to Provost Johann
Zack. Luther, in the title, had addressed him as the “he-goat” (“_ad
Ægocerotem_”) on account of the goat’s head figuring in his coat of
arms. Emser retorts: “It is plainly beyond your ability to send out
into the world any writing of yours that is not replete with houndish
fury and bristles, as it were, with canine fangs. Your father is
Belial, the ancestor of all insolent monks.” He paints a frightful
picture of Luther’s career and character the better to prove that such
a man had no right to sit in judgment on him.
Luther’s “An den Bock zu Leyptzck,” dating from the beginning of 1520,
was replied to by Emser in his “An den Stier zu Wittenberg,” whereupon
Luther retorted with “Auff des Bocks zu Leypczick Antwort,” to which
Emser replied in his pamphlet: “Auff des Stieres tzu Wiettenberg
wiettende Replica,” and his larger work “Against the Unchristian book
of M. Luther to the German Nobility”; this Luther countered by his
“Auff das ubirchristlich ... Buch Bocks Emssers.”
During the years 1521-1522 Emser wrote no less than eight tracts
against the Wittenberg Professor. The Humanist and clever man of
letters has left therein many a witty page; a refreshing sincerity
is one of his characteristics.[1348] On the whole, however, what F.
A. Scharpff says applies to these and the later polemics of this
zealous champion of the Church: They “are composed in a tone of violent
personality, nor does either combatant seek any longer to restrain the
‘Old Adam,’ as both at the outset had pledged themselves to do.”[1349]
* * * * *
Another of Luther’s earliest literary opponents was Johann Eck, the
author of the “Obelisks,” on the Indulgence Theses. Like the works
of Tetzel and Prierias, this tract is chiefly concerned in a calm
discussion of the matter in dispute, though it does not refrain from
occasionally describing this or that opinion of Luther’s as a “rash,
corrupt, impudent assertion,” as an insipid, unblushing error, a
ridiculous mistake, etc. The severest remark, however, and that which
incensed Luther beyond all the rest was, that certain passages in the
Indulgence Theses, owing to a confusion of ideas, made admissions
“containing Bohemian poison,” i.e. savouring of the errors of
Hus.[1350] Subsequent to this Eck, however, wrote to Carlstadt a letter
which was intended for Luther, where he says in a conciliatory tone:
“To offend Martin was never my intention.”[1351] Nor did he at first
print his “Obelisks,” but merely sent the tract to his bishop and his
friends. Luther, on the other hand, had the work printed in August,
1518, together with his own “Asterisks,” and, after circulating them
privately among his acquaintances, finally published them together.
In the “_Asterisci_” he speaks of the behaviour of Eck, his quondam
“friend,” as most insidious and iniquitous (“_insidiossissimum
iniquissimum_”), and mocks at his “grand, not to say high-flown,”
preface. He says: “Hardly was I able to refrain from laughter”;
Eck must have written his “Obelisks” during the Carnival; wearing
the mask of genius he had produced a chaos. His writing adduced
nothing concerning the Bible, the Fathers and the Canons, but was all
arch-scholastic; had he, Luther, wished to peripateticise he could,
with one puff, have blown away all these musty cobwebs, etc.[1352]
Johann Eck, who was professor of theology at the University of
Ingolstadt and at the same time parish-priest and preacher, enjoyed a
great reputation among the Catholics on account of his works against
Luther, particularly those on the Primacy, on Purgatory, the Mass and
other Catholic doctrines and practices, no less than on account of his
printed sermons and his general activity on behalf of the Church.
The indefatigable defender of the Church composed amongst other
writings the “_Enchiridion locorum communium adv. Lutherum et alios
hostes ecclesiæ_” (1525). The work was of great service and formed an
excellent guide to many.
In this well-arranged and eminently practical book the questions then
under debate are dealt with for the instruction of Catholics and the
confutation of heretics; excerpts from Scripture and from the Fathers
are in each instance quoted in support of the Catholic teaching, and
then the objections of opponents are set forth and answered. Not
only were the Church, the Papal Primacy, Holy Scripture, Faith and
Works, the Sacraments, the Veneration of the Saints, Indulgences,
Purgatory and other similar points of doctrine examined in this way,
but even certain matters of discipline and the ecclesiastico-political
questions of the day, such as payments to Rome, the ornaments of the
churches and the ceremonies of Divine Worship, the use of Latin in
the Mass, the disadvantage of holding disputations with heretics, and
even the question of the Turkish war. Hence the work amounted to a
small arsenal of weapons for use in the controversial field. The tone
is, however, not always moderate and dispassionate. The author was
clear-sighted enough to avoid the pitfall into which other writers
lapsed who cherished undue hopes of a settlement by give and take.
In much that he says he still speaks from the mediæval standpoint,
for instance, concerning the death penalty due to heretics; this
he defends on the strength of the identical passages from the Old
Testament to which Luther and his followers appealed for the putting
to death of blasphemers and apostates from the true faith.
Eck had the satisfaction of seeing his “_Enchiridion_,” within four
years, reprinted four times in Bavaria, twice at Tübingen, and
at Cologne, Paris and Lyons. Before 1576 it had been reimpressed
forty-five times. In the midst of his other literary works and his
fatiguing labours as preacher and professor at the University of
Ingolstadt, the scholar never forgot his useful “_Enchiridion_,” but
amended it and added to it as occasion demanded. In 1529, in a new
edition which he dedicated to Conrad von Thuengen, bishop of Würzburg,
he looks back in the dedicatory preface on the ten years that had
passed since his disputation at Leipzig, and voices his grief at the
immense advance the apostasy had made with the course of time.
“People have outgrown themselves,” Eck exclaims, “they exalt
themselves against God just as Lucifer once did, but like him too they
fall into the abyss and come to despise the teaching of God.” “Whoever
does not hold fast to the tradition of the Church and to the unanimous
consent of the Fathers and the Councils must fall into the cesspool of
the worst errors.” These words are characteristic of Eck’s unwavering
adherence to authority.
He goes on to apply this to Luther: “Luther and those who follow him
prefer to rise up in their foolish daring rather than bow to the rule
of faith; they open their offensive mouth against the holy Fathers and
the whole Church; they exalt their own judgment with momentous and
arrogant blindness above that of the most august representatives of
the teaching office.” True enough Luther had begun softly by merely
publishing some theses against the system of indulgences with which
many might still agree; but then he had gone on step by step and had
increased his partisans by proclaiming a Christian freedom which in
reality savoured more of Mohammed. It is our sins, Eck admits, that
are the cause of the unhappy success of his work. “From the poisoned
root new and corrupt shoots are constantly springing up, and of their
new sects we see no end. In our unhappy days we have experienced the
fury of the iconoclasts; Capharnaites have arisen to whom Christ’s
presence in the Sacrament is a hard saying; Anabaptists, who refuse
baptism to children but bestow it on adults, and, amongst these
teachers, every day fresh divisions arise so that the heretics are
even more prolific than rabbits. Yes, God is angry with us and allows
this because we do not turn to Him with powerful and fervent prayer.”
He then goes on to encourage the Bishop of Würzburg to offer vigorous
resistance and points modestly to his own self-sacrificing labours.
“However much heresy may gain the upper hand, the watchmen of Sion
must not keep silence; their voice must ring out like a clarion
against the Philistines who scoff at the hosts of the Lord. We must
oppose them with all the powers of our mind and defend the Tower of
David, guarded, as Scripture says, with a thousand shields. This,
zealous men, equipped with holy learning, have already done. I myself,
as the least of all, have also entered the arena and exposed myself to
the teeth of the wild beasts. At Leipzig I stood up and disputed for
twenty days with Luther, the Prince of Dragons, and with Carlstadt; at
Baden [in Switzerland, in 1526] too, I had to sustain a combat for
several days with Œcolampadius the Capharnaite, and his comrades. I
have also wrestled with them from a distance in several little works
which I published in Germany and Italy.”
Again, in 1541, in the evening of his days († 1543), in an eighth
edition of the “_Enchiridion_” dedicated to Cardinal Alexander
Farnese, while urging him to increased efforts for the bringing about
of a Council, he could point to his own three-and-twenty years of
incessant conflict with heresy. “O God,” he cries at the sight of the
extent to which the evil had grown, “what times are ours!” “Every
bulwark against arbitrary private judgment has been torn down; Luther
has taught all how to dare all things. Since he has overthrown the
authority of the Councils, the Popes, the Holy Fathers and all the
Christian Universities, every man, no matter how mad or hair-brained
he may be, is free to teach his new fancies to mankind.”[1353]
Yet the author seeks to revive hope and confidence in his own mind and
in that of his Catholic readers, and, to this end, quotes on the last
page the saying of St. Jerome, which he applies to the misfortunes
of his own day: “During the years of persecution the priests of the
Church must tell the faithful boldly and confidently: Your churches
will be rebuilt; have no fear, peace and unity will once more enter
in.--Yes truly, by God’s Mercy there will come an end to the heresies
of Luther, Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Blaurer, Osiander, Schnepf and all
their ilk, and the olden truth of faith will flourish again. Grant
this, Good Jesus, and grant it speedily!” Invocations such as these
accord well with the exhortations to pray for the erring which Eck was
fond of introducing in this as well as in his other books.
Eck’s writings in defence of the faith include learned as well as
popular works, and he was also indefatigable in his labours in the
ministry.[1354]
Johann Cochlæus, who like Eck was one of the more famous of Luther’s
opponents, had a keen and versatile mind († 1552). He first made
Luther’s personal acquaintance at Worms,[1355] and entered the lists
against him in 1522 with his “_De gratia sacramentorum_”; from that
time forward he kept a watch on all that Luther wrote, so as to be
in readiness to reply to or refute it as occasion arose. He himself
gives us the long list of his publications against Luther, in his
“_Commentaria de actis ... Lutheri_,” the work in which he sums up his
recollections of the struggles of his time.
From these “_Commentaria_” of Cochlæus, despite the disparaging
treatment accorded them by Sleidanus, “more is to be gleaned concerning
the history of the Reformation than from many bungling Protestant
eulogies.” Such, at least, is the opinion of C. Krafft, himself a
Protestant.[1356]
The writer sought after the truth and wrote with honest indignation. In
spite of disappointments, and even privations, he remained faithful to
the Church, making during his career many a sacrifice for his cherished
convictions; he himself relates how he could not find a printer for his
works against Luther and was forced himself to defray a part of the
expense of publication, whereas every press was eager to print Luther’s
books owing to the demand anticipated.
If, in Cochlæus’s writings, too great passion is often apparent, this
may well have been due to that depraved humanism and neo-classicism
under the influence of which, more perhaps than any other Catholic
man of letters, he stood. We have an instance of this in his
“Seven-headed Luther,” which he composed in 1529 at Dresden, whither
he had been summoned on Emser’s death.[1357] This book, like his later
“Commentaries,” denotes the climax of his polemics. In the dedication
he says that the seven-headed monster could not have been born either
of God or of Nature, since neither God nor Nature was capable of such
an abortion; rather, it must be an offspring of the evil one, who had
deceived man and worked him harm, in Paradise under the guise of a
serpent, and, often later, under the form of fauns, satyrs, Sileni and
various enchantments. In Africa, according to the ancients, there had
been a dragon with three or four heads, and Geryon, whom Hercules slew,
had also had three heads. But a monster with seven heads, such as was
Luther with his sevenfold doctrine, had never been ushered into the
world by any country, but must be a creation of the devil. The wicked,
perverse, insane apostate monk, long since destined to damnation,
had no scruple in deceiving and assailing every upright man with
lies, mockery, blasphemy and every kind of nastiness, or in pouring
forth seditious falsehoods and insults like an infuriated lioness.
The seven-headed hoodman, or hooded dragon, was causing all too much
confusion in Germany with his seven heads and was polluting it all with
his deadly poison. King Saul, he continues, had sinned in not rooting
out the people of Amalek. But to whom did the name of Amalek apply more
aptly than to the Lutherans? For Amalek’s was a bestial nation, living
bestially according to the flesh, just as the Lutherans--particularly
their idol, viz. this monk with his nun--were now doing. In this
mad devil’s minister not one crumb of any kind of virtue remained,
etc.[1358]
Apart from his too rhetorical and acrimonious tone other unsympathetic
features met with in Cochlæus are his frequent petitions to high
dignitaries of the Church, in Germany and even in Rome, for material
assistance; his complaints that he was not taken seriously enough; his
too great eagerness, during the first years of the struggle, to hold a
disputation with Luther; too much pushfulness and sometimes a certain
credulity, not to speak of occasional lapses into a frivolity which,
like his rhetoric, recalls the more blatant faults of Humanism and
ill beseemed a man anxious to censure the morals of his opponents. He
deemed it right and proper, for instance, to write under an assumed
name a work against the Reformers’ wives and matrimonial relationships,
where, in colloquial form and in a manner highly offensive, he
introduces much that was mere tittle-tattle and quite without
foundation. His authorship of this “Private Conversation” has been
proved up to the hilt in recent times.[1359]
Among the ranks of the opponents of Lutheranism Johann Faber and
Frederick Nausea, both of them bishops of Vienna, hold a high place.
The efforts of these two theologians to elucidate controverted points
and to refute Luther were much appreciated in the Catholic circles of
that day.
In the more popular field quite a number of good speakers and writers
belonging to various Religious Orders, particularly the German
Dominicans, distinguished themselves for their zeal in the campaign
against Lutheranism. Johann Mensing, who became a licentiate at
Wittenberg in 1517 and was Luther’s best-hated opponent, was a member
of the Order of St. Dominic; so also was Augustine von Getelen, of
whose sermons the Lutheran preacher Martin Undermark admitted, that,
“with his tongue he was able to sway the people as he pleased”;[1360]
Matthias Sittardus, Johann Dietenberger and Ambrosius Pelargus were
also all Dominicans, nor did they confine themselves to preaching, but
were all of them authors of publications suited to the times. Michael
Vehe, another Dominican, was renowned for his ability to wield the
pen in German not less than for his Latin discourses from the pulpit.
His brother friar, Johann Fabri, earned praise as a preacher and as
a clever popular writer. The Protestant preacher H. Rocholl wrote of
him: “The turn of what he writes gives proof of great eloquence and
his language is oratorically fine; his exhortations are also from an
homiletic point of view quite excellent.”[1361] Antonius Pirata of the
Dominican friary at Constance received the following encomium from
Erasmus in a letter to Laurinus: “He is a respected man of good morals
and profound learning, who displays in his sermons an eloquence truly
wonderful.”[1362] Conrad Köllin and Jacob Hoogstraaten also adorned the
Dominican Order in Germany at that time with their learning, though
their interest lay more in scholastic theology than in popular works.
All the above belonged to the German province of a single Order, and,
altogether, quite thirty Dominicans might be enumerated who engaged
in controversy with Luther. Amongst the polemists hailing from other
Orders and deserving honourable mention was the zealous and scholarly
Franciscan Caspar Schatzgeyer, also another Franciscan, Thomas Murner,
to whom we shall return immediately, the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister
and the Carmelite Eberhard Billick.[1363]
The reason that the old Orders, with the exception of the Dominicans,
did not furnish more controversialists was in great part due to the
disastrous effect of the apostasy on their houses. Many of their
subjects, deluded by Lutheranism, forsook their cells, and those
who remained were frequently exposed to severe persecution. Many
monasteries were not only deprived of their means of subsistence, but,
owing to the new spirit of the age and the material difficulties of the
monastic life, the supply of novices began to run short.
During this period of the German Church’s distress the secular clergy
were not behindhand in furnishing tried combatants, though the
influence of the new ideas and the decline in morals, particularly
during the preceding thirty or forty years, had brought ecclesiastical
life and learning to an even lower level than before. There were,
however, still some cheering examples to be met with. Conspicuous
amongst the veterans who opposed Luther’s teaching and innovations,
were, in addition to those already mentioned, Michael Helding,
auxiliary bishop and preacher at Mayence (later bishop of Merseburg),
and Conrad Wimpina of Leipzig and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, the author
of a good Latin collection of works against Luther entitled “On the
sects and errors,” etc. (1528).[1364] The Lutheran cause suffered
considerably at the hands of these writers.
Thomas Murner, the famous Alsatian preacher and writer, a new Sebastian
Brant even mightier than the former, entered the lists against Luther
and made full use of the satirical style he had cultivated even
earlier. Even Protestants have admitted his principal work against
Luther (1522) to be a highly incisive and significant production,
whilst a recent editor of his works describes him as the most weighty
of Luther’s literary opponents in Germany.[1365] There is certainly no
question of his “wanton, cheerful, nay, bacchantic humour,” and of his
wealth of caustic irony; he enters into Luther’s arguments and proofs,
and refutes them, more particularly those taken from the Bible. Murner
speaks a very simple and pithy language, though not loath to have
recourse occasionally to coarse words, of which an example has been
given above (p. 376). Luther paid him out by “amusing his readers with
an account of the lice on Murner’s cowl, and by circulating a lampoon
alleged to have been sent him from the Rhine, but, at any rate, printed
at Luther’s own instance.”[1366]
* * * * *
Not one of those who took the field against Luther and pitted their
strength against his was really a match for him in energy, in ability
to handle the language, in wealth of fancy or in power over the people.
To every clear-sighted observer it must have been apparent that truth
and logic were on the side of the Catholic controversialists, but,
unfortunately, not one of them was able to rival in effectiveness the
writings of the Wittenberg Professor.
Here and there, in certain ruder passages, we can easily see how his
opponents are clumsily endeavouring to retort upon their readier and
more inventive foe in language almost identical with his own. Luther,
however, stands alone in the originality of his abuse. But if his
adversaries, as was too often the case, overstepped the bounds of
moderation of language, we must bear in mind their pain and indignation
at the unspeakable injustice done to the Church of their fathers.
In those rude encounters people were only too apt to forget that,
according to Christ’s command, charity must be displayed even towards
those who err. Yet the Church had received as part of her heirloom
the injunction set by her Founder against the practice of the Jewish
synagogue and its saying, “Hate thy enemy” (Mt. v. 42). “But I say to
you: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for
them that persecute and calumniate you.”
It was on principles such as these that, for all his glowing zeal for
the glory of God, Bl. Pierre Favre (Faber) acted, that gentle and
enlightened preacher of the true Catholic reformation, who, since
1540, had been labouring in the dioceses of Spires, of Mayence and
of Cologne. It was on these principles that he formed his gifted
pupil Bl. Peter Canisius, the first German Jesuit, who completed the
Exercises under him at Mayence, and, three years before Luther’s death,
on May 8, 1543, joined the Society which had now been approved by the
Church. Of the followers of the new religion, Favre expresses himself
as follows: “May Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, Who knows that
His written Word does not suffice to touch the human mind, soften and
move their hearts by His divine Grace.” “No other arguments promote
their conversion better than good works and self-sacrifice, even to
laying down one’s life.”[1367] “I never cease grieving,” so he wrote to
Ignatius, the General of the Order, “at the fall of the noble German
nation, once the incomparable pearl of the Church and the glory of
Christendom.” Through the head of the Society he sought to convince its
members that his own way of dealing with the apostasy was the best.
“Those who wish to be of service to the false teachers of to-day,” he
writes, “must above all be distinguished by charity and real esteem for
their opponents, and banish from their minds every thought that might
in any way lessen their regard for them.”[1368]
When Pierre Favre set about his work for the preservation of the
German Church, Luther was already at the heyday of his success. Favre
accompanied the Spanish ambassador Ortiz to the religious Conference
at Worms in 1540, and to the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541. Those two
years bore convincing witness to the fact, that the progress of the
innovations could no longer be checked by the authority either of
Church or State.
But, before proceeding to examine Luther’s work at its zenith, we must
scrutinise his doctrine a little more closely.