In the _Open Letter to the Christian Nobility_ Luther overthrew the
three walls behind which Rome sat entrenched in her spiritual-temporal
power; in the _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_ he enters and takes
her central stronghold and sanctuary--the sacramental system by which
she accompanied and controlled her members from the cradle to the
grave; only then could he set forth, in language of almost lyrical
rapture, the _Liberty of a Christian Man_.
The first of these three great reformatory treatises of the year 1520,
as they have been called, closed with the words: "I know another
little song about Rome, and if their ears itch to hear it I will sing
it for them, and pitch it in a high key. Dost thou take my meaning,
beloved Rome?" (See above, p. 164.) That some ears were itching to
hear his little song was brought home to Luther especially by two
writings, the one appearing in the summer of 1520, the other published
in the previous autumn, but not reaching Wittenberg until some months
later.
The former came from the pen of Augustin Alveld, that "celebrated
Romanist of Leipzig," against whom Luther had culminated in _The
Papacy at Rome_, promising further disclosures if Alveld "came again."
(See Vol. I, p. 393.) He came again, this time with a _Tractatus de
communione sub utraque specie_,--date of dedication, June 23, 1520.
"The Leipzig ass has set up a fresh braying against me, full of
blasphemies"; thus Luther describes it in a letter to Spalatin, July
22, 1520. (Enders, _Luther's Briewechsel_, II, no. 328.)
The other work was the anonymous tract of a "certain Italian friar of
Cremona," who has only recently been identified as Isidore Isolani, a
Dominican hailing from Milan, who taught theology in various Italian
cities, wrote a number of controversial works and died in 1528. (See
Fr. Lauchert, _Die italienischen literarischen Gegner Luthers_,
Freiburg, 1912.) The title of his tract is, _Revocatio Martini Lutheri
Augustiniani ad sanctam Sedem_; its date, Cremona, November 20, 1520,
according to Enders, which is a mistake for November 22,1519. Its
beginning and close, which have epistolary character, are printed in
Enders, II, no. 366, and one paragraph from each is translated in
Smith, _Luther's Correspondence_, I, no. 199.
These two treatises may be regarded as the immediate occasion for the
writing of the _Babylonian Captivity_, which is, however, in no sense
a direct reply to either of them. "I will not reply to Alveld," Luther
writes on August 5 to Spalatin, "but he will be the occasion of my
publishing something by which the vipers will be more irritated than
ever." (Enders, II, no. 335; Smith, I, no. 283.) Indeed, he had
promised some such work more than half a year before, in a letter to
Spalatin of December 18, 1519: "There is no reason why you or any one
else should expect from me a treatise on the other sacraments [besides
baptism, the Lord's supper, and penance] until I am taught by what
text I can prove that they are sacraments. I regard none of the others
as a sacrament, for there is no sacrament save where there is a direct
divine promise, exercising our faith. We can have no intercourse with
God except by the word of Him promising, and by the faith of man
receiving the promise. _At another time you shall hear more about
their fables of the seven sacraments._" (Enders, II, no. 254; Smith,
I, no. 206.)
Thus the _Prelude_ grows under his hand and assumes the form of an
elaborate examination of the whole sacramental system of the Church.
He makes short work of his two opponents, and after a few pages of
delicious irony, of which Erasmus was suspected in some quarters of
being the author, he turns his back on them and addresses himself to a
positive and constructive treatment of his larger theme, lenient
toward all non-essentials, but inexorable with respect to everything
truly essential, that is, scriptural. The _Captivity_ thus represents
the culmination of Luther's reformatory thinking on the theological
side, as the _Nobility_ does on the national, and the _Liberty_ on the
religious side. It sums up and carries forward all of his previous
writings on the sacraments, just as, nine years later, the
_Catechisms_ gathered up and moulded into classic form his writings on
catechetical subjects. Passage after passage, often whole pages, from
the _Resolutiones disp._, the _Treatise on Baptism_, the _Conitendi
Ratio_, the _Treatise on the New Testament_, the _Treatise on the
Blessed Sacrament_, are transferred bodily to this new and definitive
work, and find in it the goal toward which they had been consciously
or unconsciously tending. The reader is referred to a fine comparative
study in Kostlin's _Theology of Luther_ (English trans.), I, 388-409.
The title is a reminiscence from the _Resolutiones super prop, xiii._,
of 1519,--"absit ista plus quam babylonica captivitas!" The sense in
which the work is called a "prelude" is explained on page 176; the
theologian in Luther could not deny the musician, he goes into battle
singing and comes back with the stanza of a hymn upon his lips.
The _Captivity_ marks Luther's final and irreparable break with the
Church of Rome, and it is not without a peculiar significance that in
the same letter to Spalatin, of October 3d, in which he mentions the
arrival in Leipzig of Eck armed with the papal bull, he announces the
publication of his book on the _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_
for the following Saturday--October 6th. (Enders, II, no. 350; Smith,
I, no. 303.)
While the _Nobility_, addressed to the German nation as such, was
written in the language of the people, the _Captivity_, as becomes a
theological treatise, is composed in Latin, just as later the Liberty,
affecting the religious life of the individual, whether layman or
theologian, is sent out in both German and Latin.
A translation into German appeared in the following year--the work of
the Franciscan, Thomas Murner (on whom see Theod. v. Liebenau, _Der
Franziskaner Thomas Murner_, Freiburg, 1913). Luther calls the
Franciscan his "venomous foe" and accuses him of making the
translation in order to bring him into disrepute. This charge Luther
makes in his answer to Henry VIII's _Assertio septem sacramentorum
adversus Mart. Lutherum_ (1521), the royal theologian's reply to the
_Babylonian Captivity_, for which he won from the pope the proud title
of "Defender of the Faith."
The translation which follows is based on the Latin text as given in
Clemen's "student-edition"--_Luthers Werke in Auswahl_ (Bonn, 1912-3),
I, 426-512, which reproduces, though by no means slavishly, the text
of the _Weimar Edition_ (Vol. VI), which, together with the _Erlangen
Edition_ (_opera var. arg., V_), has been compared. The German _St.
Louis Edition_ (Vol. XIX) has been consulted, and especially the
admirable German rendering of Kawerau in the Berlin Edition (Vol. II)
as well as the careful literal translation of Lemme, _Die drei grossen
Reormationsschriten Luthers vom Jahre 1520_, 2. ed. (Gotha, 1884).
Like the last mentioned, Wace and Buchheim's English translation
(London, 1896) is incomplete, and besides is not always accurate; the
_Captivity_ is not contained in Cole's _Select Works_. The catalogue
of the British Museum notes no early English translation.
Kostlin-Kawerau's (1903) and Berger's (1895) lives should be
consulted; the former for the historical setting and full analysis,
the latter for a fine appreciation of this as of the other two
reformatory treatises of this year. For the theological development,
beside Kostlin's work mentioned above, and Tschackert, _Entstehung der
luth. und re. Kirchenlehre_ (1910), compare the exhaustive article
Sakramente, by Kattenbusch, in _Prot. Realencyklopadie_, 3. ed., XVII,
349-81. The treatise is here Englished in its entirety, including
those portions of the section on marriage which are frequently
omitted. The homeless paragraph on page 260, whose proper location is
not found even in the _Weimar Edition_ nor in Clemen, we have placed
in a foot-note, following the example of Kawerau.