more as a similar request had reached him from the Elector, in this
case possibly a verbal one. He left the Landgrave to wait and replied
first to the Elector, though only by word of mouth, so as not to
commit himself irretrievably on so delicate a matter. What his reply
exactly was is not known. At the end of October he had to go to Torgau
for a conference on the subject with the Elector’s legal advisers and
possibly those of other Princes. Melanchthon and Jonas accompanied
him, and the negotiations were protracted and lively.[140]
During these negotiations Luther replied from Torgau, on October 28,
to the letter from the Landgrave referred to above, though in general
and evasive terms. He says, he hopes no blood will be shed, but, in
the event of things going so far, he had told the Elector his opinion
on resistance, and of this the Landgrave would hear in due season;
that it would be dangerous for him, as an ecclesiastic, to put this
into writing, for many reasons.[141] Hence for the nonce he was
determined to express himself only verbally on this tiresome question.
In what direction his thoughts were then turning may be gathered
from what he says to the Landgrave in the same letter concerning his
writings; the latter had asked him, he says, for a controversial
booklet, “as a consolation for the weak”; he intended “in any case
to publish a booklet shortly ... admonishing all consciences, that
no subject was bound to render obedience should His Imperial Majesty
persist”; and in which he will prove that the Emperor’s demands are
“blasphemous, murderous and diabolical”—still, the booklet was not
to be termed “seditious.” He here is referring either to the “Auff
das vermeint Edict” or to the “Warnunge.” We have already spoken of
the revolutionary character of the language he used in these tracts
published in the early part of 1531, and, subsequently, in the reply
“Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen.”[142] What he was there to advocate
goes far beyond the limits of mere passive resistance.
He was at first unwilling to declare his views at Torgau. Not to
contradict what he had previously said, he protested that the question
did not concern him, since, as a theologian, his business was to
teach Christ only. As regards secular matters, he could only counsel
compliance with the law and, on the matter of forcible resistance
to the Emperor, that any action taken should be conformable to
the “written laws.” “But what these laws were he neither knew nor
cared.”[143]
The assembled lawyers were, however, loath to leave Torgau without
having reached an understanding, and submitted another statement to
Luther and his colleagues, requesting their opinion on it. In this
document they had sought to prove, from sources almost exclusively
canonical, that it was lawful to resist the Emperor by force, because
“he proceeds and acts contrary to law,” not being a judge in matters
of religion, and that, even if he were such a judge, he had no right
to do anything on account of the appeal to a Council. They urged that
it was necessary to “obey God and evangelical truth rather than men,”
and that the Emperor was “no more than a private individual so far as
the ‘cognition’ and ‘statution’ of this matter went ... nor does the
‘execution’ come within his province.” For the sake of the salvation
of souls the Emperor was not to be regarded as “judge in the matter
of our faith,” for his “injustice is undeniable, manifest, patent and
notorious, yea, more than notorious.”[144]
The councillors chose to deal with the matter chiefly from the point
of view of canon law, as is shown by their misquotations from such
well-known canonists as Panormitanus, Innocent IV., Felinus, Baldus
de Ubaldis and the Archidiaconus (Baisius).[145] In spite of this they
calmly assumed the truth of the proposition, condemned in canon law, of
the subordination of Pope to Council and of the right of appealing from
Pope to Council. They took it for granted that Luther’s doctrines had
not yet been finally rejected by the Church, and, in contradiction with
actual fact, declared that the Augsburg Reichstagsabschied “admitted
and allowed” that Luther’s doctrines, seeing that they were supposed to
have been condemned by previous Councils, should come up for discussion
at the next. As a matter of fact the Reichstagsabschied contained
nothing of the sort “concerning doctrines of faith.”[146]
This document was submitted to the theologians before they left Torgau,
and their embarrassment was reflected in their written reply. Luther
agreed with his friends that the only way out of the difficulty was
to put the whole thing on the shoulders of the lawyers. He and his
party declared that they stood altogether outside the question, since
the councillors had already decided independently of them in favour
of armed resistance, on the ground of the secular, Imperial laws.
As for the reasons alleged from canon law, he refused to take them
into consideration. Later on he was glad to be able to appeal to this
subterfuge, and declared that he “had given no counsel.”[147]
At this time, however, Luther, Melanchthon and Jonas put their
signatures to a memorandum in which they sought to protect themselves
by certain assurances which make a painful impression on the reader.
It was true that hitherto they had taught, so they say, “that the
[secular] authorities must on no account be resisted,” but, they
had been unaware “that the authorities’ own laws, which we have
always taught must be diligently obeyed, sanctioned this.” They had
also taught, “that the secular laws must be allowed to take their
own course, because the Gospel teaches nothing against the worldly
law.” “Accordingly, now that the doctors and experts in the law have
proved that our present case is such that it is lawful to resist the
authorities, we, for our part, ‘cannot disprove this from Scripture,
when self-defence is called for, even though it should be against the
Emperor himself.’” They then come to the question of arming. This
they declare to be distinctly practical and advisable, especially
as “any day other causes may arise where it would be essential to be
ready to defend oneself, not merely from worldly motives, but from
duty and constraint of conscience.” It was necessary “to be ready to
encounter a power which might suddenly arise.”[148]
The Landgrave of Hesse was then making great preparations for war,
with an eye on Würtemberg, where, as he admitted publicly, he wished
forcibly to re-instate Duke Ulrich, a friend to the religious
innovations.
The theologians of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, unlike those of
Wittenberg, were opposed to resistance. They replied then, or somewhat
later, concerning the views put forward by the lawyers, that it
was a question of the supreme secular Majesty, not of a judge who
was subservient to a higher secular sword, hence that the lawyers’
suppositions could not stand.[149] Little heed was however paid to
their objection. On the other hand the proposal made by the legal
consulters, that further representations should be made to the Emperor
regarding the execution of the Reichstagsabschied, was described
by the theologians as “not expedient,” though it might be further
discussed at the Nuremberg Conference on November 11 (Martinmas).[150]
Instead, it was for November 13 that a summons, dispatched by Saxony on
October 31, invited a conference to meet at Nuremberg to discuss the
matter, and take the steps which eventually led to the formation of the
defensive League of Schmalkalden. At first it was proposed, that, after
the Nuremberg conference, another should be held at Schmalkalden on
November 28, though as a matter of fact the only meeting held commenced
at Schmalkalden on December 22.
Only now did it become apparent that Luther and his theologians had,
at least in the opinion of the Saxon politicians, expressed themselves
privately much more openly in favour of resistance than would appear
from the above memorandum. The envoys from the Saxon Electorate
appealed with great emphasis to the opinion of the Wittenberg divines,
in order to show the lawfulness of the plan of armed resistance and
the expediency of the proposed League. Armed with this authority they
openly “defied our ministers,” wrote Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg,
to Veit Dietrich on February 20, 1531. Spengler, like the Nuremberg
Councillors and those of Brandenburg, was opposed to resistance and
to the League. He was surprised that “Dr. Martin should so contradict
himself.”[151] The fact is that he was the only person to whom Luther’s
previous memorandum of March, 1530, had been communicated.[152]
The Nuremberg magistrates appealed, among other reasons, to the clear
testimony of Scripture which did not sanction such proceedings against
the supreme secular authority. They feared the consequences of a
religious war for Germany, just as Luther himself had formerly done,
but, in spite of their adherence to the new faith, they were more frank
and courageous in their effort to avert it than he on whose shoulders
the chief responsibility in the war was to rest.
One sentence of Melanchthon’s, written in those eventful days,
singularly misrepresents the true position of affairs. To his friend
Camerarius, on January 1, 1531, he says: “We discountenance all
arming.”[153]
Melanchthon also writes: “We are now consulted less frequently than
heretofore as to the lawfulness of resistance,” and he repeats much
the same thing on February 15, 1531: “On the matter of the League no
one now questions either Luther or myself.”[154] If we can here detect
a faint note of wonder and regret, we may assuredly ask whether the
very behaviour of the theologians at Torgau was not the reason of their
advice being at a discount; their dissimulation and ambiguity were not
of a nature to inspire the lawyers and statesmen with much respect.
It was some time before this vacillation in official, written
statements came to an end. Some more instances of it are to be met
with in the epistolary communications between Luther and the town of
Nuremberg, which was opposed to the Schmalkalden tendencies.
Prior to November 20, 1530, the Elector of Saxony had addressed himself
to the magistrates of Nuremberg with the request that “they would make
preparations for resisting the unjust and violent measures of the
Emperor.” Of this Veit Dietrich informed Luther from Nuremberg on that
day, adding that the Elector had made a reference to an approval of
the measures of defence secured from his “Councillors and Doctors,”
but had said nothing of the theologians.[155] News was, however,
subsequently received in Nuremberg that the Saxon envoys present at
Schmalkalden had boasted of the support of Luther and his friends.
It was in consequence of this that the Nuremberg preacher, Wenceslaus
Link, enquired of Luther in the beginning of January, 1531, or possibly
earlier, whether the news which had reached Nuremberg by letter was
true, viz. that “they had expressed the opinion that resistance might
be employed against the Emperor.”
Without delay, on January 15, Luther assured him: “We have by no means
given such a counsel” (“_nullo modo consuluimus_”).[156]
By way of further explanation he adds: “When some said openly that it
was not necessary to consult the theologians at all, or to trouble
about them, and that the matter concerned only the lawyers who had
decided in favour of its lawfulness, I for my part declared: I
view the matter as a theologian, but if the lawyers can prove its
permissibility from their laws, I see no reason why they should not
use their laws; that is altogether their business. If the Emperor
by virtue of his laws determines the permissibility of resistance
in such a case, then let him bear the consequences of his law; I,
however, pronounce no opinion or judgment on this law, but I stick
to my theology.” It is thus that he expresses himself concerning the
argument which the lawyers had, as a matter of fact, drawn almost
exclusively from canon law, the texts of which they misread.
He then puts forward his own theory in favour of the belligerent
nobles of his party, according to which a ruler, when he acts
as a politician, is not acting as a Christian (“_non agit ut
christianus_”), as though his conscience as a sovereign could be kept
distinct from his conscience as a Christian. “A Christian is neither
Prince nor commoner nor anything whatever in the personal world. Hence
whether resistance is permissible to a ruler as ruler, let them settle
according to their own judgment and conscience. To a Christian nothing
[of that sort] is lawful, for he is dead to the world.”
“The explanations [Luther’s] have proceeded thus far,” he concludes
this strange justification, “and this much you may tell Lazarus
[Spengler, the clerk to the Nuremberg Council] concerning my views. I
see clearly, however, that, even should we oppose their project, they
are nevertheless resolved to offer resistance and not to draw back, so
full are they of their own ideas; I preach in vain that God will come
to our assistance, and that no resistance will be required. God’s
help is indeed visible in this, that the Diet has led to no result,
and that our foes have hitherto taken no steps. God will continue
to afford us His help; but not everyone has faith. I console myself
with this thought: since the Princes are determined not to accept
our advice, they sin less, and act with greater interior assurance,
by proceeding in accordance with the secular law, than were they to
act altogether against their conscience and directly contrary to Holy
Scripture. It is true they do not wit that they are acting contrary to
Scripture, though they are not transgressing the civil law. Therefore
I let them have their way, I am not concerned.”
He thus disclaimed all responsibility, and he did so with all the more
confidence by reason of his sermons to the people, where he continued
to speak as before of the love of peace which actuated him, ever with
the words on his lips: “By the Word alone.” “Christ,” he exclaims,
“will not suffer us to hurt Pope or rebel by so much as a hair.”[157]
It was easy to foresee that after such replies from Luther, Spengler
and the magistrates of Nuremberg would not be pleased with him.
Possibly Link had doubts about making known at Nuremberg a writing
which was more in the nature of an excuse than a reply, since, on
such a burning question which involved the future of Germany, a more
reliable decision might reasonably have been looked for. On February
20, fresh enquiries and complaints concerning the news which had come
to Nuremberg of Luther’s approval of organised resistance, reached
Veit Dietrich, from the Council clerk, Spengler, and were duly
transmitted to Luther (see above, p. 58 f.). Luther now thought it
advisable, on account of the charge of having retracted his previous
opinion, to justify himself to Spengler and the magistrates. In his
written reply of February 15, he assured the clerk, that he “was not
conscious of such a retractation.” For, to the antecedent, he still
adhered as before, viz. that it was necessary to obey the Emperor and
to keep his laws. As for the conclusion, that the Emperor decrees
that in such a case he may be resisted, this, he says, “was an
inference of the jurists, not of our own; should they bring forward
a proof in support of this conclusion—which as yet they have not
done—(‘_probationem exspectamus, quam non videmus_’)—we shall be
forced to admit that the Emperor has renounced his rights in favour
of a political and Imperial law which supersedes the natural law.” Of
the Divine law and of the Bible teaching, which Luther had formerly
advocated with so much warmth, we find here no mention.[158]
The scruples of the magistrates of Nuremberg were naturally not set
at rest by such answers, but continued as strong as ever. After the
League had already been entered into, an unknown Nuremberg councillor
of Lutheran sympathies, wrote again to the highest theological
authority in Wittenberg for information as to its legality. In his
reply Luther again threw off all responsibility, referring him, even
more categorically than before, to the politicians: “They must take it
upon their own conscience and see whether they are in the right....
If they have right on their side, then the League is well justified.”
Personally he preferred to refrain from pronouncing any opinion,
and this on religious grounds, because such leagues were frequently
entered into “in reliance on human aid,” and had also been censured
by the Prophets of the Old Covenant. Had he chosen, the distinguished
Nuremberger might have taken these words as equivalent to a doubt as
to the moral character of the League of Schmalkalden. Furthermore,
Luther adds: “A good undertaking and a righteous one” must, in order
to succeed, rely on God rather than on men. “What is undertaken in
real confidence in God, ends well, even though it should be mistaken
and sinful,” and the contrary likewise holds good; for God is jealous
of His honour even in our acts.[159]
The citizens of Nuremberg had, in the meantime, on February 19, sent
to the Saxon envoys their written refusal to join the League of
Schmalkalden. The magistrates therein declared that they were still
convinced (as Luther had been formerly) that resistance to the Emperor
was forbidden by Holy Writ, and that the reasons to the contrary
advanced by the learned men of Saxony were insufficient.[160] George,
Elector of the Franconian part of Brandenburg, who was otherwise one of
the most zealous supporters of the innovations, also refused to join
the League.
The memorandum in which Luther, Jonas, Bugenhagen and Melanchthon had
declared, in March, 1530, that the employment of force in defence of
the Gospel “could not in any way be reconciled with Scripture” (above,
p. 51 f.) was kept a secret. Not even Melanchthon himself was permitted
to send it to his friend Camerarius, though he promised to show it him
on a visit.[161] Myconius, however, sent it from Gotha confidentially
to Lang at Erfurt, on September 19, 1530, and wrote at the same time:
“I am sending you the opinion of Luther and Philip, but on condition
that you show it to no one. For it is not good that Satan’s cohorts
should be informed of all the secrets of Christ; besides, there are
some amongst us too weak to be able to relish such solid food.”[162]
In spite of these precautions copies of the “counsel” came into
circulation. The text reached Cochlæus, who forthwith, in 1531, had it
printed as a document throwing a timely light on the belligerent League
entered into at Schmalkalden in that year. He subjoined a severe,
running criticism, a reply by Paul Bachmann, Abbot of the monastery of
Altenzell, and other writings.[163]
Cochlæus pointed out, that it was not the Emperor but Luther, who had
been a persecutor of the Gospel for more than twelve years. Should,
however, the Emperor persecute the true Gospel of Christ, then the
exhortation contained in Luther’s memorandum patiently to allow things
to take their course and even to suffer martyrdom, would be altogether
inadmissible, because there existed plenty means of obtaining redress;
in such a case God was certainly more to be obeyed than the Emperor;
any Prince who should assist the Emperor in such an event must be
looked upon as a tyrant and ravening wolf; it was, on the contrary,
the duty of the Princes to risk life and limb should the Gospel and
true faith of their subjects be menaced; and in the same way the towns
and all their burghers must offer resistance; this would be no revolt,
seeing that the Imperial authority would be tyrannously destroying
the historic ecclesiastical order as handed down, in fact, the Divine
order. Luther’s desire, Cochlæus writes, that each one should answer
for himself to the Emperor, was unreasonable and quite impossible for
the unlearned. Finally, he warmly invites the doctors of the new faith
to return to Mother Church.[164]
The author of the other reply to Luther’s secret memorandum dealt more
severely with it. Abbot Bachmann declares, that it was not inspired by
charity but by the cunning and malice of the old serpent. “As long as
Luther had a free hand to carry on his heresies unopposed, he raged
like a madman, called the Pope Antichrist, the Emperor a bogey, the
Princes fools, tyrants and jackanapes, worse even than the Turks; but,
now that he foresees opposition, the old serpent turns round and faces
his tail, simulating a false humility, patience and reverence for the
authorities, and says: ‘A Christian must be ready to endure violence
from his rulers!’ Yet even this assertion is not true always and
everywhere....” Should a ruler really persecute the Divine teaching,
then it would be necessary to defend oneself against him. “I should
have had to write quite a big book,” he concludes, “had I wished to
reply one by one to all the sophistries which Luther accumulates in
this his counsel.”[165]
_The League of Schmalkalden and the Religious Peace of Nuremberg._
The League of Schmalkalden was first drawn up and subscribed to by
Johann, Elector of Saxony, and Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, on February
27, 1531. The other members affixed their signatures to the document
at Schmalkalden on March 29. The League comprised, in addition to
the Electorate of Saxony and the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the
Landgraviate of Hesse under Philip, the prime mover of the undertaking,
and was also subscribed to by Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, Counts Gebhard
and Albert of Mansfeld, and the townships of Strasburg, Ulm, Constance,
Reutlingen, Memmingen, Lindau, Biberach, Isny, Lübeck, Magdeburg and
Bremen.
A wedge had been driven into the unity of Germany at the expense of her
internal strength and external development. What had been initiated
at Gotha in 1526 by the armed coalition between Landgrave Philip of
Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, in the interests of the religious
innovations, was now consummated.
The obligation to which the members of the League of Schmalkalden
pledged themselves by oath was as follows: “That where one party is
attacked or suffers violence for the Word of God or for causes arising
from it, or on any other pretext, each one shall treat the matter in no
other way than as though he himself were attacked, and shall therefore,
without even waiting for the others, come to the assistance of the
party suffering violence, and succour him to the utmost of his power.”
The alliance, which was first concluded for six years, was repeatedly
renewed later and strengthened by the accession of new members.
Luther, for his part, had now arrived at the goal whither his steps
had been tending and towards which so many of the statements contained
in his letters and writings had pointed, inspired as they were by a
fiery prepossession in favour of his cause. It suited him admirably,
that, when the iron which had so long been heating came upon the
anvil, he should remain in the background, leaving to the lawyers the
first place and the duty of tendering opinions. In his eyes, however,
the future success of the League, in view of its then weakness, was
still very doubtful. Should the Schmalkalden conference turn out to
be the commencement of a period of misfortune for the innovations,
still, thanks to the restraint which Luther had imposed on himself, in
spite of his being the moving spirit and the religious link between
the allies, his preaching of the Evangel would be less compromised.
The miseries of the Peasant War, which had been laid to his account,
the excesses of the Anabaptists against public order, the unpopularity
which he had earned for himself everywhere on account of the revolts
and disturbance of the peace, were all of a nature to make him more
cautious. There are many things to show, that, instead of promoting
the outbreak of hostilities in the days immediately subsequent to
the Diet of Augsburg, he would very gladly have contented himself
with the assurance, that, for the present, the Reichstagsabschied not
being capable of execution, things might as well take their course. By
this policy he would gain time; he was also anxious for the new faith
quietly to win new ground, so as to demonstrate to the Emperor by
positive proofs the futility of any proceedings against himself.
The wavering attitude of many of the Catholic Estates at Augsburg had
inspired him with great hopes of securing new allies. It there became
apparent that either much had been rotten for a long time past in that
party of the Diet which hitherto had been faithful to the Pope, or that
the example of the Protesters had proved infectious.
Wider prospects were also opening out for Lutheranism. In Würtemberg
Catholicism was menaced by the machinations of the Landgrave of Hesse.
There seemed a chance of the towns of Southern Germany being won back
from Zwinglian influences and making common cause with Wittenberg.
Henry the Eighth’s failure in his divorce proceedings also raised
the hopes of the friends of the new worship that England, too, might
be torn away from the Papal cause. At the conclusion of the Diet,
Bugenhagen had been summoned by the magistrates of Lübeck in order to
introduce the new Church system in that city.
In Bavaria there was danger lest the jealousy of the Dukes at the
growth of the house of Habsburg, and their opposition to the expected
election of Ferdinand as King, should help in the spread of schism.
It is noteworthy that Luther’s letter to Ludwig Senfl, the eminent and
not unfriendly musician and composer, bandmaster to Duke William and
a great favourite at the Court of Bavaria, should have been sent just
at this time. To him Luther was high in his praise of the Court: Since
the Dukes of Bavaria were so devoted to music, he must extol them, and
give them the preference over all other Princes, for friends of music
must necessarily possess a good seed of virtue in their soul. This
connection with Senfl he continued in an indirect fashion.[166]
The best answer to the resolutions passed at Augsburg seemed to the
first leader of the movement to lie in expansion, i.e. in great
conquests, to be achieved in spite of all threats of violence.
Instead of having recourse to violence, the Empire, however, entered
into those negotiations which were ultimately to lead, in 1532, to the
so-called Religious Peace of Nuremberg. At about this time Luther sent
a missive to his Elector in which his readiness for a religious war is
perfectly plain.
The document, which was composed jointly with the other Wittenberg
theologians, and for the Latinity of which Melanchthon may have been
responsible, treats, it would appear, of certain Imperial demands for
concessions made at the Court of the Elector on September 1, 1531,
previous to the Schmalkalden conference. These demands manifest the
utmost readiness on the part of the authorities of the Empire to
make advances. Yet Luther in his reply refuses to acquiesce even in
the proposal that people everywhere should be allowed to receive the
Sacrament under one kind, according to the ritual hitherto in use. We
are bound to declare openly and at all times, he says, that all those
who refrain from receiving under both kinds are guilty of sin. He
continues, referring to the other points under debate: It is true that
we are told of the terrible consequences which must result should “war
and rebellion break out, the collapse of all public order fall like a
scourge upon Germany, and the Turks and other foreign powers subjugate
the divided nation. To this our reply is: Sooner let the world perish
than have peace at the expense of the Evangel. We know our teaching is
certain; not a hair’s breadth may we yield for the sake of the public
peace. We must commend ourselves to God, Who has hitherto protected
His Church during the most terrible wars, and Who has helped us beyond
all expectation.”[167]
This argument based on the Evangel cuts away the ground from under all
Luther’s previous more moderate counsels.
The religious peace of Nuremberg was in the end more favourable to
him than he could have anticipated. To his dudgeon, however, he had
to remain idle while the guidance of the movement was assumed almost
entirely by the League of Schmalkalden, the fact that the League was a
military one supplying a pretext for dispossessing him more and more
of its direction. Already, in 1530, he had been forced to look on
while Philip made advances to the sectaries of Zürich and the other
Zwinglian towns of Switzerland, and concluded a treaty with them on
November 16 for mutual armed assistance in the event of an attack on
account of the faith. “This will lead to a great war,” he wrote to the
Elector, “and, as your Electoral Highness well knows, in such a war we
shall be defending the error concerning the Sacrament, which will thus
become our own; from this may Christ, my Lord, preserve your Electoral
Highness.”[168]
His apprehensions, lest the good repute of his cause should be damaged
by unjust bloodshed, grew, when, in 1534, the warlike Landgrave set out
for Würtemberg.
It was a crying piece of injustice and violence when Philip of Hesse,
after having allied himself with France, by means of a lucky campaign,
robbed King Ferdinand of Würtemberg and established the new faith in
that country by reinstating the Lutheran Duke Ulrich.[169]
Before the campaign Luther had declared that it was “contrary to the
Gospel,” and would “bring a stain upon our teaching,” and that “it was
wrong to disturb or violate the peace of the commonwealth.”[170] He
hinted at the same time that he did not believe in a successful issue:
“No wise man,” he said subsequently, “would have risked it.”[171]—Yet,
when the whole country was in the hands of the conqueror, when a
treaty of peace had been signed in which the articles on religion were
purposely framed in obscure and ambiguous terms, while the prospects of
the new faith, in view of Ulrich’s character, seemed excellent, Luther
expressed his joy and congratulations to the Hessian Court through
Justus Menius, a preacher of influence: “We rejoice that the Landgrave
has returned happily after having secured peace. It is plain that this
is God’s work; contrary to the general expectation He has set our fears
to rest! He Who has begun the work will also bring it to a close.
Amen.”[172]
Luther himself tells us later what foreign power it was that had
rendered this civil war in the very heart of Germany possible. “Before
he [the Landgrave] reinstated the Duke of Würtemberg he was in France
with the King, who lent him 200,000 coronati to carry on the war.”[173]
The fear of an impending great war between the religious parties in
Germany was gradually dispelled. The object of the members of the
League of Schmalkalden in seeking assistance from France and England
was to strengthen their position against a possible attack on the part
of the Emperor; at the same time, by refusing to lend any assistance
against the Turks, they rendered him powerless.
Luther now ventured to prophesy an era of peace. We shall have
peace, he said, and there is no need to fear a war on account of
religion. “But questions will arise concerning the bishoprics and the
foundations,” as the Emperor is trying to get the rich bishoprics into
his hands, and the other Princes likewise; “this will lead to quarrels
and blows, for others also want their share.”[174] This confirms the
observation made above: In place of a religious struggle the Princes
preferred to wrangle over ecclesiastical property and rights, of which
they were jealous. Thus Luther’s prediction concerning the character
of the struggle in the years previous to the Schmalkalden and Thirty
Years’ War was not so far wrong.
_Luther and the Religious War in Later Years._
Luther was never afterwards to revert to his original disapproval of
armed resistance to the Emperor.
In his private conversations we frequently find, on the contrary,
frank admissions quite in agreement with the above remark on “war and
rebellion” being justified by the Divine and indestructible Evangel.
It is not only lawful, he says, but necessary to fight against the
Emperor in the cause of the Evangel. “Should he begin a war against
our religion, our worship and our Church, then he is a tyrant. Of
this there is no question. Is it not lawful to fight in defence of
piety? Even nature demands that we should take up arms in defence of
our children and our families. Indeed, I shall, if possible, address
a writing to the whole world exhorting all to the defence of their
people.”[175]
Other similar statements are met with in his Table-Talk at a later
date. “It is true a preacher ought not to fight in his own defence,
for which reason I do not take a sword with me when I mount the
pulpit, but only on journeys.”[176] “The lawyers,” he said, on
February 7, 1538, “command us to resist the Emperor, simply desiring
that a madman should be deprived of his sword.... The natural law
requires that if one member injure another he be put under restraint,
made a prisoner and kept in custody. But from the point of view of
theology, there are doubts (Matt. v., 1 Peter ii.). I reply, however,
that statecraft permits, nay commands, self-defence, so that whoever
does not defend himself is regarded as his own murderer,” in spite
of the fact, that, as a Christian and “believer in the Kingdom of
Christ, he must suffer all things, and may not in this guise either
eat or drink or beget children.” In many cases it is necessary to
put away “the _Christianum_ and bring to the fore the _politicam
personam_,”[177] just as a man may slay incontinently the violator of
his wife. “We are fighting, not against Saul, but against Absalom.”
Besides, the Emperor might not draw the sword without the consent of
the Seven Electors. “The sword belongs to us, and only at our request
may he use it.”[178] “Without the seven he has no power; indeed,
if even one is not for him, his power is nil and he is no longer
monarch.... I do not deprive the Emperor of the sword, but the Pope,
who has no business to lord it and act as a tyrant.”[179] “The Emperor
will not commence a war on his own account but for the sake of the
Pope, whose vassal he has become; he is only desirous of defending the
abominations of the Pope, who hates the Gospel and thinks of nothing
but his own godless power.”[180]
Luther, in his anger against the Papists and the priests, goes so far
as to place them on a par with the Turks and to advise their being
slaughtered;[181] this he did, for instance, in May, 1540. In 1539 he
says: “Were I the Landgrave, I should set about it, and either perish
or else slay them because they refuse peace in a good and just cause;
but as a preacher it does not beseem me to counsel this, much less
to do it myself.”[182] The Papal Legate, Paolo Vergerio, when with
Luther in 1535, expressed to him his deep indignation at the deeds of
King Henry VIII. of England, who had put to death Cardinal John Fisher
and Sir Thomas More. Luther wrote to Melanchthon of Vergerio’s wrath
and his threats against the King, but shared his feelings so little
as actually to say: “Would that there were a few more such kings of
England to put to death these cardinals, popes and legates, these
traitors, thieves, robbers, nay, devils incarnate.” Such as they, he
says, plunder and rob the churches and are worse than a hundred men
of the stamp of Verres or a thousand of that of Dionysius. “How is it
that Princes and lords, who are always complaining to us of the injury
done to the churches, endure it?”[183]
Even in official memoranda Luther soon threw all discretion to
the winds, and ventured to speak most strongly in favour of armed
resistance.
Such was the memorandum, of January, 1539, addressed to the Elector
Johann Frederick and signed at Weimar by Jonas, Bucer and Melanchthon,
as well as Luther. The Elector had asked for it owing to the dangerous
position of the League of Schmalkalden, now that peace had been
concluded between the Emperor and Francis I. of France. He had also
enquired how far the allies might take advantage of the war with
the Turks; and whether they might make their assistance against the
Turks contingent upon certain concessions being granted to the new
worship. The second question will be dealt with later;[184] as to the
first, whether resistance to the Emperor was allowed, the signatories
replied affirmatively in words which go further than any previous
admission.[185]
They had already, they say, “given their answer and opinion, and
there was no doubt that this was the Divine truth which we are bound
to confess even at the hour of death, viz. that not only is defence
permitted, but a protest is verily, and indeed, incumbent on all.”
Here it will be observed that Luther no longer says merely that the
lawyers inferred this from the Imperial law, but that God, “to Whom
we owe this duty,” commanded that “idolatry and forbidden worship”
should not be tolerated. Numerous references to the “Word of God”
regarding the authorities were adduced in support of this contention
(Ps. lxxxii. 3; Exod. xx. 7; Ps. ii. 10, 11; 1 Tim. i. 9). It is
pointed out how in the Sacred Books the “Kings of Juda are praised for
exterminating idolatry.” “Every father is bound to protect his wife
and child from murder, and there is no difference between a private
murderer and the Emperor, should he attempt unjust violence outside
his office.” The case is on all fours with one where the “overlord
tries to impose on his subjects blasphemy and idolatry,” hence war
must be waged, just as “Constantine fell upon Licinius, his ally and
brother-in-law.” David, Ezechias and other holy kings likewise risked
life and limb for the honour of God. “This is all to be understood as
referring to defence.” But “where the ban has been proclaimed against
one or more of the allies,” “discord has already broken out.” Those
under the ban have lost “position and dignity,” and may commence the
attack without further ado. Still, “it is not for us to assume that
hostilities should be commenced at once”; this is the business of
those actually concerned.
Such was the advice of Luther and those mentioned above to the Elector,
when he was about to attend a meeting of the League of Schmalkalden at
Frankfurt, where another attempt was to be made to prevent the outbreak
of hostilities by negotiations with the Emperor’s ministers. Luther was
apprehensive of war as likely to lead to endless misfortunes, yet his
notion that “idolatry” must be rooted out would allow of no yielding
on his part. “It is almost certain that this memorandum was made use
of at the negotiations preliminary to the Frankfurt conference, seeing
that the Elector in the final opinion he addressed to his councillors
repeats it almost word for word.”[186] The memorandum was probably
drawn up by Melanchthon.
At that very time Luther seems also to have received news from
Brandenburg that Joachim II., the Elector, was about to Protestantise
his lands. Such tidings would naturally make him all the more defiant.
Joachim, in spite of his sympathies for Lutheranism, had hitherto
refrained from formally embracing it, not wishing to come into conflict
with the Emperor. In 1539, however, he publicly apostatised, casting
to the winds all his earlier promises. As Calvin wrote to Farel, in
November, 1539, Joachim had informed the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, his
chief tempter, that he had now made up his mind to “accept the Gospel
and to exterminate Popery,”[187] and this he did with the best will,
though he took no part in the Schmalkalden War against the Emperor. In
his case politics and a disinclination to make war on the Emperor were
the determining factors.
While Joachim was still quietly pursuing his subversive plans in the
March of Brandenburg, the ever-recurring question was already being
discussed anew amongst the Lutherans in that quarter, viz. whether
Luther had not previously, and with greater justice, declared himself
against resistance, and whether he was not therefore hostile to the
spirit of the League of Schmalkalden.
A nobleman, Caspar von Kokeritz, probably one of Joachim’s advisers,
requested Luther to furnish the Protestant preacher at Cottbus, Johann
Ludicke, with a fresh opinion on the lawfulness of resistance. The
request was justified by the difference between Luther’s earlier
standpoint—which was well known at Cottbus—and that which he had
more recently adopted. From the difficulty Luther sought to escape in
a strongly worded letter to Ludicke, dated February 8, 1539, which is
in several ways remarkable.[188]
In this letter the lawyers and the Princes again loom very large.
They had most emphatically urged the employment of force, and “very
strong reasons exist against my opposing this desire and plan of
our party.” In his earlier memorandum[189] he had been thinking of
the Emperor as Emperor, but now he had come to look on him as what
he really was, viz. as a mere “hireling” of the Pope. The Pope is
desirous of carrying out his “diabolical wickedness” with the help
of the Emperor. “Hence, if it is lawful to fight against the Turks
and to defend ourselves against them, how much more so against the
Pope, who is worse?” Still, he was willing to stand by his earlier
opinion, provided only that Pope, Cardinals and Emperor would admit
that they were all of them the devil’s own servants; “then my
advice will be the same as before, viz. that we yield to the heathen
tyrants.” Other reasons too had led him, so he says, to discard his
previous opinion, but he is loath to commit them to writing for fear
lest something might reach the ears of “those abominable ministers of
Satan.” Instead, he launches out into biblical proofs, urging that the
“German Princes,” who together with the Emperor governed the realm,
“_communi consilio_,” had more right to withstand the Emperor than
the Jewish people when they withstood Saul, or those others who, in
the Old Testament, resisted the authorities, and yet met with the
Divine approval. The constitution of the Empire might not be altered
by the Emperor, “who is not the monarch,” and “least of all in the
devil’s cause. He may not be aware that it is this cause that he is
furthering, but we know for certain that it is. Let what I have said
be enough for you, and leave the rest to the teaching of the Spirit.
Let your exhortation be to ‘render unto the Kaiser the things that are
the Kaiser’s.’ _Ceterum secretum meum mihi._”[190]
It is not difficult from the above to guess the “secret”: it was the
impending apostasy of the Electorate of Brandenburg.
Luther had already several times come into contact with Joachim II.
The Elector’s mother was friendly with him and came frequently to
Wittenberg. Concerning her foes Luther once wrote to Jonas: “May
the Lord Jesus give me insight and eloquence against the darts of
Satan.”[191] In his letter of congratulation to the Elector on his
apostasy he hints more plainly at the opponents to whom he had
referred darkly in his letter to Ludicke: “I am less concerned about
the subtlety of the serpents than about the growl of the lion, which
perchance, coming from those in high places, may disquiet your
Electoral Highness.”[192]
When the religious war of Schmalkalden at last broke out, the foes
of Wittenberg recalled Luther’s biblical admonitions in 1530 against
the use of arms in the cause of the Gospel, which Cochlæus had
already collected and published. These they caused to be several
times reprinted (1546), with the object of showing the injustice of
the protesters’ attitude by the very words of the Reformer, who had
died just before. The Wittenberg theologians replied (1547), but
their answer only added to the tangle of the network of evasions.
As a counter-blast they printed Luther’s later memoranda, or
“Conclusions,” in favour of the use of force, adding prefaces by
Melanchthon and Bugenhagen; where the prefaces come to deal with the
awkward statement made by Luther in 1530, the writers have recourse
to the device of questioning its authenticity; this Melanchthon
does merely incidentally, Bugenhagen of set purpose.[193] According
to Bugenhagen, who, as a matter of fact, had himself assisted in
drawing up the statement, it deserved to be relegated to the domain
of fiction; Luther’s enemies, he says, had fabricated the document
in order to injure the Evangel. He even asserted that he could quote
Luther’s own assurances in this matter; according to Caspar Cruciger,
Luther had declared in his presence that the memorandum of 1530 had
not “emanated” from him, though “carried the rounds by his enemies.”
Bugenhagen was unable to understand, so he says, how his own name came
to be there, and repeatedly he speaks of the document as the “alleged”
letter. He also tells us that he had repudiated it as early as 1531,
immediately after its publication by Cochlæus; if this be true, then it
is difficult to explain away his denial as due to mere forgetfulness.
His statements are altogether at variance with what we are told by
the physician, Matth. Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, who was always
opposed to the war, and who, in his tract of 1552, “A Warning against
Unrighteous Ways,” etc., blames Bugenhagen for his repudiation of
Luther’s authority.[194] From the above it is evident that we have
no right to praise Bugenhagen, as has been done in modern days, “for
the fire with which he was wont to advocate the truth.” Regarding
Melanchthon’s love of truth we shall have more to say later.
* * * * *
On looking back over the various statements made by Luther concerning
armed resistance, we cannot fail to be struck by their diversity; the
testimony they afford is the reverse of favourable to their author’s
consistency and honesty.
By his very nature Luther felt himself drawn to proclaim the right of
armed resistance in the cause of the Evangel. Of this feeling we have
indications even at an early date in certain unguarded outbursts which
were repeated at intervals in such a way as to leave no doubt as to
his real views. Yet, until 1530, his official and public statements,
particularly to the Princes, speak quite a different language. The
divergence was there and it was impossible to get rid of it either
by explanation or by denial. As soon as things seemed about to lead
inevitably to war, Luther saw that the time had come to cast moderation
to the winds. He was unwilling to sacrifice his whole life-work, and
the protesting Estates had no intention of relinquishing their new
rights and privileges. Formerly it had seemed advisable and serviceable
to the spread of the Evangel to clothe it in the garb of submissiveness
to the supreme authority of the Empire and of patient endurance for the
sake of truth, but, after the Diet of Augsburg such considerations no
longer held good. Overcoming whatever hesitation he still felt, Luther
yielded to the urgings of the secular politicians.
From that time his memoranda assumed a different character. At the
commencement of the change their wording betrays the difficulties with
which Luther found himself faced when called upon to reconcile his
later with his earlier views. It was, however, not long before his
combative temper completely got the better of his scruples in Luther’s
writings and letters.
Nothing is more unhistorical than to imagine that his guiding idea
was “By the Word only,” in the sense of deprecating all recourse to
earthly weapons and desiring that the Word should prevail simply by its
own inherent strength. He had spoken out his real mind when he said,
in 1522: “Every power must yield to the Evangel, whether willingly
or unwillingly,” and again, in 1530, “Let things take their course
... even though it come to war or revolt.” Only on these lines can
we explain his action. His firm conviction of his own Divine mission
(below, xvi.) confirms this assumption.
4. The Turks Without and the Turks [Papists] Within the Empire
The stupendous task of repelling the onslaught of the Turkish power,
which had cost Western Christendom such great sacrifices in the past,
was, at the commencement of the third decade of the sixteenth century,
the most pressing one for both Hungary and the German Empire.
Sultan Suleiman the Second’s lust for conquest had, since 1520, become
a subject of the gravest misgivings in the West. With the help of his
countless warlike hordes he had, in 1521, taken Belgrad, the strong
outpost of the Christian powers, and, after a terrible struggle, on
December 25 of the following year, captured from the Knights of St.
John the strategically so important island of Rhodes. There now seemed
every likelihood of these victories being followed up. The Kingdom of
Hungary, which so long and gloriously had stemmed the inroads of the
infidel into Christendom, now felt itself unable to cope single-handed
with the enemy and accordingly appealed to the Emperor for help.
At the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, the Imperial Abschied of April 18
held out a promise of assistance in the near future, and even instanced
tentatively the means to be adopted by the Empire. In the meantime
appeals were to be made to the other Christian powers for help, so that
the final resolutions concerning the plan of defence might be discussed
and settled at the Spires Convention on November 11 of the same year.
Luther thought it his duty to interfere in these preparations.
_Against Assistance for the Turkish War._
The Diet of Nuremberg had re-enacted the Edict of Worms against Luther.
It had requested the Pope to summon a “free, general Council” in
some suitable spot in Germany[195] “in order that good may not be
overborne by evil, and that true believers and subjects of Christ may
be brought to a firm belief in a common faith.” Incensed by the renewal
of the Edict of Worms against his doctrine and person, Luther at once
published an angry work, “Zwey keyserliche uneynige und wydderwertige
Gepott” (1524),[196] in which he declared himself against the granting
of any help whatever against the Turks.
He begins by saying of the authors of the new decree against
Lutheranism, that surely even “pigs and donkeys could see how
blindly and obstinately they were acting; it is abominable that the
Emperor and the Princes should openly deal in lies.” After a lengthy
discussion of the decree, he comes to the question of the help which
was so urgently needed in order to repel the Turks; he says: “Finally
I beg of you all, dear Christians, that you will join in praying to
God for those miserable, blinded Princes, whom no doubt God Himself
has placed over us as a curse, that we may not follow them against the
Turks, or give money for this undertaking; for the Turks are ten times
cleverer and more devout than are our Princes. How can such fools, who
tempt and blaspheme God so greatly, expect to be successful against
the Turks?”[197]
His chief reason for refusing help against the Turks was the blasphemy
against God of which the Princes of the Empire, and the Emperor, had
rendered themselves guilty by withstanding his Evangel.
He declares, “I would ten times rather be dead than listen to such
blasphemy and insolence against the Divine Majesty.... God deliver
us from them, and give us, in His mercy, other rulers. Amen.”—The
Emperor himself he charges with presumption for daring—agreeably
with age-long custom—to style himself the chief Protector of the
Christian faith. “Shamelessly does the Emperor boast of this, he who
is after all but a perishable bag of worms, and not sure of his life
for one moment.” The Divine power of the faith has surely no need of a
protector, he says; he scoffs at him and at the King of England, who
styles himself Defender of the Faith; would that all pious Christians
“would take pity upon such mad, foolish, senseless, raving, witless
fools.”[198]
Even in the midst of the storm caused by his Indulgence Theses, Luther
had already opposed the lending of any assistance against the Turks.
A sermon preached in the winter of 1518, in which he took this line,
was circulated[199] by his friends. When Spalatin enquired of him in
the Elector’s name whether the Turkish War—for which Cardinal Cajetan
was just then asking for help—could be justified by Holy Scripture,
Luther replied, that the contrary could be proved from many passages;
that the Bible was full of the unhappy results of wars undertaken in
reliance on human means; that those wars alone were successful where
heaven fought for the people; that now it was impossible to count upon
victory in view of the corruption of Christendom and the tyranny and
the hostility to Christ displayed by the Roman Church; on the contrary,
God was fighting against them;[200] He must first be propitiated by
tears, prayer, amendment of life and a pure faith. In the Resolutions
on the Indulgence Theses we find the same antipathy to the war, again
justified on similar mystical and polemical grounds.
His words in the Resolutions were even embodied by Rome in one of
the propositions condemned on the proclamation of the ban: “To fight
against the Turks is to withstand God, Who is using them for the
punishment of our sins.”[201]
When, later, he came to approve of and advocate the war against the
Turks, he declared, quite frankly: “I am open to confess that such an
article was mine, and was advanced and defended by me in the past.”
He adds that he would be ready to defend it even now were things in
the same state as then.—But where did he discern any difference?
According to him, people then, before he had instructed them
concerning its origin and office, had no idea of what secular
authority really was. “Princes and lords who desired to be pious,
looked upon their position and office as of no account, not as being
the service of God, and became mere priests and monks.” But then he
had written his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” (1523). Having reinstated
the secular authority, so long “smothered and neglected,” he was loath
to see it summoned against the Turks by the Pope. Besides, he is quite
confident that the Pope had never been in earnest about the Turkish
War; his real aim was to enrich his exchequer.[202]
Luther also explains that from the first he had been inclined to
oppose the granting of any aid against the Turks on the theological
ground embodied in his condemned proposition, viz. that God visits
our sins upon us by means of the Turks. Here again he will not admit
himself to have been in the wrong, for Christians must “endure wrong,
violence or injustice ... not resist evil, but allow and suffer all
things” as the Gospel teaches. Characteristically enough, he appeals
to that “piece of Christian doctrine” according to which the Christian
is to offer his left cheek to him who smites him on the right, and
leave his cloak to the man who takes away his coat. Now, what our
Lord taught in His Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 39 f.), was not, as
he had already pointed out, a mere counsel of perfection, but a real
command; but the “Pope with his schools and convents had made of this
a counsel which it was permissible not to keep, and which a Christian
might neglect, and had thus distorted the words of Christ, taught the
whole world a falsehood, and cheated Christians.”[203] A way out of
the fatal consequences which must ensue, Luther fancies he is able to
find in the distinction between the true Christian and mere worldly
citizen; it was not incumbent on the latter to perform everything that
was binding on the former.
Previous to writing his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” referred to above,
he had again publicly expressed himself as opposed to the efforts of
the Empire on behalf of the Turkish War; though no longer because the
authorities lacked a right sense of their office, or because Christ’s
counsel made submission a duty, but for quite another reason: Before
taking any steps against the Turks it was necessary to resist the
impious dominion of the Pope, compared with which the danger from the
Turks paled into insignificance. “To what purpose is it,” he wrote in
1522, “to oppose the Turk? What harm does the Turk do? He invades a
country and becomes its secular ruler.... The Turk also leaves each one
free to believe as he pleases.” In both respects the Pope is worse;
his invasions are more extensive, and, at the same time, he slays the
souls, so that “as regards both body and soul the government of the
Pope is ten times worse than that of the Turk.... If ever the Turks
were to be exterminated it would be necessary first to begin with the
Pope.” The Christian method of withstanding the Turks would be to
“preach the Gospel to them.”[204] This paved the way for his warning,
in 1524, against complying with the Emperor’s call for assistance in
fighting the Turks (above, p. 77).
Such exhortations not to wage war against the Turks naturally tended to
confuse the multitude to the last degree.
Incautious Lutheran preachers also did their share in stirring up
high and low against the burden of taxes imposed by the wars. Hence
it was quite commonly alleged against the instigator of the religious
innovations that, mainly owing to his action after the Diet of Spires,
there was a general reluctance to grant the necessary supplies,
though the clouds on the eastern horizon of the Empire were growing
ever blacker. After the horrible disaster at Mohacz, in 1526, Luther
therefore found it necessary to exculpate himself before the public.
_In Favour of Assistance for the Turkish War._
Luther gradually arrived at the decision that it was his duty to put
his pen at the service of the war against the Turks.
A change took place in his attitude similar to that which had occurred
in 1525 at the time of the Peasant Rising, which his words, and those
of the Reformed preachers, had done not a little to further.
His friends, he says in 1529, “because the Turk was now so near,” had
insisted on his finishing a writing against them which had already
been commenced; “more particularly because of some unskilful preachers
among us Germans, who, I regret to learn, are teaching the people
that they must not fight against the Turks.” Some, he writes, also
taught, that “it was not becoming for any Christian to wield the
sword”; others went so far as to look forward to the coming of the
Turks and their rule. “And such error and malice amongst the people is
all placed at Luther’s door, as the fruit of my Evangel; in the same
way that I had to bear the blame of the revolt [of the peasants]....
Hence I am under the necessity of writing on the matter and of
exculpating us, both for my own sake and for that of the Evangel ...
in order that innocent consciences may not continue to be deceived
by such calumnies, and be rendered suspicious of me and my teaching,
or be wrongly led to believe that they must not fight against the
Turks.”[205]
In February, 1528, Suleiman II. was in a position to demand that King
Ferdinand should evacuate Buda-Pesth, the capital; it was already
feared that his threat of visiting Ferdinand in Austria might be all
too speedily fulfilled. The Sultan actually commenced, in the spring
of 1529, his great campaign, which brought him to the very walls of
Vienna. The city, however, defended itself with such heroism that the
enemy was at last compelled to withdraw.
In April, 1529, when the reports of the danger which menaced Austria
had penetrated throughout the length and breadth of Germany, Luther at
last published the writing above referred to, viz. “On the Turkish War.”
The booklet he dedicated to that zealous patron of the Reformation,
Landgrave Philip of Hesse. In it his intention is to teach “how to
fight with a good conscience.” He points out how the Emperor, as a
secular ruler, must, agreeably with the office conferred on him by
God, protect his subjects against the Turks, as against murderers
and robbers, with the secular sword, which, however, has nothing to
do with the faith. There were two who must wage the war, Christian
and Charles; but Christian’s duty was merely that of the faithful
everywhere who would pray for the success of the campaign; this was
all that the believers, as such, had to do; Charles would fight,
because the example of Charles the Great would encourage him to
bear the sword bravely, but only against the Turks as robbers and
disturbers of the peace; it would be no Crusade, such as had been
undertaken against the infidel in the foolish days of old. Amongst
the most powerful pages of the work are those in which, regardless
of flattery, he impresses on the German Princes the need of union,
of sacrifice of private interests and of obedience to the guidance
of the Emperor, without which it was useless to hope for anything
in the present critical condition of the Empire. He scourges with a
like severity certain faults into which Germans were prone to fall
when engaged in warfare, viz. to under-estimate the strength of the
enemy, and to neglect following up their victories; instead of this,
they would sit down and tipple until they again found themselves in
straits.[206]
It does not, however, seem that these words of Luther’s on behalf of
the war against the Turks raised any great enthusiasm among the people.
He again took up his pen, and this time more open-heartedly, when,
on October 14, the hour of Vienna’s deliverance came and the last
assault had been happily repulsed. The result was his “Heer-Predigt
widder den Türcken” addressed to all the Germans. Here he sought to
instruct them from Scripture concerning the Turks and the approaching
Last Day. In stirring, homely words he exhorted them to rise and lend
their assistance, pointing out that whoever fell in the struggle died
a martyr. He fired the enthusiasm of his readers by even quoting the
examples of the women and maidens in olden Germany. He also dwelt on
the need of preserving the faith in captivity should it be the lot of
any of the combatants to be taken prisoner, and even exhorted those who
might be sold as slaves not to prove unfaithful by running away from
their lawful masters. He consoled his readers at the same time with the
thought, to which he ever attached such importance, that, after all, in
Turkey the devil did not rage nearly so furiously against Christians
as the devil at home, i.e. the Pope, who was forcing them to deny
Christ.[207]
We likewise find attacks on the Catholic fraction of the German nation,
mingled with exhortations to resist the Turks, in a Preface he composed
in 1530, on the occasion of the republication of an older work dating
from Catholic times, “On the Morals and Religion of the Turks.”[208]
The struggle raging in the heart of Germany, and the opposition of the
Protestant Princes and Estates to the Emperor as head of the Realm,
constituted the greatest obstacle to any scheme for united and vigorous
action against the Turks. Hence to some extent Luther was indirectly
responsible for the growth of the Ottoman Empire. On one occasion
Luther gave vent to the following outburst: “Would that we Germans
stood shoulder to shoulder, then it would be easy for us to resist
the Turk. If we had 50,000 foot and 10,000 horse constantly in the
field ... we could well withstand them and defend ourselves.”[209] The
Sultan had, long before, taken into his calculations the dissensions
created by Luther in the Empire.[210] On one occasion, about 1532, as
we know from Luther’s “Talk Table,” Suleiman made enquiries of a German
named Schmaltz, who was attached to an embassy, concerning Luther’s
circumstances, and asked how old he was. To the answer that he was
forty-eight years of age he replied: “I would he were still younger,
for he would find a gracious master in me.” Luther, when this was
reported to him, made the sign of the cross and said: “May God preserve
me from such a gracious master.”[211]
Luther, as we shall see below, had occasion to write against the
Turks even at a later date. His writings had, however, no widespread
influence; they were read only by one portion of the German nation,
being avoided by the rest as works of an arch-heretic. Many marvelled
at his audacity in presuming to teach the whole nation, and at his
speaking as though he had been the leader of the people. Catholics
were inclined, as Luther himself complains, to regard the growth of
the Turkish power as God’s chastisement for the apostasy of a part of
Germany and for the Emperor’s remissness in the matter of heresy.
Even in his very tracts against the Turks, Luther did much to weaken
the force of his call to arms. His aim should have been to inspire the
people with enthusiasm and a readiness to sacrifice themselves, which
might, in turn, have encouraged and fired the nobles; but, as the
experience of earlier ages had already proved, religion alone was able
to produce such a change in the temper of a nation. Protection for the
common, spiritual heritage, defence of the religion and civilisation
of the West, such was the only appeal which could have fired people’s
minds. And it was this banner which the Church unfurled, both before
and after Luther’s day, which had led to victory at the battle of
Lepanto and again at the raising of the siege of Vienna. Luther, on
the contrary, in his writing of 1529, repels so vehemently any idea
of turning the contest with the infidel into a crusade, that he even
has it that, “were I a soldier and descried on the field of battle a
priestly banner, or one bearing a cross, or even a crucifix, I would
turn and run as though the devil were at my heels; and, if, by God’s
Providence, they nevertheless gained the victory, still I should take
no share in the booty or the triumph.”[212]
To insure a favourable issue to the campaign it was also necessary
that the position of the Emperor as head of Christendom should be
recognised, and the feeling of common interest between the sovereigns
and nations be kindled anew. Yet the progress of the innovations, and
Luther’s own menacing attitude towards the Empire and the Catholic
sovereigns, was contributing largely to shatter both the authority
of the Empire and the old European unity, not to speak of the injury
done to the Papal authority, to whose guidance the common welfare of
Christendom had formerly been confided.
Luther allowed his polemics to blunt entirely the effect of his
summons. As, however, what he says affords us an insight into the
working of his mind, it is of interest to the psychologist.
In the second of the two writings referred to above, the
“Heer-Predigt,” despite the general excellence of its contents, the
constant harping on the nearness of the Last Day could not fail
to exert an influence the reverse of that desired. At the very
commencement he ventilates his views on the prophecies of Daniel; he
likewise will have it that the prophecy concerning Gog and Magog in
Ezechiel also refers to the Turks, and that we even read of them in
the Apocalypse; their victories portended the end of all things. His
last warnings run as follows: “In the end it will come about that
the devil will attack Christendom with all his might and from every
side.... Therefore let us watch and be valiant in a firm faith in
Christ, and let each one be obedient to the authorities and see what
God will do, leaving things to take their course; for there is nothing
good to be hoped for any more.”[213] Such pessimism was scarcely
calculated to awaken enthusiasm.
Nor does he conceal his fears lest a successful campaign against
the Turks should lead the Emperor and the Catholic Princes to turn
their arms against the Evangelicals, in order to carry out the Edict
of Worms. He so frequently betrays this apprehension that we might
almost be led to think that he regarded the Turkish peril as a welcome
impediment, did we not know on the other hand how greatly he came to
dread it as he advanced in years. This anxiety concerning possible
intentions of the Catholics he felt so keenly in 1529 as to append to
the second of his tracts on the Turkish War a peculiarly inappropriate
monition, viz. that Germans “must not allow themselves to be made use
of against the Evangel, or fight against or persecute Christians;
for thus they would become guilty of innocent blood and be no better
than the Turks.... In such a case no subject is in the least bound to
obey the authorities, in fact, where this occurs, all authority is
abrogated.”[214]
Injudicious considerations such as these are also to be found in
the earlier tract; here, however, what is most astonishing is his
obstinacy in re-affirming his earlier doctrine, already condemned by
Rome, viz. that it was not becoming in Christians, as such, to resist
the Turk by force of arms, seeing that God was using the Turks for the
chastisement of Christendom. “As we refuse to learn from Scripture,”
he says, speaking in his wonted mystical tone, “the Turk must teach
us with the sword, until we learn by sad experience that Christians
must not fight or resist evil. Fools’ backs must be dusted with the
stick.”[215] He also expresses his misgivings because “Christians
and Princes are so greatly urged, driven and incited to attack the
Turks and fall upon them, before we have amended our own lives and
begun to live as true Christians”; on this account “war was not to be
recommended.”[216] Real amendment would have consisted in accepting
the Lutheran Evangel. Yet, instead of embracing Lutheranism, “our
Princes are negotiating how best to molest Luther and the Evangel;
there, surely, is the real Turk.”[217] Because they had ordered fasts,
and penitential practices, and Masses of the Holy Ghost, in order to
implore God’s protection against the Turk, the Catholic Princes drew
down upon themselves the following rebuke: “Shall God be gracious to
you, faithless rulers of unfortunate subjects! What devil urges you to
make such a fuss about spiritual matters, which are not your business,
but concern God and the conscience alone, and to do the work God has
committed to you and which does concern you and your poor people,
so lazily and slothfully even in this time of the direst need, thus
merely hindering those who would fain give you their help?”[218]
Here again he was promoting dissension, indeed, generally speaking,
his exhortations were more a hindrance than a help; again and again
he insists on entangling himself anew in his polemics against Popery,
and this in spite of the urgent needs of Germany. Led by the Pope,
the Catholic Princes have become “our tyrants,” who “imprison us,
exercise compulsion, banish and burn us, behead and drown us and treat
us worse than do the Turks.”[219]
“In short, wherever we go, the devil, our real landlord, is at home.
If we visit the Turk, we find the devil; if we remain under the rule
of the Pope, we fall into hell. There is nothing but devils on either
side and everywhere.” Thus it must be with mankind, he says, referring
to 2 Timothy iii. 1, when the world reaches its end.[220]
In “what manner I advise war on the Turk, this my booklet shall be
witness.”[221]
Cochlæus, Luther’s opponent, collected the contradictions contained
in the latter’s statements on the Turkish War, and published them in
1529 at Leipzig in the form of an amusing Dialogue. In this work one
of the characters, Lutherus, attacks the war in Luther’s own words,
the second, Palinodus, defends it, again with Lutheran phrases, whilst
an ambassador of King Ferdinand plays the part of the interested
enquirer. The work instances fifteen “contradictions.”[222]
Luther personally acted wisely, for it was of the utmost importance to
him to destroy the impression that he stood in the way of united action
against the Turks. This the Princes and Estates who protested at the
Diet of Spires were far less willing to do. They cast aside all scruple
and openly refused to lend their assistance against the Turks unless
the enactment against the religious innovations were rescinded. It is
true that Vienna was then not yet in any pressing danger, though, on
the other hand, news had been received at Spires that the Turkish fleet
was cruising off the coasts of Sicily. It was only later on in the
year, when the danger of Austria and for the German Princes began to
increase, that the Protesters showed signs of relenting. They also saw
that, just then, their refusal to co-operate would be of no advantage
to the new Church. Landgrave Philip of Hesse nevertheless persisted in
his obstinate refusal to take any part in the defence of the Empire.
Philip made several attempts to induce Brück, the Chancellor of the
Saxon Electorate, and Luther, to bring their influence to bear on the
Elector Johann Frederick so that he might take a similar line. Brück
was sufficiently astute to avoid making any promise. Luther did not
venture openly to refuse, though his position as principal theological
adviser would have qualified him to explain to the Landgrave the error
of his way. In his reply he merely finds fault with the “Priesthood,”
who “are so obstinate and defiant and trust in the Emperor and in human
aid.” God’s assistance against the Turks may be reckoned on, but if
it came to the point, and he were obliged to speak to the Elector, he
would “advise for the best,” and, may God’s Will be done.[223]
When the Turks, in order to avenge the defeat they had suffered before
the walls of Vienna, prepared for further attacks upon the West,
frightful rumours began to spread throughout Germany, adding greatly
to Luther’s trouble of mind. At the Coburg, where he then was, gloomy
forebodings of the coming destruction of Germany at the hand of the
Turk associated themselves with other disquieting considerations.
In one of his first letters from the Coburg he says to Melanchthon,
Spalatin and Lindemann, who were then at the Diet of Augsburg: “My
whole soul begins to revolt against the Turks and Mohammed, for I see
the intolerable wrath of Satan who rages so proudly against the souls
and bodies of men. I shall pray and weep and never rest until heaven
hears my cry. You [at Augsburg] are suffering persecution from our
monsters at home, but we have been chosen to witness and to suffer
both woes [viz. Catholicism and the Turks] which are raging together
and making their final onslaught. The onslaught itself proves and
foretells their approaching end and our salvation.”[224]—“All we
now await is the coming of Christ,” so he says on another occasion
in one of his fits of fear; “verily, I fear the Turk will traverse
it [Germany] from end to end.... How often do I think of the plight
of our German land, how often do I sweat, because it will not hear
me.”[225]
Lost in his eschatological dream and misled by his morbid
apprehension, he wrote his Commentary on Ezechiel xxxviii.-xxxix.,
which was at once placed in the hands of the printer; here again he
finds the mischief to be wrought by the Turks at the end of the world
as plainly foretold as in the prophecy of Daniel, the Commentary on
which he had published shortly before.[226]
Everywhere anxiety reigned supreme, for there were lacking both
preparedness and unanimity. The Catholic Princes of the Empire were not
much better than the rest. Petty interests and jealousies outweighed in
many instances a sense of the common needs. At Spires, for instance,
Duke George of Saxony stipulated, as a condition of any promise of
assistance, that he should be given precedence over both the Dukes of
Bavaria. While the Catholic Estates agreed, at the Diet of Augsburg, to
the grants for the war against the Turks, the Protestant Estates were
not to be induced to give a favourable decision until the Emperor had
sanctioned the so-called religious Peace of Nuremberg in 1532.[227]
In the summer of that same year Suleiman passed Buda-Pesth with 300,000
men. Thence he continued his march along the Danube with the intention
of taking Vienna, this time at any cost. The Emperor Charles V.
hurried in person to command the great army which was collecting near
Vienna; the Sultan was to be encountered and a decisive battle fought.
Throughout the Empire the greatest enthusiasm for the cause prevailed.
The Electoral Prince, Joachim of Brandenburg, was nominated by the
Emperor to the command of the troops of the Saxon lowlands, since this
country had not been unanimous in the choice of a Captain, probably
owing to the religious dissensions.
The Protestant Prince Joachim requested a pious letter from Luther.
This Luther sent him, promising him his prayers, and saying that “he
would take the field in spirit with his dear Emperor Carol [as he now
calls him], and fight under his banner against Satan and his members.”
He prayed God to bestow on them all “a glad spirit,” granting them not
to trust in their own strength, but to fight with the “fear of God,
trusting in His Grace alone,” and to ascribe the honour to heaven only;
hitherto there had been too much of the “spirit of defiance on both
sides,” and each party had gone into the field “without God,” “which
on every occasion had been worse for the people of God than for the
enemy.” Luther was evidently quite incapable of writing on the subject
without his polemical ideas casting their shadow over his field of
vision.
The Turks did not venture to give battle, but, to the joy of the
Christian army, retreated, laying waste Styria on their march. The
Imperial troops were disbanded and an armistice was concluded between
King Ferdinand and Suleiman. But in 1536 the hostilities were renewed
by the Turks; Hungary was as good as lost, and in 1537 Ferdinand’s
army suffered in Slavonia the worst reverse, so at least Luther was
informed, since the battle of Mohacz in 1526. On the strength of a
rumour he attributed the misfortune to the treason of the Christian
generals. In his conversations he set down the defeat to the account
of Ferdinand, his zealous Catholic opponent; he had permitted “such
a great and powerful army to be led miserably into the jaws of the
Turks.”[228] Ferdinand, the Emperor’s brother, was, of course, to
blame for the unfortunate issue of the affair; “hitherto the Turk has
been provoked by Ferdinand and has been victorious; when he comes
unprovoked, then he will succumb and be defeated; if the Papists
commence the war they will be beaten.”[229] “Luther saw in the
misfortune of King Ferdinand a just punishment on him and his friends
who angered God and worshipped lies.”[230] He believed the cause of the
success of the Turks to be the “great blasphemy of the Papists against
God and the abominable sin against one and the other Table of the
Commandments of God”; also “the great contempt of God’s Word amongst
our own people.”[231]
While the Protestant Princes and cities again showed a tendency
to exploit the Turkish peril to the advantage of the religious
innovations, Luther, in view of the needs of the time, pulled himself
together and, when consulted, openly advised the Elector Johann
Frederick to give his assistance against the Turks should this be asked
of him. (May 29, 1538.[232])
He writes to the Elector: “‘_Necessitas_’ knows no ‘_legem_,’ and
where there is necessity everything that is termed law, treaty
or agreement ceases.... We must risk both good and evil with our
brothers, like good comrades, as man and wife, father and children
risk all things together.” “Because many pious and honest people will
also have to suffer,” it was meet that the Prince should, “with a good
conscience, render assistance in order to help and protect, not the
tyrants, but the poor little flock.”
Yet, immediately after, he deprives his counsel of most of its weight
by declaring in fatalistic language, that there was nevertheless
little to be hoped for, since God “had fashioned the rod which they
will not be able to resist.”
He tells him concerning King Ferdinand, “that there was nothing to be
anticipated from him, but only trouble and inevitable misfortune”;
of the Catholics in general he assures him, that their “blasphemy”
against the Evangel and their resistance to “their conscience and
the known truth” made it impossible for them to escape a “great
chastisement,” since “God liveth and reigneth.”
Again, as though desirous of deterring the Elector on personal
grounds, he reminds him that they (the “tyrants” as he calls the
Princes of the Catholic party) “had not so far even requested
assistance, and had not been willing to agree to peace though the
need was so great.”[233] He also thoughtfully alludes to the danger
lest the tyrants, after having secured a victory with the help of the
Protestants, should make use of their arms to overthrow the Evangel
by force: “We must be wary lest, should our adversaries vanquish the
Turks—which I cannot believe they will—they then turn their arms
against us,” “which they would gladly do”; but, he adds, “it rests in
God’s hands not in their desire, what they do to us, or what we are to
suffer, as we have experienced so far,” for instance after the retreat
of the Turks from Vienna when, “after all, nothing was undertaken
against us”; for the people would refuse to follow them in any attack
upon the Evangel.
This letter, which has frequently been appealed to by Protestants as
a proof of Luther’s pure, unselfish patriotism, is a strange mixture
of contradictory thoughts and emotions, the product of a mind not
entirely sure of its ground and influenced by all sorts of political
considerations. Of one thing alone was the writer certain, viz. that
the Turk at Rome must be fought against relentlessly.
Luther’s “Table-Talk” and occasional letters supply various traits
to complete the above picture of his attitude towards the Turkish
War. There we find polemical outbursts interspersed with excellent
admonitions to prayer,[234] confutations of the errors of the Turks,
and lamentations on the judgment of God as displayed in these wars.
_Luther on Turks and Papists._
“If Germany had a master,” he says very aptly on one occasion, “it
would be easy for us to withstand the Turk”; but, he continues, “the
Papists are our worst foes, and would prefer to see Germany laid
waste, and this the Turk is desirous of doing.”[235] The Papists are
actually trying to establish the domination of the Turk. “The Pope,”
so he was informed, “refuses, like the King of France, to grant any
assistance to the Emperor against the Turks. See the enormities of
our day! And yet this is the money [which the Pope refused to give]
that the Popes have been heaping up for so many long ages by means of
their Indulgences.”[236] “I greatly fear,” he says to his friends,
“the alliance between the Papists and the Turks by which they intend
to bring us to ruin. God grant that my prophecy may prove false.... If
this enters the heads of the Papists, they will do it, for the malice
of the devil is incredible ... they will plot and scheme how to betray
us and deliver us over into the hands of the Turk.”[237]
Meanwhile he believes that God is fighting for his cause by rendering
the Turks victorious: “See how often the Papists with their hatred of
the Evangel and their trust in the Emperor have been set at nought”;
they had reckoned on the destruction of the Lutherans by means of
Charles the Fifth’s victory over France, but, lo, “a great French army
marches against the Emperor, Italy falls away and the Turk attacks
Germany; this mean that God has dispersed the proud. Ah, my good
God, it is Thou Who hast done this thing!”[238]—On one occasion he
declared: “In order that it might be discerned and felt that God was
not with us in the war against the Turks, He has never inspired our
Princes with sufficient courage and spirit earnestly to set about the
Turkish War.... Nowhere is anything determined upon or carried out....
Why is this? In order that my Article, which Pope Leo condemned, may
remain ever true and uncondemned.”[239]
When, in the spring of 1532, Rome itself stood in fear of the Turk and
many even took to flight, a letter reached Wittenberg announcing the
consternation which prevailed there in the Eternal City. Then probably
it was that Luther spoke the words which have been transmitted in
both the Latin and German versions of the “Table-Talk”: “Should the
Turk advance against Rome, I shall not regret it. For we read in the
Prophet Daniel: ‘He shall fix his tabernacle between the seas upon
a glorious and holy mountain.’” The two seas he imagined to be the
Tyrrhenean and the Adriatic, whilst the holy mountain meant Rome,
“for Rome is holy on account of the many Saints who are buried there.
This is true, for the abomination which is the Pope, was [according
to Daniel ix. 27] to take up its abode in the holy city. If the Turk
reaches Rome, then the Last Day is certainly not far off.”[240]
It would even seem that it was his fervent desire to see Antichrist
ousted by the Turk which allured him into the obscure region of
biblical prophecy.
“Accordingly I hope for the end of the world. The Emperor Charles and
Solimannus represent the last dregs of worldly domination. Christ will
come, for Scripture knows nothing of any other monarchy, and the signs
of the end of the world are already visible.”[241] “The rule of the
Turk was foretold in Daniel and in the Apocalypse that the pious might
not allow themselves to be terrified at his greatness. The prophecy of
Daniel gives us a splendid account of what is to happen till the end
of the world, and describes clearly the reign of Antichrist and of the
Turk.”[242] Finally, Luther is of opinion that at the end of the world
both must be united, viz. the Papal Antichrist and the Turk, because
both had come into being together. About the time of the Emperor
Phocas († 610) Mohammed appeared on the scene of history, and at that
very time too the Bishops of Rome arrogated to themselves the primacy
over the whole Church.[243]
His pseudo-mysticism and factious temper thus continued to play an
unmistakable part in his ideas concerning the Turk.[244]
“Against such might and power [the Turkish] we Germans behave like
pot-bellied pigs, we idle about, gorge, tipple and gamble, and commit
all kinds of wantonness and roguery, heedless of all the great and
pitiful slaughters and defeats which our poor German soldiery have
suffered.”[245] “And, because our German people are a wild and unruly
race, half diabolical and half human, some even desire the advent and
rule of the Turk.”[246]
So scathing a description of the German people leads us to enquire into
his attitude to German nationalism.
5. Luther’s Nationalism and Patriotism
In spite of his outspoken criticism of their faults, Luther recognised
and honoured the good qualities of the Germans. His denunciations at
times were certainly rather severe: “We Germans,” he says, “remain
Germans, i.e. pigs and brutes”;[247] and again, “We vile Germans are
horrid swine”; “for the most part such shocking pigs are we hopeless
Germans that neither modesty, discipline nor reason is to be found in
us”;[248] we are a “nation of barbarians,” etc. Germans, according to
him, abuse the gifts of God “worse than would hogs.”[249] He is fond of
using such language when censuring the corruption of morals which had
arisen owing to abuse and disregard of the Evangel which he preached.
Even where he attempts to explain his manner of proceeding, where,
for instance, he tries to justify the delay in forming the “Assembly
of true Christians,” he knows how to display to the worst advantage
the unpleasing side of the German character. “We Germans are a wild,
savage, blustering people with whom it is not easy to do anything
except in case of dire necessity.”[250]
By the side of such spiteful explosions must be set the many kindlier
and not unmerited testimonies Luther gives to the good qualities
peculiar to the nation.[251] In various passages, more particularly
in his “Table-Talk,” he credits the Germans with perseverance and
steadfastness in their undertakings, also with industry, contentment
and disinterestedness; they had not indeed the grace of the Italians,
nor the eloquence of the French, but they were more honest and
straightforward, and had more homely affection for their good old
customs. He also believes that they had formerly been distinguished for
great fidelity, “particularly in marriage,” though unfortunately this
was no longer the case.[252]
Much more instructive than any such expressions of opinion, favourable
or unfavourable, is the attitude Luther adopted towards the political
questions which concerned the existence, the unity and the greatness of
his country.
Here his religious standpoint induced him to take steps which a true
German could only regret. We have already shown how the defence against
the Turks was hampered by his action. He also appreciably degraded
the Empire in the eyes of the Christian nations.[253] He not merely
attacked the authority of the Emperor and thereby the power which held
together the Empire, by his criticism of the edicts of the Diets, by
the spirit of discord and party feeling he aroused amongst those who
shared his opinions, and by his unmeasured and incessant abuse of the
authorities, but, as years went by, he also came even to approve, as we
have seen above (p. 53 ff.), of armed resistance to the Emperor and the
Empire as something lawful, nay, praiseworthy, if undertaken on behalf
of the new Evangel.
“If it is lawful to defend ourselves against the Turk,” he writes,
“then it is still more lawful to do so against the Pope, who is even
worse. Since the Emperor has associated himself with the defenders of
the Pope, he must expect to be treated as his wickedness deserves.”
“Formerly I advised that we should yield to the Emperor [i.e. not
undertake anything against him]; even now I still say that we should
yield to these heathen tyrants when they—Pope, Cardinals, Bishops,
Emperor, etc.—cease to appeal to the name of Christ, but acknowledge
themselves to be what they really are, viz. slaves of Satan; but if, in
the name of Christ, they wish to stone Christians, then their stones
will recoil on their own heads and they will incur the penalty attached
to the Second Commandment.”[254]
He saw “no difference between an assassin and the Emperor,” should the
latter proceed against his party—a course which, as a matter of fact,
was imposed on the Emperor by the very laws of the Empire. How, he
asks, “can a man sacrifice his body and this poor life in a higher and
more praiseworthy cause” “than in such worship [resistance by violence]
for the saving of God’s honour and the protection of poor Christendom,
as David, Ezechias and other holy kings and princes did?”[255]
Countless examples from the Old Testament such as the above were always
at his command for the purpose of illustrating his arguments.
In the “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” in 1531, he warns the
Imperial power that God, “even though He Himself sit still, may well
raise up a Judas Machabeus” should the Imperial forces have recourse to
arms against the “Evangelicals”; their enemies would learn what their
ancestors had learned in the war with Ziska and the Husites. Resistance
to “bloodhounds” is, after all, mere self-defence. Whoever followed the
Emperor against him and his party became guilty of all the Emperor’s
own “godless abominations.” To instruct “his German people” on this
matter was the object of the writing above referred to.[256]
“As I am the Prophet of the Germans—this high-sounding title I am
obliged to assume to please my asinine Papists—I will act as a
faithful teacher and warn my staunch Germans of the danger in which
they stand.”[257]
By thus coming forward as the divinely commissioned spokesman of the
Germans, as the representative and prophet of the nation, he implicitly
denied to those who did not follow his banner the right of being styled
Germans. He was fond of professing, in his war on Pope and Church,
to be the champion of the Germans against Rome’s oppression. This
enabled him to stir up the national feeling amongst those who followed
him as his allies, and to win over the vacillating by means of the
delusive watchword: “Germany against Italian tyranny.” But, apart from
the absolute want of justification for any such appeal to national
prejudices, the assumption that Germany was wholly on his side was
entirely wrong. He spoke merely in the name of a fraction of the German
nation. To those who remained faithful to the Church and who, often at
great costs to themselves, defended the heritage of their pious German
forefathers, it was a grievous insult that German nationalism should
thus be identified with the new faith and Church.
Even at the present time in the German-speaking world Catholics stand
to Protestants in the relation of two-fifths to three-fifths, and, if
it would be a mistake to-day to regard Teutonism and Protestantism
as synonymous—a mistake only to be met with where deepest prejudice
prevails—still better founded were the complaints of Catholics in
Luther’s own time, that he should identify the new Saxon doctrines
with the German name and the interests of Germany as a whole.[258]
Even in the first years of his public career he appealed to his
readers’ patriotism as against Rome. In 1518, before he had even
thought of his aggressive pamphlet “To the German Nobility,” he
commended the German Princes for coming forward to protect the German
people against the extortions of the Roman Curia; “Prierias, Cajetan
and Co. call us blockheads, simpletons, beasts and barbarians,
and scoff at the patience with which we allow ourselves to be
deceived.”[259] In the following year, when this charge had already
become one of his stock complaints, he summed it up thus: “We Germans,
through our emperors, bestowed power and prestige on the Popes in olden
days and, now, in return, we are forced to submit to being fleeced and
plundered.”[260] In the writing against Alveld, “Von dem Bapstum tzu
Rome,” a year later, he declared in words calculated to excite the
ire of every Teuton, that in Rome they were determined to suck the
last farthing out of the “tipsy Germans,” as they termed them; unless
Princes and nobles defended themselves to the utmost the Italians would
make of Germany a wilderness. “At Rome they even have a saying about
us, viz. ‘We must milk the German fools of their cash the best way we
can.’”[261]
That Luther should have conducted his attacks on the Papacy on these
lines was due in part to Ulrich von Hutten’s influence. Theodore
Kolde has rightly pointed out, that his acquaintance with Hutten’s
writings largely accounts for the utter virulence of Luther’s assault
on “Romanism.”[262] There is no doubt that the sparks of hate which
emanated from this frivolous and revolutionary humanist contributed to
kindle the somewhat peculiar patriotism of the Wittenberg professor.
All the good that Rome had brought to Germany in the shape of Christian
culture was lost to sight in the whirlwind of revolt heralded by
Hutten; the financial oppression exercised by the Curia, and the
opposition between German and Italian, were grossly exaggerated by the
knights.
Specifically German elements played, however, their part in Luther’s
movement. The famous _Gravamina Nationis Germanicæ_ had been formulated
before Luther began to exploit them. Another German element was the
peculiar mysticism, viz. that of Tauler and the “Theologia Deutsch,” on
which, though he misapprehended much of it, Luther at the outset based
his theories. German frankness and love of freedom also appeared to
find their utterance in the plain and vigorous denunciations which the
Monk of Wittenberg addressed to high and low alike; even his uncouth
boldness found a strong echo in the national character. And yet it was
not so much “national fellow-feeling,”[263] to quote the expression of
a Protestant author, which insured him such success, but other far more
deeply seated causes, some of which will be touched upon later, while
others have already been discussed.
It is, however, noteworthy that this “Prophet of the Germans,” when
speaking to the nation he was so fond of calling his own, did not
scruple to predict for it the gloomiest future.
A dark pessimism broods over Luther’s spirit almost constantly whenever
he speaks of the years awaiting Germany; he sees the people, owing to
his innovations, confronted with disastrous civil wars, split up into
endless and perpetually increasing sects and thus brought face to face
with hopeless moral degradation. His cry is, Let the Empire dissolve,
“Let Germany perish.” “Let the world fall into ruins.”[264] He consoles
himself with the reflection that Christ, when founding His Church,
had foreseen and sanctioned the inevitable destruction of all hostile
powers, of Judaism and even of the Roman Empire. It was in the nature
of the Gospel to triumph by the destruction of all that withstood it.
It was certainly a misfortune, Luther admits, that the wickedness of
the Germans, every day growing worse, should be the cause of this
ruin. “I am very hopeless about Germany now that she has harboured
within her walls those real Turks and devils, viz. avarice, usury,
tyranny, dissensions and this Lernean serpent of envy and malice which
has entangled the nobles, the Court, every Rathaus, town and village,
to say nothing of the contempt for the Divine Word and unprecedented
ingratitude [towards the new Evangel].” This is how he wrote to
Lauterbach.[265] Writing to Jonas, he declared: “No improvement need be
looked for in Germany whether the realm be in the hands of the Turk or
in our own, for the only aim of the nobility and Princes is how they
can enslave Germany and suck the people dry and make everything their
very own.”[266]
The lack of any real national feeling among the Princes was another
element which caused him anxiety. Yet he himself had done as much as
any to further the spread of that “particularism” which to a great
extent had replaced the national German ideal; he had unduly exalted
the rights of the petty sovereigns by giving them the spiritual
privileges and property of the Church, and he had confirmed them
in their efforts to render themselves entirely independent of the
Emperor and to establish themselves as despots within their own
territories. Since the unhappy war of 1525 the peasantry and lower
classes were convinced that no remedy was to be found in religion
for the amelioration of their social condition, and had come to hate
both Luther and the lords, because they believed both to have been
instrumental in increasing their burdens. The other classes, instead
of thanking him for furthering the German cause, also complained of
having had to suffer on his account. In this connection we may mention
the grievance of the mercantile community, Luther having deemed it
necessary to denounce as morally dangerous any oversea trade.[267] It
was also a grievous blow to education and learning in Germany, when,
owing to the storm which Luther let loose, the Universities were
condemned to a long period of enforced inactivity.[268] He himself
professed that his particular mission was to awaken interest in the
Bible, not to promote learning; yet Germans owe him small thanks for
opposing as he did the discoveries of the famous German Canon of
Frauenburg, Niklas Koppernigk (Copernicus), and for describing the
founder of modern astronomy as a fool who wished to upset all the
previous science of the heavens.[269]
Whilst showing himself ultra-conservative where good and useful
progress in secular matters was concerned, he, on the other hand,
scrupled not to sacrifice the real and vital interests of his nation
in the question of public ecclesiastical conditions by his want of
conservatism and his revolutionary innovations. True conservatism would
have endeavoured to protect the German commonwealth and to preserve it
from disaster by a strict guard over the good and tried elements on
which it rested, more particularly over unchangeable dogma. The wilful
destruction of the heritage, social, religious and learned, contributed
to by countless generations of devout forebears ever since the time of
St. Boniface, at the expense of untold toil and self-sacrifice, can
certainly not be described as patriotic on the part of a German. At any
rate, it can never have occurred to anyone seriously to expect that
those Germans whose views on religion were not those of Luther should
have taken his view of the duty of a patriot.
The main fact remains that Luther’s action drove a wedge into the
unity of the German nation. Wherever his spirit prevailed—which was
by no means the case in every place which to some extent came under
his influence—there also prevailed prejudice, suspicion and mistrust
against all non-Lutherans, rendering difficult any co-operation for the
welfare of the fatherland.
In discussing a recent work which extols Luther as a “true German” a
learned Protestant gives it as his opinion, that, however much one may
be inclined to exalt his patriotism, it must, nevertheless, be allowed
that Luther cherished a sort of indifference to the vital interests
of his nation; his “religious concentration” made him less mindful of
true patriotism; this our author excuses by the remark: “Justice and
truth were more to him than home and people.” Luther, it is also said,
“did not clearly point out the independent, ethical value of a national
feeling, just as he omitted to insist at all clearly on the reaction of
the ethical upon the religious.”[270]
On the other hand, however, his ways and feelings are often represented
as the “very type and model of the true German.”[271] Nor is this view
to be found among Protestants only, for Ignatius von Döllinger adopted
it in later life, when he saw fit to abandon his previous position.
Before this, in 1851, in his Sketch of Luther, he had indeed said,
concerning his patriotism, that, in his handling of the language and
the use he made of the peculiarities of his countrymen, “he possessed
a wonderful gift of charming his hearers, and that his power as a
popular orator was based on an accurate knowledge and appreciation of
the foibles of the German national character.”[272] In 1861, he wrote
in another work: “Luther is the most powerful demagogue and the most
popular character that Germany has ever possessed.” “From the mind
of this man, the greatest German of his day, sprang the Protestant
faith. Before the ascendency and creative energy of this mind, the
more aspiring and vigorous portion of the nation humbly and trustfully
bent the knee. In him, who so well united in himself intellect and
force, they recognised their master; in his ideas they lived; to them
he seemed the hero in whom the nation with all its peculiarities was
embodied. They admired him, they surrendered themselves to him because
they believed they had found in him their ideal, and because they
found in his writings their own most intimate feelings, only expressed
more clearly, more eloquently and more powerfully than they themselves
were capable of doing. Thus Luther’s name is to Germany not merely
that of a distinguished man, but the very embodiment of a pregnant
period in national life, the centre of a new circle of ideas and the
most concise expression of those religious and ethical views amidst
which the German spirit moved, and the powerful influence of which not
even those who were averse to them could altogether escape.”[273]
Here special stress is laid on Luther’s power over “the more aspiring
Germans” who followed him, i.e. over the Protestant portion of the
nation. Elsewhere, however, in 1872, Döllinger brings under Luther’s
irresistible spell “his time and his people,” i.e. the whole of
Germany, quite regardless of the fact that the larger portion still
remained Catholic. “Luther’s overpowering mind and extraordinary
versatility made him the man of his time and of his people; there
never was a German who understood his people so well, or who in turn
was so thoroughly understood, yea, drunk in, by the people, as this
Monk of Wittenberg. The mind and spirit of the German people were in
his hands like a harp in the hands of the musician. For had he not
bestowed upon them more than ever one man had given to his people
since the dawn of Christianity? A new language, popular handbooks,
a German Bible, and his hymns. He alone impressed upon the German
language and the German spirit alike his own imperishable seal, so
that even those amongst us who abhor him from the bottom of our hearts
as the mighty heresiarch who seduced the German nation cannot help
speaking with his words and thinking with his thoughts. Yet, even
more powerful than this Titan of the intellectual sphere, was the
longing of the German nation for freedom from the bonds of a corrupt
ecclesiasticism.”[274]
The change in Döllinger’s conception of Luther which is here apparent
was not simply due to his personal antagonism to the Vatican Council;
it is closely connected with his then efforts, proclaimed even in the
very title of the Lectures in question: “Reunion of the Christian
Churches”; for this reunion Döllinger hoped to be able to pave the
way without the assistance of, and even in opposition to, the Roman
Catholic Church. The fact is, however, that in the above passages
the domination which Luther exercised over those who had fallen away
with him has been made far too much of, otherwise how can we explain
Luther’s own incessant complaints regarding the small response to
the preaching of his new Evangel? The production of a schism by his
vehement and forceful oratory was one thing; vigorous direction
and leadership in the task of religious reconstruction was quite a
different matter.
It is not our intention here to embark upon a controversy on such an
opinion concerning Luther’s German influence as that here advanced by
Döllinger. The present work will, in due course, treat of Luther’s
posthumous influence on German culture and the German language, of
his famous German Bible, and of his hymnological work (see vol. v.,
xxxiv., xxxv.), when we shall have occasion to show the true value to
be accorded to such statements. As they stand, our last quotations from
Döllinger merely constitute a part of the legend which grew up long
since around the memory of the Wittenberg professor.
It must certainly be admitted, that Luther’s powerful language is
grounded on a lively and clear comprehension of German ways of thought
and German modes of expression; his command of language and his power
for trenchant description, which were the result of his character, of
his intercourse with the common people and his talent for noting their
familiar ways of speech, were rare qualities. He left in his writings
much that served as a model to later Germans. Of his translation of the
Bible in particular we may say, with Janssen, that, although Luther
cannot be termed the actual founder of the new High-German, yet “his
deserts as regards the development of the German language are great,”
especially in the matter of “syntax and style. In the last respect
no one of any insight will wish to dispute the service which Luther
rendered.” “The force and expression of the popular speech was hit off
by Luther in a masterly manner in his Bible translations.”[275]
Those Germans, who had been won over to the new faith and had become
Luther’s faithful followers, found in the instructions written in his
own popular vein, particularly in those on the Bible, enlightenment and
edification, in many cases, no doubt, much to their advantage. Writing
for the benefit of this circle, the versatile author, in his ethical
works—his controversial ones are not here under consideration—deals
with countless other subjects outside the range of biblical teaching;
here his manner owes its power to the fact that he speaks in tones
caught from the lips of the people themselves. Thus, for instance, when
he discovers the blots which sully the nation: luxury in dress, the
avarice of the rich, the “miserliness and hoarding” of the peasants.
Or when he tells unpleasant truths to the “great fops,” the nobles,
concerning their despotic and arrogant behaviour. Or, again, when
he raises his voice in condemnation of the neglect of education, or
to reprove excessive drinking, or when, to mention a special case,
he paints in lurid and amusing colours the slothfulness and utter
carelessness of the Germans after having achieved any success in war
against the Turks. His gift of humour always stood him in good stead,
and his love of extravagant phraseology and imagery and of incisive
rhetoric was of the greatest service to him in his dealings with the
people, for both appealed strongly to German taste. Nor must we forget
his proficiency in the effective application of German proverbs—a
collection of proverbs in his own handwriting is still extant and has
recently been published—nor his familiarity with German folk-lore and
ballads, nor finally the wonderful gift which served to tranquillise
many who were still undecided and wavering, viz. the boundless
assurance and unshakable confidence with which he could advance even
the most novel and startling opinions. The Germans of that day loved
weight and power, and a strong man could not fail to impress them,
hence, for those who were not restrained by obedience to the Church,
Luther undoubtedly seemed a real chip off the old German block.
A single passage, one against usurers, will serve to show with what
energy this man of the people could raise his voice, to the joy of the
many who groaned under the burden. “Ah, how securely the usurer lives
and rages as though he himself were God and Lord of the whole land;
no one dares to resist him. And now that I write against them these
saintly usurers scoff at me and say: ‘Luther doesn’t know what usury
is; let him read his Matthew and his Psalter.’ But I preach Christ and
my word is the Word of God, and of this I am well assured, that you
accursed usurers shall be taught either by the Turk or by some other
tool of God’s wrath, that Luther really knew and understood what usury
was. At any rate, my warning is worth a sterling gulden.”[276]
On the very same page he vents his anger against the supreme Imperial
Court of Justice, because, “in matters pertaining to the Gospel and
the Church,” its sentences did not accord with his. “I shan’t be a
hypocrite, but shall speak the truth and say: See what a devil’s
strumpet reigns in the Imperial Kammergericht, which ought to be a
heavenly jewel in the German land, the one consolation of all who
suffer injustice.”
Particularly effective was his incitement of the people to hate
Popery. “We Germans must remain Germans and the Pope’s own donkeys and
victims, even though we are brayed in the mortar like sodden barley,
as Solomon says (Prov. xxvii. 22); we stick fast in our folly. No
complaints, no instruction, no beseeching, no imploring, not even our
own daily experience of how we have been fleeced and devoured opens
our eyes.”[277]—“The Emperor and the Princes,” he had already said,
“openly go about telling lies of us”;[278] “pigs and donkeys,” “mad
and tipsy Princes,” such are the usual epithets with which he spices
his language here and later.
“Out of deep sympathy for us poor Germans”[279] it is that he ventures
to speak thus in the name of all.
He boldly holds up his Evangel as the German preaching _par
excellence_. He declares: “I seek the welfare and salvation of you
Germans.”[280]—“We Germans have heard the true Word of God for many
years, by which means God, the Father of all Mercy, has enlightened
us and called us from the horrible abominations of the Papal darkness
and idolatry into His holy light and Kingdom. But with what gratitude
and honesty we have accepted and practised it, it is terrible to
contemplate.”
Formerly, he says, we filled every corner with idolatries such as
Masses, Veneration of the Saints, and good works, but now we persecute
the dear Word, so that it would not be surprising should God flood
Germany, not only with Turks, but with real devils; indeed, it is a
wonder He has not done so already.[281]
However small the hope was of any improvement resulting from his
preaching, he fomented the incipient schism by such words as these:
“They [the Romans] have always abused our simplicity by their
wantonness and tyranny; they call us mad Germans, who allow themselves
to be hoaxed and made fools of.... We are supposed to have an Empire,
but it is the Pope who has our possessions, honour, body, soul and
everything else.... Thus the Pope feeds on the kernel and we nibble at
the empty shells.”[282]
Finally, there are some who select certain traits of Luther’s
character in order to represent him as the type of a true German.
Such specifically German characteristics were certainly not lacking
in Luther; it would be strange, indeed, were this not the case in a
man of German stock, hailing from the lower class and who was always
in close touch with his compatriots. Luther was inured to fatigue,
simple in his appearance and habits, persevering and enduring; in
intercourse with his friends he was frank, hearty and unaffected;
with them he was sympathetic, amiable and fond of a joke; he did not,
however, shrink from telling them the truth even when thereby offence
might be given; towards the Princes who were well-disposed to him and
his party he behaved with an easy freedom of manner, not cringingly
or with any exaggerated deference. In a sense all these are German
traits.[283] But many of these qualities, albeit good in themselves,
owing to his public controversy, assumed a very unpleasant character.
His perseverance degenerated into obstinacy and defiance, his laborious
endurance into a passionate activity which overtaxed his powers, and he
became combative and quarrelsome and found his greatest pleasure in the
discomfiture of his opponents; his frankness made way for the coarsest
criticism. The anger against the Church which carried him along found
expression in the worst sorts of insults, and, when his violence had
aroused bitter feelings, he believed, or at least alleged, he was
merely acting in the interests of uprightness and love of truth. Had
he preserved his heritage of good German qualities, perfected them and
devoted them to the service of a better cause, he might have become the
acknowledged spokesman of all Germans everywhere. He could have branded
vice and instilled into the hearts of his countrymen the love of
virtue more strongly and effectively than even Geiler of Kaysersberg;
in seasoned and effective satire on matters of morals he would have
far excelled Sebastian Brant and Thomas Murner; in depth of feeling
and sympathetic expression he could have rivalled Bertold of Ratisbon,
and his homely ways would have qualified him to enforce the Christian
precepts amongst all the grades and conditions of German life even more
effectively than any previous preacher.