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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS
Luther and
The German
Reformation By
Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D.
Professor of Church History, F.C. College, Glasgow

Edinburgh. T. & T. Clark
1900

Previous Volume in this Series : —
Wesley and
Methodism. By F. J. Snell, M.A.
For complete List see end.

THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS

Luther and
The German
Reformation

By
Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D.
Professor of Church History, F.C. College, Glasgow

Edinburgh. T. & T. Clark
1900

PRINTED ET
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON I SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
TORONTO i THE PUBLISHERS' SYNDICATE LIMITED.

To
James Campbell, Esq.
of Tullichewan
In Token of a Quarter of a Century's
Kindness and Friendship

PREFACE

Although Luther's life has been written scores of
times, it has always seemed to me that there is room
for another — for one which will be careful to set
Luther in the environment of the common social life
of his time. For it is often forgotten that the sixteenth
century, in which he was the most outstanding figure,
saw the beginnings of our present social life in almost
everything, from our way of looking at politics and
our modes of trade to our underclothing. To show
what that life was, and to show Luther in it, would, it
seems to me, bring him nearer us than has yet been
done. I do not for a moment pretend that this little
book is even a sketch of the Reformer's life written
in this way. That needed far more space than was
permitted. Yet I have had the thought before me in
writing, and for that reason have been careful to make
as much use as possible of contemporary evidence.
The book has not been weighted with continual
references to authorities. Instead of that a list of

viii PREFACE
a large number of works consulted has been placed
in the appendix, and their position there is, I
trust, sufficient acknowledgment of the debt owed to
them. One set of authorities I have been obliged to
omit from this list — the numerous letters, records of
conversations, extracts from diaries, all belonging to
the times of Luther, which have been printed during
the last twenty-five years in such journals as the
Studien und Kritihen, the Zeitschrift fur die histor-
ische Theologie, etc. The last edition of Kostlin's
Martin Luther : sein Leben und seine Schriften, with
its admirable notes and references, deserves a special
mention. No one can write about Luther without
acknowledging the debt he owes to it.
THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
Glasgow, 13ft April 1900.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface  vii
INTRODUCTION
The Eeformation Epoch can be looked at from various Points of v
View— The Religious— The Political— The Intellectual— The
Moral — The Economic — Luther's Relation to these . . 1

CHAPTER I
Luther's Childhood and Education, 1483-1505
Born at Eisleben — His Parents — Earliest Home Life — Christian
Training— German Peasant Life — Its Toils — Its Amusements ^
— Need for Parental Severity — School at Mansfeld — Mediseval
Schools — The Wandering Students — Thomas Platter's Auto
biography—School at Magdeburg — Eisenach — Prau Cotta
— The Holy Elizabeth — The University of Erfurt — Humanism
— Luther's inner Life at Erfurt absolutely unknown — Sudden
Entrance into the Convent — Facts and Legends ... 9
CHAPTER II
The Years of Preparation, 1505-1517
Entrance into the Convent Life — Training as Novice — What sent
Luther there— Soul Struggles — Staupitz — "The Righteous
ness of God" — Peace found — Still a Devout Member of the
Mediaeval Church — Ordination — University of Wittenberg
— Luther, Professor of Philosophy — Visit to Rome— Made
Doctor of Theology — Preaching, Lectures on New and on
Old Testament — Superintendent of Convents ... 31

x CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
Indulgence Controversy, 1517-1519
PAGB
Albert of Mainz farms an Indulgence — His Statements of its
Efficacy — Not Efficacious for Smugglers of Alum — Myconius
gets a "Papal Letter" for nothing — "Papal Letters" bought
by Wittenberg People — Luther's Perplexity — "St. Ursula's
Schifflein " — A possible Evangelical Meaning in Indulgences
— The Ninety-five Theses — Luther and Mediaeval Teaching—
The Mediaeval "Dead-lock" — How Luther solved it— How
solved by Indulgence — The Gist of the Theses — How received
by Friends and Foes — Augustinian Chapter at Heidelberg —
Dr. John Eck — Luther summoned to Rome — The Emperor
and the Elector insist on a Trial in Germany — Luther at
Augsburg — Appeals to a General Council— -Embassy of von
Miltitz — The Leipzig Disputation — Its Effects on Luther's
Position — Duke George of Saxony — Luther's Use of the Print-
ing-Press  53
CHAPTER IV
The Three Great Reformation Treatises, 1520
On Christian Liberty — Its Pathetic Origin — Its Main Theme, the
Priesthood of all Believers — The Babylonian Captivity of the
Church — A Criticism of the Romanist Sacramental Theory
—The Threefold Bondage of the Eucharist— Romanist Dis
pensations denounced— Priests should be allowed to Marry
— To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, respecting
the Information of the Christian Estate— An Indictment of the
Roman Treatment of Germany— The Three Walls of the
Papacy— Remedies Suggested— Papal Bull against Luther
—Luther Burns the Bull— What the Students did . 93

CHAPTER V
At the Diet of Worms, 1521
Death of the Emperor Maximilian— Rival Candidates for the
Throne— State of Germany— Throne offered to the Elector of
Saxony— Charles v. Elected— The "Holy Roman Empire"
—Political Condition of Germany— Charles's Dream— Middle
Ages and Modern Times meet at the Diet of Worms— The
Papal Legate, Aleauder— The Passional Christi et Antichristi
—The Safe-Conduct— On the Road to Worms— Before the
Diet— Excitement among the People— Emperor completes his
Bargain with the Pope— The Ban against Luther . . .113

CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER VI
In the Wartburg. From 4th May 1521 to 3rd March 1522 PAGE
Journey back from the Diet— Luther seized on the Road— In the
Wartburg — Memories of Song and Saintship — Letter to Albert
of Maiuz — Tract on Monastic Vows — Translation of New
Testament — Anxieties about Wittenberg— How John Kessler
saw Dr. Martin dressed as a Man-at-Arms .... 136
CHAPTER VII
The Progress of the Reformation, 1522-1525
Luther back in Wittenberg — Preaches Patience and Charity —
Makes Preaching Tours through Electoral Saxony — The
" Imperial Council " and its Difficulties — Pope Adrian Appeals
to it to enforce the Edict of Worms — "The Hundred Griev
ances" — How the Reformation Spread quietly — George of
Brandenburg— Albert, the Grand Master— The First Martyrs 150
CHAPTER VIII
Political and Social Revolts, 1522-1525
The Social and Economic Condition of Germany — Franz von ^
Sickingen — The Rising of the Nobles — Luther and Sickingen
— The " Peasants' War " — The Religious Reformation and the
Social Revolution — Condition of Peasants and Artisans —
Propaganda of the Revolt — Mattock John — Foundation of the
"Evangelical Brotherhood" — The Swabian League — "The
Twelve Articles" — Swift Spreading of the Terror — Sudden
Collapse and Bloody Repression — Luther's Connection with
the Rising — Disastrous Effects on the Reformation . .161
CHAPTER IX
Marriage, Family and Public Life
The Conception of "Marriage" in the Reformation Movement —
Luther's Personal Disinclination for the Married Life — The
Nine Nuns — Catherine von Bora — Luther Marries her — The
Augustinian Convent a Family Home — How his Wife helped
Luther — The Plague in Wittenberg — The Luther Household
—The Liber Vagatorum — Luther's Devotion to his Wife —
His Letters to her — Delight in his Children — ' ' Lena " Luther
— Sayings in the Family Circle — The Emperor determined
to Crush the Reformation — "Not Head off, dear Prince" —
Luther at Coburg — The "Augsburg Confession" — The Storm
Clouds pass away  190

xii CONTENTS CHAPTER X
Laying the Foundations of the Evangelical Church
PAGB
Luther's earlier Hopes that the Evangelical Doctrine would spread
without many External Changes — The Visible Catholic
Church — Depended on a Succession of Pious Generations
from the Apostles, not on an Historical Succession of Bishops
—The Work the Church had to do— The "Visitations"—
The "Circle" of Wittenberg — The Short and the Larger
Catechisms — Luther's Zeal for "Common Schools" — The
Reformation Movement and Education — Luther and the Swiss
— The Sacramental Question  219
CHAPTER XI
The Last Years of Luther's Life
Unceasing Labours and Continual Ill-health — Intimacy with John
Frederic — With Sibylla, the Electress — With other German
Princes — With the Electress of Brandenburg — The Bigamy of
Philip of Hesse — Luther's part in it — Attempts at a General
Union of all Protestants — Luther's Journey to Mansfeld — .
Last Letter to his Wife — Death — Burial — Luther and his Agev 246
Chronological Summary  267
List of Books consulted  293
Index  297

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN
REFORMATION

INTRODUCTION
The epoch in European History which is called the
Reformation may be looked at from many different
points of view, but when Luther is taken as the central
figure, one — the religious — must dominate all the
others, and the various intricate intermingled move
ments must be regarded as the environment of this one
central impulse. We are compelled to look on it as
the time of a great revival of heart religion — perhaps
the greatest which the world has ever seen, whether
its magnitude be measured by intensity of religious
conviction, by clearness of consecrated vision into those
intellectual meanings of spiritual facts, and into those
laws of spiritual events which we call dogmatic theo
logy, or by its almost unique effects in fields remote
from religious and ecclesiastical life, in the narrower
meaning of these words. But this great revival was set
in a picturesque framework of human impulses, political.
intellectual, moral, social, and economic, such as the
world has seldom seen before or since. History, with

2 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
its warp and woof of " When " and " Where," of Time
and Place, so wove and interwove all these impulses
together that it is both possible and legitimate to de
scribe the Reformation from many different standpoints,
all of which are true.
Professor Leopold von Ranke may be taken as the
most illustrious example of historians who have taught
us to regard the Reformation as a great political force
working political transformations not yet ended. It
overthrew completely Medicevalism, and started the
modern conditions of political life on their career. It
destroyed the mediaeval ideal of a Christendom made
visibly one by a supreme civil governor who ruled over
the bodies of all men, by a supreme ecclesiastical chief
who ruled their souls, and by a dominant scholastic
which kept their minds in due submission, and " red
the marches" between sanctified wisdom and unholy lore.
The two and a half centuries before the Reformation
are full of revolts against this Medisevalism. They
saw the birth of modern European nations with con
flicting interests, and the strong feelings of independent
national life overthrew the mediaeval ideas of govern
ment, both secular and ecclesiastical. The authority of
emperor and pope had been defied by almost every
European nation long before the times of our epoch ;
but the failure of Charles v. to restore the mediaeval
V empire in Germany may be taken as the date at which
the old ideas of government passed away for ever.
The Reformation may be regarded as an intellectual
v movement, and then Erasmus will be its central figure.
The siege and pillage of Constantinople by the Ottoman
Turks in 1453 had dispersed the scholars of that rich
and cultured city over Western Europe. Manuscripts

THE NEW LEARNING 3
and objects of art, hastily secured by trembling fugi
tives, sufficed to stock the rest of Christendom, and
western nations again began to study the authors of a
forgotten classical antiquity. A whole world of new
thoughts in poetry, philosophy, and statesmanship
opened on the vision of the men of the dawn of the
Reformation period. In the earlier days of the first
Renascence, the " New Learning " had been confined to a
few daring thinkers, but the invention of printing,
almost contemporaneous with the second Renascence,
made the " New Learning" common property, and the
new thoughts acted on men in masses, and began to
move the multitude. The old barriers- raised by medi
aeval scholasticism were broken down, and men were
brought to see that there was more in religion than the
mediaeval Church had taught, more in social life than
the empire had promised, and that knowledge was a
manifold unknown to the schoolmen. All this is true,
and the Reformation may be studied, though scarcely
explained, from this point of view.
Others again point out that the Reformation epoch
was " the modern birth-time of the individual soul " — *
the beginning of that assertion of the supreme right of
individual revolt against every custom, law, or theory
which would subordinate the man to the caste or class
— a revolt which finally flamed out in the French Rev
olution. The Swiss peasantry began it when they
made pikes by tying their scythes on their alpen-stocks,
and, standing shoulder to shoulder at Morgarten and
Sempach, broke the fiercest charges of mediaeval knight
hood. They proved that, man for man, the peasant was
as good as the noble, and individual manhood, asserted
in this rude and bodily fashion, soon began to express

4 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
itself mentally and morally. The invention of gun
powder and firearms completed what the pike had begun,
and mediaeval knighthood perished when the princes
battered down with cannon the strong new fortifica
tions of Landstuhl, and Francis von Sickingen, " the
last of the knights," was slain when in fancied security.
This intense individuality was fed by the events of the
time. The invention of the mariner's compass, the dis
covery of America by Columbus, and of the sea route to
the East by Vasco de Gama, not only revolutionised trade
and commerce, they also fired the imaginations of men.
The prevailing character of the thoughts and speech of
the period , show that men felt that they were on the
eve of great events, that it was a time of universal
expectation and of widespread individual assertion.
It is not the less true that the epoch was a time of
economic revolution which bore heavily on the poorer
classes, and scourged them into revolt. Below the whole
mediaeval system lay the idea that land was the only
economic basis of wealth; and in the earlier Middle
Ages, where each little district produced almost all
required for its own wants, and where the economic
function of the towns was to be corporations of arti
sans, exchanging the fruits of their industry for the
surplus of farm produce which the peasants brought
to their market-places, this was undoubtedly the case.
But the increasing commerce of the towns gradually
introduced another source of wealth, and this commerce
made great strides after the Crusades had opened up
the East to European traders. The gradual result of this
was to make the lesser nobles and the citizens implacable
enemies. The nobles waylaid and pillaged the merchant
trains, and the cities formed offensive and defensive

THE NOBLES AND THE PEASANTRY 5
leagues, and persuaded the larger territorial magnates
to combine with them to secure the peace of the country
and keep the roads safe. The combination of princes .
and cities against the lesser nobility drove the nobles
into a position utterly repugnant to their pride. Already
thrust from the position of defenders of society by the
introduction of infantry and artillery as the most im
portant factors in warfare, theysawthemselves distanced
by the burghers in the means of living ostentatiously ;
and while they despised the " pepper-sacks," as they
called the merchants, they felt themselves degraded
unless they could vie with them in dress and adorn
ment at the occasions of public display so dear to the
mediaeval mind. Their only mode of direct revenge,
to attack the merchant trains of goods or to make
their " horses bite off the purses of travellers," had been
made somewhat dangerous by the combinations of
princes and towns, and the only remaining thing
for them to do was to squeeze their unfortunate
peasants. For the peasant was the pariah of mediaeval
society. He stood apart from noble, burgher, and
ecclesiastical power. He was the unprotected class
whom all might spoil and whom all did oppress. He
had memories transmitted from generation to genera
tion of common lands, of free village communes, and of
the inalienable rights of the tillers of the soil ; but the
introduction of Roman law, primarily and chiefly by
ecclesiastical proprietors, which did not recognise these
old rights, and looked upon the peasant as serfs, de
prived them of the law's protection, and left them no
power of resistance save revolt or flight to the towns,
where they swelled the class of poorer citizens who
remained outside the guild privileges.

6 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
The higher commercial opportunities offered by the
opening of a sea passage to the East Indies by the dis
coveries of Vasco de Gama led to a disintegration of the
Mediaeval Town Corporations ; for the wealthier mer
chants formed themselves into trading companies out
side the old guilds, and amassed great wealth. A war
of classes ensued ; — the trading companies and capital
ists against the guilds, the poorer classes against the
wealthier, the peasants against the nobles, and the
nobles against the towns and the princes.
This seething discontent was stirred to its depths by
sudden and mysterious rises in prices, affecting first the
articles of foreign produce, to which all the wealthier
classes were greatly addicted, and at last the ordinary
necessaries of life. The cause, it is now believed, was
not the debasing of the coinage, for that affected a
narrow circle only, nor was it the importation of the
precious metals from America, for that came later, but
the larger output of the mines at home. Whatever the
cause, the thing was an irritating mystery, and each
class in society was disposed to blame the others for
the evil.
We have thus, at the beginning of the epoch, a rest
less and disturbed state of society, caused by mysterious
economic causes which no one understood, but which
drove wedges into the old social structure, bereaving it
of all power of cohesion.
It was into this mass of seething social discontent that
the spark of religious protest fell — the one thing wanted
to fire the train and kindle the social conflagration.
With all these sides of the Reformation epoch we
have to do only casually. They are the environment
of the religious movement of which we must speak

THE PEASANTS' WAR 7
when we take Luther as the central figure of the time.
Still, we must remember that they are all there ; and
we should greatly mistake the period to be studied
if we thought that the religious protest was every
thing. All these various movements combine to make
the period what it was ; and if the religious impulse
gave life to the political agitation, moral depth to
the intellectual and social impulses, and gave to the
economic protests a character that is more mediaeval
than modern, we must remember that these various
currents lent their strength to the religious movement
and gave it an impetus and an importance which it
would not otherwise have had. The Peasants' War.u
as it is called, was the parting of the ways; up to
1525 the Lutheran Reformation absorbed all the
various streams of dissatisfaction ; after that the
revolution and the Reformation pursue separate paths,
and the revolution gathered round it the more radical
elements of the religious revolt, which are summed up «•'
under the word Anabaptism — a name which included
a great variety of conflicting opinions.
Luther had some real connection with all these sides
of the great movement of his days.
He had the fullest sympathy with the patriotic
aspiration of Germany for the Germans — it is the
central thought in his Address to the Nobility of the
German Nation ; but although disclaiming any place
as a politician, he soon came to see that the times were
not ripe for a national centralisation, and that central
isation under the rule of the great territorial mag
nates gave the only hope of the fulfilment of national
aspirations. He never classed himself among the Humanists, but

8 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
he had very great sympathy with many sides of the
Humanist movement ; he made full use of the learned
labours of Erasmus, and was recognised as a leader by
most of the German Humanists ; but his absorbing aim
was the reformation of the ecclesiastical and religious
life, and that to an extent deprecated by some of the
more distinguished Humanist leaders.
No man was a more distinguished exponent of the
rights of the individual human soul ; he stood at Worms
another " Athanasius contra mundum "; but this inalien
able right was for him the incapacity to believe incredi
bilities, to adopt solemn shams, or to live under the
rule of religious falsehoods.
He was a peasant's son, and voiced over and over
again the wrongs of the class from which he had
sprung ; but he was " modern " enough to see that there
are two ways by which wrongs can be set right — the
way of war and the way of peace — and that the way
of peace is the only sure path in the long-run. He
held by this firmly, and risked his life among the
infuriated peasants as readily as when he stood before
the Emperor and the Diet at Worms.
He was a religious reformer first and foremost, and
was content to be that and nothing else, and yet his
large spiritual personality shared in all the movements
and aspirations of his time. Hence it is that among
his contemporaries men of such different circles of
thought as the Elector Frederic and Franz von Sickin
gen, Ulric von Hutten and Philip Melanchthon, Hans
Sachs and Reuchlin, Albert Durer and Lucas Cranach,
believed him to be the greatest man in Germany, and
that we, living so many centuries later, may fitly take
him as the representative man of his epoch.

CHAPTER I
LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
§ 1. Birth — Parents
The little town of Eisleben, with its narrow streets
and high-roofed, red-tiled houses, climbs slowly up the
side of one of the great billowy plains which are the
feature of this centre of the German Fatherland. All
round it lie signs of the copper and silver mines — tall
chimneys, heaps of refuse, and great holes and rifts in
the sides of the slopes. The miners throng the town,
a short, sturdy race, with curious rolling gait. At one
end of a narrow street, " at a meeting of three streets,
with a little bit of garden beside it, as became the place
they say it was — an inn — stands the house where
Luther was born. Over the door is a head of him in
stone, with ' Christi Wort ist Luther's Lehr,
Drum vergeht sie nimmermehr '
(' Christ's own word is Luther's lore,
So it lives for evermore')
carved round it. You enter the first room to the left,
and stand where he was born. It is a largish room —
day and night room it was, one would think, in the inn-
time. You can fancy the quiet thankful mother, with

10 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the grave face, high cheekbones, and full mouth, lying
there and listening, as she told Melanchthon she did,
while the clock strikes twelve, when all was over, and
laying the very hour .up, with many other things about
this babe, in her heart with faith and prayer. You can
fancy the firmly-set undersized man, with the piercing
eyes and fine, decided lips, sitting by the fire, vowing
that if head can plan and hands can labour, this lad
of his shall be spared the grinding toil he has known,
shall enjoy the splendid advantages he has missed, shall
be a great man and a scholar. Next morning you see
Frau Wirthin and him going up the narrow 'Gasse*
to St. Peter's, much enjoined and directed by the
anxious Margarethe, carrying the little stranger to
get his name and blessing from the saint of the day,
Martinus." x
Hans and Margarethe Luther had come from Mohra
(Muirtown), a little peasant township lying in the north
west corner of the Thiiringen Wald, and a few miles
to the south of Eisenach.
This was the original home of the Luther family;
old records tell us that a very large number of the
inhabitants bore that name; there are still several
families of Luthers in the village, and the distinctive
Luther features are still observable. Luther himself
now stands in bronze in the village square, near the
ancient well, opening the Bible to his fellow-villagers. 1
On the front is carved "Unserm Luther in seinem "'
Stammort." The old traditional family house stands
opposite, doubtless much patched during the centuries,
but with the old walls green with rose-bushes and other ,
climbing plants.
1 Letters from the Land of Luther, by Robert Barbour.

PARENTAGE OF THE REFORMER n
It was the custom in these old days among the
Thuringian peasants that only one son, and that gener
ally the youngest, remained to inherit the family house
and croft. The others went out into the world fur
nished with something from the family saving-box.
The mining industry, away northwards in the Mansfeld
region, attracted these Mohra peasants, and Hans and
Margarethe Luther only followed a common custom
when they left the old village and sought a new abid
ing place for the family that was to come among the
mines of Eisleben and Mansfeld. This was why the
mother-pangs came on Margarethe Luther on that
bleak 10th of November in 1483, so far away from
kith and kin.
Six months after the birth of his eldest son, Hans
Luther settled in the village of Mansfeld, a miner and
then a smelter of copper ore. The Counts of Mansfeld,
who owned all the region, and who had many years
before started the mining industry, had the habit of
building small furnaces for smelting the ore, and of
letting them out on lease to miners who desired to
better their condition, and who were trustworthy per
sons. Hans Luther soon leased one and then three
of these furnaces. He early won the respect of his
neighbours, for he became in 1491 one of the four
members of the village council.
The family life, however, in the earlier years was
one of grinding poverty, and Luther himself often recalls
the struggles of father and mother. Of his mother he
says that he has often seen her carrying the wood for
the family fire, gathered in the pine forest, on her own
shoulders. It was a hard struggle to find food and
clothing for the seven children, to provide' for the edu-

12 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
cation of the eldest, to pay the yearly rent of the fur
nace, to lay by in the family strong-box the money to
be afterwards spent on the "plenishing" when the
young burghers, Kaufmann, Polner, and Mackenrod
carried off the three daughters to new homes.
Luther's home-life should be lingered over, for it was
the making of him, and the ideal he had before him in
his famous days had its birth in the family house at
Mansfeld. The old home can still be seen, with its
double square windows, its solid substantial walls, and,
inside, its window seats, where Mother Margarethe could
watch her seven young ones going to school or playing
in the street,
Father and mother were both spare, short, and dark-
complexioned (braunlicht), says the Swiss Kessler ; the
father of good plain peasant stock. " I am a peasant's
son," said Luther ; " my father, grandfather, and great
grandfather were all genuine peasants." The mother,
Margarethe Ziegler, came of the burgher class, for Hans
Luther had married above his rank. Luther always
mentions his father with great reverence; he recalls
how he had pinched himself in his poverty to give him
an education ; how he owed all to him, both birth and
upbringing. The old man used to thank God that He
had made him tough in body and in soul ; a man of
clear understanding, and not afraid to contradict, — two
qualities which the Augustinian monks observed in the
son when they sent him up to Rome on the business of
the Order,— mostly silent, but with a gift of pregnant,
pithy expression, a gift which the son inherited. He
was a man of quiet, deep piety, but one who thought
that God could be best served in the common citizen's
life, and who heartily despised monks, men " full of cant

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 13
and hypocrisy," he said. He had a strong sense of
parental rights, and was a hard disciplinarian.
Luther was specially his mother's child. Spalatin has
recorded that when he saw her first he was struck with
the strong^ likeness eft son to mother in face and build
of body. He got from her, besides his mysticism, those
strange streaks of superstition which characterised him,
the vein of poetry which ran through him, his wit, his
love of hymns and of proverbial sayings. Melanch
thon was devoted to the mother, and we can fancy the
two talking about the famous son when the friend, in
quest of biographical notes, spent some days in the old
family house at Mansfeld. She could tell him the day
on which Martin was born, and the hour, for she
remembered lying in bed and counting the minutes till
the clock struck twelve, but she could not be sure of
the year, and the biographer had to content himself
with brother James' statement that the family had
always believed that Martin was born in 1483. Mel
anchthon calls her a model of all womanly worth, and
says that she was noted for chastity, reverence for God,
and prayer. The parents taught their children the
Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer
— the teaching which Luther afterwards made possible
for all German children by his Catechism. They taught
them that pardon comes from the free grace of God.
The truth which Luther afterwards preached to all men
he learned in the home circle at Mansfeld, adding
nothing essential. This evangelical faith and teaching
was set — and quite naturally it seemed then — in the
framework of the usages of the mediaeval Church. St.
George was the patron saint of the Mansfeld miners,
and St. Anna was their beloved protectress. Her name

14 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
was on the church bells, and every pull at the ropes in
the belfry was an invocation.
It is in such families we are to see the roots of the
great Reformation which was on the eve of coming.
The spiritual forebears of the Reformation leaders are
not to be sought in dubious Waldenses or in still more
questionable Albigenses, but in pious Christians like
Hans and Margarethe Luther, who taught the boy
within the family circle the evangelical truths he was
afterwards to thunder forth from the Wittenburg pulpit.
For if we look into the matter, the Reformation did not
bring to light many truths which were absolutely
unknown in the mediaeval Church. The spiritual life
of the mediaeval Christian was fed on the same divine
thoughts which are the basis of the Reformation theo
logy. They can scarcely be found, however, in the
volumes of mediaeval theologians. They are embedded
in the hymns and in the prayers of the Church of the
Middle Ages, sometimes in the sermons of her great
revivalist preachers, always in the quiet parental
instruction in pious homes. These truths are all
there, as poetic thoughts, earnest supplication and
confession, fervent exhortation, or motherly teaching.
When the mediaeval Christian knelt in prayer, stood
to sing his Redeemer's praises, spoke as a dying
man to dying men, or as a mother to the children
about her knees, the words and thoughts that came
were what Luther and Zwingli and Calvin wove into
Reformation creeds and expanded in Reformation ser
mons. This Reformation which Luther led was the
outcome of the old family piety which had flowered
during all the previous centuries, heedless of the fact
that it had much in it which had little in common with

THE GERMAN PEASANTRY 15
the ecclesiastical system and professional theology
which it accepted without question. The Mansfeld
home made Luther what he became, its teaching was
the seed of his theology ; and from the thousands of
homes like his the great Reformation sprang.
§ 2. Peasant Life
Luther came from the peasants of Germany. The
German peasant life in the end of the fifteenth and
beginning of the sixteenth centuries surrounded Luther
in his childhood. Few have cared to study it. Yet from
rescued collections of laws governing the peasant com
munes (the Weisthumer), from stray folk-songs and
Fassnachtspiele, from a few references in chroniclers,
and from the old engravings of the time, we can, in
part at least, reconstruct the old peasant life and its
surroundings. Only it must be remembered that the
life differed, not only in different parts of Germany, but
in the same districts and decades under different pro
prietors ; for the German peasant was so dependent on
his over-lord that the character of the proprietor counted
for much in the condition of the people.
The larger hamlets were usually surrounded by a
stout fence, made with strong stakes and interlaced
branches, and having gates ; and within this stood,
almost always among the houses, a small church, a
public-house, a house or a room where the village
council met and where justice was dispensed, and near
it always the " stocks," and sometimes a gallows. The
houses were wooden frames, filled in with sun-dried
bricks; cattle, fodder, and the family were sheltered
under the one large roof. The timber for building and

1 6 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
repairs was got from the forest under regulations set
down in the Weisthumer, and the peasants had leave
to collect the fallen branches for firewood, the women
collecting and carrying and the men cutting and stack
ing under the eaves. All breaches of the forest laws were
severely punished ; so were the moving of landmarks —
for wood and soil were precious. Most houses had
small gardens, in which grew cabbages, lettuces, parsley
and peas, poppies and hemp, apples, cherries and plums,
as well as other things whose mediaeval German names
are not translatable by me.
There might have been a rude plenty in their lives
had it not been for the endless exactions of many of their
lords and the continual robberies to which they were
exposed from bands of sturdy rogues which swarmed
through the country, and from companies of soldiers who
thought nothing of carrying off the peasant's cows, slay
ing his swine, and even firing his house. They had their
diversions, none too seemly. They clung to the festi
vals of the Church as holidays, which they spent eating
and drinking at the public-house, and dancing in front
of it. Hans Sachs makes us see the scene. The girls
and the pipers waiting at the dancing-place, and the
men and lads in the public-house, eating calf's head,
tripe, liver, black puddings and roast pork, and drinking
sour milk and the country wine, till some sank under
the benches, and there was such a jostling, scratching,
shoving, bawling, and singing that not a word could be
heard. Then three young men came to the dancing-
place ; his sweetheart had a garland ready for one of
them, and the dancing began ; other couples joined, and
at last sixteen pairs of feet were in motion. Rough
jests, gestures, and caresses went round. The men

THE GERMAN PEASANTRY 17
whirled their partners off their feet, and spun them
round and round, or seized them by the waist, and
tossed them as high as they could ; while they them
selves leapt and threw out their feet, till Hans Sachs
thought they would all fall down. The scenes were
even coarser at the night-dances, which often followed
the labours and jokes of the spinning house. For it
was the custom in most German villages that the young
women resorted to a large room in the mill or in the
village public-house, and brought their wool, their
distaffs and spindles, some of them old heirlooms and
-richly ornamented, to spin all evening. The lads came
too, for the ostensible purpose of picking the fluff off
the lasses' clothes, or holding the small beaker of water
into which they dipped their fingers as they span. On
festival evenings, and especially at carnival time, the
lads treated their sweethearts to a late supper and
dance, and went home with them, carrying their dis
taffs and spindles. All the old German love folk-songs
are full of allusions to this peasant courtship.
Such were the toilsome, lewd, grimy surroundings of
that peasant life out of which Luther came ; and they
must be taken into account when we read of the harsh
training and severe family life of which Luther and
some other reformers who came from the peasant class
had painful recollections. Pious parents of this class —
and there must have been thousands of them — felt that
they could scarcely be too severe in order to keep their
children unstained by the evil life abounding all round
them. The more deeply one studies the social life of
the times, and especially of that stratum of the people
whence Luther sprang, the more one can see how very
much Luther owed to the wise severity of his parents.

1 8 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
It must be remembered also that those peasant people
were grossly superstitious, and that many of their most
reprehensible social usages were the inheritance of the
old pagan times, many a trace of which remained un-
effaced by the teachings of the mediaeval Church. The
peasants came to the little village churches on the fore
noons of the Sundays and festival days, but their every
day worship consisted of small offerings to kobolds and
sprites of all kinds — each variety excelling the others
in the power of working mischief on poultry, swine,
cattle, crops, and the bodies of men and women, and
therefore needing to be propitiated. For the position
of the Christian Church in mediaeval Germany was, as
some one has said, not unlike that of settlers in a virgin
country. Little clearances had been made and home
steads built, but the great, dark, unsubdued forest, full
of ferocious beasts and creeping things, remained en
closing and threatening.
§ 3. Education — Schools — University
Young Martin Luther was sent to school at Mansfeld ;
for Mansfeld, small mining town as it was, had its school.
Germany in the fifteenth and the beginning of the six
teenth centuries was well provided with schools of a kind.
Most of the small parish priests belonged to the peasant
class, and the singing in the service in the parish churches
had to be done by the village boys ; and as the services
were in Latin, education was needed for priests and
choristers. Everywhere over Europe the " song-schools "
for the boys of the parish choir had become schools for
the children of the village or small town.
The education given was not very good, and the

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 19
method of imparting it still worse. The children were
taught to read and to write and to do a little ciphering ;
and they were also drilled in the Latin declensions and
conjugations. From the old engravings of Burgmaier
and others we can see what the schools were like. A
small bare room, with a large box-like desk, in which
the master sat, with birch in one hand and the other
upon a book; the children sitting below him on the
floor, and holding out their hands when they thought
that they could answer his questions. Books were
scarce ; the master himself well furnished if he had an
old copy of Donatus' Grammar and a Terence, or a bit
of Cicero ; the younger scholars had small blackboards
on which they learned to make letters and sentences ;
the older ones carried an inkhorn, a long case for pens,
and a satchel. The schoolmasters were a poor set of
creatures, and their scholars experienced more of the
pains than of the pleasures of learning. Luther said
that his master treated the boys as the public execu
tioner did thieves ; he himself was flogged fifteen times
one morning because he could not repeat declensions
which he had never been taught. John Butzbach says
that his schoolmaster was continually flogging the boys,
and that when one was being scourged the others had
to stand round and sing a hymn.
The country schools did not satisfy the craving for edu
cation which displayed itself all over Europe in those
days. It laid hold on the burgher class especially ; and
the townspeople of many a German city founded superior
high schools, and paid scholars out of the city revenues
to be teachers and rectors. Many of the German towns
entered into a generous rivalry in the matter of edu
cation, and had several high schools. Breslau, that

20 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
"paradise of students" as it was called, had no less
than seven. Such towns attracted students from great
distances, and the town's authorities built student
hostels, where the strangers found shelter and some
times firing, but seldom food. The townspeople in
many cases added a students' hospital for those who
fell sick. All these possibilities of learning attracted
great numbers of boys and young men from all parts
of Germany and Switzerland, and added a new class to
the vagrants who thronged the roads of Germany
during the later Middle Ages. The wandering student
was a feature — and not always a reputable one — during
the epoch. Children of ten and eleven .years of age
left their country villages in charge of an older student,
and set off to join some famous high school ; but these
older students were often nothing but vagrants, with
just enough of learning to impose on the simple peas
antry, from whom they took gifts for charms against
toothache or other troubles, or begged or stole. The
small unfortunates entrusted to their charge were
treated in the cruellest fashion, and often died by the
roadside. We have two or three autobiographies
written by "wandering students," of which the most
interesting is that of Thomas Platter, from which
Freytag has made long extracts ; another is by Johann
Butzbach; both cover the period of Luther's student
time. Thomas Platter was born in the Valais in Switzer
land. He wished to go to school and college in order to
become a priest. When he was in doubt what to do, a
cousin of his, who had been at Ulm and Munich, returned
to spend a few days in his native valley, and offered to
take charge of Platter. The child had not gone far

"WANDERING STUDENTS" 21
when he discovered that cousin Paulus was a merciless
tyrant, who had got possession of the boy to make him
beg for him on the road and in the towns. He treated
him very cruelly. When the poor boy could not keep
up with the older lads — for the two were soon joined
by other bacchantes with their scutones (for so the
older and the younger scholars were called) — " my
cousin Paulus came behind me with a rod, or little
stick, and switched me on my bare legs, for I had no
stockings and very bad shoes." Platter wandered over
a great part of Germany with this ruffian, and could
not escape from his clutches, although he tried hard
to get away more than once. He was a small boy, with
a fair, pitiful face, and made a capital beggar, bringing
in more food than the others did, and was thus a valu
able property. The elders made the small boys steal
fowls and all kinds of vegetables. They did not care
to carry cooking utensils with them on their journeys,
and stole an iron pot for their evening meal. When
they camped, the older students generally sought out
some quiet spot near a small stream ; the big fellows
lopped off branches, made a hut, and kindled a fire.
The fowls brought in by the youngsters were plucked,
and their legs, heads, and giblets were thrown into the
pot with shred vegetables, and the flesh was roasted on
wooden spits. They supped the stew with the spoons
they carried in their belts, and they ate the roast when
it became brown, along with sliced turnips. Platter
spent a long time in Breslau ; but his tyrant did not
allow him to study much, if at all. He tells us that
Breslau was divided into seven parishes, each with its
high school, and that each scholar could beg only within
the parish of the school to which he belonged; if an

22 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
unfortunate youth got beyond the bounds of his school
parish, he found himself among enemies, who, crying
" ad idem, ad idem," rushed at him, flinging stones and
beating him. He spent most of the morning in begging
for food, and the people were very kind to him, he says,
" because he was so small and was a Swiss ; for the Bres-
lauers were very fond of the Swiss"; and he often
brought to his bacchant enough for six meals. In the
evenings he went round the public-houses and begged
and sang for beer, and they gave him so much that the
poor boy was often the worse for it. He fell ill at
Breslau, and was taken to the students' hospital, where
he had a good doctor, and was well nursed in a good
bed, but the vermin were so many and so large that he
wished he were out of it.
The wandering student occurs frequently in the
Fastnachtspiele, or popular comedies of the carnival
time, and he is always a beggar, and generally a rogue.
It is not to be wondered at that Luther, with his
memory full of those wandering students, denounced
the system in which men spent twenty, even forty,
years in student life, and in the end knew neither
Latin nor German, "to say nothing of the shameful
and vicious life by which our worthy youth have been
so miserably corrupted."
Luther's parents looked after him too well to allow
him to go off with one of the wandering bacchants ; but
as they were not fortunate enough to live in a town
which possessed a high school, they selected Magdeburg,
perhaps because it contained an institution founded by
the disciples of Gerard Groot, the great Flemish educa
tionalist, in whose schools so many of the great men of
the fifteenth century were trained. We know little or

AT SCHOOL AT MAGDEBURG 2.3
nothing about his life there. He fell ill of fever, and was
at death's door. He saw two things which made his
whole religious sensibilities tingle, and which he never
forgot — one, a prince of Anhalt, who for his soul's
safety had become a barefooted friar, carried the
begging sack on his bent shoulders through the town,
and was worn to skin and bones by his fastings, scourg-
ings, and prayers; and the other, an altar-piece in a
church, the picture of a ship, " wherein was no layman,
not even a king nor a prince ; there were none but the
pope, with his cardinals and bishops, at the prow, with
the Holy Ghost hovering over them, the priests and the
monks with their oars by the sides; and thus they
went sailing heavenward. The laymen were swimming
along in the water around the ship. Some of them
were drowning, some were drawing themselves up to
the ship by ropes which the monks, moved by pity and
making over their own good works, cast out to them,~
to keep them from drowning, and to enable them to
cleave to the vessel and go with it to heaven. There
was no cardinal nor bishop nor monk nor priest in the
water, but laymen only." Those two visions sank
deeply into his heart. That is about all we know of
Luther at Magdeburg.
The following year the boy was sent to Eisenach to
the high school in the parish of St. George. His fever
at Magdeburg had doubtless alarmed the mother, and
as she had relations in Eisenach, which lay near the
Luther home of Mohra, she thought her delicate lad
would be better looked after. We do not hear that
Luther lived with any of these relations. He probably
got a share of a room at the scholars' hostel, and,
like other poor students, he sang in the streets, begging

24 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
for bread. Luther tells us about it in his " Sermon on
the Duty of Sending Children to School." " Do not,"
he says, " despise the boys who beg from door to door,
saying, ' A little bread for the love of God ' ; and when
groups of poor people sing before your house, think
that ye hear great princes and lords. I myself have
been such a beggar pupil, and have sung for bread
before houses, especially in the dear town of Eisenach,
though afterwards my beloved father supported me at
the University of Erfurt, with all love and self-sacri
fice, and by the sweat of his brow helped me to the
position which I now occupy. Still for a time I was
a ' poverty student,' and I have risen by the pen to a
position which I would not exchange for that of the
Sultan of Turkey, taking his wealth and giving up my
learning." The little town of Eisenach lies in a valley, sur
rounded then, as now, with rich woods, and above the
closely packed peaked-roofed houses rises the hill,
crowned by the Wartburg, where St. Elizabeth of
Hungary, the holy Landgravine of Thuringen, spent the
happier part of her life, and where Luther, three hun
dred years afterwards, was to be sent for safety. The
boys of the high school, the small Luther among them,
sang in the choir of St. George's Church, and a great
part of the interior remains still as it was in his days.
It was in Eisenach that, according to Mathesius, the
poor boy, begging and singing, attracted the attention
of a lady of gentle birth, and that she and her husband
took him into their house, and made him one of the
family. Historians make out that she was Frau Cotta,
and belonged to a noble burgher family. Luther never
names her ; but he refers often to his dear mrthin in

AT EISENACH 25
Eisenach, and he more than once quotes sayings of hers.
Once, in his Commentary on the Booh of Proverbs,
xxx. 10, he quotes her, saying, " There is nothing on
earth more lovely than the love of husband and wife
when it is in the fear of the Lord." The entrance into
this family must have opened a new world to Luther.
It was a richer life than was possible in his hard
peasant home, and full of fine human feelings. It was
probably the best part of his education in Eisenach.
Yet the master of the St. George's high school was a
distinguished man. He was that Trebonius who never
entered his classroom without bowing to his pupils,
unkempt lads as most of them must have been, because
he used to say, "Future burgomasters, chancellors,
doctors, and magistrates are among those boys."
We have some few indications of the lad's quiet,
pious tendencies while at Eisenach. The whole reli
gious feeling of the town was under the spell of the
holy Elizabeth ; the place contained no less than nine
monasteries and nunneries, many of them dating back
to the times of the pious Landgravine, and some of
them devoted to that practical charity which was her
ruling characteristic.
Who knows what thoughts went through the mind
of the boy as he gazed on the picture, over the altar in
St. George's Church, of the holy Landgravine who
had given up family life and children to earn a medi
aeval saintship, and saw the setting sun blazon her
good deeds painted on the glass windows ? Was it not
enough to lead him, with his poetic imagination and
his brooding mysticism and melancholy, away from the
hard homely piety of his peasant parents, and from the
more cultured family religion of his new friends in

26 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Eisenach, to that convent life for which Elizabeth had,
three hundred years before, given up so much? We
can fancy him, with that reverence for noble woman
hood which has always lain deep in the heart of the
best type of German boy and man, seeing in the holy
Elizabeth a glorified Mother Luther and Frau Cotta.
But if such thoughts came, they were only precious
secrets, not to be revealed to anyone ; and, so far as his
outside life was concerned, he was still the obedient
son, advancing in school and college towards the trained
lawyer which his father destined him to become.
When school-days were over, Luther was sent by his
father to the University of Erfurt. A measure of pro
sperity was crowning the hard labours of Hans and
Margarethe Luther, and they could now pay for their
boy's support when he was away from home. Luther
quitted the ranks of the " poor students," and was able
to give his whole time to his studies.
The old tile-roofed town has not altered much since
Luther came to it in the summer of 1501, and entered
his name in the university album in letters which can
still be read, "Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt"; the
Gera still crosses and recrosses the streets, and goes
round the old fortifications ; and there is still the care
ful cultivation which won the old name, " The Kitchen
Garden Town."
The university was one of the oldest in Germany,
and, when Luther entered it, the most renowned. " He
who would study well must go to Erfurt," was a com
mon saying. The great man of the place was Johan
Trudwetter, the " Erfurt Doctor," whose fame and
genius, all good Germans thought, had made Erfurt as
well known as Paris. The teaching and course of study

ERFURT STUDIES 27
was thoroughly mediaeval, but on what was esteemed to
be the advanced side of mediaeval thought. The faculty
of philosophy prepared the way for the study of law
and theology ; it began with logic, and went through
dialectic, rhetoric, and music, to physics, astronomy,
etc. The commentators followed belonged to the
Nominalist School, and Luther learned there to call
William of Occam his " dear master." Humanism had
found entrance before Luther matriculated, and lectures
on the purely classical authors had become part of the
faculty of philosophy. The new Humanism did not
attack the older course of study, openly at least, at
Erfurt. The young Humanists affected to be poets,
wrote Latin verses sometimes in praise of their
older colleagues, and were content to veil their
eclectic theosophy from their gaze. Their leaders,
Mutianus and Crotus, delighted to reveal to a
band of admiring, half-terrified juveniles that there
was but one God and one Goddess, taking the various
names Jupiter, Mars, Jesus, and Juno, Diana, Mary;
but those things were not supposed to go further than
the walls of the room. In short, the Humanists affected
to make a select and secret society, writing Latin
verses to each other, and corresponding after the manner
of the ancients. Spalatin, afterwards court preacher
to the Elector of Saxony, and one of Luther's warmest
friends, belonged to this select circle.
As for Luther himself, we have no very clear account
of what he did and how he fared in the university
town. We have to piece together a picture of his
student-life from references in correspondence, recol
lections of his fellow-students, and scattered sayings
of his own in after-life. They all reveal a self-con-

28 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
tained young man, resolved to profit to the uttermost
by the advantages of the place for acquiring know
ledge, and so to justify the self-sacrifices of his parents.
He worked hard at the prescribed studies, and though
he did not care much for the mediaeval course, he was
quick to see what was its real use. " Dialectic speaks
simply, straightforward, and plainly, as when I say,
' Give me something to drink.' But rhetoric adorns the
matter, saying, ' Give me of the acceptable juice in the
cellar, which finely froths and makes people merry.'
Dialectic declares a thing distinctly and significantly in
brief words. Rhetoric counsels and advises, persuades
and dissuades; she has her place and fountainhead,
whence a thing is taken ; as this is good, honest, profit
able, easy, necessary, etc. These two arts St. Paul
briefly taught when he says, ' That he may be able by
sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince gain-
sayers.' " He took much more delight in the classical
studies, but not in the genuine Humanist fashion. He
cared much more for the thoughts than the language,
and delighted in the glimpses of the new world which
the classical writers revealed to him. But when he
found that those studies were drawing him away from
his prescribed tasks, he had sufficient mastery over
his desires to curb his classical tastes. He had a very
modest estimate of his powers as a Latinist. He called
himself a "peasant Corydon," and thought that his
speech was too rough for him to excel as a fine writer ;
and it is almost amusing to note how careful he is to
try, not always successfully, to write a finer latinity
than usual when he corresponds with his Humanist
friends. Upon the whole, one gets the idea of a very
level-headed man, with a strong sense of the practical

INNER LIFE AT ERFURT 29
side of his studies, respected by his professors, and
refusing to be carried away into any excess of Human
ism on the one hand, or of sensuality on the other.
He did not look back with any great delight to his
student-days at Erfurt; perhaps he thought that he
had been forced to spend too much time on useless
studies ; perhaps he was undergoing, almost uncon
sciously, the inward struggles which were soon to
become only too apparent to himself.
The singular thing is, that we know very little about
the inner religious life of Luther during those student-
years. No great man has ever made himself so well
known as Luther afterwards did. His correspondence,
his sermons, his commentaries, and all his books reveal
the man himself, and are full of little autobiographical
details; but all that comes after the great conflict
had been fought and won. His inner life during his
student-days is a sealed book for us. There was unrest,
there was an inward war — there must have been ; but
it is revealed in one or two exclamations only, and we
can scarcely be sure that those discover it. It would
almost appear that during the later years of his stay
at the university, Luther was leading a double life. In
the one he was the bright, hard-working, practical
student, taking his various degrees in an unexpectedly
short time — his bachelor's degree in October 1502 and
his master's in 1505, when he stood second among the
seventeen successful candidates. Melanchthon tells
us that his conspicuous ability had become the wonder
of the whole university. The other life was that in
ward hidden struggle which he seems to have been only
half -conscious of, and to which he can scarcely be said
to have referred in after-life.

30 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
He had finished, with almost unique distinction,
his Arts course, and was about to begin the study of
law, when he suddenly plunged into the Erfurt Convent.
So sudden and unexpected was the plunge that his
friends felt bound to account for it somehow ; and their
interjectional explanations have been woven into later
legends. There seems to be little doubt that he had a
severe illness at the close of the philosophy course ; and
this, it is said, brought him to the decision. An old
tradition, which there is no reason to disbelieve, states
that on July 2, 1505, fourteen days before he entered the
convent, he was returning from a visit to his parents,
and had already reached the village of Stotterheim, close
to Erfurt, when he suddenly found himself in a great
thunderstorm, and that in fear he cried out, " Help me,
St. Anna, and I will become a monk " ; and this, it is
said, was the crisis. His friend Crotus has declared that
he believed that Luther was as suddenly called to enter
the convent as Saul was called on the Damascus road.
There is also the statement he made to his father, that
he was called by a voice from heaven ; the assertion of
Mathesius and Melanchthon that he had suddenly lost
by death a dear friend ; and the fact that he entered |
the convent on St. Alexius day. A later tradition has
woven all these separate things into the well-known
story of the journey with Alexius, the thunderstorm,
Alexius struck dead by lightning, the voice which
sounded in Luther's ears, " What shall it profit a man
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
But this is later tradition. We have no certain account
of the conflict of soul which ended in the sudden resolve
(Luther himself tells us that it was sudden) to save his
soul within the quiet of the cloister walls.

CHAPTER II
THE YEARS OF PREPARATION
§ 1. In the Convent
Luther had entered the convent. He had floated
down the stream of school-day and student life, feel
ing, almost imperceptibly, eddies and currents, and now
they had swept him to the sea, and there was no jump
ing ashore. He had gone to the convent of the Augus
tinian monks. The prior had put the usual question,
" What seekest thou, my son ? " and Luther had made
the well-known answer, " I seek the mercy of God and
your fellowship." He had been received ; he had donned
the novice's garb ; and for one whole year — a year to
be spent in learning what lay before him as a monk —
he was invisible to the world beyond the convent gate.
The grief in the old home at Mansfeld can scarcely be
described. Was it for this that Margarethe had borne
the mother-pangs so far away from all kith and kin,
and had bent her poor back to gather and carry sticks
for the cottage fire ? Was it for this that the father
had pinched and saved, and denied himself and his all
manner of small comforts, that his boy should become
a great lawyer and be the making of them all ? To
become a monk, to add one to the overflowing crowd of
31

32 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
"rogues and hypocrites," as the sturdy old peasant
called them ?
Meanwhile the young novice was learning how to
become a monk. He was to live under rules and usages
which regulated every hour of his life — rules which ex
hausted the whole religious life in certain definite and
prescribed forms. He had to spend so many hours of
the day and the night in hearing the chanting of the
services, in prayers recited standing, in hearing masses
said, in fasting. He had to learn the minutiae of all
these services — how he was to stand or sit or kneel,
how he was to move his feet and his hands and his head
in the different parts of the service. When he had
been thus drilled for a year he was supposed to be fit
for reception into the Order. The day came at last.
The church of the Augustinians was crowded with
townspeople and students from the university. After
the usual services the novice Martin, kneeling down
before the prior, Wienand of Diedenhofen, made the
irrevocable vow : " I, Brother Martin, do make profes
sion and promise obedience unto Almighty God, unto
Mary the Virgin, and unto thee, my brother, Prior of
this cloister, in the name and stead of the General Prior
of the Eremites of St. Augustine, the Bishop, and his
regular successors, to live in poverty and chastity
under the rule of the said St. Augustine until death."
He was robed in the black frock and hood of his Order,
the long white scapulary or scarf was thrown over
him, and hung down before and behind, a lighted taper
was placed in his hands, to signify the newly-enlight- ;
ened conscience; the prior whispered the prayer over him
kneeling, the choir sang the " Veni Creator Spiritus " ;
he was led up the altar steps, the monks welcomed him

IN THE CONVENT 33
with the kiss of peace, and in their midst he slowly
marched behind the screen — no longer a man in the
world, but a monk in the cloister. Many an old stu
dent friend, and some of his former professors, watched
the black-robed figure slowly disappear behind the
convent door, and went home to curse the monks who
had robbed the university of its most distinguished
student, and the world of one who was expected to play
a great part in it.
What made him do it ? What made so many noble
men and women, all down the stream of mediaeval his
tory, think that it was not possible to serve God to the
uttermost except inside the walls of a convent, unless
they abandoned family, friends, and life for others and
among others in the world which Christ came to save ?
To answer this question involves the history of the
practical piety of the pre-mediseval and mediaeval
Church, the history of the old penitential services, the
history and growth of asceticism, and many kindred sub
jects. The more one studies the whole subject, the more
the conviction comes that there was scarcely one single
act in the long interwoven series but had in its due
time and place some salutary use, and which was not
the genuine outcome of an honest human soul striving
to humble itself before God in an agony of genuine
sense of sin. The evil came when spontaneous acts of
repentance and honest endeavour after new obedience
became stereotyped customs, then prescribed regula
tions, and lost all the bloom of fresh and spontaneous
action. But however the delusion arose, that the best
way to serve God was to abandon home and family
and the world for which Christ died, Luther had it.
Two pictures had taken hold of his childish mind at
3

34 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Magdeburg— the one was the sight of the young prince
of Anhalt, who, to save his soul, had become a bare
footed friar, and the other the altar-piece in a church at
Magdeburg (p. 23). Pictures like these might well efface
the pious teaching of father and mother; and when
intense conviction of sin came, and the consequent dis
satisfaction with his surroundings, we easily conceive
how the young man surrendered himself to the thought
that he had to get rid of everything to which he was
accustomed ere he could be in a position to find the
salvation he longed for. At all events he went into
the convent in good faith, and for years, till he was
in the midst of the controversy about Indulgences, he
was thoroughly persuaded that he had done the only
thing he could do, and was perfectly sure of his voca
tion to be a monk. He threw himself with ardour
into the new conventual life ; he went through all the
observances he had been taught with careful assiduity.
He practised obedience, he fasted, he prayed, he kept
his body under with scourgings and want of sleep.
He once at least spent three whole days without eat
ing or drinking ; he was once missed from the services,
and was found fainting on the floor of his cell. "If
ever a monk could win heaven by monkery, I must
have reached it," said Luther long afterwards. Yet he
felt no nearer God ; he had no sense of pardon, no feel
ing of the upspringing of a new spiritual life.
The prior of the Augustinians, John Staupitz, was a
wise and large-hearted man. He had the root of evan
gelical faith in him, just as Luther's father and mother
had. In after years he sympathised with most of
Luther's doctrines, and yet he never left the Roman
Catholic Church. Such a man was resolved to make

BIBLE STUDY 35
the best of the monastic life which he shared, and to
do the best for the monks under his charge. He in
sisted that every monk who was fit for it should read
theology, and every convent was provided with a Latin
Bible, which the monks were instructed to study.
Luther tells us how the monks showed him the great
Bible, bound in red leather, and how the first thing he
read was the story of Hannah and Samuel, and how it
made him think of his mother and himself. He was
set to study the scholastic theology; he tells us how
he read and read till he could repeat from memory the
great folios of William of Occam ; how he pored over
the works of John Gerson and Bonaventura and Diony-
sius. He spoke slightingly of these studies in after
years. Yet he knew that the study did him good,
though not in the way he most longed for. " I still
keep those books which tormented me," he said.
"Scotus wrote very well on the Master of the Sen
tences, and diligently essayed to teach upon these mat
ters. Occam was an able and sensible man." Occam
made him know the fallibility of popes, and Gerson
showed him the ecclesiastical value of General Councils.
The study of the Bible did not bring him much con
solation at first. In the mood of mind in which he
was, the passages which spoke of the jealous and
righteous God, the God who punishes sin, burned them
selves into him. The slightest unconscious deviation
from the minutest conventual regulation of posture or
position of hands or feet was a sin which tortured him.
Staupitz told him almost roughly once to cease con
fessing till he had some real sin to confess. An aged
monk asked him to recite the Creed, and made him stop
when he came to the clause, " I believe in the forgive-

36 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
ness of sin." " Do you believe that ? " he said. " Then
put the word ' my ' in ; say ' I believe in the forgive
ness of my sins.' " Pardon comes in the appropriation ,if , 1 fy
of the promise. That comforted the storm-tossed soul,
but only for a moment. Then came the thought:
pardon follows contrition, confession, and penance;
how can I know that my contrition has gone deep
enough ? How can I be sure that my confession has
included every sinful thought, word, and deed ? Then
followed again the old weary round of torturing self-
examination. It was the thought of the "righteous
ness of God " which troubled him most, and seemed a
very wall raised to prevent his approaching God. At
last his spiritual advisers, and especially Staupitz, began
to see more clearly what his real difficulties were, and
tried to explain to him that the righteousness of God for
everyone who trusts in Christ is on the sinner's side, *
and not against him. This sent Luther to the Bible
again with new hopes. He began the study of the
Epistle to the Romans over again. But let us tell the
story in his own words : —
" I sought day and night to make out the meaning
of Paul; and at last I came to apprehend it thus:
Through the gospel is revealed the righteousness which
availeth with God — a righteousness by which God,
in His mercy and compassion, justifieth us ; as it is
written, * The just shall live by faith.' Straightway I
felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I had found "
the door of Paradise thrown wide open. Now I saw
the Scriptures altogether in a new light — I ran through 1 1 f
their whole contents as far as my memory would serve
and compared them, and found that this righteousness "i A "
was really that by which God makes us righteous, 1 1 |«

THE WAY OF PEACE 37
because everything else in Scripture agreed thereunto
so well. The expression, 'the righteousness of God,'
which I so much hated before, now became dear and
precious — my darling and comforting word. That
passage of Paul was to me the true door of Paradise."
So Luther found the peace he had so long sought in
the old, old way, which is always new — by simply taking
God at His word, by trusting in His promise. He had
not needed to come to the convent to find his new life ;
but his going there had not hindered him from finding
it. There were the promises of God, and there was a
man trusting them ; and all that righteousness, justice,
and almighty power were now behind him and beneath
him, binding him to God, not barring him out from
Him. But it is not to be thought that this new and
blessed change made Luther then and there a reformer
of abuses in the ecclesiastical life. He was still a monk,
and believed in his monastic vocation. He was still a
faithful son of the mediaeval Church, with its pope and
cardinals, its bishops and monks, its masses, its pil
grimages, and its indulgences. All these external
things remained unchanged. The thing that was
changed was the relation in which one human soul
stood to his God. His conversion (if one likes to call
it by that name), his vision and appropriation of the
pardoning grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and
the assurance he had of that, was simply one funda
mental fact on which he, a single human soul, could take
his stand as on a foundation of rock. He could now
enjoy his monastic life and all the duties which it gave
him to do ; there was something real in them and in
the religion which they expressed. The very fact that
his salvation had come to him within the convent only

38 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
made him the surer that he had done right in taking
the monastic vows, and he felt convinced that now
even his father would approve of what he had done.
§ 2. In the Convent— Ordained
Meanwhile he was to be ordained, and an ordination,
then as now, was a sort of gala occasion ; old friends
assembled, and it was customary that the father of the
candidate brought some small money gift to the son.
Old Hans Luther came, with no great good-will, only
he did not wish to shame his oldest son. He brought
a company of Mansfeld friends, who rode to the con
vent door "on twenty horses." He handed over the
usual present of twenty gulden, and sat at the ordina
tion dinner. This did not suffice for the ardent young
priest; he had to justify himself for leaving the life
his father had marked out for him, and he longed to
hear that his father accepted the justification. He
began (he has told us the story himself) : " Dear father,
why have you been so set against me, so wrathful;
why is it that you are still perhaps unwilling to see me
a monk ? It is such a peaceful, pleasant, and godly
life." The old man glanced round the table, at which
sat professors, masters, as well as monks, and said:
" Did you never hear that a son must obey his parents ?
and you learned men, have you never read in the Holy
Scriptures that a man should honour his father and his
mother?" No arguments from the company about
the beauties of the monastic life were of any avail;
and when at last Luther insisted that he had only fol
lowed the divine call, the sturdy old peasant replied :
" God grant that it may not prove a delusion of the

ORDINATION 39
devil." No man would convince him that the monk's
life was better or more godly than the life lived amid
wife and children by the fireside, and in the world of
everyday work. Luther did not believe him at the
time ; but the days came when his father's words
seemed to be the text for many a fiery oration against
monkery. He delighted to dedicate his tract On the
Monastic Vow to his father. The dedication said :
" You were right, dear father, after all." But that was
in the future.
Luther was now a priest ; and he, who took every
thing belonging to the spiritual world with such
earnestness, was oppressed beyond measure when he
thought of what he was called upon to do. For it
was now his office to perform the sacrifice of the
Mass ; it was in his power, he thought, in virtue of his
ordination, to bring the Lord Jesus Christ down from
heaven to earth. He, by his prayer of consecration,
could change bread and wine in such a way that they
were no longer what they seemed to be, but the actual
body of Christ which had hung on the Cross, and the
actual' blood which had gushed forth at the thrust of
the Roman soldier's spear; and with the body and
blood he could bring the human soul of the Saviour,
that soul which had exclaimed, " My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me ! " and with the human soul
that ineffable and eternal Godhead which in virtue of
the Incarnation dwelt for evermore within. He trembled
before this holy mystery, as he conceived it to be. He
quaked with fear when he was called on to say Mass ;
he shuddered at the carelessness of his fellow-priests,
at the light way in which they spoke of this awful
mystery, of this miraculous power placed in the hands

40 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
of weak men by God. In these early days, after his con
version, he had no doubt about the Romanist doctrine
of Transubstantiation ; he accepted it and trembled.
He had to hear confession and to pronounce absolution.
But here he was on more familiar ground. His own
experience had taught him that man could never for
give sin; that God alone could do that; that the
priest's function was much more human. He could be
the spiritual guide of those who came to confess ; he
could warn against false grounds of confidence ; he
could declare that God pardoned all who truly con
fessed and were sorry for their sins. Yet he never in
these early days proposed to do away with the con
fessional or to reform its practice. He simply set the
evangelical truth in the framework of mediaeval prac
tice, like a soul in a somewhat ungainly body. The
practice of confession was for him what it was in our
old Columban Church — a "soul-friendship" — wherein
one brother could help another out of his Christian
experience ; and the absolution was simply the privilege
of proclaiming the fact that God had pardoned the
humble and trusting penitent. He still prescribed
penances, for he thought that commanded in the Bible.
Where the Greek word which we translate "repent"
occurred, the Vulgate or Latin Bible, which Luther had,
read "do penance." Years afterwards Melanchthon
showed him that the real scriptural word meant
"change your mind." § 3. At Wittenberg
All the while Luther was beginning to show him
self a good man of business, with an eye for the heart

PROFESSOR AT WITTENBERG 41
of things. He became the confidant of the heads of
his community, and was entrusted with many delicate
commissions, and sent on some embassies on behalf of
his Order. In 1508 he was called to a wider sphere
of work. Frederic the Elector of Saxony had long
meditated on having a university within his dominions,
and in 1502 had begun one in the town of Wittenberg.
Staupitz and Dr. Pollich, who accompanied the Elector
on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, were his two chief
advisers. There was not much money to spare at the
Electoral Court, and everything was done in the most
frugal German fashion. The money got from the sale
of indulgences years before — money which the Elector
would not allow to leave the country — -served to make
a beginning. Some parishes were united to the Castle
Church, — the Church of All Saints its ecclesiastical
name, — and the tithes furnished the stipends of the
professors, who were to be prebendaries of the Church.
Staupitz suggested that the professors in theology
and philosophy might be furnished by the Augustinian
Order, and as monks they did not need salary. The
town of Wittenberg was of some official importance in
Electoral Saxony ; but it was small (only 356 rateable
houses in 1513) and mean-looking; the houses were old
and poor-looking structures of wood; the surrounding
country stony, with stretches of barren heath; the
people rough and boorish, much inclined to beer-drink
ing.1 It must have been a strange little place, full of con
trasts; the Elector's palace, the great Castle Church,
full of the relics which the Elector had brought home
from the Holy Land ; the new Augustinian Cloister,
and one or two more fine buildings; and then the
1 There were no fewer than 170 brewing houses.

42 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
wretched little houses of wood, plastered with mud and
thatched with straw, while the broad rushing Elbe
flowed past between its banks of heath. This was to
be the cradle of the German Reformation, and thither
came Luther in 1508, transferred from Erfurt to be
Professor of Philosophy in the small university.
Staupitz had early recognised the power lying latent
in the young monk. It had been Luther's duty, since
his ordination, to take his turn of preaching to his
fellow -monks. At Wittenberg his earliest sermons
were delivered in an old chapel, thirty feet long
and twenty wide, of wood plastered with clay, which
stood near the new cloister, and which had been given
to the monks to be a convent chapel. It was there that
Luther began his evangelical sermons, delivered at first
to a handful of monks and professors. "That monk
has deep eyes and wonderful fancies," said Dr. Pollich,
who was amongst his earliest hearers.
In 1511 his work at Wittenberg was interrupted:
by a command to go to Rome on the business of his
Order. Staupitz, who was at the head of a number of
reformed convents of the Augustinian Order, wished
to bring several other Augustinian convents under the
same regulations, and indeed had been authorised by
the Pope to do so. Some of these unreformed convents
had protested and appealed to Rome, and Staupitz
wished Luther and a fellow-monk, John of Mechlen, to
represent him before the papal court. Thus Luther,
who had seen monastic life from the inside, was des
tined to make a personal acquaintance with Rome itself.
He started with ten gold florins in his purse. The
journey was to be made on foot ; food and lodging were
to be got in friendly monasteries. The two Augustinians

JOURNEY TO ROME 43
went by Switzerland. Luther admired the fertile valley
of the Po, lying between the Alps and the Apennines ;
he praised the patient agriculture of the Italians, the
vines, the olives, the oranges, and the figs. He says
nothing of the Art collections of Florence, but he
praises the wonderful hospitals which the benevolence
of the people had erected for the suffering sick, and in
which honourable ladies waited on the poor. He con
trasted the sobriety of the Italians with the drunken
ness of the Germans ; and he thankfully acknowledged
the wonderful hospitality extended to the two stranger
German monks. But the luxury of the larger monas
teries pained him ; the monks feasted on fast days in a
way that Germans would not have done on festivals ;
the people were dishonest and crafty, and seemed to
care little for spiritual things. This journey was for
Luther and his companion a pilgrimage also. They
meant to visit all the holy places, and pay due rever
ence to the shrines of the martyrs. They approached
the imperial city with the liveliest expectation. When
they first came in sight of its walls, Luther raised his
hands in an ecstasy, exclaiming, "I greet thee, thou
Holy Rome ! " He felt like a Jewish pilgrim at the first
glimpse of Jerusalem.
His official business did not cost very much time ;
the dispute seems to have been amicably settled by
a compromise. His business done, he set himself to
see the city with the devotion of a pilgrim and
with the thoroughness of a German. He visited all
the oldest churches, swallowed wholesale, he says,
all the legends his guides repeated to him; studied
the ruins of ancient Rome; marvelled at the Colos
seum and at the Baths of Diocletian. Only once did

44 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
his evangelical faith rebel against all this supersti
tion. There was and is in Rome a great staircase,
its steps worn with the pressure of thousands of
pilgrims — the Holy Staircase, which was said to have
once formed part of Pilate's house. An indulgence
from penance for a thousand years is promised to
those pilgrims who climb it on their knees. Luther
began the ascent, repeating the usual prayers, but
when he got half-way up, he remembered the text
" The just shall live by his faith " ; he rose from his
knees, stood for a moment erect, and then slowly
walked down again.
But if Luther was still unemancipated from medi
aeval superstitions, his sturdy German piety and his
plain Christian morality turned his reverence for
Rome into loathing The city, which he had greeted
as holy, was a sink of iniquity ; its very priests were
openly infidel, and scoffed at the services they per
formed; the papal courtiers were men of the most
shameless lives; he was accustomed to repeat the
Italian proverb, "If there is a hell, Rome is built
over it." It was much for him in after days that he
had seen Rome for that month which he had spent
in the papal capital.
§ 4. In the Convent — Professor and Doctor
op Theology
Luther was back at Wittenberg in the early
summer of 1512. His professorial duties seem to
have been laid aside for some months, and he was
busily engaged on various duties connected with the
convent. The vicar-general, Dr. Staupitz, had, how-

DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY 45
ever, designed him for higher work. Luther had taken
the opportunity while at Rome to learn something
of Hebrew from a Jewish Rabbi, and to get lessons
in Greek from a refugee from Constantinople, and
Staupitz wished him to become Doctor in Theology
and the chief theological professor at Wittenberg.
Luther long resisted, and yielded not to persuasion
but to commands. Very unhappy about it all, he
was sent to the Erfurt convent to prepare for gradua
tion. Had he premonitions, dim or clear, of what
lay before him, when he so strenuously resisted the
persuasions of his superior? Had his studies in
mediaeval theology, and his new found liberty in ex
pounding the Scriptures, taught him that there was a
long fierce fight before him ? He must have had some
misgivings ; but the future was as dark to him as it
is to all of us. " No good work comes about by our own
wisdom; it begins in dire necessity; I was forced
into mine ; but had I known then what I know now,
ten wild horses would not have drawn me into it."
That is what Luther said about this very introduc
tion to theological teaching.
To become a doctor of theology in these days in
volved a lengthy ceremony. It began with a thesis
proposed by the graduate-to-be — a proposition whose
truth he was to defend against all-comers. Next day
at early morning the bells of the churches were set
a-ringing as on a great festival. The university
authorities, with students and strangers and townsmen,
marched through the streets, the newly created doctor
in their midst. In the hall the candidate delivered a
short address; he took the Wittenberg University
vow, " I swear to defend evangelical truth vigorously "

46 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
(viriliter) ; the doctor's cap was placed on his head ;
and the great gold ring, with its silver boss carved
with three intertwined circles symbolising the
mysteries of theology, was placed on his finger. He
was now Dr. Martin Luther, sworn to defend the
truth of the gospel as God made that knownto him.
Three days later he became a member of the Senate
of the university, and some weeks after, Staupitz, who
had now seen his favourite in what he believed to be
his true position, resigned his chair, and Luther took
his place as regent of the university. He had already
become sub-prior of his convent, and the Elector, who
had heard him preach sometimes in the little chapel,
had defrayed the expenses of his graduation.
Then began that wonderful series of expositions >
which gradually drew to the small, poor, and remote
University of Wittenberg students from all parts of
Germany, and then from all parts of Europe.
He began with the Psalms, which he used to call
the Bible within the Bible. There is preserved in
the Wolfenbiittel Library two fragments of these
early lectures of Luther. His text was the Latin
Version, and his notes from which he delivered the
lectures are written on the wide margins and between
the lines of print. He selected the Epistle to the
Romans for his New Testament subject, and this led
him to dwell on the thought of justification. Then
came lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians. These
lectures were like a revelation of the Bible to the
Wittenberg students; the townspeople heard about
them, and grave burghers enrolled themselves as
students in order to listen to the new and living ex
planations of the Word of God.

LECTURES ON THE BIBLE 47
To have the scene before us, we must imagine the
professor sitting at his desk with his book and his
notes, the students on hard benches or on the floor
without books, writing both text and comment on
sheets of paper, or following all and storing all up
in their memories and transcribing when they got
home to their lodgings. The multiplication of books
and the cheapening of paper has made a wonderful
revolution. Luther used a Latin Bible. He had
begun to study both Hebrew and Greek in the Erfurt
monastery, and he had improved his visit to Rome
by trying to learn something more about these
biblical languages; but with all this he knew that
he was weak in languages, and there was little
Greek or Hebrew known in the Wittenberg Univer
sity until three years later, when Melanchthon was
brought from Erfurt. Luther had few commen
taries to assist him. He did not trust very much to
mediaeval explanations of the sacred text, but he did
not disdain any help that he got from De Lyra and
others. All these early years of his professorial work he was
studying hard. Augustine was his favourite theo
logian, and he prized him not so much for his formal
theology as for his deep acquaintance with the human.
heart. He must have been reading the sermons of
John Tauler, the great German mystic, about this time ;
and a little later he became acquainted with a little
book called The German Theology, the work of an un
known mystic of the earlier part of the fifteenth
century. Luther tells us that he learned more about
heart religion from this little book than from anything
else save the Bible. He published a portion of it in

48 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the end of 1516 in order to show people how they
ought to pray; and in 1518 he published the whole
book, with a preface explaining his indebtedness to it.
All his former doubts and fears had fled. His Chris-'1
tianity was now of the most joyous kind. " Taste and
see how good the Lord is " is the burden of many a
private letter.
In these earlier years of his professoriate he under
took the duties of preacher in the town church of
Wittenberg. He did so apparently because the pastor
was unable to do his work from ill-health ; indeed, he
seems to have gradually slid into this position. In the
convent chapel he had preached to persons who could
perhaps appreciate learned discourses, but he had now
to do with the common rude man, with " raw Saxons "
as he said, and he knew that the first merit in a sermon
is that it can be understood. The people had no Bibles,
but most of them knew the Lord's Prayer and the Ten
Commandments. " The common people heard him
gladly." He spoke in plain nervous German. He
gathered collections of German proverbs and country
sayings, and used them as illustrations. He noted that
our Lord used the homeliest illustrations, talking of
tilling the ground, of mustard seed, of sparrows and
sheep and fish ; and he went and did likewise. It is
impossible to misunderstand Luther's sermons. Above
all, he had a way of making the Bible living, of show
ing that it was full of histories of men and women
who had lived and talked and eaten and slept and
married and given in marriage. All this was new.
No matter what the text was, the sermon was sure to
come round in the end to that doctrine of grace which
he had first learned by the hearing of the ear at his.

SUPERINTENDENT OF CONVENTS 49
mother's knees, then N cast behind him in his student
days, and finally got hold of again after sore conflict
in Erfurt monastery, — the doctrine of the radical dis
tinction between the law and the gospel,— the doctrine
that the divine righteousness is not mere punitive
justice, but saving merit made over once for all to
every believer in Christ, — the doctrine that faith is
not belief in propositions, but a trust in, and a per
sonal fellowship with, a crucified Lord. The town's
church where those sermons were preached is a great
roomy building with two towers, standing near the
market-place in Wittenberg. The old pulpit lies in
fragments in the Luther House ; but the font, a hep
tagon with the apostles engraved on the faces, a
beautiful work in bronze by that exquisite artist
Peter Vischer of Niirnberg, remains where it stood
when Luther bent over it to sprinkle little children in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
As you stand there it is not difficult to recall the
church filled with an eager audience, to see the wan
wild face with the high cheek-bones and traces of the
convent fasts and struggles and the deep-set gleaming
eyes, and to hear the clear musical voice launching
forth proverb-like sentences in the vigorous mother
tongue — for Luther's words were " half -battles."
In 1516 he had additional duties laid upon him ; he
was made a superintendent of a circle of eleven Augus
tinian convents, among them of his old convent at
Erfurt. He had to make regular visitations, to preach
to the monks, to discuss with them theological diffi
culties, to explain the rules of the Order, to discipline
erring brethren, and to give solemn decisions on dozens
of trifling questions, such as: "On what occasions
4

So LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
certain brethren were to wear their white scapularies '' ;
" who ought to clean out certain fish ponds," and " who
ought to carry the fish from the ponds to the monas
tery ? " He tells us all about this in his correspond
ence, and has a glance at everything humorous which
passes. Here is how he relates how full of work he is
(he is writing to John Lange, prior of Erfurt): "I
have need of two secretaries, and do almost nothing
all day long but write letters; ... I am convent
preacher; reader at meals; I am required to preach
every day in the parish church; I am director of
studies ; ... I am vicar of the Order, i.e. prior eleven
times over; I have to superintend the Leitzkau fish
pond ; I have charge of our people of Herzberg at
Torgau ; I lecture on St. Paul, and collate the Psalms."
Besides all this, he was already watching John Tetzel,
still at a distance from Wittenberg, and his In
dulgence-selling. Yet he can find time for letters like
the following : " Learn, dear brother, Christ and Him
crucified ; learn to sing to Him, and doubting thyself
to say to Him : ' Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteous- >
ness while I am Thy sin; what is mine Thou hast
taken upon Thyself, and what is Thine Thou hast given
' to me.' Beware of aspiring to such purity that thou
shalt no longer seem to thyself a sinner; for Christ
does not dwell except in sinners . . . For if by our
labours and afflictions we could attain peace of con
science, why did He die ? Therefore, only in Him, by
a believing self-despair both of thyself and of thy
works, wilt thou find peace."
In 1516 the plague came to Wittenberg. Most of
the inhabitants who could do so fled from the town,
and his Erfurt brethren asked Luther to come there

THE PLAGUE AT WITTENBERG 51
for a time. Here is part of his answer : " Why should
I flee ? I hope the world would not collapse if Brother
Martin fell. If the pestilence spreads I will indeed
disperse the monks throughout the land. As for me, I
have been placed here. My obedience as a monk does
not suffer me to fly ; since what that obedience once
required it demands still. Not that I do not fear death
(I am not the Apostle Paul, but only the lecturer on
the Apostle Paul), but I hope the Lord, will deliver me
from my fear."
Luther could scarcely expect to avoid all opposition
to his new mode of teaching; but he did not fear
it. He was a teacher of theology, and he could not
avoid knowing that he taught somewhat differently
from most teachers. He comforted himself with the
thought that while others were doctors of theology he
always claimed to be a doctor of the Holy Scripture,
and that it was therefore his business to expound the
Scriptures above all other portions of theological study.
His whole life and work rested on one fundamental
thought, that God of His own free grace pardoned sin
for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that no
man, however saintly, could work out his own salva
tion. Every hope that man had rested on that. The
thought was his foundation of rock. This and the
theology based on it he believed to be scriptural, and
the only seriptural theology. It was the doctrine
which the great Augustine had taught; and Luther
called it Augustinian, not Lutheran. But it was not the
theology taught in the common theological classes at
Erfurt or Leipzig. There, professors lectured on and
expounded the Sentences of Peter of Lombardy and of
his manifold commentators — the books which had tor-

52 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
mented Luther while he was at Erfurt. He not merely
felt that this theology was useless, he distrusted it
altogether. He found that it was more pagan than
Christian; that it was based much more upon the
great pagan philosopher Aristotle than on the Epistles
of St. Paul. Yet it was sanctioned by the authority of
the weightiest names of the mediaeval Church. A
collision was inevitable at some time or other. Luther
did not shirk it ; he rather invited it. Privately and
publicly, it may even be said formally and officially, he
insisted that the sole test of theological verity was the
Holy Scripture, and that if this were acknowledged as
it ought to be, the Augustinian theology would every
where displace the scholastic.
This was the condition of affairs at Wittenberg when
Luther became involved in the controversy about In
dulgences.

CHAPTER III
INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
§ 1. The Indulgence
Luther began his work of reformation in an
attack on what was called an Indulgence proclaimed
by Pope Leo X., farmed by Albert, archbishop of
Mainz, whose commissary was John Tetzel, a notorious
Dominican monk. So far as the common people
were concerned, this Indulgence meant that on the
payment of certain specified sums of money, spiritual
privileges, including the forgiveness of sins, could be
obtained by the purchasers. The Pope proclaimed
this Indulgence to be a great boon, and as such
the majority of the common people received it.
They were encouraged to look upon it in this light
by most of the clergy, and by all who wished to
stand well with the higher ecclesiastical powers. Of
course many persons thought ill of these Indulgences.
Most secular princes felt that their poor territories
were being drained of money to enrich the papal
court, graye burghers saw that all manner of evil
living followed the trail of the Indulgence-seller, and
good parish priests felt the same. Pope Julius had
proclaimed an Indulgence in 1501, and the Elector
53

54 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Frederic had not allowed the money raised in his
dominions to leave the country. It had been levied
for the ostensible purpose of assisting to pay for a
war against the Turks and in defence of Christendom ;
and Frederic declared that he meant to keep the
money until the war began. He actually used it to
found the University of Wittenberg. John Wessel
had openly protested against that earlier Indulgence,
and had died in the prison of a Dominican monastery
in consequence. Those earlier objectors had never
reached the heart of the matter, the conscience of the
people had never been touched, and upon the whole
the multitude were ready to accept the Indulgence
for the boon which the Pope declared it to be.
The money raised was to be devoted to the build
ing of St. Peter's Church in Rome, and to serve the
pious purpose, so the Pope said, of raising a worthy
tomb over the bones of the great apostle, which
were asserted to have been laid in a Roman grave.
People were a little sceptical about the destination
of the money; but the buyers had their Indulgence
tickets, and it did not matter much to them what
became of the funds after the money had left their
pockets. So the Indulgence-seller had generally a
brilliant welcome when he entered a German town.
Myconius, who at the time was a schoolboy of
thirteen, and was one of the crowd at Annaberg in
East Saxony, tells us that when "the Commissary
or Indulgence-seller approached a town, the Bull
(announcing the Indulgence) was carried before him
on a cloth of velvet or gold, and all the priests
and monks, the council, the schoolmasters and the
the scholars, all the men and women went out to

THE INDULGENCE 55
meet him with banners and candles and songs, form
ing a grand procession ; then, all the bells ringing and
all the organs playing, they accompanied him to the
principal church; a red cross was set up in the midst of
the church, and the Pope's banner was displayed; in short,
one might think they were receiving God Himself."
Albert of Brandenberg, who had been archbishop
of Magdeburg and was then archbishop of Mainz,
thought that he could gain some advantage out of
all this enthusiasm for the Indulgence. He was a
comparatively young man, fond of display, a patron
of learning, affecting Humanist sympathies, and full
of expensive tastes for pictures, cameos, etc. He had
spent large sums of money in order to gain his
dignities, and had promised his clergy that he would
himself pay for his second archiepiscopal pallium.
He was deeply in debt to the great Augsburg bank
ing house, the Fuggers, and in desperate straits for
money. He persuaded the Pope to allow him to farm
the Indulgence for the greater part of Germany, and
hired John Tetzel, who had previously acted as the
papal under-commissary, to be his commissary. The
archbishop himself drew up, to attract buyers, a
statement of the benefits coming to all who pur
chased Indulgences, and Tetzel used this statement as
a text on which he could enlarge.
The Indulgence, according to the archbishop, pos
sessed the following inestimable efficacies : — It ensured
to those who bought the tickets complete forgiveness
of sins, participation in the grace of God, and freedom
from purgatory; it gave them a ticket or letter,
stamped with the Pope's seal, which allowed them to
select a confessor, whom they pleased, who would

56 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
absolve them from all crimes and punishments, and
would permit them to exchange any vows they had "
taken upon themselves for some other more agreeable
good works; it made them sharers in all the good ,;
works of the universal Church, in all the benefits of
prayers, pilgrimages, and other ecclesiastical good
works performed by all the members of the whole
Church; and it provided a full remission of sins to
all departed persons then in purgatory. Tetzel went
far beyond the letter of his instructions. He shouted, •>'
" The soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money
rattles in the box " ; " the red cross of the Indulgence
is of equal power with the cross of Christ"; "the
' Papal Letters ' have such power that they would
absolve a man who had violated the Mother of God."
But his blasphemies did not display more sordid f|
money-getting than did the papal Commission itself.
It declared that certain sins were outside the power of
the Indulgence to remove. They were as follows: —
"Except the crimes of conspiracy against the person "|
of the supreme Pontiff, of the murder of bishops, or
of other superior prelates, and the laying violent
hands upon them or other prelates, the forging of
apostolic letters, or conveying of arms and other
prohibited things into heathen countries, and the
sentences and censures incurred on occasion of the
importation of the alums of apostolic Tolfa from
heathen countries contrary to the apostolic prohibi
tion." The meaning of the words italicised is that all
persons who imported alum into Christendom were
guilty of an unpardonable sin ; and although no reason
is given it is not far to seek. A certain Giovanni di
Castro discovered alum stone in the mountains of

SMUGGLERS OF ALUM 57
Tolfa, not far from Civita Vecchia and within the papal
dominions. This was a mine of wealth for the Holy
See. Di Castro made sure of his discovery by calcin
ing the stone. He then appeared before the Pope and
said : " I announce to you a victory over the Turk.
He draws yearly from the Christians above 300,000
pieces of gold, paid to him for the alum with which
we dye wool of various colours, because none is found
here, but a little at Ischia ... I have found seven
hills so abundant in it that they might supply seven
worlds. If you will send for workmen and cause
furnaces to be made and the stones to be calcined,
you may furnish alum to all Europe, and that again
which the Turk used to acquire by this article will
be thrown into your hands." The Holy See made
haste to work its newly found treasures, and in order
to secure the whole profit to itself, it made it a sin
to import any alum into Europe. The money to be
obtained from the Indulgence was not to be allowed
to interfere with the papal revenue from its alum
mines ; and so the importation of alum was declared
to be a sin unpardonable by any Indulgence.
Myconius tells us how Tetzel's sermons and the
conversations of the monks about the Indulgence,
made him believe in the efficacy of the pardon tickets.
He had come from a pious home. His parents had
taught him the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and
the Lord's Prayer. His father had often expounded
them to him, and he had told him over and over
again that he must continually pray to God to pardon
his sins, that God alone could pardon, and that He
grants pardon to those who sincerely seek it and that
of His free grace. But when the boy (he was only

58 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
thirteen years of age) heard the monks insist that
Tetzel was right, and that pardon could be reached
through the " papal letters " that were being sold, he
thought that his father must have been wrong, and he
was anxious to get an Indulgence ticket for himself.
He could not believe, however, that God's pardon
could be bought for money. That part of his father's
teaching stuck fast to him. One day he chanced to
hear that the pardon tickets could be got by the
poor for nothing ; he saw a proclamation, and observed
that this was really written on it — pauperibus dentur
grati. Boylike he thought that this reconciled his
father's teaching and that of the priests, and he
resolved he would do his best to get one of the
precious tickets. One day (it was Whitsuntide, 1516)
Tetzel announced that the sales were getting fewer,
and that he would be compelled to take down the red
cross and "close the door of heaven"; he advised
everyone to buy at once, for if they omitted the
chance now given them to secure the "papal letter,"
no priest could absolve them for certain sins; he
concluded by saying that during the few remaining
days of sale the prices would be reduced. Myconius
tells us that he could not believe that the "papal
letter" would do him any good unless he got it for
nothing. Then and not till then it really represented
to him the free grace of God ; and he recounts the
strenuous endeavours he made to get an Indulgence
ticket without paying for it. The priests, who acted
as Tetzel's salesmen, were so wearied out with his
importunities, that they offered to give him the
money in order to buy the ticket in the usual
way, so as not to create an inconvenient precedent.

TETZEL AND LUTHER 59
Tetzel shouted at him more than once that he could
not get the ticket. The priests, however, more
anxious than the commissary to keep faith, at last let
him have what he had so earnestly desired, and on his
own terms. His story brings the scenes surrounding
the Indulgence-selling very vividly before us.
Tetzel, early in 1516, had been selling his Indulgences
in the Meissen district, not very far from Wittenberg,
and Luther had watched his progress and his practices.
He preached at least one sermon on the subject; and
both sermon and private correspondence reveal a very
perturbed mind. The strongest thing that he said was
that the Indulgence was a very mischievous instrument
in the hands of avarice. Meanwhile Tetzel, going from
place to place in the end of 1516 and in the earlier
months of 1517, was approaching Wittenberg. People
went from Wittenberg to Jiiterbog and Zerbst and
other places where Tetzel had " set up the red cross "
and opened a sale of Indulgences. Some of Luther's
own people, parishioners of his, men and women who
came regularly to him for confession, had bought the
"papal letters," had shown them to him, and had
demanded priestly absolution in due form without
either confession of sin or showing any signs of real
sorrow. He could and did refuse to acknowledge their
" letters " ; they had complained to Tetzel, and the com
missary had uttered threats. Luther found himself
wading in deep waters. The Indulgence, he knew,
was doing great harm to poor souls ; he got the letter
of instructions given to Tetzel by his employer, the
archbishop, and his heart waxed wroth against it. But
still at the basis of the Indulgence, bad as it was, there
lay the great truth, Luther thought, that it is the

60 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
business of the Church to declare the free and sove
reign grace of God. Besides, even in the form which
the Indulgence took, as a theory at least, it belonged
to a class of things and institutions from which many
pious souls found help to holy living, and it was rooted
in doctrines in which Luther, if he did not earnestly
believe, was at least prepared to acquiesce. A large
number of the pious associations of the later Middle
Ages were founded on ideas which lay at the basis
of the practice of giving Indulgences. However
near to their Lord, God's Word, the Sacraments and
prayer brought faithful Christian men and women, the
machinery of the Catholic Church, which lay all around
them and in which they had a place, was accepted by
them as unquestionably and quietly as a law of nature.
This machinery included among other things the count
less treasure of good works, prayers, fastings, mortifica
tions of all kinds, which holy men and women of
old had done, and which were available for others
if the Pope could be persuaded to transfer them.
When men and women united in a pious confraternity,
the Pope, it was believed, could transfer to the com
munity a surplus of prayers and masses and other
ecclesiastical good deeds, and this became for pious
living what a good bank account is to a man starting
in business. Freytag gives us, as an example of this,
an account of St. Ursula's Schifflein or the Brotherhood
of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, a pious association,
which had Frederic, the Elector of Saxony, for one of
its founders and directors. It was really a brother
hood of poor and pious people who wished to assist each
other by mutual prayer, and had a charter from the
Pope highly approving of its objects. To encourage

ST. URSULA'S SCHIFFLEIN 61
them the Pope made over to them by statute a
collection of spiritual treasures which are as carefully
enumerated as the assets of a business firm, — 6455
Masses, 3500 Psalters (i.e. repetitions of the 150
Psalms), 200,000 Rosaries (i.e. repetitions of the
prayers which went to make a complete rosary),
200,000 Te Deums, 1600 Glorias in Excelsis, 11,000
prayers for the Patroness, St. Ursula, 630 times 11,000
Paternosters and Ave Marias. The whole redeeming
power of these good works was handed over by the Pope
for the spiritual benefit of the members of the brother
hood. A layman was entitled to become a brother if
he could show that he had repeated in his lifetime
11,000 Paternosters, and it was pointed out that this
condition was not a very hard one, because the 11,000
could be accomplished in a year at the rate of 32 per
day. Many such brotherhoods bought their spiritual
treasures from the Pope with money, and sold them in
the shape of entrance fees, etc., to the members. There
was neither buying nor selling about St. Ursula's
Schifflein, which was a genuine attempt to encourage
a prayerful life by means of mutual example and
encouragement. The machinery of the Church, how
ever, secured this encouragement, that, if by any
accident members failed in praying as they had pro
mised, they had always this spiritual treasure to
count upon. There is no list of members of this
association, so far as I know, in existence: but, if
there were, it is most probable that it would include
some of Luther's strongest admirers in the town of
Wittenberg. What difference in principle could be
found between the Pope transferring a mass of spiritual
benefits to a pious brotherhood, and his handing

62 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
over an indefinite amount to Archbishop Albert to dis
pose of as he thought fit, through Tetzel or otherwise ?
The theory of Indulgence could also be justified from
another side. From the earliest times the Church of
Christ, while proclaiming the free pardoning grace of
God revealed in the Person and Work of Christ, had
always insisted that the pardon was for those who
were truly penitent, and who had a real resolve to try
at least to live the life of new obedience to which
Christ has called His people. When penitents professed
sorrow for sins, they were required to show their
sorrow in some open sign of repentance. The Church
from a very early period preferred that these signs of
sorrow should take the form of prayers or gifts of
charity or some form of practical benevolence such as
the manumission of slaves. Suggestions of this kind
are apt to become prescriptions, and ecclesiastical pre
scriptions tend to become stereotyped and conventional.
When the ecclesiastical praxis of sorrow, confession,
and pardon became fixed in the so-called " sacrament
of penance," there were already attached to it stereo
typed signs of sorrow required by the Church, and
these were called satisfaction and latterly penance.
In the ordinary practice of the Church they were
required before pardon could be pronounced by the
mouth of the priest in absolution ; and although they
had an evangelical origin, and could always be ex
plained with an evangelical meaning, the common
effect they produced was to obscure the freely given
pardon of God. Indulgence could be explained and
justified on the ground that the Church was able to
dispense with those signs of sorrow which were her
own prescription ; and it was possible to say that there

LUTHER RESOLVES TO ATTACK 63
was a right use of Indulgence when the Church pro
claimed pardon apart from the signs of sorrow, for
that was a manifestation, that, after all, pardon did
not depend on the due manifestation of prescribed
signs of contrition, but on the free grace of God.
To attack the Indulgence was to make an assault
upon part at least of the machinery of the great
mediaeval Church, and Luther believed with his whole
heart that he was a devout and obedient son of that
Church. Besides, he had a profound contempt for men
who believe that they are born to set the world right.
He compared them to a player at ninepins who thinks
that he cannot fail to knock down twelve when there
are only nine pins standing. "I am but a young
doctor," he said, in reply to some exhortation to stand
forward, " fresh from the foundry, hot and happy in
the Word of God." Tetzel was no business of his;
and yet his poor people, souls whom God had given
him in charge — ! At length, after much hesitation
and deep distress of mind, he felt compelled to interfere,
and, as was usual when his mind was made up, he went
unflinchingly to the root of the matter in the most
direct and dauntless fashion.
It was characteristic of the man that he resolved to
bear the whole responsibility by himself. He wrote
to the three persons most concerned; — to the arch
bishop of Mainz, who farmed the Indulgence, and
according to whose instructions the "papal letters"
were sold ; to Tetzel, the archbishop's commissary, who
had charge of the sales ; and to the man who was his
own ecclesiastical superior, Bishop Scultetus, who was
set over the church in which Luther preached and the
university in which he taught. He seems, however,

64 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
to have taken care that none of these persons could
interfere with him, for his letter to the archbishop is
dated on the eve of the day on which he acted. All
his personal friends were kept in complete ignorance
of wha,t he was about to do. He did this, he after
wards declared, that no one, and especially not the
Elector, might be involved by his action.
He took the best way of publishing his opinions
widely that occurred to him. The Castle Church at
Wittenberg had always been closely connected with
the university, and the doors of the church had, since
the foundation of the university, been used by its
officials as a university board on which to publish
important documents. The day of the year which
drew the largest concourse of strangers to the church
was the first of November, All Saints' Day. It was
the anniversary of the foundation and consecration of
the church, and was also commemorated by a prolonged,
series of services. In accordance with a common
custom, the Pope had solemnly promised an Indulgence
of some kind to all who took part in the yearly com
memorative services. There could be no more con
venient time or place. At noon on the day in question
Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of
the church. It was a strictly academic proceeding.
A doctor in theology offered a "Disputation," for so
he called it, " for the purpose of explaining the efficacy
in the Indulgence." The explanation had ninety-five
heads, all of which "Doctor Martin Luther, theologian,"
was prepared to make good against all comers. The
strict academic etiquette was thoroughly preserved, and
the document was of course written in Latin.
The "document" differed from most academic dis-

LUTHER'S THESES 65
putations in this that everyone wished to read it.
Luther had made a duplicate in German. Copies in
the two languages were sent to the University Printing-
Press, which could not throw them off fast enough to
keep pace with the demands which came from all parts
¦of Germany. The theses had the effect of a torch
thrown among dry fuel. The first to protest was
Tetzel, who wrote counter-theses, which the students
burnt. Other protests followed; but the great mass
•of pious German people saw in these theses what they
had always believed.
§ 2. The Effect of the Theses
The question arises: Did Luther in these famous
theses break away from the thought and feeling of the
mediaeval Church, or did he only give expression to
its deepest and most devout thoughts on sin and on
pardon ? It has always appeared to me, with reverence
be it spoken, that the relation of the Reformation
¦theology, and therefore of Luther, to the teaching of
the mediaeval Church can be compared with the relation
between the teaching of our Lord and the Mosaic Law.
He came to fulfil it, and not to destroy it. He showed
the real moral depths in it. He stripped it of the tem*-
poral and accidental elements which had gathered round
it. He fulfilled it by making visible what it really
was. So Luther's teaching fulfils the best instruction
of the mediaeval Church and carries on its noblest
work. For when we think of it, there is scarcely a
thought of Luther's that is not to be found in the
hymns, prayers, and most evangelical preaching of the
Middle Ages. The difference between. Reformation
5

66 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
and mediaeval theology is that the former solves an
antinomy which the latter contains; for we may say
with Dr. Wace, that mediaeval theology had resulted
in a "dead-lock," and that Luther solved the
antinomy and dissolved the dead-lock. The task to
which the mediaeval Church had to set itself was
to tame, civilise, and evangelise the fierce Teutonic
tribes which had submerged the ancient world. It set
itself to that task with an energy and a self-devotion
seldom equalled and never surpassed. We are apt to
forget in our criticisms of that mediaeval Church the
conditions amid which it fulfilled its mission. A Boni
face or an Augustine spoke to men as savage and
bloodthirsty as Chaka's Zulu warriors, and who had
scarcely more developed morals. They spoke as a
wise and advanced civilisation speaks to savages; as
heavenly wisdom speaks to sinful folly. The necessity
of speaking from above, and the humble acquiescence
of those spoken to, easily grows into infallible utter
ance on the one side and a belief that implicit obedience
is the proper attitude of mind on the other. Can we
measure the action and reaction of teachers and taught,
or say how much the barbarian readiness to receive
the vulgarly supernatural is responsible for magical
theories of the sacraments and of the expiative power
of self-torture ? Have we marked how many tribal
customs worked their way into the canon law, say
of marriage? But when all criticisms are made, the
mediaeval Church was a stern school of religious and
moral discipline. It preached the "divine righteous
ness and its inexorable demands." It taught, and
elevated its convert nations by teaching, that sin is sin
altogether apart from extenuating circumstances, by

MESSAGE OF MEDLEVAL CHURCH 67
placing before them ideals of saintly and ineffable
purity. "The glorious cathedrals which arose in the
best period of the Middle Ages," says Dr. Wace, " are
but the visible types of those splendid structures of
ideal virtues which a monk like St. Bernard, or a
schoolman like St. Thomas Aquinas, piled up by
laborious thought and painful asceticism. Such men
felt themselves at all times surrounded by a spiritual
world at once more glorious in its beauty and more
awful in its terrors than either the pleasures or the
miseries of this world could adequately represent. The
great poet of the Middle Ages affords perhaps the most
vivid representation of their character in this respect.
The horrible images of the Inferno, the keen sufferings
of purification in the Purgatorio, form the terrible
foreground behind which the Paradiso rises. Those
visions of terror and dread and suffering had stamped
themselves on the imagination of the mediaeval world,
and lay at the root of the power with which the
Church overshadowed it. In their origin they em
bodied a profound and noble truth. It was a high
and divine conception that the moral and spiritual
world with which we are encompassed has greater
heights and lower depths than are generally appre
hended in the visible experience of this life; and
Dante has been felt to be in a unique degree the poet
of righteousness."
The mission of the mediaeval Church was to be a
stern preacher of righteousness, and Luther was a true
child of that Church. Its message had been received
by him, and had sunk into his soul. He was such a
true son of his Church that he felt more deeply than
most the point where the message, of its formal theology

€8 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
at least, failed. It contrasted the divine righteousness
and man's sin and weakness. It insisted on the in
exorable demands of the law of God, while it uttered
despairingly that man could never fulfil them. It
brought the human soul to a dead-lock. The man who
could show some way of extrication which would not
abate one jot the demands of the law of God, nor
lower the standard of divine righteousness, was no
rebel against his Church, but rather the exponent of its
deepest teaching. He solved the antinomy by showing
that, as it had been caused by setting over against each
other the righteousness of God and the sin of man, aDd
keeping the two sides distinct and separate, and that God
must be brought over to man's side, so that His righteous
ness could become man's; or, in other words, that there
must be a direct and intimate fellowship between man
and God. But all fellowship implies trust ; and trust,
the personal trust of man in a personal God, gives him
that fellowship with God through which the things
which belong to God can become his. Without this
personal trust all divine things, the Incarnation, the
Passion, the Word, the Sacraments, however true as
matters of fact, are outside the man, and cannot be
truly possessed. But when man trusts in God, and
when the fellowship which trust always creates is
established, then they can always be shared in by the
man who trusts. This is what is meant by saying that
the "just shall live by faith."
It was from this view of a personal relation between
God and man, created by personal trust in the fatherly
promises of God, that Luther had learned to regard
all things which concerned God and His faithful people,
and this had its effect on the way in which he looked

LUTHER AND MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 69
at contrition and at pardon for sin. The sorrow for/
sin which must be experienced by the man who feels/
himself to be in fellowship with God through his sense
of trust cannot be removed by any sentence of absolu
tion, but must continue lifelong, for it is fed by the\
very love to God which the fellowship, with its sense
of abiding unworthiness, evokes. The constraint to
obedience based on fear of punishment gives place to
the higher and stronger motive of a glad response to
the wishes of One who is loved. For Justification by
Faith does not mean that one trusts in God and gets
off; but that one trusts, in God and goes on through
life, drawn, instead of driven, into all holy living.
It also follows that the man who desires and enjoys
fellowship with God must think much more of God's
personal forgiveness than of the mere remission of the
consequences of sin ; the loss of the former strikes at
the sense of fellowship itself, while the sense of fellow
ship renders the latter bearable even when most bur
densome, for it teaches man to accept all manner of
trials and adversities, all God's judgments and disci
pline, in perfect peace of soul, because none of them
can really separate him from his God.
In all this Luther felt himself to be, and was the ex
ponent of the deepest and truest religious teaching of the
mediaeval Church, and the heir to all that preaching of
righteousness which makes Dante's great poem appear
to be the soul of the Middle Ages. He solved the
antinomy of the Church's teaching without letting go
either of the truths represented. But what Dr. Wace
and others, who have pointed out this clearly, have
failed to recognise is, that Luther's solution was familiar
to the simple piety, although unknown to the academic

70 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
theology of the Middle Ages ; and that Luther taught
little more than he and Myconius and thousands of
others had been taught at their mothers' knees, for the
theology of the heart is always far in advance of that
of the schools.
The opponents of Luther, on the other hand, could
not represent the deepest thoughts of mediaeval theo
logy. When face to face with the dead-lock indicated
above, they could not avoid tampering with the require
ments of divine righteousness in order to assist human
weakness. They distinguished between the command
ments of the divine law and the counsels of perfection ;
they invented a dispensing authority which could
modify the requirements of divine justice; they pro
ceeded step by step, in half -acknowledged ways, to get
rid of the severity of thos^ rules of moral life and
those ideals of moral purity which it was the duty
of the Church to sustain in all their force, until at
last they had lowered themselves to the depth of
degradation which the Indulgence, as worked by Tetzel,
exhibited. When we turn to the Ninety-five Theses of Luther
we can notice at least three main thoughts. He draws
a strong distinction between what belongs absolutely
to God and what he admits may be within the power
of the Pope, or what is ecclesiastical machinery. The
personal forgiveness of sin, which with Luther is the
one thing of overwhelming moment, is in the hands of
God, and of God alone. But all those external and
conventional signs of sorrow which have been ordered
by the Church are in the hands of the Pope, to be dis
pensed with if he orders it. " Every Christian, who
feels true compunction, has, of right, plenary remission

POPULARITY OF THE THESES 71
of pain and guilt, even without letters of pardon." "We
must beware of those who say that these pardons from
the Pope are that inestimable gift of God by which
man is reconciled to God." " The Pope has neither the
will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those
which he has imposed by his own authority or by that of
the canons." He rings the changes on this main theme.
He denounces, in quoting, all the assertions of Tetzel
which go to obscure the difference, such as that the red
cross of the Indulgence has equal power with the Cross
of Christ. He insists that the law of the Christian life
must be a continuous repentance, and that this evan
gelical repentance is something quite different from the
confession and satisfaction which are performed under
the ministry of priests. He proclaims that ecclesias
tical good works, which can be remitted by the Pope,
are by no means so valuable as those spontaneous
offerings of charity which show the heartfelt thanks
and humility of the soul whom God has pardoned.
The theses are not a reasoned treatise ; they are the
work of a man who wishes to drive his meaning into
the minds of his readers by repeated blows. They are
ninety -five sledge-hammer strokes delivered at the
grossest ecclesiastical abuse of the age. They are
written in such plain, nervous language, that no one
could fail to understand what they meant, . although
it might not be so easy to comprehend all that they
implied. The theses made a great impression far and wide.
The speed with which they got into circulation was,
for the age, unprecedented. They were read and known
over the great part of Germany within a fortnight
after they were published ; and Myconius tells us that

72 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
they had gone far beyond Germany in four weeks.
They were discussed privately by people of all ranks
and classes. This was no doubt due, as Luther said,
to the dislike that so many people had for the Indul
gence. But the boldness of the thoughts, and the clear,
trenchant language, which Luther knew so well how
to use, had their effect. So effective were they that
the sales, of "Papal Letters" declined rapidly, to the
great disgust of Archbishop Albert and his commis
sary Tetzel. But Luther was disappointed that no
one came forward to dispute the questions he. had
raised ; and he was hurt that his friends were very
silent about the matter. The common opinion among
those most friendly was that while he had spoken
what was true, he had done a very rash thing, and that
he could not fail to suffer for it. Luther's bishop told
him that he found nothing heretical in his theses, but
advised him to be content with what he had done, and
publish nothing further upon the matter.
On the other hand, Archbishop Albert was as much
dissatisfied with the part he was forced to play. . He
wished to begin an ecclesiastical process against' Luther
at once, but was dissuaded from doing so by his ad
visers, and had to content himself with writing to the
Pope. Tetzel, with his usual audacity, wrote and pub-'
lished counter-theses, and another Dominican monk,'
Conrad Wimpina, did the same. These controversialists
contented themselves, however, with sheltering them
selves behind the omnipotence of the Pope in all mat
ters belonging to faith and morals ; they did not enter
into the deep moral and theological questions, raised
by Luther. The students of Wittenberg, who were
enthusiastically on the side of Luther, succeeded in

LUTHER AT HEIDELBERG 73;
buying and stealing some eight hundred copies of
Tetzel's counter - theses, and burning them in the
market-place of that town. This act of violence did not
do the cause of their hero any good. Luther, debarred
by his bishop from publicly answering his opponents,.
contented himself with quietly preaching sermons in
which he explained the moral questions involved in
the sinner's relations to God and the pardon and free-
grace offered in the gospel.
In April 1518 the Augustinian monks held their
usual chapter or General Assembly at Heidelberg, and
Luther went there in spite of many warnings from
his friends that it was dangerous for him to leave
Wittenberg. The Elector Frederic, although he did
not approve of Luther's views on the Indulgence-
question, evidently did what he could to secure the
safety of one whom he declared to be a " pious man."'
At these general chapters of the Augustinian Order
a large amount of time was spent on theological
discussions, and Luther had the consolation, hitherto
denied him, of defending his theses publicly in the
presence of theological opponents ; and in spite of the
fact that he found much more opposition than he-
had expected, he returned to his work at Wittenberg;
very much strengthened and comforted in mind.
Meanwhile one theologian, John Eck, formerly a.
personal friend of Luther's, a theological professor
in Ingolstadt, had been carefully studying the theses,
and with increasing dislike. Eck was by far- the
ablest opponent of Luther that Germany produced:
a clear-sighted and learned man, and a forcible and
ready debater. He saw that the theses were
based on principles which would justify the opinions

74 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
of John Huss, or, as they were commonly called, " the
Bohemian Heresy," and that if carried out they
would destroy the whole mediaeval conception of the
supernatural powers of the clergy, and the dominion
over the laity which the gifts supposed to be bestowed
in ordination gave them. He made his first attack
on Luther in a book of annotations on the theses,
which he called Obelisles; and from this time forward
two men, both the sons of peasants, stood forward as
the champions, the one of the Romish hierarchy and
the other of evangelical liberty.
§ 3. Luther and Leo X
When Luther came back from Heidelberg, he pre
pared for final publication an elaborate defence of
his theses. He called it Resolutiones, and it is
perhaps the most carefully prepared of all Luther's
writings. It was rewritten several times, and long
meditated over. It was dedicated to the Bishop of
Brandenburg ; it was also sent to the Pope, accompanied
by a letter to His Holiness, in which Luther, in the
strongest language, professed himself to be a loyal
and obedient son of the Church and of the Pope;
he went so far as to say that he would "re
cognise in the Pope's voice the voice of Christ";
and that he had the greatest confidence in the Pope's
personal character. In the Resolutiones he went over
the ground taken in the theses, and explained at
length the relation of the priest to the sinner in
priestly absolution, what he meant by the absolute
authority of Scripture, and what he understood by
the "power of the keys."

SUMMONED TO ROME 75
Pope Leo x. was not a man to take any doctrinal
matters very seriously. His one intention was to
enjoy the papacy. He was rather anxious about the
state of Germany, for the aged Emperor, Maximilian,
was anxious to have his grandson nominated to be his
successor ; and the election of such a powerful prince
to the imperial throne did not promise an easy
pontificate. He had heard a good deal about Luther
before the monk addressed him, and he had
written confidentially to the general of the Augus
tinians that he was to do his best to keep things
quiet, and calm down any excitement that had arisen.
There was, however, at Rome, and in a place of
authority, a very violent opponent of Luther. This was
Silvester Mazzolini, called Prierias, from his birth
place, Prierio. He was a Dominican, was papal censor
for the Roman Province, and an Inquisitor. He had
written against the theses, and urged the Pope to
do something, and that speedily, to end the heresy,
for so he thought it, of the German monk. The
Pope consented, and on the 7th of April Luther
received a summons to present himself at Rome within
sixteen days. The sudden summons to appear before
the Inquisitorial office at Rome could be represented
as an insult to the University of Wittenberg, of which
Luther was the official head. To obey the summons
was to invite destruction. Luther wrote to Spalatin,
and suggested that the German princes ought to
defend the rights of German universities attacked in
his person. Spalatin wrote to the Elector and to the
Emperor, both of whom were at Augsburg at the
Diet. They were willing enough to insist on a trial
on German soil. Frederic was anxious to maintain

76 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the dignity of his university, and had a high regard
for Luther, although he did not yet share his opinions.
The Emperor's keen political vision discerned a useful
although obscure ally in the young German theologian.
He wished to secure Frederic's interest for his pro
posal to have his grandson nominated to be his
successor, and he had long meditated on the need for
notable reforms in the Church. "Luther is sure to
begin a game with the priests," he said to Pfeffinger,
Frederic's secretary; "the Elector should take good
care of that monk, for he will be of use to us some
day." The Pope was urged to grant a trial on
German soil, and as he was no less anxious than the
Emperor to secure to his side the support of Frederic,
he at once consented. It was accordingly arranged
that instead of going to Rome, Luther should present
himself before the papal legate at Augsburg.
Luther at once set out in obedience to the mandate,
although some faint-hearted friends tried to hold him
back. The Elector gave him twenty gulden for the
expenses of the journey, and when he reached Augsburg
provided him with a jurist who could advise him on
points of law. Travelling on foot, he got to Augsburg
on the 8th of October 1518, and after some days'
waiting, had an audience of the legate, the Cardinal
Cajetan. Luther found the Cardinal willing to
discuss the questions raised by the theses, and
learned that there were two points to which he
specially objected: first, that Luther denied, by
implication at least, the existence of a "treasury of
merits," which could be dispensed by the Pope to
the faithful, as in the Indulgence ; and secondly, that
he seemed to hold that the sacraments were not

APPEAL TO A GENERAL COUNCIL 77
efficacious apart from faith in the receiver. He
indicated that if Luther would unconditionally recant
these two propositions, the rest might be condoned.
Indeed, Luther received the impression that if he
would admit the existence of the " treasury of merits "
and assent to the use made of it in the Indulgences,
nothing further would be said; "for I saw," said
Luther, "that it was money, and not doctrine, that
they cared for at Rome." Luther would have yielded
almost anything, except the truth that the just
shall live by his faith; a truth on which these two
propositions were founded which the legate required
him to recant. On this he could not yield, and the
legate dismissed him with threats. His friends at
Augsburg were so alarmed for his safety that they
smuggled him out of the city, and he went off riding
on such a sorry horse that it would have been much
less fatiguing to have walked.
The legate, highly indignant at Luther's refusal
to recant, wrote to the Elector warning him against
sheltering a heretic, to which Frederic replied that
he could not deem a man to be a heretic whom no theo
logian in Germany had hitherto succeeded in showing
to be in the wrong.
Before leaving Augsburg, Luther had prepared a
protest against the legate's decision, and had appended
an appeal to a General Council. It is probable that
he had been thinking about this before he left
Wittenberg; for it is recorded that he had said that
the papists believed that the Church was in the Pope
and the representation in the Cardinals, while he thought
that the Church was in Christ and the representation
in a General Council. At all events this appeal was a

78 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
masterstroke of policy. For one thing, it made use
of a well-known and legitimate weapon of defence
against papal tyranny. No one could accuse the
great University of Paris of heresy, and yet not more
than six months earlier (in March 1518) its theologians
had appealed to a General Council against a decision
of the Pope, which they believed was an infringe
ment of the ecclesiastial liberties of the Church of
France. It enabled the Elector and the Emperor to
protect the reformer until his appeal had been heard
and decided upon. It was besides an offer to the Emperor
and the German princes of the most effectual means
of wringing from the papal court ecclesiastical
reforms for which all Germany was crying out. In
Luther's hands, however, old weapons acquired new
powers, and this was soon to be apparent with regard
to the time-honoured appeal to a General Council.
For as the effect of the appeal came to be recognised,
Luther published the three great Creeds of Western
Christendom — the Apostles', the Nicene, and the
Athanasian — as his Confession of Faith; and in his
preface he said: "I have caused these three Creeds
or Confessions to be published together in German,
Confessions which have hitherto been held through
out the whole Church; and by these publications
I testify once for all that I adhere to the true
Church of Christ, which up till now has maintained
these Confessions, but not to that false, pretentious
Church, which is the worst enemy of the true
Church, and which has surreptitiously introduced
much idolatry alongside of those beautiful Confessions."
The result of the publication of the appeal and of
the Creeds was that people were able to see that

MILTITZ AND LUTHER 79
even Western Christendom was wider than the
papacy, that it had a Creed which tested orthodoxy,
and that it had a Court of Appeal which preserved
its discipline, and that one might be an orthodox
Catholic Christian, although the Pope and the papal
Curia had thrust him from their communion. The
publication of the Creeds in German was much later
than the first issuing of the appeal ; but it is
well to see now all that Luther had in his mind
when on his return to Wittenberg from Augsburg
he carefully redrafted and published this appeal to
a General Council.
The political condition of affairs in Germany was
too delicate, and the need for conciliating the political
support of the Elector Frederic was too important,
for the Pope to proceed rashly in the condemnation
of Luther, which had been pronounced at Augsburg
by the papal legate. With its habitual caution, the
papal court resolved to refrain from hasty action.
The Pope determined to send a special delegate to
Germany to find out and report upon the condition
of matters there. He selected his chamberlain, Charles
von Miltitz, belonging to a noble Saxon family,
members of which were in the service of the Elector,.
a man whom the Elector had used as his agent
at the Court of Rome. No selection could be more
acceptable to Frederic. The Pope did more to gain
over Luther's protector. It was well known that
Frederic was a devout man in the common mediaeval
sense of the term ; he had made a pilgrimage to
Palestine, and had brought home a great store of
relics, all of which are fully set forth in Lucas Cranach's
book — Wittemberger Heiligenthums Buch von 1509 ;

So LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
those relics were shown to the faithful on high
festivals, and Frederic had procured from the Pope
an Indulgence for the pilgrims who came to see
and adore. He thought himself entitled to receive
that mark of the Pope's friendship which was called
the " Golden Rose," and had privately asked for it
through Miltitz himself. The "Golden Rose" was
now sent with a gracious letter.1
Miltitz was armed with several letters from the
Pope to Frederic, in which Luther was called a " child
of the Devil," to the Saxon Councillor Pfeffinger, and
to other magnates in Germany. He had full powers
to do the best he could to calm things down, and
was only fettered by the instructions to conclude
-nothing without taking the legate along with him.
Miltitz set to work very cautiously. He was not
able to confer with the legate, who had gone to Austria,
nor could he persuade Tetzel to come to meet him.
The Indulgence-preacher declared that he dared not
travel, being in fear of his life, so much had Luther
stirred the authorities against him, not only in all
parts of Germany, but also in Hungary, Bohemia, and
Poland. Miltitz soon discovered that any high-handed
proceedings against Luther would bring about an ex-
1The "Golden Rose" is an artificial rose made in filigree work of
gold. About two ounces weight of gold is employed for the purpose.
On the first Sunday in Lent the Golden Rose was solemnly blessed
by the Pope. After service, when the Pope left the church with his
clergy, he carried the Rose in his hand. It was afterwards sent to the
sovereign or prince on whom the Pope wished to bestow a special
-mark of personal friendship. It is now usually sent to ladies. The Queen
¦of Spain got it to console her for the troubles inflicted in the war
with the United States ; and the mother of baby Boris to comfort her
when, in spite of all her exertions, the baby was baptized according
to the rites of the Greek Church.

THE LEIPZIG DISPUTATION 81
plosion of wrath in Germany. Nearly half the men he
met with were on Luther's side. He therefore resolved
to meet Luther in as friendly a way as possible, and
had interviews with him in Spalatin's presence at
Altenberg. There Luther was persuaded to write a
conciliatory letter to the Pope, and pledged himself to
keep silence on religious matters in dispute, provided
his opponents did the same; and Miltitz prevailed
upon the Pope to write to Luther, and address him as
his "dear son." Miltitz then went to Tetzel, and
having discovered the character of the man, he got
the Dominican authorities to confine the former com
missary for Indulgences to the monastery of his Order
in Leipzig. The poor man died not long afterwards
in disgrace, abandoned by his party. It was charac
teristic of Luther that when he heard of Tetzel's
disgrace and illness he sent him a comforting letter.
Luther had promised to keep silent until the matters
in dispute had been referred for investigation to two
honoured German prelates, the Archbishop of Trier
(Treves) and the Bishop of Wurzburg, but only on
condition that his opponents refrained from attacking
him. He faithfully adhered to the pact. But his
opponents refused to let him alone ; and he was prac
tically forced by Dr. Eck to take part in the great
theological discussion at Leipzig.
§ 4. The Leipzig Disputation and its Results
The Leipzig Disputation, as it is called, is one of the
most important episodes in the history of the Reforma
tion. It brought the two German champions face to
face. Eck so forced the discussion that it became
6

82 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
plain that Luther's Augustinian theology led him
much further than he had at first believed, and really
involved much more than a protest against some pro^
minent abuses in the mediaeval Church.
It is needless to enter into the details of the negotia
tion which led up to this famous Disputation. Duke
George of Saxony, afterwards one of Luther's bitterest
enemies, was keen to have such an important Disputa
tion held in the presence of his university. Matters
were so arranged by his opponents that Luther was
forced to vindicate his own honour, bitterly attacked
by Dr. John Eck, and the reputation of the University
of Wittenberg, by consenting to take part in the
discussion. Luther and Carlstadt left Wittenberg on the 24th
of June 1520, in two common country carts, Carl
stadt by himself in the first, and Luther with his
friend Melanchthon, who since August 1518 had
joined the teaching staff of Wittenberg, in the second.
They were accompanied by the young Duke Barnim
of Pomerania, who was the rector of their university,
and by some of the Wittenberg lecturers, among whom
were Nicholas Amsdorf and Johann Lange of Erfurt.
About two hundred students, armed with spears and
halberts, walked beside the carts, partly to honour and
partly to protect their professors. The Wittenbergers
had come among a people little friendly. "In the
hotels where the Wittenberg students lodged, the land
lord kept a man standing with a halbert near the table
to keep the peace while the Leipzig and the Witten
berg students disputed with each other. I have seen
the same myself in the house of Herbipolis, a book
seller, where I went to dine . . . for there was at table

THE LEIPZIG DISPUTATION 83
a Magister Baumgarten . . . who was so hot against
the Wittenbergers that the host Herbipolis had to
restrain him with a halbert to make him keep the
peace so long as the Wittenbergers were in the house
and sat and ate at the table with him." Dr. Eck had
come to the town a few days previously, and went
about with great ostentation. The 26th was spent in
settling the terms of the debate, and the Disputation
was begun with all fitting solemnities on the 27th of
June. The university did not contain any room large
enough to hold the company assembled to hear the
discussion, and Duke George gave the use of the great
hall in his castle of Pleisenburg, and had it appro
priately furnished — two great chairs being placed for
the disputants. But let Master Froschel, who was
present, speak: "When we got to the church,. . .
they sang a Mass with twelve voices which had never
been heard before. After Mass we went to the Castle,
where we found a guard of burghers in their armour
with their best weapons and their banners ; they were
ordered to be there twice a day, from seven to nine
o'clock in the morning and from two to five o'clock in
the afternoon, to keep the peace while the Disputation
lasted. When we got to the Castle, Peter Mosellanus
stepped forward and delivered a Latin oration, and then
we all went to lunch. The Disputation was to begin
at two o'clock in the afternoon, and there appeared
George Rhau the precentor, with his choir and with
the town pipers, and they began to sing and to blow
the Veni Sancte Spiritus; thereafter the Disputation
began, first Dr. Carlstadt with Dr. Eck."
The disputation between Carlstadt and Eck lasted
five days, and it was generally conceded that Eck had

84 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the best of the argument. Then came Luther's turn.
He had been treated very discourteously during the
days that had passed; when he went to church to
worship, the priests took away the elements from the
altars lest they should be polluted by the approach of
a heretic. He was made to feel that he was an out
cast, while his opponent was honoured in every way.
At last, on the 4th of July, the two theologians, both
peasants' sons, faced each other. Young Mosellanus
has given us a striking picture of the two men.
" Martin is of medium height ; his body is slender,
emaciated by cares and study; one can count almost
all the bones ; he stands in the prime of his age ; his
voice sounds clear and distinct." Mosellanus further
tells us that Luther was remarkably courteous and
friendly in his intercourse with all ; however hard his
enemies pressed him, he maintained his calmness and
his good nature, though in debate he was somewhat
bitter. It was cause of general remark that he carried
a bunch of flowers in his hand, and often looked at it
and smelt it, especially when the discussion got hot.
To Mosellanus the whole aspect of the man, in the
peculiarly trying circumstances in which he was placed,
almost assured him that Luther could not be what he
was without having the assurance of the presence of
God with him.
Of Eck he says : " He has a huge square body, a full
strong voice coming from his chest, fit for a tragic
actor or a town crier, and more harsh than distinct ;
his mouth, eyes, and whole aspect give one the idea of
a butcher or a rude soldier rather than of a theologian."
Mosellanus also tells us that Eck gave one the idea of
striving to overcome rather than to win a victory for

THE LEIPZIG DISPUTATION 85
the truth, and that there was as much sophistry as
good reasoning in his arguments. Besides, he was
continually misquoting his opponent's words or trying
to give them a meaning which they were not intended
to convey. Eck evidently impressed him badly.
The debate, which lasted five days, was confined
almost exclusively to the questions relating to the
supremacy of the Pope over the Catholic Church of
Christ. When we compare the incidents of the discus
sion with Dr. Eck's first attack on Luther in his
Obelislcs, it becomes evident that the intention of the
papal champion was to force Luther to make admis
sions which would bear out Eck's accusation that
Luther's theses on Indulgences were really an attack
on those hierarchical and priestly conceptions of the
Christian ministry, on which the external organisation
of the mediaeval Church was based. In this he was
eminently successful. He compelled Luther, step by
step, to avow that the Church is not the hierarchy and
those dependent on it, but the whole company of faith
ful believers ruled by ministers who are the " servants "
of the community. Eck had declared in his Obe
lisks that Luther's theses contained implicitly the
'' Bohemian Heresy," and he tried to force this out at
Leipzig. The exciting moment in the discussion came
when this was made evident. "One thing I must
tell," to quote our eye-witness, Master Froschel, " which
I myself heard in the Disputation, and which took
place in the presence of Duke George, who came often
to the Disputation and listened most attentively ; once
Dr. Martin spoke these words to Dr. Eck when hard
pressed about John Huss: 'Dear Doctor, the Hussite
opinions are not all wrong.' Thereupon, said Duke

86 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
George, so loudly that the whole audience heard, ' God
help us, the pestilence ! ' (' Das wait, die Sucht '), and he
wagged his head and placed his arms akimbo. That
I myself heard and saw, for I sat almost between his
feet and those of Duke Barnim of Pomerania, who was
then the Rector of Wittenberg."
Poor Duke George ! What would he have thought
had it been told him that he would be chiefly known
because of a saying of the pestilential Luther ? " Dare
not go to Leipzig," said Luther once. " If I had
business there I would go, though it rained Duke
Georges nine days running!" He was a stately,
magnificent man; the handsomest, wealthiest, and
most learned of all the German princes. His con
temporaries called him George the Rich, George the
Learned (he had written a history of his father's
exploits in Latin), and George the Bearded from his
magnificent flowing beard. The old prints of the time
let us see a stately gentleman, with aristocratic
features and high forehead, his breast blazing with
jewels where the beard allows them to be seen. He
was always strong for the old religion, and wrote,
schemed, and conspired on its behalf. His life was
full of troubles. Of his large family of ten children
not a son remained to inherit his lands, and his
brothers all took the Lutheran side. When he felt old
and frail, near death, he wrote to his brother, the next
heir, then very poor, that he would hand over every
thing to him at once — lands, palace, and possessions
— provided only he vowed to remain faithful to the
old religion. The brother honourably declined. Then
Duke George made a will that his successor in his
dukedom must be a Roman Cathohc, and asked his

THE LEIPZIG DISPUTATION 87
Estates to ratify it. The Estates respectfully refused.
This second refusal proved too much for the old man.
He took to bed, and never rose again. Carlyle tells a
pathetic story of his end. " A reverend Pater was
endeavouring to strengthen him by assurances about
his good works, about the favour of the saints and
suchlike, when Dr. Rothe, the Crypto - Protestant
medical gentleman, ventured to suggest in the extreme
moment, ' Gracious Lord, you were often wont to say,
" Straightforward is the best runner ! " Do that your
self; go straight to the blessed Saviour and Eternal
Son of God, who bore our sins, and leave the dead
saints alone ! ' ' Ay then, — Help me then,' George
groaned out in low sad murmur, ' true Saviour, Jesus
Christ ; take pity on me, and save me by Thy bitter
sorrows and death ! ' and yielded up his soul in this
manner." Dr. Eck was delighted at the success of his tactics,
and he and his friends had no doubt whatever that he
remained the victor in the controversy ; while Luther,
on the other hand, returned to Wittenberg in great
depression of spirit, to bury himself in his professorial
and pastoral work there. He took care, however, to
prepare the Disputation for publication, and to com
plete his argument on the position of the Pope in the
Church. According to Eck and his friends, the battle
had been won. Luther had been forced to declare
himself, and that in such a way that there only
remained room for a papal Bull declaring him an
excommunicated heretic, and delivering him over to
the civil authorities for punishment.
What Eck did not see was that some defeats are
victories; and while he was congratulating himself

88 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
that he had at last thrust Luther outside the pale of
the mediaeval Church, he did not perceive that this was
exactly what would give Luther an immense accession
of outside strength. He showed that Luther was an
unyielding opponent of Rome, and almost all Germany
was at that time looking for such a champion. Eck
had effected what the clear-sighted politician Miltitz
dreaded: that Luther should be forced into such a
position that, whether he liked it or not, he would
become the rallying centre for all those who were
longing to see a " Germany for the Germans."
This Leipzig Disputation was therefore perhaps the
most important episode in the whole course of Luther's
career. It made him for a few years at least the
"man of Germany" with almost every German.
Leipzig made Luther see clearly for the first time what
lay in his opposition to Indulgences ; and it made
others see it also. He and other men now saw that
the principles laid down in the theses struck at the
whole round of mediaeval ecclesiastical life. The
noblest teaching of the Middle Ages, which announced
an awful divine righteousness with its inexorable
demands, made it impossible for any man or woman to
live such a perfectly pure and holy life in the sight of
God, that he could accumulate a store of merits so
abundant that part could be handed over to less
impeccable mortals. This thought destroyed the basis
on which were founded the worship of saints, the
reverence of relics, and the religious uses of pil
grimages. On the other hand, the proclamation of the
free pardoning grace of God made monastic life, with
its vigils, its fasts, its scourgings and mortification of
all earthly and family affections, a useless thing. All

THE LEIPZIG DISPUTATION 89
these things were apt to be hindrances rather than
helps to that true life of the soul which it lived in
communion with God, and which was produced by
trust on Him and on His promises. After this Leipzig
Disputation Luther found out his true religious
position in a way that he had never previously
done. The effects were soon visible in the sermons
and tracts in German which his tireless pen produced,
and which the printing-press sent broadcast over
Germany. This teaching found its freest expression
in the two treatises, On the Liberty of the Christian
Man, and On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church
of God.
The Leipzig Disputation had besides given Luther,
all unconsciously to himself, a position in the eyes of
men who had cared very little for his stand about
Indulgences. The German patriot, when he read the
account of what took place at Leipzig, saw a man
defying Rome, and asserting in the face of that oldest
of despotisms the principles of individual and national
liberty. To his mind the one thing that prevented
Germany from being a free and united nation like
England, France, or even Spain, was the thraldom in
which the land was held by the Pope and the Roman
Curia. The German Emperor had to be crowned by
the Roman pontiff, the title of the king of the Germans
was the king of the Romans ; the legates of the Pope
and of the Curia took advantage of the divided state of
the country to set one province against another, and
rule over all by fomenting the quarrels which other
wise might easily have been ended. The exactions of
the Pope and the Curia impoverished the bishops, the
nobles, and the cities, and this impoverishment reacted

go LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
on the artisans and peasant classes, and increased the
hardships of their lives. The one supreme duty of
every patriotic German — as men like Ulrich von Hutten
thought — was to deliver their country from the political
degradation caused by its political bondage to the
Roman Curia. It is after the Leipzig Disputation
that we hear of Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von
Sickingen in the latter's castle of Ebernburg, spending
some time every day after dinner in reading over
carefully and then discussing Luther's writings, till
Sickingen could say, "And does anyone dare try to
undermine Luther's doctrines or think that he can if
he tries ? " Scenes like this in the castle of Ebernburg
were happening all over Germany, and Luther's cor
respondence grew to be burdensome in consequence,
and he was encouraged to take all Germany into his
confidence in his Address to the Nobility of the German
Nation. To such length had the attack on Indulgences
led him.
The Leipzig Disputation taught Luther that both
Church and State needed a reformation, and that
reform meant separation from the Roman Curia as its
first step. It became clear to him also that such a
reform and reconstruction could only be effected by a
movement which combined the whole population of
Germany, and that it ought to be carried out, not by
fire and sword, but by the spread of the principles
of genuine religion through the whole population.
His weapon was the printing-press, and few under
stand how unweariedly and how uniquely Luther made
use of it. One might almost say that Luther was the
man who started the trade in books printed in German.
Dr. Burkhardt, archivist at Weimar, has given us the

LUTHER'S LITERARY ACTIVITY 91
following remarkable facts.1 He tells us that the
number of books which were issued from the printing-
presses in the German language and within Germany,
from 1480 to 1490, did not exceed 40 a year ; that the
numbers issued during the first ten years of the
sixteenth century were not greater ; and then he gives
the exact numbers for individual years. In the year
1513 the number of books in the German language
issued from German presses was 35 ; in 1514 it
was 47 ; in 1515, 46 ; in 1516, 55 ; and in 1517, 37.
Then Luther's printed appeals to the German people
began to appear in the shape of sermons, addresses,
short tracts, etc., and the German publications of the
year 1518 were 71, no less than 20 of which were from
Luther's pen ; in 1519 the total number of German
published books was 111, of which 50 were Luther's;
in 1520 the number of printed German books rose to
208, of which 133 were Luther's; while in 1523 the
whole number of German books had risen to 498, of
which no less than 183 were from Luther's pen.
These facts not merely show us the incredible and
restless activity of the man, they also prove that
almost all Germany was eager to read whatever he
printed. Eye-witnesses describe how crowds waited
at the doors of the printing-house when any specially
important sermon or booklet was almost ready, to get
the earliest copies ; that men could not wait till they
got home to read it; that readers were surrounded
by eager crowds, who insisted on the booklets being
read aloud to them in the streets and market-places.
Perhaps no one has ever had such a power over his
1 Zeitsch. f. hist. Theol., 1862, p. 456 ; cf. also Ranke, Deutsche
Geschichte im Zeitalter der Peformation, ii. p. 56, 6th ed.

92 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
contemporaries as Luther exercised. His writings
were not merely printed books giving information;
they came as the voice of a brother-man from the
depths of his heart, speaking in ringing, inspirit
ing tones, and using language that all could under
stand. He seemed able to say what others were only
thinking, and he dared to speak aloud what others
only whispered to their own hearts. The accusation
which Eck hurled against him that he was repeating
the words of John Huss, a condemned and burned
heretic, only seemed to give his utterances more
power. These old words could not be hushed, it was
seen ; they had risen again from the dead, and there
fore they were felt to be endowed with an eternal life.
" No one," said Melanchthon, " comes near Dr. Luther,
and indeed the heart of the whole nation hangs on
him. Who stirs the heart of Germany — of nobles,
peasants, princes, women, children — as he does with his
noble, faithful words ? "

CHAPTER IV
the three great reformation treatises
§ 1. " Christian Liberty " and " The Captivity of
the Church"
In 1520 Luther published the three writings which
contain the principles of his reformation. They
appeared in the following order: To the Christian
Nobility of the German Nation, respecting the Re
formation of the Christian Estate, probably in the
beginning of August ; The Babylonian Captivity of
the Church, probably before the end of September;
and Concerning Christian Liberty, early in October.
These three books are commonly called in Germany
the " Three Great Reformation Treatises," and the title
befits them well. Luther wrote and published them
after three years of controversy, following upon the
publication of the theses, had made his position per
fectly clear to himself, and at a time when he knew
that he had to expect nothing from Rome but a sentence
of excommunication. However the details of his teach
ing may have afterwards changed, it remained in all
essential positions unaltered from what we find it in
these three books.1
1 These three treatises, exhibiting the principles of the Lutheran Re-

94 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
The short tractate on " Christian Liberty" had a some
what pathetic history. The good Miltitz still hoped
that the final breach between Luther and the papacy
might be avoided ; and he earnestly counselled Luther
to write a friendly letter to the Pope, and send His
Holiness a short, simple statement of what his inmost
religious beliefs were. Luther did so ; and this booklet
was the result. It has for its preface the letter to Pope
Leo, which concludes thus : " I, in my poverty, have no
other present to make you, nor do you need anything
else than to be enriched by a spiritual gift. I com
mend myself to your paternity and blessedness, whom
may the Lord Jesus preserve for ever. Amen."
The short treatise is a brief statement, free from all
theological subtleties, of the priesthood of all believers,
which is the result of justification by faith. Luther
begins by an antithesis : " A Christian man is the most
free lord of all, and subject to none ; a Christian man
is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every
one " ; or, as St. Paul puts it, " Though I be free from
all men, yet have I made myself servant of all." He
expounds this by showing that no outward things have
any influence in producing Christian righteousness or
liberty; neither eating, drinking, or anything of the
kind, neither hunger nor thirst, have to do with the
liberty or the slavery of the soul. It does not profit
the soul to wear sacred vestments or to dwell in sacred
formation, together with the theses against Indulgences and Luther's
Short and Greater Catechisms, have been translated and published in
English, with two explanatory Essays — one on the "Primary Principles
of Luther's Life and Teaching," by Prebendary Wace, and the other on
the " Political Course of the Reformation in Germany (1517-1546),"
by Professor Bucheim. London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1896. I have
taken the translation of the extracts quoted from this volume.

THE TRACT ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 95
places, nor does it harm the soul to be clothed in
worldly raiment, and to eat and drink in the ordinary
fashion. The soul can do without everything except
the Word of God, and this Word of God is the gospel
of God concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen,
and glorified, through the Spirit the Sanctifier. " To
preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it
free, to save it, if it believes the preaching ; for faith
alone and the efficacious use of the Word of God bring
salvation." It is faith that incorporates Christ with the
believer, and in this way " the soul, through faith alone,
without works, is, from the Word of God, justified,
sanctified, endued with truth, peace, liberty, and filled
full with every good thing, and is truly made the child
of God." For faith brings the soul and the Word to
gether, and the soul is acted upon by the Word, as iron
exposed to fire glows like fire, because of its union with
the fire. Faith honours and reveres Him in whom it
trusts, and cleaves to His promises, never doubting but
that He overrules all for the best. Faith unites the
soul to Christ, so that " Christ and the soul become
one flesh." " Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of
its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of
death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal
righteousness, life, and salvation of its husband Christ."
This gives the liberty of the Christian man ; no dangers
can really harm him, no sorrows utterly overwhelm
him, for he is always accompanied by the Christ to
whom he is united by faith.
" Here you will ask," says Luther, " ' If all who are in
the Church are priests, by what character are those
whom we now call priests to be distinguished from the
laity ? ' I reply, By the use of these words, ' priest/

96 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
'clergy,' 'spiritual person,' 'ecclesiastic,' an injustice
has been done, since they have been transferred from
the remaining body of Christians to those few who are
now, by a hurtful custom, called ecclesiastics. For
Holy Scripture makes no distinction between them,
except that those who are now boastfully called Popes,
bishops, and lords, it calls ministers, servants, and
stewards, who are to serve the rest in the ministry of the
Word, for teaching the faith of Christ and the liberty
of believers. For though it is true that we are all
equally priests, yet we cannot, nor ought we, if we could,
all to minister and teach publicly."
The first part of the treatise shows that everything
which a Christian man has goes back in the end to his
faith ; if he has this he has all ; if he has it not, nothing
else suffices him. In the same way the second part
shows that everything that a Christian man does must
come from his faith. It may be necessary to fast and
keep the body under ; it will be necessary to make use
of all the ceremonies of divine service which have been
found effectual for the spiritual education of man. The
thing to remember is that these are not good works in
themselves or in the sense of making a man good; they
are all rather the signs of his faith, and are to be done
with joy, because they are done to the God to whom
faith unites us.
This brief description of what Luther called a
"'summary of the Christian life" will give an idea
of the little book which perhaps most clearly mani
fests that combination of revolutionary daring and
wise conservatism which was the most outstanding
feature in Luther's character. It maintains that cere
monies, or what may be called the whole machinery

THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS 97
of the Church, are most valuable, and indeed indis
pensable, provided they are looked at from the right
point of view, and are kept in their proper place;
while, on the other hand, they may become harmful to,
and indeed almost destructive of, the true religious
life, if they are considered in any other sense than as
means to an end. It therefore follows that, if through
human corruption and neglect of the plain precepts
of the Word of God, those ceremonies instead of
aiding the true growth of the soul are hindering it,
they ought to be changed or done away with ; and the
fact that the soul of man, in the last resource, needs
absolutely nothing but the Word of God dwelling in
it, gives men courage and tranquillity in demanding
their reformation. It is the assertion of this principle,
at once simple and profound, which places Luther in
the forefront of all reformers of religion, and which
marks him off from all previous witnesses for the
truth, however courageously they may have testified
against the ecclesiastical abuses of their days. The
principle itself is the doctrine of Justification by Faith
stripped of theological accessories, and stated in the
simple language of everyday life.
The immediate application of this principle which
Luther made, to define by it the relative positions of
the clergy and the laity,, was so important that it may
be called a second principle. It is the assertion of the
spiritual priesthood of all believers. He declared that
men and women living lives in the family, in the
workshop, and in the civic world, held their position
there, not by a kind of indirect permission wrung
from God out of His compassion for human frailties,
but by as direct a vocation as that which called men to
7

98 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
what by a mistake had been deemed the only religious
life. The principle of the spiritual priesthood of all
believers was able to deliver the laity from the vague
fear of the clergy which enthralled them, and was also
a potent spur to incite them to undertake a reforma
tion of the Church which was so sorely needed.
These principles Luther at once applied in his two
longer treatises on the Church and on the Christian
Estate or Commonwealth.
In the Babylonian Captivity of the Church Luther
declares that everything must be brought to the one
test of the authority of the Word of God. This
shows us how Luther thought that his principle of
Christian liberty is to be applied, and what limita
tions were to be placed on its exercise. The essence of
the liberty of a Christian man is the faith which he
possesses, and faith is not mere abstract sentiment, but
a personal trust in a personal Saviour who has given
promises to be trusted in and messages to be accepted.
These promises and messages are given us in the Word
of God, which is a tissue of promises and prayers, and
thus exhibits the union and communion of the be
lieving man and the Saviour God. The promises may
be simple promises, or they may be promises wrapt in
a visible sign, or they may be contained in pictures of
the life of a believing man or nation in communion
with God. However they are given, they are con
tained in the Word of God, which is therefore the rule
both of the exercise and of the limitations of our
Christian freedom. He applies this to a criticism of
the elaborate sacramental system of the Roman Church,
and the result of the application is to convince him
that the Roman Curia has held the Church of God

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 99
in bondage to human traditions and commandments of
men, which run counter to the plain messages and
promises of the Word of God. The ideas which guide
him throughout the book are brought together at the
close ; and there we learn that while Luther considers
it possible to apply the word " sacrament " to all those
things to which a divine promise has been made, such
as prayer, the Word, the cross, yet it is best to limit
the use of the word to those promises which have
visibly and divinely appointed signs attached. The
result is that there are only two sacraments, — Baptism
and the Lord's Supper, or the Bread as Luther calls
it, — and that the other so-called sacraments are but
ceremonies of human institution, salutary or otherwise.
It is unnecessary to describe the contents of this
book at any length, but it may be interesting to notice
briefly what Luther has to say on the one topic of
Christian marriage.
Nothing in the whole round of Romish interfer
ences with scriptural commands and messages excited
Luther's indignation like the way in which it had
degraded the whole conception of Christian marriage.
" What shall we say of those impious human laws by
which this divinely appointed manner of life has been
entangled and tossed up and down ? Good God ! it
is horrible to look upon the temerity of the tyrants
of Rome, who thus, according to their caprices, at one
time annul marriages and at another time enforce
them. Is the human race given over to their caprice
for nothing but to be mocked and abused in every
way, and that these men may do what they please
with it for the sake of their own fatal gains. . . .
And what do they sell ? The shame of men and

100 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
women, a merchandise worthy of these traffickers, who
surpass all that is most sordid and most disgusting in
their avarice and impiety." Luther points out that
there is a clear and scriptural law on the degrees
within which marriage is unlawful, and that no human
regulations ought to forbid marriages outside these
degrees or permit it within them. He declares him
self in favour of the marriage of priests, and says that
there is nothing in Scripture or in the usages of the
early Church forbidding it. He says that personally
he detests the thought of divorce, " and even prefers
bigamy to it"; but that it is clearly permitted by
Christ in certain cases, and that the Roman Curia, now
forbidding and now permitting, have defied all laws
human and divine for the sake of money-making.
The justness of Luther's indignation at the scandals
of the Roman Curia in relation to the Church's matri
monial legislation can only be appreciated by those
who have studied the havoc it made in the family life
of palace, castle, and burgher's home in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.

§ 2. The Reformation of the Christian Estate
In his address To the Nobility of the German Nation,
respecting the Reformation of the Christian Estate,
Luther applied the principles laid down in his treatise
on Christian Liberty to the reformation of the
political Commonwealth. No writing coming from
Luther's pen produced such an instantaneous, wide
spread, and powerful effect as this treatise did. It
was issued from the printing-press some time in the
beginning of August (the exact date is unknown), and

ADDRESS TO THE NOBILITY 101
before the 18th of the month four thousand copies
were in circulation throughout Germany, and the
presses could not print fast enough for the demand.
Such a circulation was extraordinary for the times,
and was quite unprecedented. The treatise was a
thoroughgoing antidote to the Bull of excommunica
tion which was soon to be published in Germany. It
was the political and social manifesto of the Reforma
tion, and its effects were seen at the two Diets held at
Nurnberg in 1522 and 1524, where its indictment of
the Roman Curia was practically adopted by the Diet.
It owed its power to the spiritual insight, the moral
energy, and the tact which, in spite of occasional
violence of language, it displayed throughout. The
spiritual insight is to be seen in the way in which it
lays down the principle of the independence of the
human soul of all merely human powers and arrange
ments, in which it insists on the equal spiritual rights
and responsibilities of layman and cleric, and in which
it asserts the true sanctity and spirituality of all
natural relationships of family, home, trade, and pro
fession, of noble, burgher, artisan, and peasant. The
moral energy is displayed in the way in which one
abuse after another is brought forward in swift
irresistible succession, and the veil of legal chicanery
is stripped from one monstrous exaction after another,
and in the boldness with which the author points to
plague-spots which were due to the vices of the people
themselves. Its wonderful tact is disclosed in the
modest beginning: "It is not out of mere arrogance
and perversity that I, an individual poor man, have
taken upon me to address your lordships." It appears
in the courteous addresfl»to the young Emperor,.

102 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Charles v., from whom German patriots were expect
ing so much, and in whom they were soon to be sadly
disappointed: "God has given us a young and noble
sovereign, and by this has roused great hopes in many
hearts ; now it is right that we too should do what we
can, and make good use of time and grace." It is
seen in the deft omission from the title of all reference
to the Holy Roman Empire and the delicate suggestion
thereby of a " Germany for the Germans " ; in the
appeal to the nobles who were, with the Emperor, the
legal representatives of the German nation, and on
whose shoulders the author lays the responsibilities
for the good government of the realm ; and in the use
of the German language, which makes the address an
appeal to the whole German people — nobles, burghers,
and peasants.
The great source of the clamant evils which oppress
the German people is, according to Luther, the Pope
and the Roman Curia, and the reason why the nation
has been slow to deliver itself from the evils which
overwhelm it is because its arch-enemy has entrenched
itself behind a triple fortification believed to be im
pregnable. The first thing to do is to tear down these
defences, whieh are: (1) that the Temporal Power
has no jurisdiction over the Spiritual ; (2) that they
cannot be admonished from Scripture, since no one
may interpret Scripture but the Pope ; (3) that they
cannot be called in question by a Council, because no
one can call a Council but the Pope. These are their
defences, and Luther proceeds to demolish them.
The Romanists assert that the Pope, bishops, priests,
and monks are the spiritual estate, while princes, lords,
artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate; but

INDICTMENT OF THE PAPACY 103
this is simply an hypocritical device. All Christians
are of the spiritual estate, and there is no differ
ence between them save that of office and of work
given to do. Every man has work given him to do
for the commonwealth, and he may be restrained and
punished if he does not do it properly, whether he be
Pope, bishop, priest, monk, tailor, mason, or cobbler.
As for the statement that the Pope alone can inter
pret Scripture — if that were true, what is the need for
the Holy Scriptures ? " Let us burn them, and content
ourselves with the unlearned gentlemen at Rome, in
whom the Holy Ghost dwells, who, however, can dwell
in pious souls only. If I had not read it, I could never
have believed that the devil should have put forth such
follies at Rome and find a following."
The third " wall " falls of itself with the other two ;
for .we are plainly taught in Scripture that if our
brother offends we are to tell it to the Church, and
if the Pope offends, as he often does, we can only
obey the Word of God by calling a Council ; and this
the Emperors used to do.
Then comes the indictment. There is in Rome one
who calls himself the Vicar of Christ, and who lives
in a singular state of resemblance to our Lord and
St. Peter, His apostle; for this man wears a triple
crown (a single one does not content him), and keeps
up such a state that he requires a larger personal
revenue than the Emperor. He has surrounding him
a number of men, called cardinals, whose only apparent
use is that they serve to draw to themselves the
revenues of the richest convents, fiefs, endowments,
and benefices, and spend the money thus got in keep
ing up the state of a wealthy sovereign in Rome.

104 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
When it is impossible to seize upon the whole revenue
of an ecclesiastical benefice, the Curia joins some ten
or twenty together, and mulcts each in a good round
annual sum for the benefit of a cardinal. Thus the
priory of Wurzburg gives one thousand gulden yearly,
and Bamberg, Mainz, and Trier pay their quotas. The
papal court is enormous — three thousand papal secre
taries and hangers-on innumerable, and all waiting
for German benefices, whose duties they never fulfil,
as wolves wait for a flock of sheep. In this way
Germany pays to Rome a sum of three hundred
thousand gulden annually — more than it pays to its
own Emperor. " Do we still wonder why princes,
noblemen, cities, foundations, convents, and people
grow poor ? We should rather wonder that we have
anything left to eat." Then look at the way in which
Rome robs the German land. Long ago the Emperor
permitted a Pope to take the half of the first year's
income from every benefice — the annates — for the
special purpose of providing money for a war against
the Turk. This money was never spent for the pur
pose destined ; yet it has actually been regularly paid
for a hundred years, and the Pope regards it as a
regular and legitimate tax, and employs it to pay
posts and offices at Rome. " Whenever there is any
pretence of fighting the Turk, they send out commis
sions for collecting money, and often send out Indul
gences under the same pretext . . . They think that
we Germans will always remain such great and in
veterate fools that we will go on giving money to
satisfy their unspeakable greed, though we see plainly
that neither annates, nor absolution money, nor any
other thing — not one farthing — goes against the Turks,

INDICTMENT OF THE PAPACY 105
but all goes into their bottomless sack . . . and all
this is done in the holy name of Christ and St. Peter."
He then enumerates the ways, many of them mere
legal chicanery, by which the Pope gets the right to
appoint to German benefices. He exposes the gross
exactions connected with the bestowal of the pallium
on German prelates; the trafficking in benefices, in
all manner of exemptions and permissions to evade
ecclesiastical laws and restrictions, the most shame
less instances being those connected with marriage;
and describes the Curial Court as a place " where vows
are annulled; where a monk gets leave to quit his
Order ; where priests can enter married life for money ;
where bastards can become legitimate ; and dishonour
and shame may arrive at high honours ; all evil repute
and disgrace is knighted and ennobled ; where a mar
riage is suffered that is in a forbidden degree, or has
some other defect. . . . There is a buying and a selling,
a changing, blustering and bargaining, cheating and
lying, robbing and stealing, debauchery and villainy,
and all kinds of contempt of God that Antichrist could
not reign worse."
Luther, lastly, proceeds to give some suggestion for
amending matters — twenty-seven in number. The
first eight and the seventeenth are such that if carried
into effect they would have the result of creating a
German National Church with an ecclesiastical Council,
to be the highest court of ecclesiastical appeal, and to
represent the German Church as the Diet did the
German State. Suggestions nine, ten, eleven, and
twenty-six aim at the complete abolition of the
supremacy of the Pope over the State. In most of
the others he deals with ecclesiastical abuses which

106 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
do not spring from the supremacy and greed of Rome,
but which are productive of much religious and social
evil. Luther would check the multitude of pilgrim
ages, which he thinks do not tend to good morals, and
lead men to pursue a life of wandering beggary. For
the same reason he would limit or suppress the mendi
cant orders. " It is of much more importance to con
sider what is necessary for the salvation of the common
people, than what St. Francis, or St. Dominic, or St.
Augustine, or any other man, laid down, especially
since things have not turned out as they expected."
He would bring some daylight into the convents both
for men and women, and believes that everyone who
wishes to leave the convent ought to be allowed to do
so, since God will accept voluntary service only. He
thinks that there are too many saints' days and
ecclesiastical festivals, which are only seasons of glut
tony, drunkenness, and debauchery, and would retain
the Sunday only. He also considers that it is time
that the German Church came to some terms with the
Bohemians, who, whatever their sins, did nothing so
bad as deliberately break a solemnly given safe-
conduct. In one of his suggestions (fourteenth), he
deals with the terribly sad condition of the German
country parish priests, and he does this in a tender
and sympathetic way. "We see also how the priest
hood is fallen, and how many a poor priest is encum
bered with a woman and children, and burdened in his
conscience, and no one does anything to help him,
though he might very well be helped." Luther's
sympathy goes out to the man ; ours goes forth more
to the woman. The priest's concubine, the Pfaff" s
Frau, is the common butt of the mediaeval rustic

SOCIAL EVILS IN GERMANY 107
poetry; and she is accused of all manner of things
in the coarse wit of the times. Even Hans Sachs has
his gibe at her :
" Nach dem der Messner von Hirschau,
Der tanzet mit des Pfarrherrn Frau
Von Budenheim, die hat er lieb,
Viel Scherzens am Tanz mit ihr trieb."
'' I will not conceal," says Luther, " my honest counsel,
nor withhold comfort from that unhappy crowd, who
now hve in trouble with wife and children, and remain
in shame, with a heavy conscience, hearing their wife
called a priest's harlot, and the children bastards. . . .
I say that these two (who are minded in their hearts
to live together always in conjugal fidelity) are surely
married before God."
His remaining paragraphs treat briefly of social
evils which cannot be called ecclesiastical. He refers
to the rampant beggary which disgraces Germany and
which comes both from the mendicant monks and from
the numerous vagrants. He calculates how much a town
of ordinary size actually taxes itself when it supports
by casual almsgiving the troops of sturdy rogues who
wander through it. His remedy for the disease is that
each town should support its own poor in a charitable
fashion. He has also some solemn words addressed to
the luxury and the licensed immorality of the cities ;
and with these words of warning he closes the address.
This call to the Nobility of the German Nation
appealed to all Germans, and produced a great effect
on the very class to which it was directly addressed.
Apart from its immediate effect on Luther's relation to
his contemporaries, it ought to be remembered that it
is really the first definite announcement that Germans

108 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
ought to work all together for a united Germany, and
was the first practical step taken in the movement to
create a German nationality which has made such an
advance in our own generation, and whose end is not
yet. Meanwhile at Rome the Bull condemning Luther
had been prepared, and was published there in the
middle of the month of June. It seems to have been
drafted by Eck, Cajetan, and Prierias, and the work
manship was mainly Eck's. It is a very curious
document. It begins pathetically : " Arise, 0 Lord,
plead Thine own cause ; remember how the foolish man
reproacheth Thee daily; the foxes are wasting Thy
vineyard which Thou hast given to Thy Vicar Peter ;
the boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild
beast of the field doth devour it." St. Peter is then
invoked, and the Pope's distressful state at hearing the
news of Luther's misdeeds is described at length. The
Bull then cites forty -one propositions, said to be Luther's,
and condemns them. It is worthy of notice that there
is no condemnation of Luther's evangelical principles,
but of the objections to Romish practices which flowed
from these principles. All Luther's writings, whenever
and wherever found, are ordered to be burnt. The
Pope details his many "fatherly dealings" with his
rebellious son, and adds that even yet, if he will only
recant, he is prepared to welcome him back to the fold ;
if he remains obstinate there is nothing before him but
the fate of a heretic.
This Bull was published, by Eck and by the Roman
legate Aleander, in some parts of Germany. When
it reached Wittenberg both the Elector and the univer
sity took no notice of it, notwithstanding threats that

THE PAPAL BULL 109
the privileges of the university would be withdrawn.
The Elector, some time later, asked Spalatin to find out
what effect the Bull was having on the students and
citizens, and the chaplain reported that there were
nearly six hundred students in Melanchthon's classes
and over four hundred in Luther's, while the crowds of
people attending Luther's preaching were so great that
the churches could scarcely contain them. The Bull
had not caused the people of Wittenberg to shun
Luther. The legate was determined to make a personal
appeal to the Elector ; he waylaid him at Cologne as
he was returning from the coronation of the young
Emperor, and demanded that he should publish the
Bull in his dominions, publicly burn Luther's writings,
and deliver up Luther himself to the Pope as a heretic.
He added the curious threat that if this was not done,
the Pope would withdraw the title of Holy Roman
Empire from Germany and treat the land as Constan
tinople and the Eastern Empire had been treated.
Upon this Frederic secretly consulted Erasmus. The
cautious Dutchman told him " that Luther had sinned
in two points ; he had touched the crown of the Pope and
the bellies of the monks " ; while in an interview with
Spalatin the great humanist declared that the attacks
upon Luther came from ignorance enraged at science
and from tyrannical presumption. Thus fortified, the
Elector replied to the legate that he had never made
common cause with Luther, nor would he protect him
if he attacked the Pope, but that as matters stood
Luther must have a fair trial. His Elector therefore
protected Luther, and the Reformer was able to go on
preaching, teaching, and writing in peace.
The Bull was proclaimed in some parts of Germany,

no LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
and copies of Luther's writings were seized and burnt ;
but the curious Documenta Lutherana, published a
few years ago by the Vatican, reveal that this was
done with increasing difficulty, and that the excite
ment caused by burning Luther's books was so great
that the legate sometimes trembled for his life.
Meanwhile Luther worked on indefatigably with
his pen. Attacks on the Bull and its authors in Latin
and in German flowed from the Wittenberg press, and
among others an elaborate defence and explanation of
the forty-one propositions cited in the Bull. Luther
also solemnly renewed his appeal to a General Council,
and published it in Latin and in German.
When tidings came to him that his writings had
been burnt in several parts of Germany, he resolved
on the momentous step of burning the Book of
Decretals, that part of the Canon Law in which the
papal supremacy is supported by many a fictitious
document, and with them the Bull itself. So on the
10th of December 1520 he posted a notice inviting the
students of Wittenberg to witness the burning of
the " Antichristian Decretals" at nine o'clock in the
morning. A great multitude of students, burghers, and
professors collected in the open space before the Elster
Gate, where a great bonfire had been built. One of the
masters kindled the pyre; Luther laid the Books of
Decretals on the glowing mass, and they caught the
flames; then in solemn silence Luther placed a copy
of the Bull in the flames, saying in Latin : " As thou
hast wasted with anxiety the Holy One of God, so may
the eternal flames waste thee " (" Quia tu conturbasti
Sanctum Domini, ideoque te con tubernet ignis aeternus").
He waited till the flames had consumed the paper and

LUTHER BURNS THE BULL in
then with his fellow-professors and other friends slowly
re-entered the town and went back to the university.
The opportunity was too good a one to be lost by
the students. The solemnity of the occasion at first
impressed them, and some hundreds standing round the
flames sang the " Te Deum." Then the spirit of mis
chief seized them, and they began to sing funeral dirges
in honour of the burnt Decretals. Thereafter they
got a large peasant cart, erected a pole in it, and hung
on it a banner six feet long emblazoned with a copy of
the Bull. They piled the cart with the works of Eck,
Emser, and other Romish controversialists, hauled it
through the town and through the Elster Gate, and
tumbling Bull and books on the still glowing embers
of the bonfire, they burnt them together. Then sobered
again they sang the " Te Deum " and separated.
It is scarcely possible for us in the nineteenth cen
tury to understand the thrill that went through all
Germany, and indeed all Europe, when the news sped
that a poor monk had burnt the Pope's Bull. It was
not the first time that a Bull had been burnt, but the
burners had been great monarchs, with trained armies
and a devoted people behind them, while in this case
it was a monk with nothing but his manhood to back
him. It meant that a new world had come into being,
and that the individual human soul had found its own
worth. It is as impossible to date epochs as it is to
trace the real fountainhead of rivers. In the one case
a guess is made and some event is fixed on as the
beginning of the new period, and in the other some
nameless rill is selected as the source. But it is easy
to see the river when it begins to roll in volume of
water, and to discern the epoch when some utterly

112 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
unlooked-for event startles mankind. So this burning
Pope Leo's Bull showed that modern history had begun.
An oak tree now stands between the Elster Gate
and the Elbe River, planted long ago to mark the spot
where the Bull was burnt.

CHAPTER V
AT THE DIET OE WORMS
§ 1. The Election of the Ruler of the Holy
Roman Empire
While Luther and Eck were debating at Leipzig, the
eyes of Europe were turned to another corner of
Germany — to the venerable town of Frankfort-on-
the-Maine — where, according to ancient custom, the
Electors met to choose the ruler of the Holy Roman
Empire. Old Kaiser Max had died very unexpectedly
on the 12th of January 1519, and the intervening five
months had been spent in ceaseless intrigues by the
partisans of Francis I. of France, and of Charles, the
young King of Spain and grandson of the late
Emperor. Francis was then at the height of his
power and fame. His kingdom was the most compact
in Europe, his home position secure, and his foreign
policy had hitherto been successful. Charles was an
unknown youth of nineteen, the fruit of an unhappy
marriage, the child of poor Joanna of Spain, whose
early melancholy had turned to incurable madness
after the death of her husband, and whose gloomy
temperament he seemed to have inherited.1 His
1 Cf. Portrait No. 464 in Hirth's Cultsergeschichtliches Bilderbuch,
vol. i. (Bartsch, App. 41 ; Passavant, No. 334), — a delicate, lacka
daisical-looking youth with a strong chin.
' 8

114 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
political insight, his patient industry, his wide ambi
tion were all to be developed in the future, and were
still unknown. Perhaps the very brilliancy and
powers of Francis were against him; the German
princes did not want a masterful overlord, and the
princes on the Rhine feared the absorption of their
territories into France. Long before the day of
election arrived the French party had melted away;
everyone seemed ashamed to be thought to belong to it.
This did not mean that the Electors were satisfied
with the other candidate. We can see from the
matters discussed at the later Diets under Maximilian,
and from the political literature of the time, that the
German people were longing for some firm central
power which could check the encroachments of the
Roman Curia. Then there was a clamant need for a
strong central Government to put down that curse of
Germany, the right of "Private War," practised not
merely by the greater princes, but claimed by all the
free nobles of the Empire ; and for a central court of
appeal strong enough to enforce its decisions, where all
disputes could be settled by just arbitration. The
cities, the traders, the peasants, and all peace-loving
citizens longed for something like this. It was uni
versally felt also that it was high time that Germany
should be considered as a nation with one national
language, common national usages, and national laws
which should preserve individual rights and liberties
unknown to the Roman law which was superseding the
old usages. This thought was especially dear to the
leaders of the peasants, for the Roman law did not
recognise the free peasant at all. There were also two
strong under and counter currents which were to

ELECTION OF EMPEROR 115
make themselves felt some years later, which repre
sented the aristocratic and the democratic revolu
tionary spirit, and which, curiously enough, seemed to
express themselves in the one political formula, " God
and the Emperor."
It is needless to say that those revolutionary ideas
did not find any sympathy within the electoral college,
but they contributed to the feeling of the gravity of
the situation, and made the Electors the more sensible
that the ecclesiastical abuses and the disorders arising
from private war should, if possible, be put an end to,
and that it was their duty to select an Emperor who
had a knowledge of German affairs and power to
enforce reforms. Their first thought was to elect a
purely German Emperor, and they turned instinctively
to the Elector of Saxony, the most venerated prince in
Germany. He was privately offered the crown on the
day before the official election. But he did not think
himself able to undertake " the burden of the empire."
He had no personal ambition. He was too old, too
cautious, too well acquainted with the troubles that
lay before the ruler of Germany to. think of accepting
office. He felt especially that a stronger hand than
his was necessary to knead into a unity of subordina
tion the unruly and restless factions of Germany.
Perhaps, too, he may have cherished the idea that the
young Emperor would follow the advice of one to
whom he owed the Imperial crown, and that in the
near future at least the sagacity and experience of
Frederic might guide the stronger hand of Charles.
He refused the crown, and urged the election of the
King of Spain, and after this there was no more to be
said.

116 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
So on the 28th of June 1519, when, according to the
ancient custom, the Alarm Bell of Frankfort gave the
signal, and the Electors, in their scarlet robes of State,
came together in the dim, narrow little chapel of the
Church of St. Bartholomew where the conclave was
always held, the Electors had already made up their
minds, and Charles was unanimously chosen to be the
head of the Holy Roman Empire and the ruler of the
Mediaeval State.
Charles was at Barcelona when the news reached
him, and the affairs of his Spanish and then of his
Netherlands States prevented his coming to be
crowned until 20th October 1520. When the German
princes assembled at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), for
there since the beginning of the Empire the corona
tion took place, they saw a young man of twenty, who
sat his horse and managed his lance as well as his
neighbours, but who looked in weak health, whose
face, though good-natured enough, showed signs of
weary melancholy, and who seemed to leave all busi
ness to his ministers. There was not a trace of that
masterful ambition which was soon to show itself.
He came to Worms in December, called together his
first Diet, and the nobles of Germany with the repre
sentatives of the free cities crowded the town to meet
their new master.
Before describing the business, and especially the
ecclesiastical affairs, which were presented to this
famous Assembly, it may be well to glance at the
political condition of Germany at the accession of
Charles v. to the Imperial throne. For it is to be
remembered that at the Diet of Worms the past and
future confronted each other in two men — the Emperor

CHARLES V 117
Charles and the monk Martin Luther. The young
Emperor, with his melancholy, listless expression, con
cealed in his brain the vast and, as he was in the end
to learn, the impossible design of setting back the
clock of European history two centuries at least, and
of reproducing again the Holy Roman Empire of the
earlier Middle Ages. Luther represented in great part
forces invisible to the Emperor, which were to wreck
all his schemes, send himself into a convent, and at
least inaugurate a new Europe. The conditions of
Germany, political, social, and religious, were the con
ditions on which both forces acted, and by which both
were modified and sent into channels not of their own
choosing. Charles was elected to be head of the Holy Roman
Empire, as his grandfather Maximilian had been ; and
some idea of what underlay the expression may be
conceived when one reads across Albert Diirer's
portrait of the latter, " Imperator Caesar Divus Maxi-
milianus Pius Felix Augustus," just as if he had been
Trajan or Constantine. The phrase and the thought
it conveys carries us back to the times when the
Teutonic tribes swept down on the old Roman lands of
Western Europe and took possession of them. They
were rude barbarians, and tried to adopt and assimilate
the wider civilisation of the conquered, with its system
of jurisprudence and its modes of government. They
crept into the shell of the old Empire of the Caesars,
and lived more or less uncomfortably within it. One
main thing to be noted was the increased political
influence of the Church, for Churchmen had been
trained in and had not forgotten the traditions of the
old imperialism, and taught them to their barbarian

118 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
conquerors. Hence in the Middle Ages it came to
pass, as Mr. Freeman says, that — "The two great
powers in Western Europe were the Church and the
Empire (and that the centre of each, in imagination at
least, was Rome). Both of these went on through the
settlements of the German nations, and both in a
manner drew new powers from the change of things.
Men believed more than ever that Rome was the
lawful and natural centre of the world. For it was
held that there were of divine right two Vicars of
God upon earth, the Roman Emperor, His Vicar in
temporal things, and the Roman Bishop, His Vicar in
spiritual things. This belief did not interfere with
the existence either of separate commonwealths and
principalities or of national Churches. But it was
held that the Roman Emperor, who was Lord of the
World, was of right the head of all temporal States, and
that the Roman Bishop, the Pope, was the head of all
Churches. Now this part of the theory was never
carried out, if only because so large a part of Christen
dom, all the Churches and nations of the East, refused
to acknowledge either the Emperor or the Bishop of
old Rome. But it was much more nearly carried out
in the case of the Roman Bishop than it was in the
case of the Roman Emperor. For the Popes did really
make themselves spiritual heads of the whole West,
while the temporal headship of the Emperors was
never acknowledged by a large part even of the
West." As the modern nations of Europe came
gradually into being, the real headship of the Emperor
became more and more shadowy. But both headships
contrived to prevent the national consolidation of the
countries in which the possessors dwelt. Machia-

POLITICAL CONDITION OF GERMANY 119
velli says : " We owe to Rome that we are become
divided and factious, which must of necessity be our
ruin, for no nation was ever happy or united unless
under the rule of one commonwealth or prince, as
France and Spain are at this time." And the shadowy
Empire kept the Germans separate, and filled her
princes and nobles with ideas which stood in the way
of all national union. For the theory was that all
princes directly under the Emperor were sovereign,
and Germany was full of small sovereign kinglets who
clung tenaciously to their kingship, even when it
could only be exhibited in that form of war which we
should now call highway robbery.
The political condition of Germany was something
like this. The Empire was elective, and it had been
settled, by the " Golden Bull " of 1356, that the election
was to be in the hands of seven prince electors, four of
them on the Rhine and three on the Elbe. Three were
ecclesiastical princes, the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier,
and Koln; and four were laymen, the Electors of
Saxony and Brandenburg, the King of Bohemia, and
the Count Palatine of the Rhine. During an inter
regnum the management of affairs was in the hands of
the Count Palatine and the Elector of Saxony. The
internal affairs of Germany were managed, under the
Emperor, by a national Council called the Diet, a feudal
and not a representative assembly, which met and voted
in three Chambers — the Electors (excepting the King
of Bohemia, who had no place in the Diet), the Princes
or great territorial magnates lay and ecclesiastical, and
the free Imperial cities, i.e. those cities who had got
their charters directly from the Emperor. But nothing
could be even submitted to the Chamber of the cities

120 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
until it had first passed through the other two Chambers.
The Diet had very little real power, and was of use
chiefly for providing public discussion, for it could
not enforce its own decrees. Power in Germany had
been for long coming into the hands of the great
territorial magnates, and the cities were all armed and
independent republics. The power of the Emperor
depended on the amount of force he could bring to
bear upon Germany from his own hereditary dominions.
The disorganised nation had not even the semblance of
common government. Ranke says that when Charles
met the Diet at Worms in 1521 everything was in con
fusion: "No form of central government had been
established, no finance system nor army organisation
were in existence; there was no Supreme Court of
Justice, and private war had not been put down. Be
sides this, the various classes within the Empire were
at variance with each other — the nobles with the
princes, the knights with the cities, the clergy with
the laity, and the upper and middle classes with the
peasants. Added to all this a comprehensive religious
movement had sprung up from the depths of the national
consciousness which had within the last months openly
defied the supreme ecclesiastical authority." All
these difficulties confronted the young Emperor at
Worms. It may be added that he was the subject of
the most extravagant hopes, and that his presence in
Germany was looked to with enthusiasm. Nor was the
exaltation of feeling to be wondered at. No one man
for centuries had been in possession of the power which
belonged to Charles. He had inherited the hereditary
lands of Austria and had added to them the over-lord-
ehips of Hungary and Bohemia, making his Austrian

CHARLES V 121
possessions almost as extensive as the modern Austrian
Empire. He was master of the Netherlands, the richest
part of Europe in trade and manufactures, with cities
which more than rivalled the past glories of the Italian
towns. He was King of Spain, with all the Spanish
possessions in Italy and the wealth of the newly dis
covered continent at its command. Men did not pause
to think that the world had been growing much more
complicated, and that these large dominions meant a
variety of conflicting interests which it was beyond
the power of man to harmonise in one homogeneous
government. They saw the outside power, they recog
nised the opportunity, and when Charles devoted him
self to none of their projects the disappointment was
all the more bitter. The young Emperor had his
dream also, and a most natural one then, though
strange enough to us now. He had the highest idea
of his Imperial rank, and his dream was to restore the
mediaeval Empire and establish it in a splendour un
known even to Frederic il, whom his contemporaries
called the " Wonder of the World." He had only to
humble France, to make Italy his own, to set the Pope
back into his place as chief pastor of Christendom, to
organise Germany — and the Empire would be restored
to its old position. That was his policy from the very
first ; every calculated step he took was towards this
end. Everything encouraged him. All Europe except
England was under a jurisprudence which spoke of
one Christendom under one Imperial rule. The keenest
intellects of the day drew their inspiration from the
literature of old Imperial Rome, and those Imperiahst
ideas were their pohtical atmosphere. It had been for
centuries the tradition of Europe that only a strong

122 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Emperor could hold in check'a tyrannical and rapacious
pontiff. And the peasants knew that a strong central
power saved them from oppression. Charles understood
all these things ; but one thing he did not understand
and could never be made to understand, and that was
the power of a deep-seated religious conviction when
once it had embedded itself in the hearts of the people.
He never could see in the movement which Luther
represented anything more than a band of men who
were to be diplomatically caressed if the Pope became
too exacting, to be bribed if they became troublesome,
or to be crushed underfoot if they refused to move out
of the path of his State policy.
It is not easy to say when the Middle Ages begin or
when they end ; the phrase is only a convenient way of
speaking. But that a man in the position of Charles
should conceive the ambition of restoring the Empire
of the Hohenstaufens, and that his contemporaries
should think it a most natural and feasible project,
shows the Middle Ages had not yet departed. That a
movement like Luther's, preaching the indestructible
liberty of the individual human soul, should prove
itself stronger than this most powerful of monarchs,
and should in the end utterly wreck his scheme, is
proof that the Middle Ages had gone. The time is an
epoch, and Luther was the epoch-maker.
§ 2. Luther at the Diet
The general business of the Diet need not concern
us. It was arranged that there should be a Council
of Regency to manage the affairs of the Empire when
Charles was absent in Spain. An Imperial Court of

LUTHER AT THE DIET 123
Justice was also established, and an impost sanctioned
to defray its expenses. The two Courts were excellent
things, but were rendered useless by the fact that no
real powers were given to them. All felt that the
important business was the settlement of the disputes
between the ecclesiastical and the civil powers, and
that this involved the discussion of the excommuni
cation of Luther.
One day while a tournament was beginning, and the
Imperial standard had just been hoisted to authorise
the sports, the members of the Diet were hastily
summoned to the Emperor's presence to hear him read
a letter from the Pope. It asked the Emperor to put
into execution the Bull of excommunication against
Luther, and reminded him that as head of the Holy
Roman Empire the unity of the Church must be as
precious to him as it had been to former Emperors. It
is probable that Charles had made up his mind about
Luther before he came to Worms, and that he was
very much less influenced by his confessor and others
than has been supposed. He had a bargain to make
with the Pope. For one thing, the Pope had been
interfering with the Inquisition in Spain, and trying
to soften its severity ; and Charles, like his maternal
grandfather Ferdinand of Arragon, believed that the
Inquisition was a great help in curbing the freedom-
loving people of Spain, and had no wish to see his
instrument of punishment meddled with. For another,
it was evident that Francis 1. was about to invade
Italy, and Charles wished the Pope to take his side.
If the Pope gave him his way on both these points
then he was ready to treat Luther as a heretic, if not
he might follow the advice of his Spanish secretary :

124 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
" Your Majesty should show some favour to a certain
Martin Luther, who is to be found at the Court of
Saxony, and is a cause of some anxiety to the Court of
Rome from the things which he preaches."
The papal legate was Aleander, selected because he
was believed to be acceptable to Charles, and his
letters are curious reading. According to his own
account, he had got Luther's books burnt in the
Netherlands without the Emperor or his councillors
knowing what writings they had condemned to the
flames. He had surrounded Charles with spies, by
bribing one of his secretaries with fifty gulden and his
doorkeepers and others with smaller sums. He ex
plains that these Imperial councillors and secretaries,
however much they hate the papacy, " can be made to
dance to the Pope's piping as soon as they see his
gold." It is probable that all this fuss amounted to
very little. Charles was already a cool diplomatist,
who knew exactly what he wanted and the price he
was willing to give for it. It must have been a grim
pleasure to him to explain to the legate that the
Pope's letter could not be acted upon until the Electors
at least had discussed it. It was read to the Electors
and the princes, and Aleander tried to convince them
in a nine hours' speech that Luther ought to be placed
under the ban without further hearing. But the
German princes, however little they cared for Luther's
evangelical doctrines, were very much in earnest to
get rid of the exactions of the papal Curia ; and re
solved that before coming to any decision about the
excommunication they should appoint a committee to
draft their grievances against Rome. When the list
was read to them they remembered what a valuable

LUTHER AT WORMS 125
ally Luther was, and they insisted that it did not con
sist with the dignity of the Emperor to condemn a
man unheard. They suggested that Luther should get
a safe-conduct, and be summoned to appear before the
Diet to defend himself. The Emperor consented, and
the safe-conduct and the summons were sent off to
Wittenberg on the 6th of March.
As for Luther, he was eager to go to Worms, and
would have gone even had no safe-conduct been sent
him. He was burning to testify before the Diet, and
was firmly resolved not to recant. While the Diet
was deliberating whether he was to be heard or not,
Luther, in conjunction with his intimate friend the
painter, Lucas Cranach, the elder, had published a
little book called Passional christi und antichristi.
It is a series of pairs of engravings contrasting the
lives of our Lord and the Pope, so arranged that wher
ever the book was opened two contrasting pictures
could be seen at the same time. Below the scenes
from our Lord's life were appropriate texts, and below
those representing the Pope, texts from the Canon Law.
The contrasts were: Christ washing the disciples'
feet and the Pope holding out his toe to be kissed ;
Christ healing the sick and the Pope presiding at a
tournament ; Christ bending under His cross and the
Pope carried in state on men's shoulders; Christ
driving the money-changers out of the temple and the
Pope and his servants turning a church into an In
dulgence mart, and sitting surrounded with piles of
money and strong boxes ; and so on. " It was a good
book for the laity," Luther said.
Kaspar Strum, the Imperial herald, reached Witten
berg and delivered the citation and the safe-conduct to

126 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Luther on the 26th of March 1521, and Luther found
that he was ordered to appear at Worms not later than
the 16th of April. He calmly finished some expository
writing, and on the 2nd of April he left Wittenberg for
the Diet. The town of Wittenberg provided him with
a large cart with a canvas covering to protect him
from the sun and the rain. Luther took with him a
companion-brother of his Order, John Petzensteiner, his
old friend Nicholas Amsdorf, and a young Pomeranian
noble, Peter Staven, who was a student at Wittenberg.
The four sat in the hay at the bottom of the cart.
Just before starting Luther wrote to his friend Link :
" I know, and am certain, that our Lord Jesus Christ
still lives and rules. Upon this knowledge and assur
ance I rely, and therefore I will not fear ten thousand
Popes ; for He who is with me is greater than he
who is in the world." And to Melanchthon, who was
broken-hearted at the parting, he said : " My dear
brother, if I do not come back, if my enemies put me
to death, you will go on teaching and standing fast
in the truth ; if you live, my death will matter little."
He stepped into the covered cart, and the little pro
cession started amid the tears and ejaculations of the
citizens, the herald with the square yellow banner,
blazoned with the black two-headed Imperial eagle,
hanging over his bridle arm, blowing his trumpet, riding
before. The road led past Leipzig, then through
Thuringia by Naumburg, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha,
Eisenach, Hersfeld, Griinberg, Friedberg, Frankfort,
and Oppenheim to Worms. The journey was full of
incidents; it seemed, the indignant papists said, like
a royal progress; crowds came to see and bless the
man who had stood up for Germany against the

LUTHER AT WORMS 127
papacy, and who was going to his death for it. At Erfurt
forty members of the university, with their rector at
their head, rode out to meet Luther, and escorted him
to the old familiar monastery, where he lodged and
spent the Sunday. He preached to an immense crowd
from the text, " Peace be unto you ; and when He had
so said, He shewed unto them His hands and His side."
It was from the gospel for the day (John xx. 19-23),
and the sermon has come down to us. He preached
also in the Augustinian Convent churches at Gotha
and at Eisenach. The excitement of the journey, the
worship of the crowds, the numberless fatigues began
to tell upon him. He was ill at Eisenach ; he wrote to
Spalatin from Frankfort that he was in great bodily
weakness ; but his courage and clearness of vision
never faltered.
The papal party at Worms began to feel alarmed at
the demonstrations on the journey, and thought it
might be advisable to prevent him reaching the town.
They hinted at a compromise, and Glapio, the
Emperor's confessor, went to Sickingen to propose
a private interview with Luther at the Ebernberg.
But Luther would have none of it. He could see
Glapio at Worms ; he would obey the Imperial citation,
come what might. Even the Elector grew alarmed.
Spalatin wrote to Luther reminding him of the fate of
John Huss, who had been burnt at the Council of
Constance in spite of the Imperial safe-conduct. The
message reached Luther at the last stage of the journey
at Oppenheim, and he rephed " that he would go to
Worms if there were as many devils there as tiles on
the roofs ; if Huss had been burnt, the truth had not
been burnt with him."

128 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
In the early forenoon the watcher on the lookout
tower blew his trumpet to announce that the herald
with Luther in charge was in sight. The princes
sent out six knights with some men-at-arms to
escort him into the town ; the people were at their
forenoon meal, but when the news reached them all
rushed out into the streets, to see the monk sitting
in his cart clad in the habits of his Order, with a
curious travelling cap on his head.1 The escort
made their way with difficulty through the excited,
gaping, jostling mobs, and brought Luther to the
doors of the house of the Knights of St. John,
where he was to live in safe proximity to his
Elector. Next day, late in the afternoon, he was summoned
before the Diet. The Emperor presided; below him
sat the six Electors; the princes, lay and clerical,
filled the hall. On a table there was a pile of book3
— Luther's writings. He had never been in such a
presence before; his voice seemed to fail him; men
thought that his spirit was broken at last. He was
asked whether these books — the titles were read over
to him — were his; and if so, whether he stood by
what he had written, or whether he would recant.
He begged for time to consider his answer. It was
granted till the following day, and he went back to
his lodging.
The evening and night was a time of terrible de
pression, conflict, despair, and prayer. Before the day
broke the victory had been won, and he felt in a great
calm. 1 Cf. Picture by Daniel Hopper in Hirth's Cultssrgesch. Bilderbuch,
i. No. 37.

LUTHER AT WORMS 129
He was summoned on the following evening (18th
April); the streets were so thronged, even the roofs
crowded with people to gaze on him, that the officials
had to take him by side streets and lanes to reach
the Diet. He had to wait two hours before he was
received. The throng of members was so great that
the Electors had found it difficult to get to their
places ; the darkness had fallen, and the hall was
lit with flaring torches. There was the same table
with the same pile of books. This time Luther was
ready with his answer; his voice had recovered its
clear musical note, and his demeanour was calm and
fearless. An old tradition tells us that as he was
entering the hall, old General Frundsberg, the most
famous of German warriors, who was to be the
conqueror at Pavia and to lead an army of Germans
to the sack of Rome, clapped him on the shoulder and
said : " My poor monk ! my poor monk ! thou art on
thy way to make such a stand as I and many of my
knights have never done in our toughest battles. If
thou art sure of the justice of thy cause, then forward
in the name of God, and be of good courage; God
will not forsake thee." John Eck, the " orator " of the
Archbishop of Trier, — not to be confounded, as he often
is, with the other John Eck who was professor at
Ingolstadt, — conducted the proceedings as on the
previous day. He asked Luther whether, having
acknowledged the books to be his, he was prepared
to defend them, or to disavow some of .them. Luther
replied at some length, — a two hours' speech, it was
said, — but the substance of it was that his books were
not all of the same kind ; in some he had treated of
faith and morals in a way approved by all, and he
9

130 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
could not retract what friends and foes alike com
mended ; other of his books were against the papacy,
whose doctrine and example were ruining Christendom,
body and soul, and to retract these would be but to
strengthen its odious tyranny; in a third class he
had written against those who had upheld the Roman
tyranny, and he was quite prepared to admit that
he might have been more vehement in his charges
than became a Christian, and yet he was not prepared
to retract them either ; but he was ready to listen to
anyone who could show him that he had erred. He
spoke in German.
When he had done, the Emperor, who did not
understand German, asked him to repeat what he had
said in Latin, which Luther did. Then the Emperor,
through Eck, told Luther that he was not there to
question matters which had been discussed and settled
in General Councils long ago, and that he must give
a plain answer, " without horns," whether he would
retract all that he had said contradicting the decisions
of the Council of Constance; if so, then he would
be dealt with leniently with regard to what else he
had written. Luther replied: "Since your Imperial
Majesty requires a plain answer I will give one with
out horns or hoof ! It is this : that I must be
convinced either by the testimony of Scripture or by
clear arguments. I cannot trust the Pope or Councils
by themselves, since it is as clear as daylight that
they have not only erred but contradicted themselves.
I am bound by the Scriptures which I have quoted;
my conscience is thirled to the Word of God. I may
not and will not recant, because to act against
conscience is neither honest nor safe." This he said

LUTHER AT WORMS 131
both in German and Latin. Then after a pause he
added in German: "I can do nothing else; here I
stand ; so help me God ! Amen." The Empetf or asked
him, through Eck, whether he really declared that
Councils could err! Luther "hardened himself like
a hard rock," and answered that it was manifest that
Councils had erred often ; that the Council of Constance
had given decisions against the clearest passages of
Holy Scripture, and Holy Scripture compelled him
to say that Councils had erred. " It cannot be shown
that any General Council has erred," said Eck.
Luther answered that it could, and in many a place.
Here the Emperor interfered. He had heard quite
enough, and the audience was restless and noisy.
He dismissed the Diet, and Luther was sent back to
his lodgings, escorted by guards. The excitement, the
crowd, the speaking, had worn him out ; his face was
wet. When the multitudes in the streets saw him
on the threshold escorted by guards, they began to
cry that he was being taken to prison, and there was
danger of a riot. But Luther calmed them by calling
out that the guards were taking him to his lodging.
With great difficulty a passage was forced, and Luther
reached his door, where friends had already gathered.
When he got among them he stretched out his
hands, crying out, " I am through ! I am through ! "
While they were talking together excitedly a message
came to Spalatin from the Elector. The good old
prince only wanted to say to his chaplain how de
lighted he had been with Luther's appearance before
the Emperor : " How excellently Father Martin spoke
both in Latin and in German before the Emperor
and the Estates ; he is too bold for me." The Germans,

132 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
friends and foes, were proud of the stand he made,
and praised his speeches. The Emperor, however,
had not been much impressed. "He will never
make a heretic of me," he said. The Spaniards and
Italians were only moved to rage. Next day the
Emperor proposed formally that Luther should be
condemned, but the Germans pressed for delay, and
suggested that a commission should be appointed to
confer with him. The negotiations with the Pope
were not yet ended, and the Emperor consented.
The commission, with the Archbishop of Trier at the
head of it, had several meetings with Luther, and
the archbishop showed himself most conciliatory ; but
the conference always broke down at the point that
Luther refused to submit himself to any authority
except the Holy Scriptures.
Luther had written out his account of the proceed
ings at the Diet, and had summarised his answers ; the
printers sent the sheets all over Germany. The excite
ment of the common people rose to a white heat. He
was their champion, who, for the sake of the Father
land, had faced both Pope and Emperor. They grew
impatient, thinking that their hero was still in Worms,
and still in the clutches of the Emperor and of his
Spaniards. The confidential agents of the various
Powers noticed the tremendous popularity of Luther.
The English envoy wrote to Wolsey: "The Germans
everywhere are so addicted to Luther that rather than
that he shall be oppressed by the Pope's authority a
hundred thousand of the people will sacrifice their
lives." The Spanish envoy, evidently ignorant of his
master's negotiations with the Pope, wrote : " Here you
have, as some think, an end of this tragedy, but I am

LUTHER AT WORMS 133
persuaded that it is only the beginning of it. I see
that the minds of the Germans are greatly enraged
against the Roman See, and they do not seem to care
for the Emperor's edicts ; for Luther's books are sold
openly at every step and corner of the market-place
and streets. From this you will easily guess what
will happen when the Emperor leaves. This evil
might have been cured with the greatest benefit to the
Christian commonwealth, had not the Pope refused a
General Council, had he preferred the public good to
his own private interests. But while he insists that
Luther shall be condemned and burnt, I see the whole
Christian commonwealth hurried to destruction unless
God help us." German princes came to Luther's lodg
ings to congratulate him ; among them young Philip of
Hesse ; he grasped Luther by the hand, saying, " You
were in the right, Doctor ; may God keep you." Franz
von Sickingen threatened to attack the town in spite
of the Emperor's presence if Luther came to any harm.
A placard was found posted up on the walls of the
town hall, declaring that four hundred knights, with
eight hundred men-at-arms, had bound themselves to
take vengeance on the Romanists if Luther was
harmed. It was unsigned, but beneath it were
written the ominous words, " Bundschuh ! Bundschuh !
Bundschuh ! " — the old watchword of peasant revolt.
At last Luther got leave of the Emperor to quit
the town and return to Wittenberg. Meanwhile
the legate was urging the unconditional condemna
tion of Luther, when a conversation with Charles's
confidential minister made him see the state of
matters. "If your Pope," said the minister, "is
going to throw our affairs into confusion, we will

134 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
make such an entanglement for him that he will
not easily get free from it." " Your Pope," thought
the legate, and hastened to complete the bargain
Charles wanted to make. The Pope pledged him
self to interfere no more with the Inquisition in
Spain, and to support Charles against Francis in
Italy. Then at last the Emperor set himself to sup
press Luther.
But it was not so easy to do this. Some of the
German princes had no desire for it, and one of them,
the good Elector, was sure to withstand it. So
Charles waited for some days to get rid of them.
Then the Emperor, after formally closing the Diet,
requested the princes to remain a day or two longer
to finish some unimportant matters. They met on the
25th May, not in their hall, but in the Emperor's
apartments. He produced the ban against Luther,
and, after some objections, it was agreed upon. Next
day, a Sunday, the legate brought the official document
to Charles, who signed it. The Emperor, however,
dated it the 8th of May, the day on which he had
made his bargain with the Pope, to make people
believe that it had been issued formally after discus
sion, and perhaps also to remind the Pope that there
was a bargain.
The ban of the Empire, thus fraudulently obtained,
granted Luther twenty days' safe-conduct after his
departure from Worms ; after this — twenty days after
the 26th of April — everyone was forbidden, under
severe penalties, " to give the aforesaid Luther house
or home, food, drink, or shelter, by words or by deeds."
It only remained to secure Luther's person and burn
him as a heretic. Luther had suddenly disappeared,

LUTHER DISAPPEARS 135
however, and no one knew where he was, and the
wildest conjectures were started. Aleander came
nearest the truth when he said that he believed that
"the old fox," meaning the Elector of Saxony, had
hidden him somewhere.

CHAPTER VI
IN THE WARTBURG
Luther left Worms in the covered cart which had
brought him there, with the same travelling com
panions and some friends who accompanied him on
horseback, among them Jerome Schurf, the Wittenberg
jurist who had acted as his legal adviser at the Diet.
The little company wished to shun observation as
much as possible, and the herald rode far behind.
They returned by the way they had come. When
they came to Hersfeld, Abbot Crato, the head of the
Benedictine monastery there, received them with all
respect, lodged them for the night, and insisted on
Luther preaching before he started next day. Luther
preached at five o'clock in the morning. They reached
Eisenach, Luther's "dear town," on Wednesday, and
stopped there for the night. Next day the little
company separated, the majority taking the straight
road to Gotha, while Luther, Amsdorf, and the com
panion Augustinian monk, leaving Eisenach in the
afternoon, turned south to let Luther visit his kinsfolk
at Mohra. Heinz Luther, who lived in the old family
house, welcomed and lodged his nephew, and Luther
preached in the parish church early in the forenoon
136

IN THE WARTBURG 137
of Saturday (4th May). In the afternoon the three
companions left Mbhra, making for Gotha by Schweina
and the Castle of Altenstein, a group of Luther's
relations accompanying them on foot as far as the
castle. About two miles to the east of Castle Alten
stein the road begins to wind through wooded slopes,
and a hill stream runs alongside. When the cart
reached the ruins of a wayside chapel — the spot is
still shown, and is now marked by a monument to the
reformer — two knights and some horsemen dashed at
the cart from the ambush of the wood ; the driver was
ordered to stop; Luther was dragged from the cart,
his grey felt travelling cap falling off in the rush and
left upon the road. The band rode eastwards for a
short distance, then took a woodland path. Luther
was set on horseback, and the raiders set off along a
winding track in the beech woods to the Wartburg,
from which they had started. A ride of eight miles
was before them, through the glades of the dense beech
wood, the horses over the fetlocks in the dead leaves
of the last year, and all around the young shoots
bursting with sap and blossoming into dainty beech
green, the hares leaping noiselessly into the under
wood, and the shy deer watching the riders from
behind some distant tree-trunk. The troop had to go
slowly, for in these deep glades round the Wartburg,
even in the first week of May, the winter's snow,
crushed into ice, lay in many a hollow that had to be
crossed, and it was eleven o'clock at night before Luther
drew rein at the courtyard door, heard the kindly
welcome of Herr von Berlepsch, the Elector's trusty
castellan, and was conducted with all honour to the
rooms which had been got ready for him. This was

138 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the hiding-place, the " Patmos '' Luther calls it, which
his Elector had provided for him; and there he
remained in complete seclusion for ten long months.
He doffed his monkish habits, and wore the hose and
doublet of a soldier, with a sword-belt and the sword
clanking at his heel. He let the hair grow on his
tonsured head and shaven face. He was no longer
Dr. Martin but Knight George, a friend of the
Elector's, who needed shelter for a time. He was free
to go where he pleased within the castle precincts, and
a trusty servant man-at-arms accompanied him in his
walks and rides in the woods surrounding. He could
write to his friends, provided the letters were sent by
the Elector's own servants to Spalatin. He had his
books and his pen. Sometimes a friend, provided he
was a very trustworthy person, was allowed to see him ;
but that did not happen very often. Lucas Cranach
got himself smuggled in to paint the portrait of
" Junker George," and let future ages see what Luther
looked like when dressed as a knight.
The grim stronghold whose dark turrets look down
on the trees, with its memories of courage and justice,
of song and of saintship, represented all that was best in
mediaeval Germany, and was the fitter casket to hold
the most precious life that the Fatherland had then
produced. But the stout old Landgraves who ruled
there centuries ago, and who rode up and down the
steep causeway, with their weapons clanking behind
them, have all faded out of recollection, and the
memories of song and saintship alone survive. It was
to the Wartburg that there came in 1207 all the most
famous of the Minnesanger to prove their gifts and
win the crown of minstrelsy, when the boy Walther

IN THE WARTBURG 139
von der Vogelweide sang the praises of spring, and
the grey-haired Remar der Zwete chanted the charms
of autumn, while Heinrich of Osterdingen chose winter
as his theme, and Wolfram of Eschenbach carried off
the crown by his lay of the summer-time. It was in
Wartburg that St. Elizabeth lived the happiest part of
her life with husband and children, where she fed the
hungry, clothed the naked, housed the homeless, and
nursed the sick, where she founded almshouses in
which Luther saw the brothers doing deeds of mercy
three hundred years afterwards.
The guest who was now hidden away in the old
fortress combined the memories of both minstrelsy and
piety. His songs and hymns are the property of the
German people, and he taught them that saintship did
not mean, what it did to poor Elizabeth, the sacrifice of
all family affections and giving up the honest work of
daily life in the world.
The rooms Luther inhabited in the Wartburg
remain in the state in which he used them. The
visitor can see his bed, his table, his bookcase, his
chair, and his footstool.1 The great window beside
which he wrote is still there, and the descendants of
the rooks he delighted in still " hold Diets " in the tree-
tops far below the panes. The view is magnificent
away down to Cassel in billow on billow of wooded
hills, where the dark pines, the lighter larches, the
beeches and the birches, and the oaks, make a sea of
many coloured green. He complained of idleness and
1 The ink-stain on the wall made by Luther flinging his ink-bottle at
the devil is comparatively modern, and was unknown for many a decade
after his death. A similar stain made in the same way, it was said, was
long shown in the Castle of Coburg.

140 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
soft living. He took walks in the woods, and
delighted to find wild strawberries. He once or twice
took part in the hunt, and saw hares and partridges
taken with nets and dogs — " an occupation for idle
men," he says. Restless at being caged up while others
were bearing the brunt of attack, he was also dis
turbed by noises which he attributed to the devil. But
he loyally obeyed his Elector's wishes, until the troubles
in Wittenberg compelled him to leave his " Patmos."
What he called idleness most men would count hard
work : a multifarious correspondence, answers to the
theological faculty of Paris, attacks on the Bull, a
series of sermons on the Epistles and Gospels for the
day, tracts on celibacy and monastic vows, and, above
all, the translation of the New Testament into German
from the original Greek. This is what he calls,
writing to Spalatin, sitting the whole day at leisure
reading the Greek and Hebrew Bibles.
Luther's stay in the Wartburg will, however, always
be noted for three things especially — his tussle with
the Archbishop of Mainz, his tract on Monastic
Vows, and his translation of the New Testament.
Albert, archbishop of Mainz, the old patron of
Tetzel, and now a cardinal, being as sadly in need of
money as ever, had bethought himself of a new ex
pedient to raise funds. He published that he had added
several wonderful relics to his collection in his church at
Halle. There was part of the body of the patriarch
Isaac, some pieces of the manna which had fallen in
the desert, a few twigs of the burning bush which
Moses had seen, some thorns from the crown of our
Lord, and some of the water that He had changed into
wine at the wedding at Cana ! All these, with others

LUTHER ON MONASTIC VOWS 141
to the number of nine thousand, were to be exhibited
in the collegiate church at Halle, and all pilgrims
who came to see and adore would receive an Indulgence
when they contributed alms to that foundation. This
proclamation roused all Luther's righteous wrath. He
composed a pamphlet on The New Idol (Abgott) at
Halle, and told Spalatin that he meant to attack the
cardinal. The Elector, who was anxious that no more
should be done to disturb the peace of the realm, sent
word to Spalatin that Luther's pamphlet must not
appear, and the court chaplain quietly suppressed it.
Luther, however, without consulting anyone, wrote a
letter to the archbishop telling him that Luther was
not dead ; that the God who had protected him against
the Emperor lived still, and could gainsay an Elector of
Mainz with four Emperors to back him, and that if the
new sale of Indulgences were not stopped, he, Luther,
would testify. The man's power was so great that
Albert replied in a letter so abject that Luther could
not believe it to be written seriously, and the new
attempt to introduce Indulgences was abandoned.
Scarcely stronger evidence could be given of the
influence and power which the prisoner of the Wart
burg had suddenly attained by his appearance and
behaviour at Worms.
The bold declaration of Luther about the marriage of
priests in his Address to the Nobility of the German
Nation had produced its natural effects, and some
parish priests had married wives. This led to reflec
tions about the lawfulness of monastic vows, and to
the violent disruption of the convent life in some
places, and Luther was anxious to publish his thoughts
on the subject. It was all the more needful because

142 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
one of his former allies, Archdeacon Carlstadt, had
begun to teach that the married state was the only
lawful one, and that none but married men should be
set apart for office in the Church. Luther's views,
put shortly, were that the married state is honourable
and natural, that the marriage of priests was clearly
sanctioned in the Word of God, and that the chastity
required of monks and nuns by their vow of celibacy
was only possible when the man and woman possessed
the special gift of continence spoken of by St. Paul
(1 Cor. vii. 7). Besides, monastic vows and others of the
same kind were the fruit of a work -righteousness, and
were therefore denials of faith rather than marks of a
real Christian life. Nevertheless there should be no
compulsion in the mattter, for God was not served
by force but by voluntary service. His letters and
treatises really solved the question for Saxony. At a
chapter of the Augustinian Order held at Wittenberg
under the presidency of Vicar-General Link, it was
resolved that all monks had free permission to leave
their convents if they desired to do so ; and that those
who voluntarily remained must keep the rule strictly,
and exert themselves either in preaching or in manual
labour for the support of the community. This became
in time the general usage all over Electoral Saxony,
and might have continued long had not the horrors of
the Peasants' War destroyed what remained of the
convent life in Saxony.
Luther's greatest gift to Germany from the Wart
burg was his translation of the New Testament. It
was priceless religiously, but its benefit to Germany
did not stop there. Other translations of the Bible
into the German language had been made long before

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 143
Luther began his work. Janssen, the learned Roman
Catholic, author of the History of the German People
from the close of the Middle Ages, tells us that no fewer
than fourteen complete versions of the whole Bible in
High German and five in Low German had appeared
before 1518. For it is a mistake to believe that the
mediaeval Church attempted to keep the Bible from the
people. That was reserved for the Roman Catholic
Church, which was founded at the Council of Trent.
But these translations, made from the Latin Version,
were mostly uncouth, and not very easily understood
by the common people. Luther may almost be said to
have created the German language as a vehicle of
literary expression. Ulrich von Hutten, for example,
was made to see what the German language could
express from his study of Luther's German writings.
Besides, Luther, a Thuringian born, was brought up on
the boundary between the two German languages, and
used neither High German nor Low German, but a
third, which united the two. His Bible in this way
gave Germany a common language. This new intel
lectual possession preserved the unity of the German
people through times of political and ecclesiastical
division in a way that no Emperor ever did or could
have done. He resolved that his translation should be
a book for the " common man." " One has to ask," he
says, "the mother in her home, the children in the
street, the common man in the market-place, and to
look at their mouths to see how they speak, and thence
interpret it to oneself, and so to make them understand.
I have often laboured to do this, but have not always
succeeded or hit off the meaning." He took incredible
pains with his work. Some MS. of his translations

144 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
survive, and we find that he has struck out passages as
often as fifteen times in the endeavour to find exactly
the right expression. Many versions are much more
literally accurate, but none takes the reader so directly
into the heart of the original as his does. It took the
exclusive interpretation of the Bible out of the hands
of the ecclesiastics, and made man feel God speaking
to him face to face. Every German with reverence
enough for it could now stand beside Moses on the
Mount. The translation finished by Luther in the
Wartburg was revised by Melanchthon and others at
Wittenberg. Three printing-presses were then set to
work, and on 21st September 1522 the first edition
of the New Testament in German was published. It
was speedily exhausted, and a second was ready in
December. The book was illustrated by Lucas
Cranach; it was published without date or name of
printer or translator ; the price was 1£ gulden.
The translation of the Old Testament was not begun
in the Wartburg. Luther felt that he required help
for such a great task. After he was back in Witten
berg, a band of scholars set themselves to the work,
and it was slowly accomplished and published in
instalments. In 1534 the first complete edition ap
peared entitled, Biblia, das ist die ganze heilige
Schrifft, Deudsch. Martin Luth. Wittenberg.
mdxxxiv. By this time no less than sixteen revised
editions of the New Testament had been issued, and
more than fifty reimpressions.
Amid his multitudinous studies, correspondence, and
writing of every kind, Luther's great heart was being
fretted and worn by the news which came to him from
time to time from his own town of Wittenberg. His

LUTHER'S DREAMS 145
comforting sermons published in pamphlet form, his
cautions and exhortations by letter, seemed to produce
no effect. He had dreamed of a renovated Germany,
with a school in every parish, high schools in con
venient centres, and libraries, all provided out of the
worse than useless wealthy convent endowments; of
children taught at home and in school the "funda
mentals " which to his mind, true to the memories of
his own home training, were the Lord's Prayer, the
Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments ; of an
evangelical pastorate of married parish priests, free
from the vices and hypocrisy of the old clergy, pro
claiming the full grace of God, and warning against
the soul-destroying error of work-righteousness; of
the limitation of the power of the clergy, and the
transference of the direction of the social duties to the
magistracy and the community — all being brought
about gradually by the quiet working of the Word of
God on heart and conscience, and nothing done in undue
haste or by compulsion. Events were advancing at a
rate neither he nor anyone had thought of only a few
months before. His Theses, his Leipzig Disputation,
and above all his appearance before the Diet, had
kindled a train which had long been laid. What this
was, must be told when we come to the double flare up
of the combustible elements in Germany, in the brief
revolt of the knights and the prolonged conflagration
of the Peasants' War. The ecclesiastical events alone
need concern us now.
One question was solving itself quietly ; more than
one parish priest, after obtaining the consent of his
congregation, had married ; this conduct obtained
Luther's approval. But many were demanding the

146 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
abolition of all monastic vows by ordinance to be
enforced by violence. Although this question had
been solved by the timely decision of the Augustinian
Order assembled in full chapter, the populace were
subjecting the monks, who refused to quit the cloister
and who appeared in the streets in their monastic
dress, to all manner of petty insults.
Changes in worship were also hotly demanded, the
celebration of the Eucharist in both kinds, new modes
of receiving the elements to bring out the primitive
idea of a supper, the abolition of the sacrifice of the
Mass, and the abolition of the use of vestments. The
populace riotously disturbed the service of the Mass,
stormed into the churches to tear down images and
pictures, and made many such unseemly tumults.
Then there appeared a strange movement, headed by
Archdeacon Carlstadt, which repudiated all human
learning, disorganised the university, and persuaded
the schoolmaster to send the boys home to their
parents. Carlstadt himself, in order to carry out his
idea of "simplifying himself," assumed the peasant's
dress, and worked on his father-in-law's farm. All
these things were aggravated by the presence in the
town of certain men who came from Zwickau, famed
for its weaving industry, Nicolas Storch and Mark
Stiibner, men who were called the " heavenly prophets,"
and who preached a thorough and radical reconstruc
tion of all the public religious life.
Luther had been so anxious about all these things
that he had gone to Wittenburg secretly, remaining hid
in Amsdorf s house, to satisfy himself about the actual
state of matters, and he had returned to the Wartburg
in great depression of spirit. When he heard that the

KESSLER AND LUTHER 147
Council of the Regency, on complaint of Duke George
of Saxony, the head of the Albertine line and a strong
opponent of the Reformation, had called upon the
Elector to put down by force all the innovations intro
duced into the town, he could restrain himself no
longer. He wrote to the Elector that he must leave
his place of refuge, and asked him to do nothing to
protect him should the Imperial officials seize him
according to the decree of the Diet.
We get a glimpse of him on the road from the
Wartburg to Wittenburg from the pen of John
Kessler, a young Swiss student, who was travelling
with a companion to enrol himself in the university.
Kessler relates that at the town of Jena they
entered the "Black Bear" Hotel to lodge for the
night. "There we found a man sitting alone at the
table, and before him lay a little book. He greeted us
kindly, asked us to draw near and place ourselves by
him at the table, for our shoes were so covered with
mud and dirt that we were ashamed to enter boldly
into the chamber, and had seated ourselves on a little
bench in a corner near the door. . . . We thought
nothing else but that he was a trooper, as he sat there
according to the custom of the country, in hose and
tunic, without armour, a sword by his side, his right
hand on the pommel, and his left grasping its hilt.
His eyes were black and deep, flashing and beaming
like a star, so that they could not well be looked
upon." Then they talked about Switzerland, their
studies, their earnest desire to see Luther, and so on.
"With such conversation we grew quite confidential,
so that my companion took up the little book that lay
before him, and looked at it. It was a Hebrew Psalter.

148 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Then he laid it quickly down again, and the trooper
drew it to himself. And my companion said, ' I would
give a finger from my hand to understand that
language.' He answered, ' You will soon comprehend
it if you are diligent; I also desire to understand it
better, and practise myself daily in it.' Meanwhile
the day declined, and it became quite dark, when the
host came to the table. When he understood our
fervent desire and longing to see Martin Luther, he
said, ' Good friends, if you had been here two days ago
you would have had your wish, for he sat here at table,
and in that place.' " After some more conversation the
host called Kessler apart, and informed him that he
believed the stranger to be Martin Luther, and Kessler
managed to whisper the news to his companion, but
neither could believe that Luther could be dressed in
such a way, and concluded that the host must have
meant Ulrich von Hutten. When the meal came in
they wished to be excused from partaking, but the
stranger invited them to seat themselves as he meant
to pay their score. Then two merchants came in, and
having removed their cloaks and spurs, sat down at
the table, and one of them produced an unbound book,
which proved to be a copy of Luther's Commentary on
the Epistle to the Galatians. The merchant asked
Luther whether he had seen it, and he replied that it
would be sent to him. " During the meal Martin said
many pious and friendly words, so that the merchants
and we were dumb before him, and heeded his dis
course far more than our food. Among other things,
he complained with a sigh how the princes and nobles
were gathered at the Diet of Niirnberg on account of
God's Word, many difficult matters, and the oppression

KESSLER AND LUTHER 149
of the German nation, and yet seemed to have no
purpose but to bring about better times by means of
tourneys, sleigh-rides, and all kinds of vain courtly
pleasures; whereas the fear of God and Christian
prayer would accomplish so much more. . . . After
this the merchants gave their opinion, and the elder of
them said, ' I am a simple, unlearned layman, and have
no special understanding of these things ; but as I look
at the matter I say, Luther must either be an angel
from heaven or a devil from hell. I would gladly give
ten florins to be confessed by him, for I believe that
he could and would enlighten my conscience.'" . . .
"On Saturday (they had got to Wittenberg by this
time) we went to Dr. Jerome Schurf to deliver our
letters of introduction. When we were called into the
room, lo and behold ! there we found the trooper
Martin, as before at Jena ; and with him were Philip
Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, Nicolas Amsdorf, and Dr.
Augustin Schurf, who were relating to him what had
happened at Wittenberg during his absence. He greeted
us, and laughing, pointed with his finger and said,
' This is Philip Melanchthon of whom I spoke to you.' "

CHAPTER VII
THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION
1522-1525
Luther got back to Wittenberg on a Thursday, and
spent the next two days in learning all about the
condition of affairs in the town. On the Sunday his
familiar face appeared in the pulpit, and for eight
successive days he preached to his people. He en
forced the need of charity and forbearance even in
essentials, he counselled his audience against all
violence, he made no personal references, and in the^
end he was master of the situation. In his exhorta- "
tions against all violent action, especially in matters of
religion, he says: "The Word created heaven and
earth and all things ; the same Word will also create
now, and not we poor sinners. Summa summarum,
I will preach it, I will talk of it, I will write about it,
but I will not use force or compulsion with anyone;
for faith must be of free will and unconstrained, and
must be accepted without compulsion. To marry, to
do away with images, to become monks or nuns, for
monks or nuns to leave their convents, to eat meat on
Friday or not to eat it, and other like things, — all
these things are open questions, and should not be

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 151
forbidden by any man." " It is His Word that must
act, and not we. And wherefore do you say ? Because
I do not hold the hearts of men in my hand as the
potter holds the clay in his. Our work is to speak.
God will act. Let us preach. The rest belongs to
Him. If I employ force, what do I gain ? Changes in
demeanour, outward shows, grimaces, shams, hypo
crisies. But what becomes of the sincerity of the
heart, of faith, of Christian love? All is wanting
where these are lacking ; and for the rest I would not
give the stalk of a pear. What we want is the heart,
and to win that we must preach the gospel. Then the
word will drop to-day into one heart, to-morrow into
another, and so will work that each will forsake the
Mass. God effects more than you and I and the whole
world combined could attempt. He secures the heart ;
and when that is won all is won."
By Luther's advice the old methods of performing
service were restored, the clergy wore vestments again,
the Eucharist was given in the old way, but for those
who wished it a separate altar was placed where com
municants could partake of the cup as well as the bread,
and gradually all went to that altar, and the change
came about peaceably. Luther himself went back to
the Augustinian convent and resumed his monk's
dress. The university classes were again crowded,
and the boys were again sent to school, the master
having recovered from his momentary aberration.
As soon as Wittenberg was pacified, Luther was
asked to make preaching tours through towns mostly
in Electoral Saxony1 — to Zwickau, the town of
1 Saxony in the time of the Reformation was divided most irregularly
as territories were concerned, for they wound out and in through each

152 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
weavers, where it is said twenty-five thousand persons
assembled to hear him, to Altenberg, the old princely
residence of Saxony ere the grand division of lands
was made, to Dorna, to Weimar (at the invitation of
Duke John, the Elector's brother), and to Erfurt.
When at home he was chiefly busied with his Bible
translation, but composed one notable short treatise,
foreseeing, no doubt, that something on the subject
would soon be required. This was entitled, On the
Secular Power, and how far Obedience is due to it.
The intention of the tract was to show that the secular
power was as much an ordinance of God, and as much
meant by Him for the good of man, as the ecclesiastical
power, which proclaimed itself to be divine. His posi
tion is that the commands of our Lord forbid Chris
tians taking vengeance for personal wrongs, that it
is necessary for the general good that wrong-doing
should be punished, and to this end our Lord has
assigned the sword to the secular power. Princes and
magistrates are as much set apart by God for this good
end as Churchmen for the service of the Church, and
they as truly command our veneration and obedience.
There is a limit to this obedience. The secular power
other, into the two divisions of Electoral Saxony, with Wittenberg as
capital and university town, and Ducal Saxony with Leipzig as capital
and university town. Electoral Saxony was held by the Ernestine line
and Ducal Saxony by the Albertine line. Luther's Elector was the son
of Ernest, and Duke George the son of Albert, the boy -heroes of the
Prince-Stealing Raid, the theme of many a Pastnachtspiel, and still
commemorated by local celebrations in the Altenberg region. The
younger or Albertine line ousted the elder or Ernestine line from the
Electorship in the person of Maurice of Saxony, Duke George's nephew
and successor. It is now represented by the King of Saxony. The
elder line split into many small dukedoms, and is represented by the
Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, our Queen's second son.

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 153
has no divine rule over the human conscience, and it
has nothing to do with testing doctrines. That belongs
to bishops and not to princes.
During the months which had elapsed since the Diet
of Worms, and while the fever of the reform move
ment was spreading itself over the land, Germany
had been watching with much patience the gradual
establishment of what was called a Reichsregiment or
permanent Imperial Council, meant to govern Ger
many during the absence of the Emperor, and perhaps
to act as some restraint on Imperial despotism. This
had long been an aspiration, and now seemed in the
way of becoming an established fact.
Once started on their work, one can discern that if
the times had not been so difficult, if the warring in
terests had not been so utterly conflicting, or even
with all these if they had got a fair backing from the
Emperor, whose work they were doing, the Council
might have made something of the terribly distracted
Germany. They were almost at the beginning called
upon to face the economic problems which were perplex
ing the land, and the sketch plan which they produced
shows that this Council had in their minds a united
Germany, whose various territories and classes of men
were to support each other against all outsiders. They
drafted a great customs union, which was to include all
German lands, and some lands that were not German
(for they included the Netherlands) which had laid
hold on the sea approaches of the Rhine. The very
plan which almost within the present generation was
the forerunner of a united Germany.
They were soon forced to give some attention to the
religious question. Duke George of Saxony was deeply

154 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
concerned that so many religious tumults should have
taken place in his cousin's university town of Witten
berg, much afraid that they might extend further,
perhaps into his own Ducal Saxony. Early in 1522,
therefore, he brought forward a proposal that the
Council should commission the three bishops of Naum-
berg, Meissen, and Merseberg to visit Wittenberg and
other places where disorders had occurred, and restore,
by pains and penalties if need be, the public worship
to the old use and wont. Luther had returned to his
post, and had mastered the situation not a day too
soon. As it was, the representative of the Elector
could remind the Council and Duke George that the
work of the Commission had already been done ; the
disorders had been put down, and most of the old uses
had been restored in public worship. As for the other
things, they were trifles. What if the Eucharist was
celebrated in both kinds, what if one or two parish
priests had married, or a pair of monks had left their
convent ? Those things were not heresies against the
faith, but mere evasions of some recent commands of
Popes, which were not of much consequence. It was
in vain that Duke George declared that Luther's
presence in Wittenberg was an insult to the Empire.
He was informed that the Council were able to judge
when the Empire was insulted, and when they saw
any insult would punish it.
When the summer of 1522 came round, it was the
turn of the Elector of Saxony to take his place in the
Council, and the thorny question of the religious com
motions began to be treated in his wise, tolerant fashion.
What benefit might have come to unfortunate Germany
if he had not refused the Imperial throne on that

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 155
evening in the end of July 1519 ! Readers are familiar
with his portrait by Albert Dilrer, which shows us a
corpulent, benevolent, elderly gentleman " looking out
from under his electoral cap, with a fine, placid, honest,
and yet vigilant and sagacious aspect." He belonged
to the band of old princes who had suggested the
Council. He had taken a personal part in its institu
tion. He had been frequently consulted on points of
official procedure. His placid nature, his wide experi
ence, the veneration in which he was held from his
sagacity and talent for business, all gave him a position
of unusual authority. " It might be said," says Ranke,
" that at this period he ruled the Empire, so far as it
was possible to speak of ruling it."
It was to this Council that Pope Adrian vi. sent a
letter and a legate about the religious matters in Ger
many. The new Pope was a very different man from
Leo. He had been a Dominican monk and the tutor
of Charles v. He was a pious man according to his
lights, and was deeply sensible of the evils which were
corrupting the Church. He was not afraid to confess
them, and to promise honestly to do what in him lay
to end them. But he was a firm believer in the schol
astic theology of the Middle Ages, and he had all the
Dominican feeling that obedience to ecclesiastical and
papal authority must be enforced. He accordingly
demanded the enforcement of the Bull of his prede
cessor and of the Edict of Worms against Luther. The
legate brought his requests before the Diet which met
at Niirnberg at the close of 1522. The Diet was in no
mood to grant his demands. Germany had abundant
grievances against Rome, and Luther had voiced these
more effectually than any other person. They could

156 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
not burn him and then proceed to demand the very
thing for which he had been condemned. Besides, the
princes felt sure that the land would be plunged into
civil war if the Edict of Worms was carried out. Even
Albert of Mainz had forbidden the Franciscans to
preach against Luther, from dread of popular dis
turbances. All the members of the Diet knew some
thing of the state of popular unrest arising from many
causes, among which the exactions of the Church were
not the least. These only required occasion to flame
out into popular revolt against all constituted autho
rities. The Diet determined to come to no decision
about the Pope's demand until they had received some
definite answer from Rome to a statement of their eccle
siastical grievances. They drafted the famous " Hundred
Grievances " of Germany against Rome, and gave that
to the legate for their answer. This done, they debated
how to deal with the religious question at home.
They held long discussions over it, and at last came to
a conclusion which was the outcome of many a com
promise. It was to the effect that nothing should be
preached in Germany but the true, pure, sincere, and
holy gospel, in accordance with the teaching and inter
pretation of well-known works approved by the Church.
Almost every word in the decision represents a com
promise ; and what made it valuable was that it repre
sented the way in which Germany, if left to itself and
apart from the foreign policy of the young Emperor,
would have treated the Reformation movement. The
one permanent result of it was that it gave a legal
standing to the reformed religion in those parts of
the country where that was making progress. Luther
had published his opinion that it was lawful and scrip-

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 157
tural for communities, who were of the evangelical
faith, to choose for themselves pastors, and gather
round them in worship. He had seen that the decision
of the Niirnberg Diet gave a quasi-legal authorisation
for changes in worship, and had accordingly published
a Wittenberg Order of Public Worship, an Order of
Baptism, and an evangelical Hymn-book containing
eight hymns. All these publications of his went far
and wide, and no doubt helped to encourage the minds
of those who looked to him for guidance in many parts
of Germany. The Hymn-book especially, which was
enlarged during the course of the year, aided the
work more than anything else. We find, after this
Diet of 1523, a silent, widespreading movement going
on all over Germany. There was no concerted action,
no plan of operation, no active incitement, but every
where evangelical preachers appeared and congrega
tions were formed. These preachers were for the most
part monks who had left the cloister — Augustinians in
largest number, but also Benedictines, Franciscans, and
even Dominicans. Sometimes parish priests called
their parishioners together, and explained that they
had accepted the teaching of Luther, and for the most
part their congregations were glad to follow them.
Sometimes the priest explained that he could no longer
conscientiously conduct the service in the old fashion,
and that, as his superiors would not allow him to use
the church, he would preach to them in the fields.
The people followed him, and after they saw that no
use was being made of the church, they insisted on
going back there and worshipping in the reformed
fashion. One pastor preached to his people under the
trees in the churchyard, and the congregation came

158 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
armed to protect him, and found that they had no need
to bring their weapons. Sometimes evangelical com
munities formed themselves, and had no pastors ; then
they wrote to Luther to send them one. Thus Witten
berg became a sort of evangelical metropolis, and
Luther an unconscious metropolitan. The movement
Was so universal in all German - speaking lands, so
silent, so natural, that Ranke can compare it to nothing
else save the warm rays of the spring sun quickening
and making sprout the seed which has lain " happed "
in a tilled and sown field.
Some princes came forward as open supporters of
the movement, foremost among whom, to Luther's
great delight, were the Counts of Mansfeld in his
native Thuringia. The free cities also ranked them
selves on the evangelical side — Niirnberg, Ulm, Stras-
burg, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Breslau, and others. The
more important towns in Electoral Saxony — Zwickau,
the town of weavers, Altenberg, Eisenach, and others
— had their reformed pastors.
German notables, perplexed by the strenuous wishes
of their people, came to consult Luther. The towns
people in the Culmbach region, for example, urged
thereto by Niirnberg, the great city near them, began
to feel impatient that they had still to endure the
Romish services, and wished to make a clean sweep of
them all. Their superior, George, Margrave of Anspach,
and cousin to the Archbishop Elector of Mainz himself,
rode off to Wittenberg "with six attendants only,"
alighted at Luther's door, had long, earnest conversa
tion with him, and rode back again, all his doubts
removed, to be a loyal supporter of the evangelical
cause to the day of his death. His brother too, Albert

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 159
of Brandenburg, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights
in East Prussia, in desperate trouble between the King
of Poland on the one hand and his German com
manderies and the Diet on the other, took the same
road more than once (June 1523, again in 1524), and
got the emphatic advice that the Order had become
a thing serviceable neither to God nor to man ; that
the best thing he could do was to throw off his Grand
Master's cloak, dress as a plain German noble, marry,
and make East Prussia an evangelical principality.
All of which Albert did, and East Prussia became the
first principality to adopt the evangelical faith officially
and completely.
So the Reformation spread through Germany far and
near in simple, natural fashion, without any attempt at
preconcerted action, or any design to impose a new form
of Church government, or a new and uniform order of
public worship. Luther was not without hope that the
great ecclesiastical principalities would become secular
lordships, that the bishops would assume the lead in
ecclesiastical reform, and that there would be a national
Church in Germany, altered in externals as little as
possible, enough only to permit free scope to evangelical
preaching and teaching. It is true that before the year
1524 had ended the Pope's legate managed to bring
together the princes of Austria and Bavaria, and the
ecclesiastical States in South Germany, in a Convention
at Ratisbon, and there to induce them to agree that,
provided the sales of Indulgences and various ecclesi
astical extortions were put an end to, no further con
cessions should be made in doctrine, and that any
pretence of favouring new theological ideas should be
firmly checked. It is true that the Emperor had set

160 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
himself firmly against the whole Reformation move
ment, and that in his hereditary dominions of the
Netherlands he had sent the first martyrs for the faith
to the flames. It is true that there were not lacking
symptoms of restlessness and discontent over wide
areas of Germany. Still, all these things did not pre
vent such a skilled and wary statesman as the old
Elector from confidently expecting a peaceful, and, so
far as Germany was concerned, a unanimous and hearty
solution of the religious difficulty. The storm burst
suddenly which was to shatter all these optimistic
expectations, and to change fundamentally Luther's
conception of what was to be expected from the
"common man" in Germany.
This was the Peasants' War.

CHAPTER VIII
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REVOLTS
§ 1. The Revolt of the Nobles
Two sudden risings, significant of the social and
economic troubles of the time, materially affected the
course of the religious movement which centred round
Luther. These were the " Revolt of the Nobles " under
Franz von Sickingen and that terrible conflagration
which has been called " The Peasants' War."
We have alluded to the economic changes which
were affecting society everywhere, but especially in
Germany, during our epoch (pp. 4-6), and seen that
they bore most heavily on two classes in the society of
the Middle Ages — the lesser nobility and the peasants
with the lower classes in the towns ; and it was from
these two oppressed classes that the risings came.
The lesser nobility, the Freiherrn or free nobles of
the Empire, had once held a commanding position in
the social life of the Middle Ages. They had been the
warrior caste, and had possessed the position in life
which naturally falls to the men who do the fighting.
The feudal structure of society gave them a real inde
pendence, and when land was the one great source of
wealth their position as an aristocracy was unchal-
n

1 62 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
lenged. The Swiss peasant revolts had proved the
superiority of trained infantry over the clumsy chivalry
of knights and squires. The great landowners, who
could afford to maintain small armies of paid soldiers,
made the free nobles feel themselves reduced to a
position of galling inferiority. The commerce of the
towns had furnished a new source of wealth, to which
the free nobles had no legitimate access, and in which
they could only share, either by taxing heavily the
merchant trains as they passed under the cliffs on
which their castles were perched or laboriously forded
some rushing and unbridged stream within their terri
torial domains, or else by rushing down from their
eyrie-like towers and capturing both traders and mer
chandise. The very names of the two Imperial houses
now ruling in Germany (Hohenzollern or Upper Tolls
and Hapsburg or Gled's Tower) show the aristocratic
methods of money-getting in the Middle Ages. But
the sturdy German burghers did their best to put this
highway robbery down by Hanse Leagues among them
selves and Swabian Leagues with the princes. The
German free nobles were discontentedly feeling them
selves reduced to a very inferior position in a society
in which they claimed a first rank. Some of them
accommodated themselves to the new style of things
by becoming the followers of the greater landowners,
and gained a comparative security while losing their
independence. Others levied black-mail in districts
where quiet people gladly paid for some rude protec
tion. A third class gathered round them bands of
trained mercenaries, and rivalled the Italian Condot-
tieri in their exploits as mercenary leaders, selling their
swords to the highest bidder.

REVOLT OF THE NOBLES 163
Foremost among the last class was Franz von Sick
ingen, commonly, but rather inappropriately, called
" the last flower of German chivalry." He was much
liker a premature Wallenstein or one of those Italian
soldiers of fortune of the latter Renaissance period, such
as Giovanni dei Medici of the Black Bands, save that
being a German he possessed a fund of natural morality
and piety lacking to the great Italian soldier, and had
Ulrich von Hutten and not a Pietro Aretino for his
confidential friend. He began life by serving under
various princes, and having gradually made his way,
amassed wealth by attacking and ransoming cities
instead of wayfarers. He had three castles strongly
fortified and placed in strategic positions, and he kept
up a greater state than most princes. He was the
patron of Humanists and men of learning. He had
been attracted by Luther's teaching, and we have
already seen (p. 90) Ulrich von Hutten expounding the
evangelical faith to his patron in the afternoons at
Ebernburg. His wife, Hedwig von Flesshaim, was a
pious lady much given to good works, and his castle was
a well-ordered household. He had espoused Charles's
side in the election, had even lent him money for his
canvas; and he was powerful enough for Charles to
ask him to make war in a district in France when the
Emperor wished to embarrass his rival. His portrait
by Hopper shows a high square forehead, a close-packed
brain, firm nose, mouth, and chin, a face full of courage
and craft, humour and decision of character, and, in
addition, curiously " modern " looking.
This was the man to whom the knights turned in
their extremity, and he was willing enough to be their
champion. The free nobles of the Upper Rhine met

1 64 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
at Landau on the 13th of August 1522 and signed a
"Brotherly Agreement" in which they declared their
wrongs. They protested against the Swabian League,
which acted as accuser, judge, and executioner all in
one ; against the Imperial Privy Council, which sought
out and punished the weaker offenders and let the
powerful ones go unscathed ; and against the grasping
greed of the princes, who were ruining the free nobles
with their new-fangled Courts of Justice, the admin
istration of their feudalities, and their increasingly
severe feudal dues. They claimed their old independ
ence, and refused to be tried by other than their peers.
Franz was named Hauptmann, and was expected to
redress their wrongs.
The aim of the nobles was, like the dream of Charles,
to return to a state of society that had for ever fled.
It is difficult to believe that the brain behind that
" modern "-looking face could have thought the thing
possible ; still more difficult to understand the medley
of forces he tried to weld together in his attack on the
power of the princes. He may have seriously believed
that he was actually clearing the way for a religious
reform, for a man's inner religious convictions can make
strange alliances in most ages. There is no reason to
doubt the reality of his ecclesiastical aspirations, or to
think that he was posing for effect when he insisted
on public worship at Ebernburg being modelled on the
reformed service at Wittenberg, assisted at the marriage
of his chaplain, wished the cup given to the laity at
Holy Communion, banished pictures from his churches,
and objected to prayers to the saints ; but along with
all these things there was the perception that the eccle
siastical principality of Trier would make an excellent

REVOLT OF THE NOBLES 165
secular lordship if it could only be won, and that the
man who secured it would "become an Elector and
more." He knew that Luther did not believe in attach
ing a reformation of religion to an armed rising, and that
he had told Hutten so frequently. But he also knew
the wild words that Luther had flung out against the
ecclesiastical princes, and how loudly they were re
echoing in the hearts of the lower clergy and the
people. We need not be surprised then at the alliance
he tried to make between his raid on the Archbishop of
Trier and the evangelical Reform movement. But
what is difficult to see is how he could ever have hoped
for an alliance between the nobles and the cities. It is
true that the burghers were indignant for the time being
at the Imperial Council ; that they were feeling the
position of inferiority in which their delegates were
placed at its meetings; and at the disproportionate
weight of Imperial taxation which was laid on their
shoulders. But no two classes in the Empire had less
in common than the free nobles and the burghers. It
was the interest of the burghers to see that the roads
were kept safe ; it was the free nobles who made the
roads dangerous for all the law-abiding trading classes.
What had Frankfort in common with the nobles at a
time when its own delegate to the Imperial Council,
worthy Philip Fiirstenburg of the Tailors' Guild, had
to leave his carriage on the road to be pillaged by law
less knights, and make his way on foot by bypaths with
a trusty journeyman craft-brother to Niirnberg where
the Council met ? Yet Franz summoned Frankfort
to aid him. Hutten, that stormy petrel of the epoch,
even appealed to the peasants, and compared his patron
to Zisca, who had cleared Bohemia of useless priests

1 66 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
and monks, confiscated their possessions to the common
good, and ended the robberies of Rome. But the
peasants knew full well that their most pitiless op
pressors were those free nobles whose cause he was
championing, and were soon to feel that his soldiers
pillaged peasants' farmyards as well as convents and
bishops' abodes.
The very army which Sickingen led showed that a
restoration of the mediaeval knighthood was a thing of
the past. It was a body of drilled and paid soldiers,
and had the usual equipment of artillery. There was
no appearance of the old mediaeval militia of knights
and squires.
Yet his rising was regarded by many as the most
dangerous thing that had happened or could happen to
the Empire — so difficult is it to see the proportions of
contemporary events ! He sent the usual feud letter
to the Archbishop of Trier, and set out on his march in
the beginning of September 1522, all Germany wonder
ing what was to come of this thing.
The expedition was a complete failure. The arch
bishop defended his capital like another Pope Julius u.
The siege had only lasted a week when the besiegers'
powder ran out. Sickingen had to withdraw his forces
and retire to Ebernburg, where he hoped to pass the
winter. The princes, however, were on the alert. The
Imperial Council had sternly forbidden Sickingen's
raid, and now they were resolved to punish him and
his abettors. The Cardinal-Elector of Mainz, who had
not gone at once to his neighbour's assistance, was
heavily fined; his chamberlain, Frowen von Hutten,
a cousin of Ulrich, was driven from his castle and

REVOLT OF THE NOBLES 167
deprived of his estates. In the spring the three
princes, the Archbishop of Trier, the Count Palatine of
the Rhine, and the young Landgrave of Hesse, blockaded
Sickingen in his castle of Landstuhl, captured the
messengers he sent out to secure help, and battered
down his walls with cannon. Franz himself was
desperately wounded, and the strong place was sur
rendered. When the princes entered they found
Sickingen dying. "What hadst thou against me,
Franz," said the Archbishop of Trier, " that thou hast
laid waste me and my poor folk ? " — " Or against me
that thou didst overrun my land in the days of my
minority?" said the Landgrave. "I have to answer
to a greater Lord," said the dying man. His chaplain
asked him if he wished to confess, and Franz answered
that he had already confessed to God in his heart.
Then the chaplain gave him absolution. He was
about to elevate the Host, the princes had uncovered
their heads and knelt, when Franz expired. The
princes said the Lord's Prayer over the body and
departed. They none the less determined to stamp out the
rising. The castles of Sickingen and his allied nobles
were seized and kept by the princes who had made
the campaign against him. The wonderful treasures
of Ebernburg fell to the share of Philip of Hesse.
The Swabian League thought that the time had come
to put an end to the Franconian robber knights.
They held a memorable meeting at Nordlingen, and
resolved to proceed against all who did not make
submission. An army was gathered, with George
Truchsess as general; the towns of Augsburg, Ulm,
and Niirnberg furnishing artillery. The League began

1 68 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
by attacking the strongest castle in the whole district
of Franconia — Bocksberg, near the quiet little town
of Mergentheim, where invalids in these calmer days
congregate to drink mineral waters. This was taken
and destroyed. The defenders of the other castles
were too frightened to make much resistance. The
grim tower of the Absberg, the castle of the ruffian
Hans Thomas, who, not content with robbing, used
to cut off the hands of his victims and occasionally
send them to the authorities in Niirnberg, was seized,
and its walls of enormous thickness were blown asunder
with gunpowder. The work was done very thoroughly ;
the von Giechs, the von Aufsesses, the von Absbergs,
the von Brandensteins, and the von Rosenbergs were
reduced to submission, and highway robbery and
mutilation by knightly persons was largely suppressed.
The fall of Landstuhl and the end of Sickingen
are therefore more than the capture of a castle and
the death of a warrior. They mark the crowning
victory of the great magnates over the free nobles,
and the beginning of the new era of political de
velopment which was the feature of the age. Only
the internal circumstances of Germany prevented a
national centralisation round a national king, as in
England, France, and Spain. The centralising prin
ciple found expression rather in the concentration of
authority in the hands of local territorial magnates,
and in the division of Germany into a number of
separate and independent principalities; and this
formed a field which invited the intrigues of the
Roman Curia, and led to the disastrous Thirty Years'
War, where the bitterness of contending creeds, the
fierce rivalries of mutually jealous petty sovereigns,

THE PEASANTS' WAR 169
and the fiendish desire of France and the Curia to
bleed Germany to death, prolonged the most ferocious
internecine struggle that Europe has ever seen. All
these things came from the economic ferment which
sent Franz von Sickingen to attack the princes, in
the hope of restoring their ancient position and
privileges to the free nobles of the German mediaeval
Empire. Few impartial writers will venture to trace any
thing but a remote and indirect connection between
this revolt of the nobles and the preaching of Luther.
Sickingen himself may have calculated upon the effects
of Luther's denunciation of the ecclesiastical princes,
and Hutten certainly hoped that the rising led by
his patron would introduce a new era of light and
intellectual and religious liberty. Both, however, knew
very well that Luther did not desire their help, and
that he disapproved of the appeal to arms. Sickingen
himself was too cool-headed a man to be carried away
by the violent language of a religious preacher. His
enterprise rested on political calculations which were
outside the sphere of Luther's thinking.
§ 2. The Peasants' War
When we consider the causes which produced the
Peasants' War, however, it must be acknowledged
that there was an intimate connection between that
disastrous outburst and Luther's message to the German
people. When the voice of a bold and earnest preacher
sounds over a land, the conviction of the speaker
awakening an answering conviction in the hearers,
when it proclaims the old gospel in such a new form

170 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
as to pierce the sham religion of the age, when it
comes at a time when all men are restless and most
men are intolerably oppressed, when it appeals
especially to all who feel the yoke galling and the
burden heavy, it is sure to be followed by far-re
sounding reverberations. It awakens responses, some
of them very unexpected, in the depths of the life
of the common people, and is able to call into being
a movement which may last for centuries. The voice
of Luther in the age of the Reformation awoke echoes
whereof he never dreamt, and its effects cannot be
measured by some changes in doctrines or by a
reformation of ecclesiastical organisation. It is easy
to show that the Reformation of Luther had nothing
in common with the revolt of the peasants in the
country districts and with the insurrections of the
working classes in the towns — as easy as to show
that there was little in common between the " spiritual
poverty" of Francis of Assisi and the vulgar com
munism of the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Life,
between the doctrines of Wicklif and the gigantic
labour strike headed by Wat Tyler and priest Ball,
between the preaching of John Huss and the extreme
Taborist fanatics. The fact, however, remains that the
"common man" in each case did appropriate and
remodel, after his own fashion, the exhortations of
the religious leaders, and apply them in wholly un
expected ways.
The times of the Reformation were ripe for revolu
tion. The fields had been ploughed, sown, and
harrowed ; the voice of the Reformer came like the sun
in the early summer to quicken all the seed into life.
We have referred to the social and economic con-

THE PEASANTS' WAR 171
ditions of the time already, but it is necessary to point
out again how they were affecting the lot of the
labouring classes in town and country. The growth
of commerce, the shifting of the centre of trade
from Venice to Antwerp, caused by the capture of
Constantinople and the closing of its port, together
with the discovery of a sea route to the East, had
disorganised the old city Guild life, which was still
further overthrown by the growth of great merchant
companies whose world-trade required large capital.
The rise of this capitalist order severed the poor from
the rich, dug a great gulf between them, and created,
in a sense unknown before, a proletariat class within
the cities, liable to be swollen by the influx of dis
contented or ruined peasants from the country districts.
The sudden accession of wealth led to diffuse display in
dress and adornment of houses, in eating and in drink
ing, which in turn led to a corruption of morals that
reached its height in the city life of the first quarter
of the sixteenth century, and which must have
intensified the growing hatred between rich burgher
and poor workman. The territorial magnates, unwill
ing to be left behind in the race for luxurious living,
increased their feudal dues, and oppressed the lesser
nobles, who in the race for wealth had no recourse but
to squeeze still further their unfortunate peasants.
The ferment which this restless competition between
classes, this unwearied hunting after luxurious living,
this embittered separation between poor and rich,
and the envenomed class hatreds resulting therefrom,
were producing, created great rifts in the social
structure of mediaeval feudalism. Into it all came
the sudden rise of prices, which intensified every

172 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
economic evil, and swelled all the roads and streets
with crowds of sturdy beggars, the refuse of all
classes of society, from the broken knight and the
disbanded mercenary soldier to the ruined peasant,
the workman out of employment, the begging friar,
and the " wandering student." This was the society to
which Luther spoke, and its discontent was the sound
ing-board which made his words reverberate. His
message was democratic.1 It destroyed the aristocracy
of the saints, it levelled the barriers between the
priest and the layman, it preached the equality of all
men before God, and the right of every trusting man
to stand in God's presence whatever might be his rank
or condition of life. It did not content itself with
simply preaching sin and repentance and pardon.
The Reformation voiced the grievances of the people ;
it attacked the merciless exactions of the Church
men, and it had also hard words on occasion for the
oppressors among the secular princes and the free
nobles, and for the luxurious and money-getting life
of the burghers. Luther's Appeal to the Nobility of
the German Nation touched upon almost all the open
sores of the time, and seemed to warn against disasters
not very far off.
It must be remembered, too, that no other man of
the great men of the earth, and we place Luther in the
very front rank, ever flung about wild words in such
reckless profusion. He had, as all men have, the
defects of his qualities. He had the gift of strong
smiting phrases which seemed to cleave to the very
heart of the subject, of words which lit up the
matter with the vividness of a lightning flash, and
] See Stern, Die Socialisten der Meformatwnszeit.

THE PEASANTS' WAR 173
he had them at command in the utmost profusion.
Whatever he said or wrote remained stuck fast in the
memory and the imagination, and he launched letters
or pamphlets from the press about almost every
thing — written for the most part on the spur of the
moment and when the fire burned. His words fell
into souls full of the fermenting passions of the time,
readier to remember the incitements than the cautions,
and longing to translate speech into action. They
drank in with eagerness the thought that all men were
equal before God, and that men have divine rights
which are more important than all human prescrip
tions. They refused to believe that such golden ideas
belonged to the realm of spiritual life only, and that
the commands and exactions of Popes, Curia, and
bishops were the only human prescriptions to be
resisted. The successful revolt of the Swiss peasantry
and the victories of Zisca, the people's leader in the
neighbouring Bohemian lands, were illustrations, they
thought, of how Luther's sledge-hammer words could
be changed into corresponding deeds.
Other teachers besides Luther were listened to.
Many of the Humanists, professed disciples of Plato,
were accustomed to expound to admiring friends and
scholars the communistic dreams of the Republic, in
which the State was all and the individual nothing or
very little, and to indulge in theories " of the study "
of which Sir Thomas More's Utopia is the most
brilliant example. These, listened to in the class
rooms by the "wandering students," were expounded
and illustrated in a manner undreamt of by the
scholarly Platonist, to peasant audiences and gatherings
of workmen, and received unexpected applications.

174 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
The missionaries of the movement were innumerable,
and belonged to all sorts and conditions of men. Poor
priests exhorted their parishioners. Wandering
monks who had deserted their convents, students who
were on their way from one university town to
another, working men journeying according to the
German fashion from one centre of their trade to
another — everywhere found eager audiences. They sat
at the tables of the public-houses in the lower parts
of the towns, they mingled with the villagers on the
village greens under the lime trees, they talked in the
rude language of the people, and their speech was
garnished with many a biblical quotation and many a
trenchant illustration gathered in their wanderings
in Switzerland or Bohemia.
The propaganda carried on by means of the printing-
press must not be forgotten. Luther had discovered
the power of the printed word in the German
language, and the exponents of the rights of the
"common man" made a very effective use of it.
Small fly-sheets and pamphlets, sometimes with rude
woodcuts, printed in thick letters on coarse paper,
passed from hand to hand. They were read to small
excited audiences, who discussed them eagerly. They
are full of biblical ideas, if not exact quotations, and
are stored with the broad, coarse humour of the period,
which Luther himself did not disdain to use. The
weapon was a new one, — so new that the authorities
never seemed to notice it, — and was never more effect
ively employed. The most popular was " Karsthans " or
"Mattock John," the Reformation equivalent of the
"Jack Upland" or "Piers Ploughman" of the times
of the English Lollards, and their most prominent

THE PEASANTS' WAR 175
characteristic is their embittered hatred of the clergy
and of clerical exactions, loose living, and hypocrisy.
''Jack Upland" describes the fat friar of the earlier
English days with his dew-lap wagging under his
chin " like a great goose egg," and contrasts him with
the poor peasant and his wife going shoeless to work
along the ice-bound roads, their steps marked with the
blood which came from their cut feet. "Mattock
John " is much more theological, and discusses Luther
and Eck, and the doctrine of papal authority, etc.
These pamphlets commonly took the form of dialogues
between peasants and monks, noblemen and peasants,
clerics and artisans. They were sold at the markets
and church festivals, and hawked about in the towns
and villages. All the burning questions of the day
were discussed in these popular pamphlets, which found
their way everywhere, added to the ferment of the
times, and prepared the way for common action and a
statement of common principles when the time for
revolt came.
It would seem that there was no preparation for
any organised insurrection throughout all Germany;
no confederation of leaders or formulation of demands,
until after the rising had actually begun. The
Zwickau prophets had preached something very like a
general revolution. Thomas Miinzer, his mind aflame
with the wrongs of the commonalty, had made wide
tours throughout many parts of Germany, and had
striven to create something like combined action. It
is very doubtful, however, whether his personal
influence extended much beyond Thuringia. Common
distress, the same surface causes producing the evils
which were felt, the common class hatreds were

176 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
sufficient of themselves to give the outbreak an
appearance of combined action which it did not really
possess. The first rising, according to the common story,
came. almost accidentally. The Countess of Lupfen
ordered her husband's peasantry on a holiday to gather
wild strawberries for the castle table, and to collect
snail-shells on which she might wind her silk thread.
It seems a small matter, but it filled up the measure of
exasperation, and produced the first serious rising.
Whether this traditional story is correct or not, it is
certain that this region, the eastern side of the slopes
of the Black Forest, furrowed by small tributaries of
the Rhine, where the peasants, looking across the
river, could almost see and envy their fellow-peasants
in free Switzerland, gave the signal for the general
uprising. On 24th August 1524 a body of peasants
met at the little town of Waldshut, about half-way
between Basel and Schaffhausen, under the leadership
of Hans Muller, an old mercenary soldier, and pledged
themselves to rebel against the conditions of their life.
The peasants, carrying a flag with the Imperial colours
of red, black, and yellow, fraternised with the towns
people, and the formidable " Evangelical Brotherhood "
was either then formed or the roots of it were planted.
The news spread among the peasants and towns of
Baden. It crossed the Rhine into Elsass, it went up
the valley of the Mosel. From the south of the Black
Forest it spread northwards through Franconia and
Swabia. In its beginnings it took the route marked out
by Joss Fritz's Bundschuh organisation twelve years
earlier, and its whispered programme was at first almost
the same — the differences being due to the altered con-

THE PEASANTS' WAR 177
ditions of the times, especially in the religious environ
ment. The commonalty wished to make a clean sweep
of all controlling castes between the peasants, the
townspeople, and the Emperor. "Their name was
legion ; not only were there endless numbers of princes,
bishops, dukes, landgraves, margraves, counts, lords,
abbots, who exercised sovereignty of one sort or
another, but the old Imperial cities were ruled by
little oligarchies of old families, who, by close combina
tion, possessed as much real sovereignty as any prince.
The land was thus broken up into numerous States,
great and small, each entrenched against the other;
and custom-houses, different coinages, bad roads,
brigand knights, and bands of robbers divided them
still more."1 These ruling classes, it was believed,
defied and hindered the just rule of an Emperor, and
prevented all peaceable living.
The Swabian League, the only Imperial organisa
tion which possessed any controlling power in South
Germany, was thus confronted with the most formid
able popular uprising that Germany had yet seen. It
was compelled to negotiate with the leaders of the
revolt. Had the demands of the peasants and towns
men been met in a fair spirit of compromise, the
country would have been spared much. All the
evidence goes to show that the demands of the people,
when once formulated, were not unreasonable, and
that the leaders would have accepted some compromise.
But the negotiations were begun, on the part of the
ruling powers, only to gain time, and as soon as forces
could be collected were shamelessly broken off and
the insurgents massacred. When the atrocities of the
1 R. Heath, Anabaptism, p. 10.

178 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
peasants are mentioned, it should be remembered that
the bloodshed was begun by the ruling classes, after
having appeared at least to accept the terms proposed
to bring about peace. It is scarcely to be wondered
if the insurgent peasants attempted to avenge their
slaughtered brethren. But even a casual reading of
the contemporary documents shows that, if we except
a few outstanding cases which historians always
enumerate, the Peasants' War stands forth as an
example of how little bloodthirsty the oppressed
German peasantry showed themselves during the short
period of their success. Their moderation in reveng
ing wrongs by bloodshed forms a striking contrast
to the horrible bloodbath into which the conquering
princes plunged almost every district of Germany
when the revolt was overcome. The peasants sacked
and burned castles and monasteries, they filled them
selves drunk at nights with the wines they found in
noble and ecclesiastical wine-cellars, but as a rule they
did not shed blood wantonly.
The rising, so sudden, so widespreading, so simul
taneous, spread terror among all the ruling classes.
The flames of insurrection were kindled all over
Germany. From Swabia and Franconia they spread
to Thuringia, then through the Vorl - Arlberg, the
Tyrol, Salzburg, and up into the Duchy of Austria.
Manifestoes were issued, summarising the grievances
of the peasants and of the working-classes in the
towns, and also giving the political aspirations of
more educated leaders, who had wider outlooks.1 In
1 The full text of the famous "Twelve Articles" has been given by
Dr. Belfort Bax in his Peasants' War, London, 1899, pp. 63-75. This
book gives by far the best account of the movement accessible to the

THE PEASANTS' WAR 179
almost all of them ecclesiastical demands are mingled
with the political and social requirements. The right
to choose and dismiss the pastor is one of the
commonest, and there is frequently a clause added to
ensure evangelical preaching. The peasant demands
appeared in several forms, with a varying number of
articles. They were, however, summed up in the
famous " Twelve Articles," which became the Peasant
Charter of the rising, although the classic form was
continually modified in various districts. The peasants
asked the abolition of villeinage, the withdrawal of all
or most of the ecclesiastical and feudal exactions,
freedom to hunt, to fish, and to take wood for fuel
and building under proper restrictions, the restora
tion of the common lands, and a return to their old
rights and Communal Courts of Justice, for fair rents
settled by honest valuators, and in some cases for the
cancelling of the loans which had been granted to
peasants on the security of their holdings. The towns
people asked that the ecclesiastical and conciliar im
munities should cease; they demanded improvements
in the administration of justice, a readjustment of
local taxation, the popular election of the Council, and
a better treatment of the poor. The more comprehen
sive manifestoes contained demands for a thorough
reconstruction of the Imperial administration on a
scheme which involved the destruction of all feudal
and local Courts of Justice, and contemplated an organ-
English reader. The curious ideas the author has of the characters of
Luther and Melanchthon do not seriously interfere with his description
of the great rising. Dr. Belfort Bax has pilloried a slip of mine, made
long ago, which was discovered just when it was too late to correct it.
It has been pointed out and apologised for several times, but litera
impressa manet. ¦

180 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
ised administration, based on the Communal Courts to
be revived, and ascending to the Imperial Court of
Justice. They also called for a unification of coinage,
weights, and measures throughout the German Empire,
a confiscation of ecclesiastical endowments for the
purpose of lessening taxation and for the redemption
of feudal rights, a uniform rate of taxes and customs
dues, restraint to be placed on great capitalists, the
regulation of business and trade by law, and the
admission of delegates from every class of the com
munity into the public administration. In every case
the Emperor was regarded as the lord-paramount.
There was also a declaration of the sovereignty of the
people, made in such a way as to suggest that the
teachings of Marsilius of Padua had insinuated them
selves into the minds of some of the leaders of the
commons. The main thought with the peasant was
to secure his fair share of the land ; and when that
was denied he printed it in burning letters in the
blaze of castles and monasteries, which reddened the
midnight sky all over Germany. The main thought
of the workman was to secure an adequate representa
tion on the city council, and he made it emphatic in
tumults which drove the patrician Council from the
town hall and installed people's delegates.
During the earlier months of 1525 the rising carried
everything before it. The smaller towns made common
cause with the peasants ; prominent nobles were forced
to join the " Evangelical " or " Christian Brotherhood " ;
princes like the Cardinal-Elector of Mainz and the
Bishop of Wurzburg had to come to terms with the
insurgents; a wave of destruction spread over the
whole land. But the movement had no solidity in it.

THE PEASANTS' WAR 181
It produced no creative leader, save in the Tyrol,
where the wisdom of Gaismayr, aided by the moun
tainous nature of the country, enabled the people to
make a permanent stand, and wring some real con
cessions out of the governing classes. Everywhere
else there were divided counsels. Leaders like the
bankrupt Duke of Wiirtemberg and the freebooting
noble Gotz von Berlichingen could only harm any
movement they joined or were compelled to join. The
insurgents became demoralised by their drunken revels.
They refused to obey orders, on the ground that they
were all brethren, and the whole movement began
to show signs of dissolution before the princes had
recovered from their terror and begun to stamp it out
in bloody massacre. On the side of the ruling classes
there was at least some unity of purpose. They had
their mercenaries, who were trained soldiers, armed
and drilled according to the best ideas of the time.
They had military experience and skill in the art of
war. Had it not been that the Italian campaigns of
Charles V. had drained Germany of the greater part
of its soldiery, the poorly armed, undisciplined, and
badly led bands of peasants and artisans would have
succumbed much earlier. As it was, long before the
end of 1525 the rising was stamped out, and that with
atrocious severities. One chronicler asserts that more
than a hundred thousand fell on the field of battle or
elsewhere, and Bishop Georg of Speyer has, after
careful examination, asserted that the number was a
hundred and fifty thousand. No attempt was made to
cure the ills which were at the roots of the rising.
All counsels to redress the clamant grievances were
thrown to the winds. The oppression of the peasantry

1 82 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
was intensified. The last vestiges of local self-govern
ment were stamped out, and the unfortunate people
were doomed for generations to exist in the lowest
degradation. The few months of terror and paralysis
gave birth to a fiendish cruelty of suppression. The
year 1525 was one of the saddest and most terrible in
the annals of the German Fatherland.

§ 3. Luther's Relation to the Revolt
The question meets us: What had Luther to do
personally with this tragedy which overtook his land
of Germany ?
It would not be difficult to show that the Peasants'
War had no place in the thoughts of Luther for the
regeneration of Germany. His ideal was always a
religious Reformation brought about by preaching and
teaching, and owing nothing to violence — in action at
least. He has expounded this thought over and over
again. He never had any sympathy with an armed
rising to effect the most legitimate reforms. But he
seemed singularly unable to measure the inevitable
effects of his own sledge-hammer words on minds
excited by oppression or by passion. He had a
singular lack of self-control in the use of violent and
incendiary speech. He saw and pitied the growing
oppression of the peasantry, and denounced it in his
own trenchant fashion. He reproved the greed of the
lords by .saying that if a peasant's land produced as
many coins as ears of corn the profit would go to the
landlord only. No man had been so outspoken against
the tyranny of the princes and over-lords as Luther ;
no one had denounced more strongly the mad race

THE PEASANTS' WAR 183
after luxury which was at the root of most of the evils.
But Luther, rightly or wrongly, was convinced that no
good could come of armed insurrection, and that any
lasting good must be patiently worked and waited for.
He had detected the signs of the coming evils in the
crowd of beggars which was a moral pest in the begin
ning of the sixteenth century all over central Europe,
and he advised that every town and country district
should assess themselves to support their own poor. He
dreaded the revolutionary spirit that betrayed itself
in the Zwickau prophets and in Miinzer and Carlstadt.
He felt sure that those guides were leading the poor
people who followed them to their destruction. Before
the storm burst he did his best to show that no good
would come from insurrection. After it burst, he
risked his life over and over again in the visits he paid
to the disaffected districts to warn the people of the
dangers they were running. He did not believe in the
more ambitious schemes of the leaders of the rising.
He saw clearly enough that, in the condition in which
Germany was, the one element of permanent political
strength which the country possessed was the princes.
He had sympathy with the demands of the " Twelve
Articles,'' and long before they were formulated he
advocated a return to the old common law of Germany.
He expressed his approval of the substance of the
" Twelve Articles," after they were recognised to be the
" charter " of the German peasant. But, true to the
principles that had always been, his, he declared that
to press them by armed insurrection was not the way
to bring them into force. He has been accused of
sycophancy to the constituted authorities. He has
been censured for "sitting on the fence" when he

1 84 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
blamed both nobles and peasants in the Exhortation
to Peace, on the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in
Swabia. But that " Exhortation " expresses the opin
ions he had entertained years before these Swabian
Articles had been formulated. In this tract he sharply
rebukes those princes, nobles, and bishops who "tax
and fleece their subjects, for the advancement of their
own pomp and pride, until the common people can
endure it no longer." He praises some of the Articles,
but warns against attempting to extort agreement to
them by force of arms. He proposes that "a few
counts and nobles should be chosen from the nobility
and a few councillors from the towns, and that matters
should be adjusted and composed in an amicable
manner, that so the affair . . . may be arranged
according to human laws and agreements." The tract
must have been written about the end of the third
week in April 1525, while Luther was at Eisleben,
called there to establish a school in his native town.
Miinzer was then at Miihlhausen, where his intense
earnestness and sincerity carried all before him. The
citizens regarded him very much as the Florentines
looked on Savonarola. For a while the rich fed the
poor, and he almost established a community of goods.
The news from South Germany excited him, and he
appealed madly to arms. He sent out fiery proclama
tions to citizens and peasantry : —
"Arise ! fight the battle of the Lord ! On ! On ! On !
the wicked tremble when they hear of you. On ! On ! On !
Be pitiless ! although Esau gives you fair words (Gen. xxxiii.).
Heed not the groans of the godless ; they will beg, weep, and
entreat you for pity like children. Show them no mercy, as
God commanded Moses (Deut. vii.), and as He has revealed the

THE PEASANTS' WAR 185
same to us. Rouse up the towns and the villages ; above all
rouse the miners. . . . On ! On ! On ! while the fire is
burning ; let not the blood cool on your swords ! Smite
pinkepank on the anvil of Nimrod ! Overturn their towers
to the foundations ; while one of them lives you will not be
freed from the fear of man ! While they reign over you it is
of no use to speak of the fear of God ! On ! while it is day !
God is with you."
These words were meant to rouse the miners of
Mansfield, and were intended to bring fire and sword
into the district where Luther's parents were living.
If they failed in their original intent, they sent bands
of insurgents through Thuringia and the Harz, and
within fourteen days about forty monasteries and
convents were destroyed and the inmates (many of
them poor women with no homes to return to) were
sent adrift. It was then that Luther determined to
make one last personal effort to bring the misguided
people to more reasonable courses. He made a tour
through the disordered districts. He went west from
Eisleben to Stolberg (21st April); thence to Nord-
hausen, where Miinzer's sympathisers rang the bells to
drown his voice, and where he was in great personal
danger ; south to Erfurt, which he must have reached
before the 28th April, then north again to the fertile
valley of the Golden Aue and Wallhausen (1st May),
and south again to Weimar (3rd May). Here news
reached him that his Elector was on his deathbed,
which made him hurry home to Wittenberg, which he
reached on the 6th of May. It was on this journey, or
shortly after his return, that Luther wrote his
vehement tract Against the Murderous Thieving
Hordes of Peasants. He wrote it while his mind was

1 86 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
full of Miinzer's calls to slaughter, when the danger was
at its height, with all the sights and sounds of the
turmoil and destruction in eye and ear, while it still
hung in the balance whether the insurgent bands might
not, after all, carry all before them.1 In this terrible
pamphlet Luther hounded on the princes to crush the
rising. When all is said that can reasonably be said
in explanation of his action, we cannot help feeling
that the language of this pamphlet is an ineffaceable
stain on Luther, which no extenuating circumstances
can wipe out. It remains the greatest blot on his
noble life and career. After speaking of the duties of
the authorities, he proceeds : " In the case of an insur
gent, every man is both judge and executioner.
Therefore, whoever can should knock down, strangle,
and stab such, publicly or privately, and think nothing
so venomous, pernicious, and devilish as an insur
gent. . . . Such wonderful times are these that a prince
can merit heaven better with bloodshed than another
with prayer." To which we may add, " such wonderful
times " that a preacher of the gospel of Christ thought
that he could do his Master's work best by hounding
on men to slay in cold blood these poor misguided
peasants ! When did the majority of German princes
need to be told to misuse their commonalty ?
The thoughts and sayings of the wise old Elector
were in striking contrast. It adds an additional
1 It is somewhat difficult to say where Luther went, and on what
days, during this attempt to calm the people. He had made a journey
through the same districts in the previous year, and the two are some
times confused. But the dates and the places above given may be
taken as correct. The Thuringian peasants were defeated at Franken-
hausen (near which Luther must have passed at least once in this
journey) on the 15th of May.

THE PEASANTS' WAR 187
element of pain to the thought of Luther's action, that
he must have written his furious pamphlet either
immediately before or immediately after the death of
the Elector. Frederic the Wise had been much dis
tressed at the news of the peasant rising in the south.
He wrote to his brother, Duke John, on the 14th of
April : " The poor are in many ways burdened by us of
the secular and ecclesiastical upper classes; it may
therefore be God's will that the common man should
reign ; but if that is not His divine will, and if that
will not be to His glory, it will not happen ; let us pray
God to forgive us our sins, and let us leave it all to
Him." He thought that he and his brother should let
things alone as much as possible. The news of the
rising among his own subjects troubled him greatly.
In his last illness, on to his death on the 5th of May,
he kept hoping that all grounds of complaint might be
removed by reasonable compromise, and that all the
negotiations would go on peaceably and have a good
ending. He wrote anxiously to Luther to come and
see him before he died. But he passed away ere
Luther could reach the castle. He was the best loved
prince in Germany, and was taken away just when his
counsels would have helped most. It is recorded that
the children used to watch for him as he rode through
the streets, to catch his kindly smile, and to greet
" Our Elector " as they called him. Perhaps the
thought of the pain that the rising had caused the
good prince added to the ferocity of Luther's pen ; but
it is not pleasant to think of the pamphlet coming
from Luther at the moment of the Elector's death.
Luther's enemies were quick to make capital out of
his worse than blunder. Doggerel verses by Emser,

1 88 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
one of his most persistent opponents, compared Luther
to Pilate, who washed his hands after having done the
deed. Luther tried to make some amends. He de
clared that he had meant his words to apply only to
those who were actually engaged in bloodshed and
rapine; and he publicly asserted that the authorities,
when they were victorious, ought to extend full pardon
to the guilty who had been beaten in the fight ; but he
was to learn that it is much easier to justify wrathful
passions than to calm them. It is not likely that
Luther's ferocious words made the sufferings inflicted
on the peasants any more severe than they would have
been ; and it does not seem that his recommendations
to mercy had very much effect.
The Peasants' War had a lasting and disastrous effect,
not only on the Reformation, but on Luther himself. -
Up to the tragical year 1525, the Lutheran move
ment absorbed all the various elements of discontent in
Germany, and Luther seemed to have the whole land
behind him. This year was the parting of the ways.
The conservative ecclesiastical Reformation, of which
Luther was the exponent, was rudely separated from
a large amount of the popular aspirations which had
given it such an appearance of strength. The political
destiny of Germany appeared definitely shaping for
territorial centralisation round the greater princes and
nobles, and the dream of a united and democratic Ger
many was rudely dispelled. The conservative religious
Reformation followed the political lines of growth, and
resulted in the formation, not of a National Church of
Germany, but of territorial churches under the rule and
protection of such of the territorial magnates as em
braced the Reformed faith. The more radical religious

THE PEASANTS' WAR 189
Reformation broke into fragments, and appeared in the
guise of the maligned and persecuted Anabaptists, who
also, to some extent at least, appropriated the social
aspirations which had been crushed in the Peasants'
War. The terrors of that time were eagerly used by
the servants of the Roman Curia to separate Germany
into two hostile camps, — the one accepting and the
other rejecting the ecclesiastical Reformation, which in
this way ceased to be a national movement in any
real sense of the word.
As for Luther himself, the Peasants' War imprinted
in him a deep distrust of the " common man," which
prevented him from believing in a democratic Church,
and led him to bind his reformation in the fetters of a
secular control, to the extent of regarding the secular
government as having a quasi-episcopal function. He
did his best within Germany to prevent attempts to
construct anything like a democratic Church govern
ment. His dislike and distrust of the " common man "
was largely at the basis of his inability to understand
or appreciate the heroic Ulrich Zwingli and his f ellow-
Switzers— a misunderstanding which worked many an
evil to the German Reformation, and produced much
of the disasters of the horrible Thirty Years' War.
For years after the publication of his pamphlet against
the peasants his life was scarcely safe in many of the
rural districts of Germany. If he sinned, it may be
said that few men have suffered so severely for it.

CHAPTER IX
MARRIAGE, FAMILY LIFE, AND PUBLIC LIFE
§ 1. Marriage
The religious movement whieh Luther led in the
sixteenth century contained no thought more startling
nor impregnated with more far-reaching ethical con
sequences than the position which was assigned to
marriage. It is vain to look for anything like this
in any of the mediaeval religious revolts. The Refor
mation may be distinguished from all other partial anti
cipations by the way in which it dealt with this one ques
tion. It destroyed at one blow the amazing blasphemy,
which in the Middle Ages was received as an unques
tioned divine conception, that the order which God
Himself has established in the world is comparatively
unholy, and that the union between husband and wife,
which is hallowed in the Holy Scriptures by comparing
it with the union between Christ and His Church, is
one which must sully the lives of Christians who share
it. It is difficult for us who live so far removed from
the shadow of mediaeval religious life to appreciate
the change of view, nor is it possible to describe it by
contrasting propositions laid down by mediaeval and
by evangelical theologians. With regard to this one
190

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE 191
question at least, Luther's teaching changed the whole
atmosphere of the spirit's life ; and just as all organic
beings cannot live in one climate, so certain circles of
thought lose all their convincing power when the
moral atmosphere is changed. The difference of mode
of thought went far beyond the Lutheran ecclesiastical
Reformation. It can be seen working in the argu
ments which Romanists now use to defend the reten
tion of the celibate life — arguments which appeal to
the new circle of thoughts created at the Reformation,
and which the mediaeval Church had never occasion
to use.
The Reformation worked a revolution in the concep
tion of piety and the pious life when it asserted that
every kind of honourable and honest secular calling
could be as much a vocation as the call to a monastic
and celibate life. It made the family hearth as sacred
as the monastic cell, and saw that the mother who
spent a sleepless night at the bedside of a sick child
was holding a vigil as sacred as that of a nun pro
strate on the flags of the convent chapel. It made
the thought possible that the heaven that is about
us in our infancy is the haven of a pious home. Such
thoughts might have been in the minds of thousands
in the Middle Ages. We know that Luther's sturdy
old father held them. But they formed no part of
the recognised teaching of the Church, and they did
not create a moral atmosphere in which the family life
could be lived and hallowed. The Reformation did
this, and created religion in common life in conse
quence. In doing so its influence went far beyond
the boundaries of its ecclesiastical reconstruction.
Within the circle of ecclesiastical reformation the

192 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
thought worked great changes. The marriage of the
clergy put an end to the disgraceful concubinage of the
mediaeval parish priests, which was almost universal in
the later Middle Ages. The home-life of the Lutheran
parish priest was generally a model to his rough
parishioners, and the great numbers of the men fore
most in every department of public life in Germany
who have come from these homes show how the
clerical and the citizen life have been combined by the
Lutheran ideal.
It would have seemed as if the story of the Re
formation was incomplete if the voice of the daring
preacher, who had awakened the conscience of man
kind to all these new thoughts, had spoken from a
hermitage and not from a home. Yet Luther himself
for long had an instinctive disinclination for a married
life. He had early in his career become convinced
that there was no reason why parish priests should
practise celibacy if they preferred a married life. He
believed that men and women who had been forced to
take monastic vows in early years, and without a
distinct sense of vocation to that life, were at liberty to
leave their cloisters. He was not at all persuaded,
however, that men like himself, who had deliberately,
and without any external constraint, embraced the
monastic life, and taken its vows of celibacy, ought not
to keep their oaths. Even when he reached the con
clusion that those vows were plainly based on such an
erroneous idea of righteousness, and were so misleading
that they ought not to be kept, he did not feel inclined
to break them in his own case, and that although he
had often been urged to marry. He abandoned his
monastic garb some months after his return to Witten-

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE 193
berg from the Wartburg, and wore instead the usual
dress of the German professor. But he lived on in the
old convent, deserted by all the monks except himself
and prior Brisger, without even a lay brother to look
after them and perform the usual menial services. While
Miinzer was sneering at "the soft-living flesh at
Wittenberg," Luther was often reduced to dine on
bread and water from lack of any other kind of
provender. Melanchthon tells us that when he re
monstrated with Luther that his bed was damp and
not been made for days, Luther told him that he had
been so hard at work all day that when the night
came he was unable to do more than to tumble down
on the bed and fall asleep.
Yet since the spring of 1523 the overworked man
had been busied with the matrimonial affairs of others.
From the time that he had made visitation tours in
the region of Grimma, his writings had found their
way into the cloisters of the district, and among others
into a convent of Cistercian nuns at Nimtzch, which
lay a little to the south of Grimma, and not far from
Leipzig. Many of the nuns in this convent, which was
reserved for ladies of noble birth, became convinced of
the unlawfulness of the vows they had taken, and
wished to return to their homes. They wrote to their
relations and asked leave to return home, but none of
those noble families could brook the disgrace, as it was
then reckoned, of receiving into their houses a recusant
nun. Then the ladies wrote to Luther. After some
correspondence, the matter was entrusted to a worthy
burgher of Torgau, Leonhard Koppe by name. Tradi
tion says that nine of the nuns, all who dared the
venture, met in the cell of Catherine von Bora, who
^3

194 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
had planned the rescue, on the 4th of April 1523, got
out of the window into the court, and were assisted
over the wall by Master Koppe, who was waiting for
them with a large country cart and some empty beer-
barrels. The nuns were put into the beer-barrels, and
after three days' journey, part of it through the hostile
territories of Duke George of Saxony, they reached
Wittenberg safely, where Luther was able to find
shelter for them in the houses of some of the most
respectable citizens of the town.
This convent-breaking made a great sensation, and
was vehemently condemned. Luther justified it in a
telling pamphlet in which he told the history of a poor
girl, Florentina, of Upper Weimar. She had been im
mured in a convent when she was six years old, and at
the age of eleven had been made to take the veil.
When she was fourteen years old she felt that she had
no vocation for a nun's life, and was then told by the
abbess that she was a nun for life, and had to make the
best of it. She seems to have heard of Luther, and
the young girl wrote to him. Her letter was in
tercepted, and she was punished by severe penances.
She tried to communicate with her relations, and when
this was discovered she was beaten, chained by the
foot, and finally condemned to lifelong imprisonment
in a cell. She escaped, and her story became known.
Luther published it to let people know what " cloistery "
was like, and said that he could tell many a similar
story. His letters are full of his successes and failures to
get the nine nuns married, Catherine among the rest.
The others seemed for the most part contented with
the partners proposed to them. Not so Catherine.

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE 195
She was a dignified maiden of four-and-twenty, with a
high fair forehead and bright black eyes. Her history
was a type of hundreds. She belonged to a noble but
impoverished family in the Meissen district, who were
glad enough to get a daughter provided for by sending
her to a convent ; had entered Nimtzch when she was
ten years old, and had taken the veil when she was
sixteen. It was a "family arrangement," practised
generation after generation in noble German house
holds. Magdalena von Bora had been the victim in the
previous generation, and Catherine found her aunt an
inmate of the convent when she went there in 1509.1
The young nun found a home at Wittenberg in the
family of Dr. Reichenbach, the town-clerk. Her
maidenly dignity of demeanour was universally ob
served, and attracted the notice of King Christian of
Denmark when he was the guest of Lucas Cranach in
October 1523. Luther himself was a little afraid of
her, and thought her very proud.
How Luther and she came together and agreed to
become man and wife is unknown. Luther said more
than once that such matters ought to be left in the
hands of God and the two persons most concerned, and
he kept his own counsel. The marriage took place
during the storms of the Peasants' War. On the even
ing of the 13th of June 1525, he invited his friends,
Bugenhagen the parish priest of Wittenberg, Justus
Jonas the provost of All Saints, Lucas Cranach the
painter and his wife, Dr. Apel, professor of laws, who
1 Magdalena von Bora left the convent some time after her niece, and
was a member of Luther's household ; she is the " Aunt Lene " of the
Letters and Table Talk. Magdalena, Luther's favourite daughter, was
named after her.

196 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
had himself married a nun, to witness the ceremony.
Bugenhagen officiated, using the common German form
of matrimony. The pair were asked whether they
would take one another for man and wife ; they were
then directed to take each other by the right hand,
and they were declared " to be joined together in holy
matrimony, in the name of the Triune God." This
concluded the ceremony, and Luther and Catherine
von Bora were man and wife. A few days later the
wedded pair gave a modest breakfast to their more
intimate friends, and the magistracy of Wittenberg
sent formal congratulations through Cranach, and along
with them a present of wine. A fortnight later, on
27th June, the wedding was celebrated at a feast, to
which relations and distant friends were invited. At
this, to Luther's great joy, his father and mother were
present, and old Hans Luther at last thoroughly for
gave his son his lapse into monasticism. Good Leon-
hard Koppe from Torgau, whose cart and beer-barrels
had brought this about, was not forgotten in the
ceremony. The breakfast and the feast which followed
were all in accordance with the usual mediaeval wedding
usages among the Germans — only to be distinguished
from most by the modest frugality displayed. The
university presented the married pair with a beauti
fully chased silver goblet, with the inscription : " The
Honourable University of the Electoral Town of
Wittenberg presents this wedding gift to Doctor
Martin Luther and his wife Kethe von Bora." Luther
was forty-two and Catherine twenty-six years of age
when they married.
The Elector (formerly Duke John, the brother of
Frederic, whom he succeeded) gave Luther the old

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE 197
Augustinian convent for a house ; and as prior Brisger
was called to be pastor at Altenburg a few months
after the wedding, the newly married couple had the
empty buildings all to themselves. The first year of
their wedded life was a time of pure happiness to
Luther ; the second one of great trials. His " Kaethe "
was no ordinary woman. She was a good housewife,
which she had need to be with such a husband, but she
was much more besides. She took a great share, and
an increasing share as the years went on, in all her
husband's work. He liked her to sit with him in his
study. He consulted her about most of his corre
spondence. Her name comes into his letters continually,
and she becomes one of the circle of inmates who are
together working out the great Reformation in Ger
many. Catherine's biography has yet to be written,
and the wonderful influence she exerted has to be
gathered from innumerable minute references to her
work scattered throughout Luther's huge corre
spondence. For one thing, her loving care prolonged
Luther's life. He had overworked himself recklessly.
He was subject at times to fits of the gloomiest de
pression, which reacted upon his bodily condition.
Catherine persuaded him to take an interest in his
garden — the old convent garden with the pear-tree
under which he sat with Staupitz, and was persuaded,
sorely against his will, to undertake the teaching of
theology; to dig a well; to write to friend Link to
send him choice seeds from Niirnberg — seeds of melons,
cucumbers, and other plants ; to instruct friend Lange
to send him seeds of the great radishes for which
Erfurt was famous. These requests come at the end
of letters in which he is denouncing the iniquities of

198 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Duke George, of Henry vm., or of some other emissary
of Satan sent to buffet him. Why need he mind them
after all, he says, when the garden and gardening are
so delightful ? Then comes the birth of his firstborn,
Hans, named after the old father at Mansfeld; and
Luther bubbles over with bliss. " His young fawn with
his doe " thanks Spalatin for his blessing ; " the little
one " is the lustiest eater and drinker that man can see ;
he begins to walk and gets into every corner of the
study; "Hanschen" thanks friend Haussman for a
rattle, " in which he glories and rejoices wondrously " ;
and so the tiny thread of life embroiders quaintly the
grave web of correspondence about the most serious
business. The year 1527 was a harassing one.
Luther fell dangerously ill. As he lay near death
the baby's smile brought comfort the one moment and
the next sadness, to think that he must leave behind
him a widow and a fatherless child without means of
support — nothing but a few silver tankards that had
been presented to him. " Dear Doctor," said Catherine,
" if it be God's will then I also choose that you be with
Him rather than with me. It is not so much I and
my child that need you as the multitude of pious
Christian people. Take no thought for me." Her
courage kept him up; her careful nursing drew him
back from death. But the troubles were not over.
There followed one of the severest periods of gloom
and spiritual distress, almost as severe as in the old
days in the Erfurt convent. This had scarcely passed
when the dreaded plague visited Wittenberg. The
university and the Court left the town to settle for
a season at Jena, and the Elector entreated, all but
commanded, Luther to follow. But he would not.

THE PLAGUE 199
He would be no hireling, he said, to flee when the
sheep needed him most. He remained in the smitten
city, and Catherine — soon to become a mother again —
and baby Hans stayed with him. The plague began
in the fishers' quarter, and Luther soon counted eighteen
corpses buried at the Elster Gate, not far from his
house. It crept up to the centre of the town, where
the first victim, the burgomaster's wife, died while
Luther was with her. It attacked his friends. The
wife of Dr. Schurf was seized, and did not recover until
the beginning of November ; the wife of the chaplain
died of it, and Luther insisted on Bugenhagen and his
family leaving the pestilence-stricken house and coming
to live with him. It entered his house; Frau von
Mocha, sister-in-law to Carlstadt, who was living with
the Luthers, was seized. Catherine's second child,
Elizabeth, was born, and only her superb coolness and
courage saved the mother. Little Hans fell ill, but
not of the plague as it was at first feared. So the
weary months passed. Then Luther could write : " My
little boy is well and happy again. Schurf's wife has
recovered ; Margaret has escaped death in a marvellous
manner." During this anxious time he was further
distressed by the news that persecution for the faith
had begun in South Germany, and that the Bavarian
pastor Leonard Kaiser had been burnt at the stake.
His pent-up feelings found expression in the famous
hymn : " A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon ;
He'll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o'ertaken."
The plague ceased ; the students and professors re-

200 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
turned to Wittenberg ; and Luther had his old friends
about him again. He recovered his health and his
spirits. § 2. Home Life and Family Cares
The empty Augustinian convent which became
Luther's house was an unfinished building when the
Reformation began, and required many a repair and
addition ere it was fit for the household which gradu
ally gathered round Luther. It stood with its back
to the wall of the town, the front windows and door
opening into the large garden, and the back windows
looking out over the Elbe. It was a three-storeyed
building, with the usual high roof covered with red
tiles. The family latterly consisted of Luther and his
wife, their three sons and two daughters, Aunt Lene
or Magdalena von Bora, Catherine's aunt, two orphan
nieces, Lene and Else Kaufmann, daughters of Luther's
sister, and another young girl, Anna Strauss, who
seems to have been a grandniece. Like the other Wit
tenberg professors, Luther had students who boarded
with him, and in his case they were often men of some
age and distinction, who were .glad to have this oppor
tunity of intimate intercourse with him. It is from
the recollections of these boarders that we know some
thing of the inner life of Luther's home. They tell us
that the Reformer was sometimes moody and silent at
table, brooding over the troubles and difficulties of the
time, but that he generally led the conversation on all
manner of interesting subjects. He liked to spend an
hour or so after dinner in singing or listening to music.
The children always sang to him; and at this hour
friends came to talk with him as he sat in the garden,

LUTHER'S HOME LIFE 201
his children and boarders around him. When Luther
and his wife began to keep house they must have been
in very straitened circumstances. He had married a por
tionless nun ; and on till 1532 his professorial salary was
only two hundred gulden, or about £160, according to
the present value of money. He had besides, his house,
and occasional presents of eatables and wine from the
town council of Wittenberg when he had to entertain
distinguished strangers. Then Luther was a man of
overflowing charity. Wandering students, monks who
had broken their convents, beggars of all kinds got
what money he had. If he had no money, he gave
away silver cups he had received as presents, and must
have been the despair of his long-suffering wife. It is
said that on one occasion in these early years he told a
poor student who came begging that he had no money,
but that he might take and sell " this " ; and in spite
of his wife's frowns, he handed over the little silver
christening cup that had been given to baby Hans.
Catherine was, however, a notable housewife; she
made the long-neglected garden profitable; she kept
pigs and poultry; she planted all manner of fruit
trees ; she made Luther rent and then buy three other
gardens, stocked a fish-pond, kept cows, and farmed in
a small way. She showed Luther that he was getting
into debt, and proved to him that his indiscriminate
charity did no good. Luther regarded this last as a
notable discovery, too good to be kept to himself, and
he published it in a very daring manner. He got hold
of a curious old book, the Liber Vagatorum, which we
may translate " The Book of Scoundreldom " — book
collectors know the quaint mediaeval cant-Gertnan in
which it is written, and the strange woodcuts with

202 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
which it is illustrated — and he actually published it,
with a most characteristic preface, in which he says:
"This little book about the knavery of beggars was
first printed by one who calls himself ' Expertus in
Truffis,' i.e. a fellow right well knowing in roguery,
which the book very well proves. . . . Princes, lords,
counsellors of State, and everybody should be prudent
and cautious in dealing with beggars, and should learn
that, whereas people will not give and help honest
paupers and needy neighbours as ordained by God,
they give by the persuasion of the devil, and contrary
to God's judgment, ten times as much to vagabonds
and desperate rogues. . . . For this reason every vil
lage and town should know their own poor, as written
down in the register, and assist them. But as to out
landish and strange beggars, they ought not to be borne
with, unless they have proper letters and certificates ;
for all the great rogueries mentioned in this book are
done by them. If each town would only keep an eye
on its own paupers, such knaveries would soon cease.
/ have myself of late years been cheated and befooled
by such tramps and liars more than I like to confess."
From which it may be seen that after two years Cathe
rine had done something with her husband, and that he
presented to his native land the outline of a " Charity
Organisation Society." After 1532 the Luther house
hold was in much more comfortable circumstances.
The professorial salary was increased to £240, and there
were also added payments in kind, — corn, wood, malt,
etc., — which meant a great deal more. Great princes
made presents, and Luther was able to buy a small
property near Leipzig, called Zulsdorf, and to build a
house on it. Catherine was greatly attached to it, and

LUTHER'S HOME LIFE 203
went there so often that the thing would excite our
wonder, were it not that it seems that the property
was bought from Catherine's brother in order to help
him in some money difficulties. We can understand
the very peculiar pleasure with which the noble lady,
who had been cast off by her family, became the pro
prietress of part of the old family estate; and how
Luther would secretly enjoy her absorption in her
small property, though he never ceased '' chaffing " her
about it.
This household of wife, family, dependants, and
guests was a very haven of rest for the storm-tossed
man. His devotion to his wife was unbounded, and it
may well have been ; for few wives have done or could
do so much for such a husband. " I am apt to expect
more from my Kathe, and from Melanchthon, than I
do from Christ my Lord. And yet I know that neither
they nor anyone on earth has suffered or can suffer
what He has suffered for me." These words belong to
his earlier married life. " I would not part from my
Kathe, no not to gain all France and Venice"; he
declared that if his Kathe died and he were a young
man nothing would induce him to marry again ; and
late in life, speaking from his own experience, he says,
that "next to God's Word, the world has no more
precious treasure than holy matrimony. God's best
gift is a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping
wife, with whom you may live peacefully, to whom
you may entrust your goods, your body, and life."
Perhaps his profound respect for her and trust in her
comes out nowhere more strongly than in his " will."
He bequeathed her everything that he had — lands,
houses, the goblets and jewels he had received in

204 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
presents, to be at her sole disposal ; and he did so for
three reasons — (1) because she had been to him " a
pious, faithful, and dutiful wife, always loving, devoted,
and beautiful " ; (2) because she alone knew his affairs
and would have to pay his debts ; and (3) because it
was more fitting that his children should be dependent
on their mother than the mother on her children. He
carried out the principle he had laid down in his Table
Talk : " Between husband and wife there should be
no question of meum and tuum. All things should be
in common between them, without any distinction or
means of distinguishing." Of course he talked roundly
of marital supremacy and the impossibility of getting
a thoroughly obedient wife unless he carved one out of
stone for himself ; he laughed at his Kathe's command
of language, and assured an English guest that he ought
to take her as his teacher in the German tongue, for she
knew more about it than he did ; but he had a deep
desire to spare her any pain. When the country was
in a disturbed state after the Peasants' War he refused
to go to a dear friend's wedding " for the tears and
fears of my Kathe prevent me." There is one letter of
his to his wife, which is seldom, or never quoted, and
which shows the high opinion which Luther had of her
judgment even on deep theological matters. He wrote
it from Marburg, where he was at the conference with
the Swiss theologians, and where he did not certainly
show himself at his best. In that letter he gives the
only fair statement he ever made about the views of
his Swiss opponents, and seems anxious to persuade
her that it was not his obstinacy but the prevalence of
the plague which broke up the negotiations. He tells
her, what he confessed to no other creature, " that we

LUTHER'S HOME LIFE 205
(the Swiss and the Lutherans) are united on all points
except that our opponents maintain that it is mere
bread in the Lord's Supper, but acknowledge therein
the presence of Christ spiritually " ; and he goes on to
say that everyone is become mad with fear of the
" sweating sickness " ; " yesterday fifty were taken ill
of it, and one or two have died." His affectionate play
fulness ripples over all his correspondence with her,
and was no doubt appreciated with due wifely fondness,
although it must have been trying to have one's letters
addressed on the outside, "To my dear Master, Frau
Katharine Luther"; "To my kind and dear Master,
Frau Katharine v. Bora, Doctoress Lutheress, at Witten
berg." In this letter he wrote : " It is an annoyance to
me to have bad wine to drink, when I remember what
good wine and beer I have at home, besides a pretty
wife— or shall I say it — Master ? " but that was inside.
Other outside designations are : " To my gracious girl,
Katharine Luther v. Bora and Zulsdorf, at Wittenberg,
my darling." This one begins inside : " Grace and
peace, my dear girl and wife Kathe. Your Grace must
be informed that we are all here fresh and sound — God
be praised ; we eat like behemoths (yet not much), and
drink like Germans (yet not much), and are joyous."
" To the rich lady of Zulsdorf, Frau Doctor Katharine
Luther, dwelling in the body at Wittenberg and wan
dering in the spirit to Zulsdorf ; to be delivered into
the hands of my darling ; if absent, to be opened and
read by D. Pomeran, Pastor " ; " To my heartily beloved
wife, Katharine Luther, Lady of Zulsdorf, Doctoress,
Lady of the pig Market, and whatever else she may
be " ; inside this we find : " Grace and peace in Christ,
and my poor old love as before. Dear Kathe, I have

206 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
been very weak on the road. . . . M. L., your old
darling." "To my dear wife, Katharine Luther, Doctoress
and self-tormentor, at Wittenberg ; to the hands and
feet of my gracious lady"; inside this one we have
" Dear Kathe, read St. John and the Small Catechism,
of which you sometimes say, ' All in this book is said
of me.' For you must needs take God's cares upon
you, just as if He were not the Almighty. ... All the
letters you have written have come here, and to-day
the one which you wrote last Friday. ... I mention
this that you may not be angry." On the outsides of
other letters we have such epithets as "The deeply
learned lady," " the saintly, anxious-minded lady," " my
dear and kind wife." The letters show how much she
did for him ; she corresponded with ladies who could
assist her husband (the Electress Sibyl, wife of John
Frederic, had almost as great a regard for Catherine
as her husband had for Luther), she looked after the
printing of Luther's sermons and pamphlets, and saw
that the printers did not run short of paper, she even
bought special presents which Luther might give to the
children when he came home from a journey, and she
had wonderful tact in soothing people whom Luther's
roughness had offended. She managed the large house
hold with its boarders, and presided at the table in her
husband's absence. One thing she could not do, and it
rather worried her anxious mind when she thought of
the young family and the precarious health of her
husband ; she could not get Luther to charge any fees
for lecturing, to take any salary from the town for his
services as pastor in the town church, nor take one
farthing for all the books he wrote. On this last head
he was stolidly immovable, though his wife showed

LUTHER'S HOME LIFE 207
him that he might surely have a share in the profits as
well as the publishers. She had calculated that if
Luther only took as much for writing his books as was
given to scholars by the publishers for translating some
of them into foreign languages, they might lay past
nearly four hundred gulden a year. But Luther was
inexorable. He would take no money for his writings
— a resolution which, as Catherine saw, benefited no
one but the publishers of his books.
Luther had the greatest delight in his children. " I
am sufficiently contented," he writes, " for I have three
noble children, which no papist theologian has; and the
three children are three kingdoms which belong to me
by inheritance more surely than Ferdinand's Hungary,
Bohemia, and the Romish Kingdom." When baby
Elizabeth died (she lived scarcely eight months), Luther
was broken-hearted. " She has left me," he writes, " a
strangely sick almost womanly heart, such pity moves
me for her ; I could never have believed before what
is the tenderness of a father's heart for his children."
A second daughter, Magdelena, the " Lenchen " of the
Letters, was born just a year after her sister's death.
She was Luther's favourite child, perhaps because she
came before his grief was spent, perhaps because she
was the very image of her mother. She grew to be a
beautiful and charmingly affectionate girl, and died
when she was a little more than thirteen years old.
Her death was very peaceful. Her father often asked
her, " Lenchen, my little daughter, thou wouldst like
to stay with thy father; art thou also content to go to
thy Father yonder?" "Yes, dearest father; as God
wills," she said. When the end came, Luther fell on his
knees at her beside, weeping and holding her in his

208 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION/
arms, prayed that God would receive her. He tried to
console his wife by saying that they had sent a saint
to heaven — " Yes, a living saint ! May we have such
a death ! Such a death I would gladly die this very
hour." When they came back from the grave, he
said : " My daughter is now provided for in body and
soul. We Christians have nothing to complain of;
we know that it must be so. We are more certain of
eternal life than of anything else; for God, who has
promised it to us for His dear Son's sake, cannot lie.
Two saints of my flesh has our Lord taken." That
evening he said: "We must take great care of our
children, and especially of the poor little maidens ; we
must not leave it to others to care for them. I have
no compassion on the boys. A lad can maintain him
self wherever he is, if he will only work ; and if he
will not work he is a scamp. But the poor maidenkind
must have a staff to lean on." All the infinite tender
ness in his great heart was called forth in his thoughts
about his little " Lenchen." His youngest child, Mar
garethe, was also a great favourite. He writes that
she could sing hymns when she was four years old.
He wrote hymns, words and music, for his children
to sing. The best known is :
"From heaven above to earth I come,
To bear good news to every home ;
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing." l
1 Luther's children were —
Hans, born 7th June 1526. He studied at Wittenberg, became a
lawyer, was in the service of Duke Albert of Prussia, and died
a councillor of the Court at "Weimar.
Elizabeth, born 10th December 1527, and died 3rd August 1528.

LUTHER'S HOME LIFE 209
The Luther house which contained this happy family
has been renovated out of all recognition, and the
room now shown as Luther's study was probably the
family room — it could not have been the study. One
thing, however, remains very much what it was — the
great arched stone doorway which Catherine planned
with Master Lucas Cranach as a surprise gift for her
husband when he was away on one of his many
journeys. "On the one tip of the arch was her Doctor's face, set.
suae 57. On the other (where a lesser soul might have been
forgiven for putting her own fair face) his own device of arms
— a dark cross on a red heart in a white rose on a blue
ground in a golden ring. Luther, I think, has an interpreta
tion of it for himself- — mine is ' Christ and Him crucified con
tained in a sinner's love, making it flower out into a clear
conscience and a pure life, with an open heaven above and a
golden heaven before.' Was it not a beautiful thought of
hers 1 — something she had lain awake thinking for nights not
a few — something she called Master Lucas Cranach in to
talk over more than once, before the plans quite pleased her
— something she carried out finally and hastily, with many
fears lest the work should be caught unfinished, with many
questions from the children as to what, and how, and why,
and when, while her Doctor was away on one of these
Magdalena, born 4th May 1529, and died 20th September 1542.
Martin, born 9th November 1531. He studied theology, but was
always delicate. He married the daughter of the burgomeister
of Wittenberg, and died in his thirty- third year.
Paul, born 28th January 1533. He studied at Wittenberg, became
a physician, and was court physician to the Elector of Saxony
at Dresden.
Margarethe, born 17th December 1534; she married a Prussian
nob/le, Adeligen von Kunheim.
!4

210 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
worrying visitations — something ' brought forth with singing '
and clapping of hands one fine day, when the familiar horse-
hoofs came clattering up the street, and the dear Greatheart,
her husband, flung heavily out of the saddle, and landed
right down on the very stones which cried out to him of his
wife's love. How glorious and noble and perfect such a
' love in life ' seems ! " J
We can recall the picture of Luther at the Leipzig
Disputation, holding a bunch of violets in his hand,
looking at it, and tasting its perfume, while he
thundered against Eck, the Popft, and the Councils.
This home of his, with wife and children and family
friends, was his bunch of violets in his later life.
While at Wittenberg the evening talks in his garden,
where he sat with wife and friends under the pear-
tree, and the children brought him flowers and were
taught to distinguish the voices of the birds that were
singing, were a great refreshment. Of a rose he
would say: "A man who could make one rose like
this would be accounted most wonderful ; yet God
scatters countless such flowers around us ! His gifts
are so infinite that we do not see them." Or seeing a
little bird gone to roost for the night: "That little
1 Robert Barbour, Letters from the Land of Luther, pp. 102-105.
Luther's own explanation of the meaning of his device was : "A black
cross on a red heart ; for, in order to be saved, it is necessary to
believe with our whole heart in our crucified Lord, and the cross, though
bringing pain and self-mortification, does not corrupt the nature, but
rather keeps the heart alive. The heart should be placed in a white
rose to show that faith gives joy, comfort, and peace, and because white
is the colour of the spirits and angels, and the joy is not an earthly
joy. The rose itself should be set in an azure field, just as this joy is
already the beginning of heavenly joy and set in heavenly hope, and
outside, round the field, there should be a golden ring, because heavenly
happiness is eternal and precious above all possessions."

LUTHER'S HOME LIFE 211
bird has chosen his shelter ; above it are the stars and
the deep heaven of worlds ; yet he is rocking himself
to sleep without caring for to-morrow's lodging, calmly
clinging to his little twig, and leaving God to think
for him." Or when the slow creaking of the mill was
carried far on the still afternoons : " The heart of man
is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat
under it, it turns, and grinds and crushes the wheat
into flour ; if you put no wheat it still grinds on, but
it grinds itself and wears itself away. So is the
human heart ; unless it be busied with some employ
ment, it leaves space for the devil, who wriggles him
self in, and brings with him a whole host of evil
thoughts, temptations, tribulations, which grind away
the heart." Or when Catherine sat beside him with
her distaff and flax, spinning her linen thread : " What
a martyr the flax is ! When it is ripe it is plucked,
steeped in water, beaten, dried, carded, spun, and woven
into linen, which is cut and torn and pierced. ... So
must good and godly Christians suffer much from the
ungodly and wicked." Or when he was very ill and
they brought him proof-sheets: "God has touched
me sorely. I have been impatient; but God knows
better than I do whereto it serves. Our Lord God
is like a printer who sets the letters backwards,
so that here we cannot read them. When we are
printed off in the life to come we shall read all
clearly and straightforward. Meanwhile we must
have patience."
" I know few things more touching than those soft breath
ings of affection," says Carlyle, " soft as a child's or a mother's,
in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated
with any cant; homely rude in their utterance; pure as

212 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all that
downpressed mood of despair and reprobation which we saw
in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful
gentleness, affections too keen and fine. . . . Luther to a
slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man;
modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction
of him. It is a noble valour which is roused in a heart like
this, once stirred up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly
blaze. . . . The common speech of him has a rugged noble
ness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine ; gleams here and there
with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him to be a great
brother man. His love of music, indeed, is not this, as it
were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a
wild unutterability he spoke forth from him in the tones of
his flute. The devils fled from his flute, he said. Death-
defiance on the one hand, and such a love of music on the
other; I could call these the two opposite poles of a great
soul ; between these two all great things had room."
§ 3. The Emperor and Luther
Things had been going badly with the Evangelical
party since the Peasants' War. That mad outbreak
had been industriously used by the Romanists as a
proof of what the Evangelical doctrines would lead to
if tolerated. The Emperor had resolved that the
Evangelical cause should be crushed, and that his Edict
of the Diet of Worms should be carried out. He sent
down orders to Germany that this should be done
when the Diet met at Speyer in 1526. Political events
beyond Germany staved off the collision for a while.
Charles had totally defeated Francis at the battle of
Pavia. The Pope, afraid of the power of Charles and
of its effect in Italy, had made a secret alliance with

THE EMPEROR AND LUTHER 213
Francis. Charles, determined to resist the Pope, no
longer cared to crush the Lutherans ; therefore, at the
Diet of Speyer, it had been resolved that, " Each State
should, as regards the Edict of Worms, so live, rule,
and bear itself as it thought it could answer it to God
and the Emperor." This left each principality and
Imperial city free to do what it pleased in the matter
of religion; but it was felt by both sides that the
truce was but temporary. The Romanist States had
made a league, and it was felt by many of the Pro
testants that they, too, ought to be united. Doctrinal
differences between the Swiss and some of the Imperial
cities on the one side, and the followers of Luther on
the other, stood in the way of a close alliance, and
young Philip of Hesse had proposed a conference at
Marburg. The conference had produced a great deal
of good, but it had been wrecked by the obstinacy of
Luther, in spite of proved and acknowledged unanimity
on all points of doctrine but the one of the meaning
of Christ's presence in the Sacrament of the Supper.
Meanwhile the Emperor had settled his quarrel with
the Pope, and was again demanding that the Edict of
Worms should be carried out in Germany. A second
Diet at Speyer was held in 1529, the decision of 1526
was reversed, and the Evangelical States protested.
Civil war might have ensued had not the Turks
threatened Vienna, and had not Luther patriotically
insisted that all should unite to drive away the danger
menacing Christendom.
Charles had now reached the summit of his power.
He had crushed France, had humbled the Pope and
compelled him to enter into an alliance, and had
conquered the Turks. He had only to crush the

214 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Reformation to attain his scheme of restoring the
Mediaeval Empire in all its old glory. He came down
to Germany to hold a Diet at Augsburg, with the
express design of compelling the Evangelical princes
to abandon the cause of Luther and of the Reforma
tion. With all Charles's keenness of diplomatic vision
and power of measuring men, he could never under
stand spiritual forces. He thought that he had only
to appear in Germany, and exercise his persuasive
powers on the German princes, to overthrow the
Evangelical movement. He had sent messages to the
Evangelical princes, and had expressed hopes which
might soon become commands. He entered Augsburg
in extraordinary state, the flower of all Germany,
princes evangelical and papal, riding out to meet him
as far as the bridge of the Lech. In the evening he
summoned the foremost Evangelical princes to meet
him, John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, old George of
Brandenburg among them. He had told them firmly
that all the licence hitherto permitted must cease,
and that to-morrow they must walk with him in the
Corpus Christi procession. The princes refused, and
young Philip was about to argue the matter theo
logically, but the Emperor sternly refused to hear him.
Then George of Brandenburg stood forth and told the
Emperor that he and his fellows could not and would
not obey. It was a short, rugged speech, though
eminently respectful, and ended with these words,
which flew over Germany, kindling hearts as fire lights
flax : " Before I would deny my God and His Evangel,
I would rather kneel down here before your Majesty,
and have my head struck off" — and the old man hit
the side of his neck with the edge of his hand. " Not

THE EMPEROR AND LUTHER 215
head off, dear Prince, not head off," said Charles in his
Flemish-German ("Nit Kop ab, lover Forst, nit Kop
ab ! "). Charles walked in the procession through the
streets of Augsburg on a blazing hot day, stooping
under a heavy purple mantle, and with a superfluous
candle sputtering in his hand; but the Evangelical
princes remained in their lodgings.
It had long been felt that this Diet would be a
critical time for the Evangelical faith, and the Elector
John had been anxious to have a summary of Evan
gelical doctrine prepared for him, to be used when he
met the Emperor. He had accordingly summoned
Luther, Melanchthon, and some other theologians to
meet him at Torgau to prepare Evangelical " Articles of
Faith " ; and Luther, with his companions, had pre
sented the Marburg Articles with some additions. It
was felt, however, that something fuller was needed ;
and Luther and Melanchthon had been busied at
Coburg, whither they had gone with the Elector, in
drafting a " Confession." The work was interrupted
by a summons from the Emperor asking the Elector to
meet him at Augsburg at the end of April, and the
Elector left for the city where the Diet was to be held,
taking the other theologians with him but leaving
Luther at Coburg. Luther was worried and anxious,
feeling like a caged eagle. He knew Melanchthon's
strong desire for some conciliatory confession with
which everyone could agree ; he knew that his Elector
had neither the influence nor the strength of mind of his
brother ; he feared the impetuosity of young Philip of
Hesse ; he was left for weeks at a time without any
news ; he was fretting himself ill and longing to be
back at Wittenberg, where he could at least " teach his

216 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
students." His secretary wrote woeful accounts of him
to the Wittenberg home circle. Catherine knew how
a little bit of home would cheer him. She got their
good friend Lucas Cranach to paint their baby
Magdalena, then a year old, and the picture was sent
on to Coburg. Luther hung it up where he could
always see it from his chair, and the sweet little
face looking down at him gave him the courage to
endure during these long months of waiting. The old
father died at Mansfeld during this enforced stay at
Coburg (29th May), and Luther could not go to see his
widowed mother. Posts brought him word that the
" Confession," completed by Melanchthon, had been read
in German in the Diet on the 25th of June ; that the
Romanists were preparing a refutation, and that mean
while all manner of conferences were going on; that
the Romanist reply was ready on 3rd August; that
Philip of Hesse had left the Diet abruptly on the 6th,
to raise troops to fight the Emperor, it was reported ;
that Melanchthon was being entangled in conferences,
and was said to be giving up everything. How he
must have fretted! A man, required to exercise a
woman's courage— the courage to wait on in suspense !
The child's face smiling down on him as he sat and
fretted seemed to give him calm. He wrote to his
Elector's legal adviser at the Diet, exhorting him to
remember that God was more powerful than the
Emperor, and then went on:
" I have lately seen two wonders ; the first as I was
looking out of my window and saw the stars in heaven and
all that beautiful vault of God, and yet I saw no pillars on
which the Architect had fixed this vault ; yet the heaven fell
not, and all that grand arch stood fast. Now there are some

THE EMPEROR AND LUTHER 217
who search for the pillars, and want to touch and grasp them,
and since they cannot, they wonder and tremble as if the
heaven must certainly fall, for no other reason but because
they cannot touch and grasp its pillars. If they could lay
hold on them then they think the heavens would stand firm !
The second wonder was : I saw great clouds rolling over us
with such a ponderous weight that they seemed like to a
great ocean, and yet I saw no foundation on which they
rested nor were based, nor any shore which restrained them ;
yet they fell not on us, but frowned on us and flowed on.
But when they had passed by, then there shone forth both
their floor and our roof which had kept them back — the rain
bow ! A frail, thin floor and roof, which soon melted into the
clouds, and was more like a shadowy prism such as we see
through coloured glass, than a strong and firm foundation, so
that we might well distrust that feeble rampart which kept
back that fearful weight of waters. Yet we found that this
unsubstantial prism was able to bear up the weight of waters,
and that it guarded us safely ! But there are some who
look more at the thickness and massy weight of the waters
and the clouds than at this thin, light, narrow bow of
promise. They would like to feel the strength of that
shadowy, vanishing arch, and because they cannot do this,
they are always fearing that the clouds will bring back the
Flood." The flood was threatening. The Evangelical theo
logians did make the needful stand ; " the Romanists,"
said Luther to his wife, " positively desire to have the
nuns and monks again in the cloister " ; there was no
hope of a compromise ; the Emperor announced that
he gave the Evangelical princes until the 15th of April
1531 to make their submission; everything seemed
making for internecine strife.
Yet the frowning clouds passed away. Troubles in

218 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
other parts of his widespreading dominions prevented
Charles from carrying out his threats. The Evangel
ical Church had time to root itself and organise itself.
The religious war did not break out until Luther had
passed away from earth.

CHAPTER X
LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EVANGELICAL
CHURCH
§ 1. Luther's Idea of the Church
The years 1530 to 1555 are usually described by
Church historians as the time of laying the founda
tions and building the structure of the Evangelical
Church of Germany. From the year 1526, which saw
the decision of the Diet of Speyer that in matters of
religion and with reference to the Edict of Worms
every State was to live, enact, and maintain itself as it
trusted to answer to God and to his Imperial Majesty,
if not from the earlier decision of the Diet of Niirn
berg in 1523, Luther, amid his multifarious labours,
had always regarded this one thing as his supreme
task. But the very important question at once arises
— What had Luther in view when he set himself to this
work, and what did he mean to do? There were
many disturbing elements, all of which tended to
obscure the main purpose in Luther's mind from con
temporaries and from students of history. The pol
itical condition of the times, so constantly changing;
the policy of the Emperor, sometimes plainer, some
times obscure, always an object of suspicion; the
219

220 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
attitude of the German bishops, sometimes conciliatory,
sometimes resolutely opposed to the Evangelical move
ment ; unexpected divisions among those who favoured
religious reform, which in turn frequently took the
shape they did from social and political environment ;
above all, the catastrophe of the Peasants' War and
what that led to and revealed, — all these things give
an almost kaleidoscopic appearance to Luther's work
in the establishment of the Evangelical Church of
Germany. The stream of his purpose was turned now
the one way now the other as the successive obstacles
met it, and it took now one now another course, follow
ing, though with very distinct limitations, the path of
least resistance. For Luther was the reverse of doc
trinaire. He was, with some interesting reservations, an
opportunist, in the good sense of this modern word, and
had the defects of the opportunist character, which
works rather for the more immediate than for the
remoter results.
In the earlier years of Luther's struggle against
Rome, his preaching and teaching had forced their way
throughout all classes of the population of Germany.
His popularity was increased by the incessant use he
had made of the printing-press and by his heroic action
in presence of the Emperor and the Diet. His friends
were astonished at his success, his enemies never
counted on such a speedy and widespread popularity.
The good Elector always cherished the hope that if the
gospel was allowed to spread quietly throughout the
land its truth would gradually permeate all Christen
dom, or at least all Germany, and that a peaceful
victory would be gained without much tumult or even
much external change. Luther himself had the same

LUTHER'S IDEA OF THE CHURCH 221
idea. All he wanted was room for the preaching of
the gospel, which declared the true way of pardon.
This of itself would, he thought, in due time effect
a peaceful transformation of ecclesiastical life and
worship. .The earlier Diets of Niirnberg and Speyer
had provided a field, always enlarging, for exhibiting
this quiet transformation ; and Luther, with the con
currence of his Elector, took advantage of it. He had
hoped that the greater ecclesiastical princes would,
with the consent of the Diet, secularise their terri
tories, and that the ordinary bishops would continue
their oversight of the Church. He was as indifferent
to forms of Church government as John Wesley, and,
like Wesley, every step he took in providing for a
separate organisation was forced upon him as a
practical necessity. He cherished the hope that the
new wine might be stored in the old bottles as late as
the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 and the Diet of Speyer
in 1545. The Augsburg Confession itself (1530) con
cludes with : " Our meaning is not to have rule taken
from the bishops ; but this one thing only is required
at their hands, that they should suffer the gospel to
be purely taught, and that they would relax a few
observances, which cannot be held without sin."
Meanwhile the common people in Germany were
remaining uninstructed in the gospel of the grace of
God, and it was impossible to wait for the tardy
appreciation by the bishops of the Evangelical move
ment, or for the almost vanishing hope that a General
Council held on German soil would reconcile the
religious differences. Something had to be done, and
that at once.
It must be remembered that Luther and all the

222 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Reformers of the sixteenth century held very strongly
and clearly that there was a Visible Catholic Church
of Christ, that the Evangelical movement which they
headed was the legitimate development of the centuries
of saintly life within that Visible Catholic Church,
and within its Western branch especially. They did
not for a moment suppose that in sharing in this
movement they were separating themselves from the
Catholic Church of Christ in its visible sense. It is
true that they all taught that there was an Invisible
Catholic Church, and that this Invisible Church was
based on the predestination of God. But if their ideas
on this subject be carefully examined, it will be seen
that they did not take the thought of predestination
in the sense of the abstract metaphysical category
which it assumed in the hands of doctrinaire theo
logians of the seventeenth century. It was their way
of showing that the whole of the believer's religious
life and what it leads to depended in the last resort
on God and not on man. They opposed the decree of
God (predestination) to the decrees of man (of Popes
and Councils). Hence neither Luther nor any of the
Reformers thought that in making provision for the
preaching of the Word, the administration of the
Sacraments, the exercise of discipline, and whatever
was required for the existence and good government
of Christian congregations, they were founding a new
Church, and were going forth from the Visible Catholic
Church of Christ. They refused to concede the name
Catholic to their opponents, and in the various confer
ences between the two parties, both before the Diet
of Augsburg and after it, the Roman Catholics were
always officially designated " the adherents of the old

LUTHER'S IDEA OF THE CHURCH 223
religion"; and in the official document which states
the terms of the Religious Peace of Niirnberg (1532),
the two parties are respectively called the " adherents
of the old religion " and the " associates of the Augs
burg Confession."
On the other hand, neither Luther nor any of his
fellow - Reformers thought that the existence of a
Catholic Visible Church of Christ depended on what
has ambiguously been called an apostolic succession
of bishops, who through conferred gifts of ordination
create priests, who in turn make Christians out of
heathen by the Sacraments. His thought of the
"Freedom of the Christian Man," or the idea of the
spiritual priesthood of all believers, as he interpreted
it, prevented him from imperilling the existence of
the Church Catholic on an external succession of
office-bearers. If he had thought that an episcopal
ordination in the Roman or Anglican sense was es
sential, there was a sufficient number of evangelical
bishops to secure it; but no use was made of them
in this way.
The true succession from the apostles lay within
the Church, in the succession of generations of saintly
souls, who, with confession of sin and faith on the
promises of God, had found pardon and impulse to
lives of new obedience by going directly to God for
them. Neither communion with Rome nor an histor
ical succession of bishops were marks of the Visible
Catholic Church in his eyes. He had no objections
to episcopal rule, nor even to a primacy in the See
of Rome. He respected everything which had be
longed to the past, and especially to that mediaeval
Church into which he had been born. But these

224 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
things were not required to make the Church They
were only modes of exercising the needful disciplinary
control, and if they failed to conform to the precepts
of the Word of God and had become full of human
corruptions, thus degenerating into hindrances rather
than remaining helps to the furtherance of the true
religious life of the soul, they ought to be done away
with, and something else should be put in their place.
The fact that the human soul needs absolutely nothing
in the last resort but the Word of God dwelling in it,
ought to give men courage and calmness in demanding
the change. The principle of the spiritual priesthood
of all believers was able to deliver men from all fear
in demanding such a reformation as the Church re
quired to allow it to do the work God has given it in
charge. He had a very clear idea about what the Church
needed to enable it to do the work for which God
had called it into being. This is what he says : " The
Church of Christ requires an honest ministry dili
gently and loyally instructed in the Holy Word of
God after a pure Christian intelligence, and without
the addition of any false traditions. In and through
such a ministry it will be made plain what are —
Christ and His Evangel, honest repentance and the
fear of God, how to attain to the forgiveness of sins,
and the properties and power of the Keys in the
Church." In this way the people will learn what
Christian freedom is, and how the conscience becomes
free in Christ. There is need of schools that boys and
maidens may be taught these things and all good
morals in their youth There is need also of the
gift of knowing such languages as Latin, Greek, and

LUTHER'S IDEA OF THE CHURCH 225
Hebrew. For all this there must be some real super
vision, to see that all these things are done. Bishops,
in the mediaeval sense of the word, might be super
fluous, but their true function, that of oversight, was
a thing indispensable.
These were the thoughts in Luther's mind when he
busied himself about the reconstruction of the Church
in Germany. His first idea was that much of this
might be left in the hands of the people, with some
oversight from the bishops; but this first idea was
soon abandoned. The Peasants' War slew all his
trust in the "common man," in Germany at least.
It was vain also to expect anything from the bishops.
One or two had declared themselves on the side of
the Reformation; but the higher ecclesiastics, as a
class, had become more and more estranged from the
movement. Even if the bishops had shown them
selves sympathetic, Luther soon saw that their dioceses
were in many respects ill-fitted by territorial arrange
ment for the inspection and control of the parishes.
The only constituted authorities that could do what
he conceived ought to be done were the secular princes;
and to them Luther turned.
The first thing to do was to ascertain exactly the
state of matters in the country districts of Electoral
Saxony. This was done by means of "Visitations,"
and the example of the Elector was speedily followed
by other evangelical princes. Luther persuaded the
Elector to appoint a regular commission to visit every
part of his dominions; to report what needed to be
done; and to give advice about the best means of
accomplishing it. The commission was a mixed one
of lawyers and pastors ; the lawyers to examine into
15

226 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
and report upon the legal provisions available for the
support of churches and schools, and for the care of
the poor ; while the pastors were to inquire into the
fitness of the country clergy, the spiritual needs of the
people, and matters of that kind. The visitors re
quired some common standard to test the condition of
matters ; and Melanchthon prepared " Articles of Visi
tation," which, after careful revision, were published
in March 1528, with a preface written by Luther.
Luther's preface was the "pastoral epistle" of the
visitation. The necessity was great, and the visitation was held
simultaneously in several parts of Electoral Saxony.
The correspondence of Luther during the years
1525-27 shows how urgent the need of such a visita
tion appeared to be to him. He had been up and
down the country several times. He was a "man of
the people," and no one was afraid of speaking to him.
The parish priests were always ready to lay their
difficulties before him. In his letters he pictures the
abounding poverty of those parish priests, a poverty
increased by the fact that the only application of
the new views made by many of the people was to
refuse to pay all clerical dues. This was their idea
of Reformation. He saw that the "common man"
respected neither priest nor preacher, that in country
districts where there was no supervision, the houses
of the priest and of the parish clerk were fast de
caying, and he feared that if things were allowed to
go on as they were doing there would soon be
neither priest's house, nor schools, nor scholars. The
visitations made it clear that Luther had scarcely
exaggerated matters. What was discovered was gross

THE VISITATIONS 227
ignorance on the part of people and priests alike. The
district round about Wittenberg was by far the best ;
but in the outlying districts a very bad state of
things was disclosed. In a village near Torgau the
visitors found an old priest who was hardly able to
repeat the Creed or the Lord's Prayer, but who was
held in the highest reverence for his power as an
exorcist, and who derived a good income from the
exercise of his craft. Priests had to be evicted for gross
immoralities. Some kept beer-houses and practised
other worldly callings. Village schools were rarely
to be found, and the people were grossly ignorant.
Some of the peasants complained that the Lord's
Prayer was so long that they could not learn it;
and in one place the visitors found that not a single
peasant knew any prayer whatsoever.
§ 2. The Visitation of Wittenberg "Circle"
Perhaps the best way of seeing what this visita
tion was like is to take one single district — that of
the " circle " of Wittenberg. The commissioners were
Martin Luther and Justus Jonas, theologians, with
Hans Metzsch, Benedict Pauli, and Johann of
Taubenheim, jurists. They began in October 1528,
and spent two months at their task. They went
about it with great energy, holding conferences with
the priests and with the representatives of the com
munity. They questioned the priests about the
condition of the people, and the people about the
priests. In towns their conference was with the
Council or Rath, and in the village with the male
heads of families. Their common work was to find

228 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
out what was being done for the "cure of souls,"
the instruction of the youth, and the care of the
poor. By " cure of souls " (Seelsorge) they meant
preaching, dispensation of the sacraments, catechetical
instruction, and the pastoral visitation of the sick.
It belonged to the theologians to estimate the capa
cities of the pastors, and to the jurists to estimate the
available income, to look into all legal difficulties that
might arise, and especially to clear the entanglements
caused by the supposed jurisdiction of convents over
many of the parishes. They found a good deal of
confusion. This small district was made up of the
outlying portions of three dioceses. It had not been
inspected within the memory of man. At Klebitz
the peasants had driven away the parish clerk, and
put the village herd in his house. At Biilzig there
was neither parsonage nor house for parish clerk, and
the priest was non-resident. So at Danna; where
the priest held a benefice at Coswig and was besides
a chaplain at Wittenberg, and where the clerk lived
at Zahna. The parsonages were all in a bad state
of repair, and the local authorities could not be got
to do anything. Roofs were leaking, walls were
crumbling, it was believed that the next winter's frost
would bring some down bodily. At Pratau the priest
had built all himself — parsonage, outhouses, stable
and byre. All these things were duly noted to be re
ported upon. As for the priests, the complaints made
against them were very few indeed. In one case the
people said that their priest drank, and was con
tinually seen in the public-house. Generally, however,
the complaints, when there were any, were that the
priest was too old for his work or was utterly un-

THE VISITATIONS 229
educated, and could do little more than mumble a
Latin Mass. The priests had dealt very wisely in
all matters of change. In some parishes they ad
ministered the Sacrament of the Supper according
to the old and also acccording to the new rites,
and the people seemed to prefer the new. In one
parish, where there were two churches, the priest
used the one for the old service and the other for
the new. At Bleddin the peasants told the visitors
that their pastor, Christopher Richter, was a learned
and pious man who preached regularly on all Sundays
and festival days, and generally four times a week
in various parts of the parish. It appeared, however,
that their admiration for him did not compel them to
attend his ministrations with very great regularity. The
energetic pastors were almost all young men who had
been trained at Wittenberg. The older men, peasants'
sons all of them, were scarcely better educated than
their parishioners, and were unable to preach to them.
The visitors made strict inquiry about the habits
of the parishioners with respect to attendance at
church and at the Lord's Table. They found very few
parishes indeed where three, four, five, or more persons
were not named to them who never attended church or
came to the Lord's Table ; in some parishes men came
regularly to the preaching who never would come to
the Sacrament. What impressed the visitors most
was the ignorance, the besotted ignorance, of the
people. They questioned them directly; found out
whether they knew the Apostles' Creed, the Ten
Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer; and then
questioned them about the meanings of the words.
" What do you mean by saying that God is Almighty ? "

230 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
said Luther to a peasant. " I do not know," was the
answer. ' I can well believe that," said Luther ; " the
most learned theologian must give the same answer."
But " do you know that God is your Father ? " " No."
"When you say, 'Our Father which art in heaven,'
who is the Father?" "I do not know," was the
answer. Luther came back from the visitation in greatly
depressed spirits, and expressed his feelings in his
usual energetic language. He says in his introduction
to his Small Catechism, a work he began as soon as
he returned from the visitation: "In setting forth
this Catechism or Christian doctrine in such a simple,
concise, and easy form, I have been compelled and
driven by the wretched and lamentable state of affairs
which I discovered lately when I acted as a visitor.
Merciful God, what misery have I seen, the common
people knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine,
especially in the villages! and unfortunately many
pastors are well-nigh unskilled and incapable of teach
ing ; and although all are called Christians and partake
of the Holy Sacrament, they know neither the Lord's
Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten Commandments, but
live like poor cattle and senseless swine, though, now
that the gospel is come, they have learnt well enough
how they may abuse their liberty."
The visitors found that the pastors never studied
theology because they had no books, or very few.
They named the pastor of Schmiedeberg as a notable
exception ; he had a library of twelve volumes, which
was a wonderful thing ! It could not be expected that
such men could preach to much edification; and the
visitors recommended that copies of Luther's Postils or
short sermons on the Gospels and Epistles be sent to all

THE VISITATIONS 231
the parishes, with orders that they should be read
by the pastors to the congregations. The aged and
incapacitated pastors were very gently dealt with. At
Iiesnitz, old Pastor Conrad was quite unable to per
form his duties. It was arranged that he should have
the stipend and parsonage for life, but that he should
give fourteen gulden to a coadjutor, who was also to act
as parish clerk, and the proprietor of the place promised
to feed the coadjutor at his table. The visitors also
found that schools did not exist in the villages at
all, and they were disappointed with most of the
schools they found in the smaller towns. They saw
nothing for it but that the pastors must become the
village schoolmasters. The pastors were instructed not
to forget to warn their people to send their children to
school, and they were requested to make the catechis
ing of the children part of their church services on the
Sunday. Various proposals were also made for the
purpose of making the schools in the towns more
efficient, and the church " cantor " or precentor was to
train the children to sing the evangelical hymns.
In their inquiries about the care taken of the poor
they found that there was not much need for any
thing to be done in the villages; but the case was
different in the towns. In most of the towns there were
old foundations meant for the poor, but all manner
of misuses and misappropriations of the funds were
discovered. Suggestions were made for replacing
these on a better foundation.
This very condensed account of what took place in
the Wittenberg " circle " shows the work of the visita
tions; a second and a third visitation was needed in
Electoral Saxony ere things were put right; but in

232 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the end good work was done. The Elector refused
to take any of the confiscated convent lands and
possessions for civil purposes, and stipends for the
pastors and salaries for the schoolmasters, with
provision for the poor, were gradually secured through
out Electoral Saxony.
Visitations somewhat on the Saxon model went on
all over Germany, and out of them came the various
ecclesiastical ordinances for the Evangelical States, out
of which grew by slow stages the present Consistorial
system of the Lutheran Church. If the whole move
ment towards an ecclesiastical organisation be carefully
studied, it will be seen that it advances by slow stages
as necessity calls for some new development, and that
there is no thought of giving the people, because they
are members of the Church, any share in its organ
isation and rule. The shape which it finally took was
a return to the mediaeval form of Church local control.
The Consistorial Courts of the Lutheran Church in
Germany are very like the Consistorial Courts of the
mediaeval bishops, only instead of the bishop appoint
ing the members of the Courts, and holding them
responsible to him, the members are appointed by and
are responsible to the supreme local civil authority,
whatever form that assumed. This remains a striking
distinction between the Evangelical (Lutheran) and the
Reformed (Calvinist) types of ecclesiastical organisation.
One interesting outcome of the Saxon visitations
was Luther's Catechisms, Short and Large, and a new
and greatly enlarged Hymn-book. It is more than
likely that in preparing all three Luther had in view
his own training as a child in the old Mansfeld home ;
and that he desired to give all German children the

THE CATECHISMS 233,
means of receiving the same evangelical education
which he had received from his father and mother. The
Short Catechism is Luther at his best. It is difficult to
think that anyone but himself could have written it ;
and the preface is as characteristic. He tells the
pastors who make use of it that they must above all
things avoid the use of different texts or forms of the
Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. " If you
preach to scholars or wise men you may show your
skill, and vary these articles and twist them as subtly
as you can. But with the young, always keep to one
form and teach them . . . word for word, so that they
may repeat them and learn them by heart." When
the children know the words perfectly, then the
teacher may proceed to explanation, and this is to be
done question by question. The second commandment
is not to be explained till the first is clearly understood.
When the Short Catechism is thoroughly understood,
then the Large one is to be gone through in the same
way. He closes thus : " Our office has now become a
different thing from what it was under the Pope; it
has now become a real and saving office. Therefore it
is more troublesome and full of labour, and is more
encompassed with danger and temptation, and, more
over, brings little reward and thanks in this world.
But Christ Himself will be our reward if we work
faithfully. And so may the Father of all mercies
help us, to whom be praise and thanks everlasting,
through Christ our Lord."
The Short Catechism is divided into six sections —
The Ten Commandments, The Creed, The Lord's
Prayer, The Sacrament of Holy Baptism, How the
simple folks should be taught to confess, and The

234 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Sacrament of the Altar — and it has two Appendices,
the first of which gives Prayers for private use morn
ing and evening, and Grace before and after meals;
while the second is a selection of pious thoughts,
mostly in Scripture language.
One example may suffice to show how Luther wrote
his Catechism :
" The Sacrament of the Altar 
" Who, then, are they who receive this Sacrament
worthily ?
"Answer. Fasting and bodily preparation are in
truth a good external discipline, but he is truly worthy
and prepared who believes the words : ' Given for you
and shed for the remission of sins' But he who does
not believe them is unworthy and not prepared. For
the words 'for you ' demand truly believing hearts."
Luther was accustomed to repeat this Catechism to
himself every morning. He thought that men whose
business was theology needed more than others to be
constantly reminded how simple after all the founda
tions and essentials of the faith were.
The Large Catechism repeats the thoughts of the
Short one at a sevenf olddength. These two Catechisms
and the tract on the Liberty of the Christian Man
contain all that is essential and all that is best in
Luther's teaching. The Short Catechism and the
Augsburg Confession are the two creeds which every
Lutheran Church cherishes.
§ 3. Luther as an Educational Reformer
Another result from these visitations was the foun
dation of something like a universal common-school

EDUCATIONAL REFORM 235
system for all Germany, and especially for the rural
districts. The education of boys and maidens, not
merely of the upper and burgher classes, but of the
whole people, was an end for which Luther strove
unweariedly. In his Address to the Nobility of the
German Nation, he proposed that a number of the
useless convents should be restored to their primary
use, that of educating boys and girls. His correspond
ence is full of desire to see good and sound education
spreading throughout Germany. In 1524 he wrote his
celebrated call To the Burgomasters and Councillors
of Cities in the German Land, urging them to provide
a large and generous system of education in their
towns. His first and most earnest desire was that
every child, no matter how poor the parents were,
should be trained to read, write, and cipher. If it
were objected that the parents need their services
in order to gain a living, he replies that his idea
is that boys should spend a few hours a day at
school, and the rest of the day they can be at
home learning their trade, and thus study and work
will go hand in hand and mutually help each other.
The real difficulty, he says, is the absence of any
earnest desire to educate the young, and thus pro
vide accomplished citizens to aid and benefit man
kind. Remember, he says, that "the devil much
prefers blockheads and drones." But while Luther
pled for a minimum of education for every child, he
insisted that all children of bright understandings
should have very much more. He shows how good
high schools for girls as well as for boys can be
established by using many needless ecclesiastical
foundations for the purpose. Then he urges the

236 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Town Councils to establish good libraries, for they
give the best education.
This extensive reorganisation of education which
took in as one whole the training of the youth of the
Fatherland from the poorest village schools up to the
universities was more to Luther than a "devout
imagination." He produced it in actual life wherever
he could. He encouraged the Town Council of Witten
berg to establish a school for girls, and himself invited
Else von Kanitz to be the schoolmistress. " You shall
be in my house," he wrote (2nd May 1527), " and at my
table, so that you may be free from danger and cares ;
so I beg you not to refuse me." One result of the
first Saxon Visitation was a Girls' School at Grimma,
and Magdalena von Staupitz, sister or niece (I cannot
make out which) of Luther's old convent superior,
went there as schoolmistress. Luther received funds
for the institution of bursaries for poor students from
well-to-do ladies and gentlemen — Frau Dorothea
Jorger, with her five hundred gulden, being the first.
The Counts Mansfeld could think of no more pleasing
present to Luther than the foundation of a high school
in the town where his parents lived. He went to open
it just before the Peasants' War broke out. Not to
multiply proofs, it will be found that in almost every
one of the numerous ordinances for the organisation
of the Evangelical Church in Germany which Richter
has collected there is distinct and earnest provision
made for the godly upbringing of the youth in common
schools, which are regarded as essential to the well-
being of the Church and of the State.
For all these reasons Luther has been usually re
garded as the founder of the modern school and

EDUCATIONAL REFORM 237
university of Germany. Yet many have called in
question the correctness of the common opinion. The
growl of Erasmus is well known : " Ubi Lutheranis-
mus, ibi literarum interitus " ; Dbllinger, Janssen, and
Paulsen all declare that the Reformation movement,
and with it the influence of Luther, was hostile to
learning ; they bring forward facts witnessing to the
existence of high schools in Germany long before
Luther's time, and to the decay of the high schools and
universities in the years following 1520. It is un
doubted that there were schools and provisions for
learning during the Middle Ages in Germany. There
were even a few schools for girls supported by some of
the larger towns. Frankfort-on-the-Maine and other
German cities had schools for girls, taught by mis
tresses who were not nuns, early in the fifteenth
century. In some convents the education of girls was
carried on as far as the state of learning permitted.
In 1260 the little Saxon convent of Rodoardesdorf,
afterwards Helfte, was almost a mediaeval "Girton"
under its bright young abbess, Gertrude of Hackeborn.
Pages could be filled with the evidence of school and
student life during the Middle Ages. It is also true
that in the earlier years of the Reformation movement
attendance at schools and at many universities was
sadly diminished. The excitement of the times and
anxiety for the future easily accounts for this. Noble
men who sent their sons to high school and university
in the expectation of placing them afterwards in some
wealthy religious foundation, — and the richest positions
were almost all reserved for men of noble birth, —
burghers who looked to place their sons in the same
way, poor people, peasants, and artisans who had once

238 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
hoped to get their children off their hands in monastery
or village parsonage, saw the possibility of all these
benefices being abolished. These fears kept crowds
back who some years earlier would have all been
students. Besides, the Lutheran movement had kindled
undoubtedly a distaste for the old learning of the
schoolmen, with its pedantic, long-winded arguments
about trifles, and Humanism was beginning to descend
to much trifling also. Motives which appealed to the
enthusiastic and to the sordid kept men back from
devoting themselves to a student life. Luther was as
keenly alive to all this as his future critics. " People
are saying," he writes, " Why should we educate our
children if they are not to earn a living by becoming
priests and monks and nuns ? " He says that he per
ceives that schools are deteriorating throughout
Germany, and that the universities are becoming
weak. The thing was inevitable. It took place every
where. The old incentives were disappearing, and the
new had not time to root themselves in the minds of
the people.
Yet the popular opinion is right after all, and it is
to Luther that Germany owes its splendid educational
system in its roots and in its conception. For he was
the first to plead for a universal education — for an
education of the whole people, without regard to class
or special life-work. His firmest thought was that no
village should be without its school. He inspired the
German people with the desire to give their children
as good an education as possible, and, after all, the
creation of a living desire that can grow and make
itself felt is the root of the matter. Once called into
being, the desire, strengthened by the feeling that it

EDUCATIONAL REFORM 239
was a holy thing, something owed to God, was more
important to the German land than a scholastic organ
isation apart from the desire. The learned authors of
the exhaustive History of German Education from its
Beginnings to our Time, edited by Dr. Schmid, claim
that Germany owes almost all that is best in its modern
education to the efforts of Luther. He freed it from
the crushing weight of scholastic authority. He in
sisted on making the lessons interesting, and prepared
an edition of JSsop's Fables, to be used as a reading
book ; he invented the art of pictorial illustration, and
teaching by the eye as well as by the ear ; and he bound
the whole educational system together, from the lowest
village schools up to the universities.
So the foundations of the Evangelical Church were
laid, and the work of the Reformation was consolidated.
It was done in face of enormous difficulties, and before
a definite legal status had been gained. Oversight
and discipline, two things absolutely required, were
revived, and that in a much more thoroughgoing
fashion than the mediaeval Church in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries had been able to accomplish. The
progress was slow. It could not but be slow. Sancti
fication is always a work, whether in a man or in
a community. By degrees the rawness of the new
congregations, the evil habits of the old pastors, the
carelessness and hostility of the people, the greed of
the nobles and of the commons, were surmounted,
and a moral regeneration set in. It is scarcely possible
to dwell on this, for that would involve a discussion
and proof of the degrading immoralities which dis
graced German life, of noble and burgher alike, in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The subject is not a

240 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
pleasant one ; but a careful examination of the chron
icles of the German towns during the latter half of the
fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth century
-reveal a state of things which is usually passed over
by history. All this the Lutheran Church set itself to
overcome, and it largely succeeded.

§ 4. Luther and Zwingli
Before passing from this subject it may be well to
remember that the Lutheran movement did not include
a large number of those who separated from the Roman
Church. Indeed, in the second generation a very
large portion of the German Reformation abandoned
the strictly Lutheran type of doctrine and organisation,
and ranged itself under the Reformed Church. This
•did not take place until after Luther's death. But
his positive refusal to admit brotherly relations with
Zwingli and the Swiss was largely responsible for
it, and it is necessary to say something about the
dispute. What divided Luther from Zwingli was the question
of the presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper. Looking at the whole controversy
now, with all the treatises of the controversialists
before us, we can see that there was nothing contra
dictory between the opinions of Zwingli and those of
Luther. The opposed views were, in fact, comple
mentary, and the pronounced ideas of each were im
plicitly, though not expressly, held by the other.
Luther and Zwingli approached the subject from two
different points of view, and in debate they neither
understood nor were exactly facing each other.

LUTHER AND ZWINGLI 241
The whole Christian Church has found three great
ideas embodied in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
— the thoughts of Proclamation, Commemoration, and
Communion or Participation, and the rite has always
been held to have a close relation to the death of Christ
on the Cross for His people. We proclaim the death
and what it means, we commemorate the sacrifice, we
participate in or have communion with the Crucified
' Christ. This last thought of " participation " has
always carried the mind of the Christian Church, not
away from the death of Christ, but through it to the
Living Risen Saviour, with whom there is fellowship
through the Holy Spirit.
The mediaeval Church insisted that this sacramental
Commemoration and Participation, with all the spiritual
blessings it involved, was in the hands of the priest
hood to give or to withhold. They alone could bring
the Crucified and Risen Christ into such a relation
to the worshippers as made the sacramental Com
memoration and Participation possible things. Out
of this claim there grew the mediaeval theory of
Transubstantiation. It may also be said that the
mediaeval Church represented the thoughts of Com
memoration and Participation under two distinct uses
of the sacrament — as a Mass, where the priest alone
communicates, and as the Eucharist, where the faith
ful laity join. Or if the expression be too strong it
may at least be said that the distinction referred
to in the cultus gave rise to two separate ways of
looking at and objecting to the mediaeval doctrine —
each of which connected itself instinctively with the
two thoughts of Commemoration and Participation.
Zwingli approached the mediaeval doctrine by the
16

242 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
first and Luther by the second of those two separate
paths. What repelled Zwingli was the fact that the
mediaeval Church had thrust aside the thought of
Commemoration and put the thought of Repetition
in its place. For the mediaeval priest claimed
that he, in virtue of miraculous powers given in
ordination, could change the bread and wine before
him into the actual and physical body and blood of
Jesus, and when this was done, that he could re
produce the agony of the Cross by crushing with his
teeth. Whenever Zwingli thought of the mediaeval
doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he saw
with horror a priest who claimed that he was repeat
ing the agony of the Cross by manducating the Host.
The thing was, to his mind, horribly profane. Besides,
it dishonoured the one great Sacrifice; and it de
parted from the words of Jesus, which imply Com
memoration but not Repetition. The commemoration
was of the death of Jesus, and the participation a
sharing in the Atonement which that death effected.
But Atonement is appropriated by faith. Thus we
get Zwingli's second thought, that we receive Christ
by faith. Commemoration instead of repetition,
faith instead of eating with the mouth; these are
Zwingli's two great thoughts. But it must also be
remembered that Zwingli held that faith always
meant spiritual union or contact with Christ. Thus
there is a Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament
brought about by faith. Then when his theory was
complete, and not till then, he gave the explanation
of the words of the Institution, that "is" means
" signifies."

LUTHER AND ZWINGLI 243
What repelled Luther in the mediaeval doctrine was
the way in which it trampled upon the scriptural
thought of the spiritual priesthood of all believers.
He protested against Transubstantiation and private
Masses because they were the most flagrant instances
of that contempt. When he first began to write on
the subject (1519), it was to insist that the "cup"
should be given to the laity. In the sermon there
is an interesting statement, which sheds a light on
Luther's whole position, to the effect that in the
sacrament "the communicant is so united to Christ
and His saints, that Christ's life and sufferings and
the lives and sufferings of the saints become his."
No one held more strongly than Luther that the
Atonement was made by our Lord, and by Him
alone. Therefore Luther cannot be thinking of the
Atonement when he speaks of union with our Lord
and His saints. He thinks that the main thing in
the sacrament is that it gives real companionship
with Jesus, such fellowship as His disciples and saints
had. There must be a reference to the death of
Christ, for apart from the death there is no com
panionship possible, but the reference is indirect and
through the thought of the fellowship. In the sacra
ment we touch Christ as His disciples might have
touched Him when He walked on the earth, and as His
glorified saints touch Him now. This reference to
the saints also shows us that Luther saw in the
sacrament the presence, not of the crucified, but of
the glorified body of Christ. Luther, then, believed
that the primary use of the sacrament was to give
believing communicants a direct and immediate com
munion with the Living Risen Christ, such as His

244 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
saints have in the life of glory. This required a
presence (and Luther thought a local presence) of
the glorified body of Christ in the sacrament; the
communicant must be in contact with it. But com
munion with the Living Risen Christ implies the
appropriation of the death of Christ, and of the
Atonement won by His death. Finally, the local
presence of Jesus in the elements need not involve
any special miracle; for in virtue of the ubiquity of
the glorified body of Christ it is present every
where, and is therefore naturally in the elements.
This natural Presence becomes a sacramental Presence
because of the promise of God which is attached
to the reverent and believing participation of the
sacrament. Each theologian held implicitly what the other
stated explicitly ; Zwingli put the relation to the
death of Christ in the foreground, but implicitly
admitted the relation to the Risen Christ ; Luther
put the fellowship with the Risen Christ in the fore
ground, but admitted the reference to the Crucified
Christ. The one had a very shallow exegesis to help him,
and the other a scholastic theory of space; and
naturally, but unfortunately, when controversy arose,
the disputants attacked the weakest part of his
opponent's theory — Luther, Zwingli's exegesis, and
Zwingli, Luther's scholastic theory of space.
The most notable attempt to bring about an under
standing was made by Philip of Hesse at the
Marburg Conference in 1529, where Zwingli and
GEcolampadius (real name Heusgen, transformed into
Hausschein or House Lamp, and then turned into

LUTHER AND ZWINGLI 245
Greek) represented the Swiss and Luther and Mel
anchthon the Saxons. The Conference did not bring
about agreement on the doctrine of the sacrament,
but it proved that on all other points of the Christian
faith the Reformed theologians were completely at
one. Yet Luther refused to give Zwingli his hand.
Long afterwards Zwingli's followers accepted Calvin's
theory, which combined the doctrines; Luther de
clared himself satisfied with it, and Calvin signed
the Augsburg Confession. After Luther's death, his
followers, more Lutheran than himself, refused the
compromise, and thus the Reformation was split into
two.

CHAPTER XI
THE LAST YEARS OF LUTHER'S LIFE
§ 1. Luther's Political Influence
The last years of Luther's life were spent amid in
cessant labours, and amid continual ill-health. He had
always spent himself when work for the "evangel"
was to be done, and had it not been for the iron con
stitution he had inherited from his parents he could
never have gone through the labours he thought him
self forced to undertake. He was twice at death's
door. At Schmalkald, where he went in February 1537
to attend a meeting of theologians to discuss the pro
priety of accepting the proposal to convene a General
Council, he had a terrible attack of "stone." He
preached nevertheless, and the malady increased. He
had a week of intense pain, his body swelled, he was
constantly sick, everyone feared and he hoped for
death. He was far from wife and children, and was
anxious about them. The Elector promised to care
for them " as his own." To make matters worse the
necessary medical appliances were not to be had at
Schmalkald, and it was resolved, ill as he was, to
remove him. The journey was a prolonged torture,
but the jolting of the carriage seems to have effected
246

LAST YEARS OF LUTHER'S LIFE 247
what the doctors had been unable to do. As soon as
the pain left him he wrote to his wife, to remove her
anxieties. The journey was accomplished by slow
stages. At Weimar, his niece Lena Kaufmann met
him from Wittenberg ; he got safely back to his Kaethe
and his home, where good nursing brought him round
again. In 1541 the terrible malady returned, and his
life was again despaired of; but careful nursing
restored him. These attacks occurred at times of very
trying anxieties. His life was spared, but he was
constantly an invalid, and the misused body revenged
itself in continual pain. He told his friends during
this last illness that his brain was like a knife worn to
the heft and incapable of cutting. His father had
died in 1530, when Luther was detained at Coburg ;
his mother lived a year longer, and died on 30th June
1531. Luther wrote a touching letter to her, which
she received on her deathbed. It ends : " All your
children and my Kate pray for you. Some weep ; the
younger eat and say, ' Grandmother is very ill.' " One
can see little Hans and baby Lena, wagging their small
heads, and repeating the words between the mouthfuls.
It was characteristic of Luther to describe what he
saw, and to think in pictures. This breaks forth even
in the most abstract questions. When he discusses the
doctrine of Christian perfection in the Augsburg Con
fession, he has a God-fearing German burgher and a
barefooted friar in his eye. " Christian perfection,"
he says, " is this, to fear God sincerely, and to have
great faith, and to trust assuredly that God is pacified
towards us for Christ's sake, to ask and certainly to
expect help from God in all our affairs according to our
calling, and outwardly to do good works in our voca-

248 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
tion. In these things doth true perfection and the
true worship of God consist. It doth not consist in
celibacy, in begging, and in wearing dirty clothes."
When he expounds the meaning of " Give us this day
our daily bread," he calls up the picture of a well-fed,
warmly clothed German child trudging to school in a
stout pair of shoes to keep its small feet dry. His
thoughts naturally shaped themselves in pictures ; and
he was careful to cultivate- this gift. German art had
been changing since the beginning of the sixteenth
century. It had begun the change by tracing sketches
from common life round the margins of its copper
plates or woodcuts of Holy Families, or of scenes from
the Bible and from the lives of the saints. Then,
emboldened, it had plunged into the delineation of all
kinds of ordinary, commonplace life. The revolution
in religion said that all human life, even the most
commonplace, could be sacred ; and the contemporary
revolution in art discovered the picturesque in the life
of the people. We have from Albert Diirer, Hans
Burgmaier, the brothers Beham, Lucas Cranach, and
from many another artist, pictures of the life of the
times, in the castles of the nobles, in the streets of the
cities, and in the villages of the peasants. Niirnberg
was the great centre of this effort to bring art into
common life. In 1535 we find Luther writing to his
friend Wencelas Link to collect for him all the pictures
of the common German life, the rhymes, the ballads,
and the stories that had been published there, because
he wished to familiarise himself thoroughly with the
genuine language and life of the people.
The last years of Luther's life brought him no new
tasks; they were ceaselessly occupied in the same

LAST YEARS OF LUTHER'S LIFE 249
kind of work which had come upon him after the Diet
of Augsburg. He was the confidential adviser of a large
number of the German princes. He was occupied with
attempts to unite more firmly together the whole
Evangelical movement. He was also on the watch
against the attempt of the Roman Curia to recover its
old power over Germany.
Luther's intimacy with his own Elector helped to
give him the place accorded to him by other German
princes. Luther lived under three Electors of Saxony
— Frederic the Wise, who had been offered the Empire,
and had declined; John, his brother; and John
Frederic, son of Elector John and nephew of Elector
Frederic. Frederic, although he had been Luther's
protector in all the early stormy times, although he
lived continually in the same town, frequently heard
Luther preach, and had corresponded with him,
never had any personal intercourse with the Reformer.
He sent for Luther, when he was on his deathbed
during the storm of the Peasants' War, but Luther did
not reach the castle in time to see the old lord alive.
His brother John, long before Frederic's death, had
been much more intimate with Luther, had sent for
him to preach at Weimar, when he was only Duke
John, and was fond of consulting him personally.
After he became Elector, the intimacy between the
Augustinian convent and the castle was continuous, and
Luther was constantly summoned to attend the prince
at distant castles when things of importance were being
debated. He died in 1532, just after the conclusion of
the Treaty of the Peace of Niirnberg, which he had
done so much to bring about. He was a man of
straightforward piety and of great benevolence. John

250 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
the Stedfast was his name in that age of sobriquets.
Poor man ! he grew to be so fat in his latter days that
his people had to hoist him on the back of his horse
by a sort of windlass !
John Frederic, his son and successor (born in 1503),
was twenty years younger than Luther, and we can
see that from his boyhood the Reformer had been
his hero. He was fourteen years old when Luther
published the Theses, eighteen when Luther stood
forth at Worms. The Passional Christi et Anti-
christi had taken great hold on his young mind, and
he was intensely pleased that he was one of the few
who knew who the author was. When he became
Elector, he wished Luther to come and live constantly
with him in the castle and dine daily at his table. He
wrote to him continually in terms of the greatest
familiarity, and could never make enough of him.
His wife, Sibylla of Cleves, was full of loving admira
tion of the household in the Augustinian convent.
Her portrait by Cranach gives one the idea of a tall
lady with a clever, demure face, and eyes and mouth
that are longing to laugh, only that must not be while
one's portrait is being painted. She was the sister of
that Anne of Cleves, the rather stout and large German
lady who was too coarse-looking for such a delicate
creature as Henry vm., and whom he called the
" Flanders Mare." It is curious to think how the
sisters were separated. The one coming over to
England to share a throne, and finding instead a quiet
Hfe in a pleasant English house at Burley-on-the-Hill ;
the other in the heart of the busiest part of Germany,
a true and noble wife, sharing her husband's good
fortunes, counselling wisely him and his, and in the

LAST YEARS OF LUTHER'S LIFE 251
evening of his days, when he lost the Electorate and
almost lost life, sharing in faithfullest fashion every
hardship he had to undergo. Her letters to Luther
are full of bright feminine humour and sincere
womanly piety.
Next to his own Elector, Luther's most intimate
friends among the princes were Wolfgang of Anhalt
and his three nephews, the lords of Anhalt-Dessau.
The history of the three lads is interesting, if there
was time to tell it. They had three bitter supporters
of the papacy for their guardians, and George, the
eldest, intended for the Church, had been made a canon
of Merseberg when he was eleven years old. One
after another they sought the friendship of Luther,
and became strong Protestants. They had a visitation
of their small territories made after the Saxon fashion,
and George, as a clergyman, insisted on conducting it.
In 1539 Duke George of Saxony's brother, Henry,
succeeded to Albertine Saxony, and, with the joyful
consent of his subjects, pronounced for the Evangelical
faith. Nothing would content him but that Luther
should come to Leipzig to preside clerically at such an
auspicious event. He had even to preach in the great
hall of the castle, where just twenty years before he
had stood confronting Eck in the famous Disputation,
and had heard Duke George declare that his opinions
were pestilential. In the afternoon he preached in
one of the town churches, where, on the same occasion,
the priests had swept the elements off the altar into
the sacristy, lest the presence of such a heretic would
profane them.
Perhaps the most romantic story belongs to Electoral
Brandenburg. The Elector, Joachim 1., brother of

252 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
Albert of Mainz, who farmed the Indulgence, was a
strict supporter of the Emperor and the Edict of
Worms. He died praying his son, with tears it was
said, to remain in the old religion — the son being then
committed to the Protestant side. His wife, Eliza
beth, was secretly inclined to the Evangelical faith.
She longed to partake of the Lord's Supper according
to the Evangelical rites, and succeeded, but was not
able to keep the matter from her husband's knowledge.
Whereupon he threatened to " wall her up." The poor
lady managed to escape, and made a desperate flight
to Saxony, to Torgau first, and then to the Castle of
Lichtenstein. There she corresponded regularly with
Luther, and had him to stay with her when he
travelled that way. But she felt that she must know
Catherine, for Luther was always speaking about his
wife, especially to lady friends and correspondents.
The royal lady, therefore, came to Wittenberg, and
spent three months with Catherine in the Luther
household. Her children all sympathised with her, —
the sons at least, — and thus Brandenburg, which is
to-day Prussia, became Protestant. Elizabeth, a king's
daughter and an Electress, must have enjoyed the
Luther family household, with all its bustle, or the
visit would have been somewhat shorter. The young
Elector, Joachim il, and his brother John had always
afterwards an immense esteem for Luther. Their
people, too, had been secretly longing for the Evan
gelical worship, and rejoiced at the change. Electress
Elizabeth went back to Brandenburg after her son's
accession, and ended her days peacefully at Berlin.
Princely correspondence was not always pleasant,
however, even when it came from men who were strong

THE LANDGRAVE'S BIGAMY 253
and hearty for the Evangelical faith. Philip of Hesse,
the brightest, boldest, and by far the most capable of
all the Evangelical princes, had an unhappy home-life.
He had married, when barely nineteen, a daughter of
Duke George of Saxony, and had been, in that age of
sexual licence, a faithful husband to her, in all out
ward respects at least. We have not the lady's story,
it must be remembered ; but the husband's is that she
was of morose temper, that she had a disagreeable
disease, and that she was given to drink. Latterly he
declared that married life with her was impossible,
and that the terms on which he was with her prevented
him going to the Lord's Table and fretted his whole
inner life.
It has been suggested that the statements of some of
the wilder Anabaptists, justifying polygamy from Old
Testament example, first made him think of the possi
bility of taking a second wife. He had thought of
divorce ; but he knew that the strong opinions which
Luther had on the subject of Henry viii.'s divorce
made it impossible for him to get the Evangelical
theologians to consent to such a thing. Brooding over
the whole matter, he convinced himself that there were
cases in which a man might take two wives, and that
his was a case in point. He got no encouragement,
rather dissuasion, at first. He thought himself very
hardly treated, and declared, truly enough, that had he
been a Romanist he could easily have got a dispensa
tion to keep a concubine. We have on record the
yearly sums some bishops made in the beginning of
the sixteenth century by the granting of such dis
pensations. He entrenched himself in the idea that
polygamy was permitted under the Old Testament,

254 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
and was not positively forbidden under the New, and
that matrimony was not part of the ceremonial law of
the Old Testament, which was manifestly done away
with by the coming of Christ.
Matters at last came to a crisis. Philip had fallen
in love with a young lady, Margarethe von der Saal,
whom he met when on a visit to his sister, the Duchess
Elizabeth, at Rochlitz. The young lady, who was
some distant relation of Luther's wife, very properly
refused to have anything to do with him unless she
could be legally married to him ; and her mother's idea
of a legal marriage was one at which Bucer, the
renowned Strassburg theologian, Luther, Melanchthon,
or at least two of them, would be present as witnesses,
with envoys from John Frederic the Elector, and
Maurice, now Duke of Saxony. These two princes
were respectively the second cousin and the nephew of
Philip's wife. Philip prepared his own case, recapitulat
ing the arguments given above, adding some precedents
he had discovered of princes being allowed to take a
second wife, and ending with the compliment that the
lady was a relation of Catherine von Bora, and that
part of his anticipated joy in the marriage was that it
would make him a connection of Luther's by marriage.
He won over Martin Bucer to his side, and indeed the
blame attaching to the Evangelical theologians must
be laid most heavily on Bucer's shoulders. There is
no doubt that this action of Philip was a profound
grief to Luther. The Landgrave had been bringing
the matter before him for thirteen years with increas
ing insistence. It can scarcely be said that Luther's
answer to the question placed before him by the
Landgrave was due to the fear of displeasing a leading

THE LANDGRAVE'S BIGAMY 255
Evangelical prince. For it is clear that the proposed
second marriage must have been, and was, looked upon
as a personal affront by young Maurice of Saxony,
whose ability and power everyone recognised. The
slight put upon his aunt was an insult to himself and
to the family of which he was the head. Luther also
knew that his own Elector not only felt that his
friend's proposal was against the fundamental laws of
Christian morals, but regarded it as an affront upon
the House of Saxony. Then Luther, at the very time
when the question was finally placed before him by the
Margrave, was deeply anxious about the exaggerated
reports he had heard of the Anabaptists encouraging
polygamy, and was very much afraid lest such views
might spread among the peasantry, who, he said, had
already very lax ideas about the sanctity of the
marriage tie. These things ought to be stated, not to
palliate Luther's conduct, for they rather increase the
error, but for the purpose of having the whole situa
tion before us.
The official document sent by Luther, Melanchthon,
and Bucer is very sad reading. It may be summar
ised thus: According to the original commandment
of God, marriage is between one man and one woman,
and the twain shall become one flesh, and this original
precept has been confirmed by our Lord ; but sin brought
it about that first Lamech, then the heathen, and then
Abraham took more than one wife, and this was per
mitted by the law. We are now living under the gospel,
which does not give prescribed rules for the regulation
of the external life, and it has not expressly prohibited
bio-amy. The existing law of the land has gone back
to the original requirement of God, and the plain duty

256 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
of the pastorate is to insist on that original command
ment of God, and to denounce bigamy in every way.
Nevertheless the pastorate, in individual cases of the-
direst need and to prevent worse, may sanction bigamy
in a purely exceptional way; such a bigamous mar
riage is a true marriage (the necessity being proved)
in the sight of God and of conscience, but it is not
a true marriage with reference to public law or
custom. Therefore such a marriage ought to be kept
secret, and the dispensation which is given for it
ought to be kept under the seal of confession. If it
be made known, the dispensation becomes eo ipso in
valid, and the marriage becomes mere concubinage.
This is a short summary of the document which
caused the scandal. It may be well to ask whether
Luther had any principle before him when he drafted
and signed this extraordinary paper? He had, and
this paper is the worst instance or outcome of a
mode of thinking, from which he never completely
divested himself. With all his reverence for the Word
of God he could never avoid giving the traditions
of the Church a certain place beside the Scripture.
We find this thought coming continually forward,
sometimes quite unconsciously, in much of his reason
ings about institutions and in doctrines. He applied
that principle here. The mediaeval Church had been
accustomed to insist that it possessed a power of dis
pensation ; and Luther never altogether denied this.
In this instance, notwithstanding his denunciations
of the dispensations granted in matrimonial cases by
the Roman Curia, he declared that the Church did
possess this power of dispensation even to the length
of tampering with a fundamental law of Christian

THE LANDGRAVE'S BIGAMY 257
society, provided it did not attack a positive scrip
tural ordinance to the contrary. If it had been
pointed out to him that he was acting as the Roman
Curia had done, he would probably have replied that
the Curia took money for its dispensations and that
the Evangelical Church did not, and that this fact
made the two cases entirely dissimilar.
However he reasoned with himself, he thoroughly
repented of his action when it was too late. He was
not present at the marriage, though Philip by a
stratagem did secure poor doubting Melanchthon as
a witness. Repentance, however, as Luther had often said,
„ does not secure against the consequences of sin, and
Luther was to feel this. Nor did Philip escape.
Bigamy was a grave offence against the laws of the
land. Serious talk arose about bringing Philip up
before the Imperial Law Courts and punishing him.
The Emperor ended this by declaring that poor Mar
garethe had never been married at all, and was simply
Philip's concubine. The effect of the formal answer
of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer was simply to
deceive a poor maiden. The full consequences of the
sin did not manifest themselves in Luther's lifetime,
but the beginnings were not lacking. The confeder
acy of Protestant princes received a shock from which
it never recovered; and Maurice of Saxony took his
revenge on Philip when he suddenly deserted to the
Emperor's side when the religious war broke out,
as it did shortly after Luther's death. It must not
be supposed that Evangelical theologians approved of
Luther's conduct. Most of them disapproved strongly,
and the remonstrances of some had the effect of induc-
17

258 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
ing Melanchthon formally, to withdraw his acquies
cence in the paper he had signed along with Luther
and Bucer. Yet the Evangelical cause had to sustain
the burden brought on it by this strange document.

§ 2. The Last Scenes
During the last years of Luther's life attempts
were unceasingly made to bring about a union, or at
least a common understanding, between the North
Germans, represented by Luther, and the South Ger
mans, at the head of whom stood Bucer of Strasburg.
All throughout the conferences Luther endeavoured
to be as friendly as his conscience permitted him ; but
he would on no account have any personal relations
with the Swiss. He could not divest his mind of the
error that Zwingli's views on the Sacrament of the
Supper were those of his old friend Carlstadt, whom
he had never forgiven for his share in bringing on
the deplorable Peasants' War. But the heroic death
of Zwingli at Cappel in October 1531 seems to have
softened all men's minds towards the Swiss, and plans
for united action became more possible. The begin
nings of those conferences go back to the year 1529,
when Evangelical princes and theologians met at
Schmalkald to discuss the situation. The first League
was formed at the same place in view of the threat
of the Emperor to suppress the Reformation by force,
a threat which appeared very real at the Diet of
Augsburg. In this first League only the stricter
Lutheran territories were included, notwithstanding
the entreaties of Bucer that the South Germans
might be allowed to join. In 1531 happier feel-

PROTESTANT UNION 259
ings prevailed, and a mutual defensive alliance
was made between the members of the Schmalkald
League and the South German cities, Luther making
no objection. All the political side of the matter
Luther contentedly left to the princes, saying that
such matters did not belong to the province of the
theologian. A few years of political union renewed the desire
for a still closer approximation. The South German
pastors pled for an interview with Luther and a dis
cussion of the theological situation. The meeting-
place was to be Eisenach, but Luther was too ill to
leave home when the time of conference came. All
the delegates came on to Wittenberg. After some
little talk, it was found that all were in agreement
save on one point in the doctrine of the Sacrament
of the Supper. It was the old story of the corporeal
and local (the last being the test word) presence of the
body of Christ in the bread in the Lord's Supper.
This was a point to which Luther clung with all the
tenacity of his nature, and that simply because he
thought that the words of Scripture required him to
do so. The theory of the local bodily presence had
no connection in his mind with any sort of priestly
miracle or sacrificial theory of the Supper. He ex
plained the possibility of such a local presence by a
scholastic theory of corporeal presence, but he did not
cling to his theory. All that he would not give up
was the thought that the body of Christ was actually
in the mouth of the partakers. He always maintained
in its integrity the thought of the spiritual priesthood
of all believers, and expressly applied the idea to the
partaking in the Lord's Supper. "There," he says,

260 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
" our priest or minister stands before the altar, having
been duly and publicly called to his priestly function,
he repeats publicly and distinctly Christ's words of
the Institution, he takes the bread and the wine, and
distributes it according to Christ's words, and we all
kneel beside him and around him, men and women,
young and old, master and servant, mistress and maid,
all holy priests together, sanctified by the blood of
Christ. And we are there in our priestly dignity. . . .
We do not let the priest proclaim for himself the
ordinance of Christ, but he is the mouthpiece of us
all, and we all say it with him in our hearts, and with
true faith in the Lamb of God, who feeds us with His
body and blood."
The South Germans were able to content Luther so
far that they agreed to differ on the one very small
point of doctrine that remained over. This cheered
Luther immensely. He preached to the little company
of theologians a sermon of wonderful power and sweet
ness. The delegates all partook of the Holy Com
munion together, and then separated to their distant
towns and districts.
These peaceful conferences and the strength they
manifested led some of the more spiritually minded
Roman Catholic divines to ask whether it was not pos
sible for all to come together; and conferences were
held at various places with this aim. The most in
teresting was at Ratisbon, and one has only to read
the conclusions come to to see how very nearly the
best and deepest theology of the mediaeval Church
approaches the Evangelical. The one thing which
really separated the theologians of the two Confessions
was the mediaeval theory of the priesthood and of

THE LAST SCENES 261
the miraculous powers which were believed to be con
ferred on priests in ordination.
Year by year Luther was growing weaker, his
attacks of illness became more frequent, and his bodily
pains more severe and more continuous. One bit of
work remained for him to do, and do it he would at all
risks. The Counts of Mansfeld had quarrelled over
the division of the properties which they had inherited.
It was the division of the small things that had brought
about the quarrel — some trifling revenues and the pat
ronage of some churches. They had agreed to accept
the mediation of Luther, and he gladly responded.
" I would cheerfully lay down my bones in the grave
if I could only reconcile my dear lords," he said. He
left Wittenberg on the 23rd of January 1546, in
bitterly cold weather. His wife and the Elector would
fain have kept him at home. He was very weak and
ill. Only six days before he started he described him
self as " old, spent, worn, weary, and cold, with but one
eye to see with." His two sons, Martin and Paul, went
with him, to see the old place where their father had
been born. He travelled by slow stages, and was
detained at Halle for three days, for thaw setting in
had burst the ice on the river Saal, and great floods
hindered any crossing. His poor wife was very anxious
about him, and he wrote to her five times in the four
teen days, — whimsical letters for the most part, but
always telling her what he had to eat and drink, — prob
ably in obedience to some wifely command. She must
have scolded him for attempting the crossing before
the river was low enough ; for he writes : " Thou must
needs take the cares of God upon thee, as if He were
not Almighty, and could not create ten Dr. Martins if

262 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
one old Dr. Martin were drowned in the Saal," which
pious reflection was not likely to bring much consola
tion to poor Catherine. When he reached Eisleben
and Mansfeld he found the work harder than he had
hoped, his chief difficulties being with the lawyers of
the respective brothers. But at last all was amicably
settled, and Luther accepted the fees of arbiter in the
shape of endowments for village schools in the Mans
feld region. The young Counts made much of him,
and on the 14th of February he wrote his last letter to
his wife. On the outside is : " To my dear kind house
wife, Katharin Luther von Bora, at Wittenberg " ; and
inside : " Grace and peace in the Lord, dear Kaethe ! We
hope to come home again this week, if God will. . . .
The young men are all in the best spirits, and make
sleigh rides every day with fools' bells on their horses ;
and the young ladies also ; and amuse themselves to
gether. ... I send thee some trout which the Countess
Albrecht has presented to me. . . . Thy sons are still
at Mansfeld. Jacob Luther will take good care of
them. ... I have no ailments " — a letter which must
have cheered the anxious wife not a little.
But he was never to see his Kaethe again. He had
preached in Eisleben in the Church of St. Andrew on
the 14th with great power and fervour, when sud
denly he said quietly, " This and much more is to
be said about the gospel ; but I am too weak, and we
will close here." These were his last words in the
pulpit. On the 16 th and 17 th the deeds of the recon
ciliation were duly signed, and Luther's work was
done. He was living in the house of the town-clerk
of Eisleben — a house whose front windows looked
across the street to the church in which he had

THE LAST SCENES 263
been baptized sixty-three years ago. The end came
somewhat suddenly. He was very ill on the 17th;
all his friends waited on him that night — his two
boys, Justus Jonas, his host and hostess, and the
Count and Countess Albrecht of Mansfeld. His suf
ferings were great, he uttered many ejaculations, and
prayed aloud a short beautiful prayer. Jonas said
early in the morning, stooping down to the ear of the
dying man, "Reverend Father, wilt thou stand by
Christ and the doctrine thou hast preached ? " Luther
roused himself to say " Yes." It was his last word.
Twenty minutes later he passed away with a deep
sigh ; poor wife Kaethe doubtless fast asleep at Witten
berg, far away, and dreaming of her husband's safe
return, for he had promised her to be home that week.
He died on Thursday, 18th February, between two
and three in the morning, not a hundred yards from
the place where he first saw the light so many years
ago. The Elector, John Frederic, was resolved that his
lifelong hero and friend should be laid in the grave at
Wittenberg, and Catherine wished that also. So the
Eisleben people had a service in the Church of St.
Andrew, which lasted two days. On the 20th the
funeral procession began its long march. The Counts
of Mansfeld, with their wives, followed as far as the
gates of Eisleben, with the magistrates and the whole
population of the town. A troop of fifty light-armed
horse, commanded by the sons of the Counts of Mans
feld, rode in front, and escorted the procession all the
way to Wittenberg. Delegates from the Elector met
the procession when it crossed the boundaries between
Mansfeld and Electoral Saxony. The bells tolled in

264 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
every village church steeple on the route, and at all
the cross-roads were groups of weeping peasants.
They laid him to rest in the Castle Church of
Wittenberg, near the door, where he had nailed up
the theses which had kindled such a conflagration.
Luther is the man of his epoch — but what man
can ever adequately represent an epoch? The age
is always richer than the greatest individual belonging
to it, and brings into the world more than any man of
the time can see, understand, or make his own. His
epoch had elements of culture which Luther either
deliberately rejected or was unable to appropriate.
There were indestructible elements in the culture of
men like Erasmus and Sir Thomas More which Luther
could not appreciate. His age was fertile in economic
suggestions which were a sealed book to Luther. He
might have learned much even from such fanatics as
Miinzer or the leaders in the Peasants' War. His in
ability to see the promise and potency of life which
lay in the rude strivings of the " common man " marred
his reforming work and still paralyses the European
portions of the Church which bears his name. These
and other defects may have nevertheless aided him in
doing what he did accomplish. He was not too far
before his contemporaries to prevent them seeing his
footprints and following in his steps. Yet, as Harnack
has remarked: "What an inexhaustible richness his
personality included ! How it possessed in heroic shape
all that the time most lacked — a wealth of original
intuition which outweighed all the elements of culture
in which it was defective ; a certainty and boldness of
vision which was of more value than any insistence on

CRITICAL APPRECIATION 265
free investigation ; a power to lay hold on what was
true and to conserve what would stand the test of time
compared with which the merely critical faculty is
pointless and feeble ; above all a wonderful ability to
give expression to strong feeling and true thought, to
be a seer and a speaker, to persuade by the written
and spoken word as the prophet must do."
His conduct towards Zwingli and the Swiss, as also
the strong language which he used towards opponents,
reveals to later generations a fund of intolerance which
is not what one expects from such a great man ; but it
is manifest that his contemporaries did not and could
not pass the same judgment. While he lived, he
held the Protestant forces together in a manner that
only a man of broad, wise tolerance could have done.
His sincerity, his wise patience, his power of separat
ing what was essential from what was accidental are
apparent when we think of what occurred after his
death, when he was no longer there to hold in check
the petty orthodoxies of the Amsdorfs and Osianders
among his followers. It is the fate of most of the
authors of revolutions to be devoured by the move
ment which they have called into being. Luther
occasioned the greatest revolution which Western
Europe has ever seen, and he ruled it till his death.
History shows no other man with such kingly power.
This king among men was also the most human.
He had his fits of brooding melancholy, his times of
jovial abandonment when one can hear his great jolly
laugh and his rich sonorous voice carolling forth songs
his moods of the softest tenderness with wife and
children, and his abiding sense of companionship with
the Eternal. What is especially Luther-like in this

266 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION
last is that he carries this Holy of Holies about with
him, and that it makes him companionable and not
solitary. It makes him sympathise with beast and
bird and tree and plant — with the hares in the woods
about the Wartburg, with the little bird in his garden,
with the rooks who built their nests far below his
window in the Coburg Castle, with the rose and the
flax and the pine trees. The God, who is his closest
companion, made them all.
Luther, we may add, is the type of the best German
manhood, in his patient industry, his enjoyment of
quiet home-life among wife and bairns, his love of
music, and his power to kindle when occasion arises
into that slow-burning fire which consumes opposition.
Dead these long centuries ago, he is still living in the
German nation. For, as even Dollinger admits, " he has
stamped the imperishable seal of his soul alike upon
the German language and the German mind," so that
"even those Germans, who abhor him most as the
powerful heretic and the seducer of the nation, cannot
escape ; they must discourse with his words, they must
think with his thoughts."

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION

267

CHRONOLOGICAL

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1493-1519. —Jan. 12,
Maximilian I. Em
peror. At his death
the Elector Frederick
the Wise of Saxony
(1480-1525), viceroy.
1499-1535. —Elector
Joachim I. (Nestor)
of Brandenburg.
1500 - 1539. — Duke
George of Saxony.
1509 - 1547. — Henry
vm. of England.
1515-1547.— Francis I.
of France.
1518-1567.— Philip the
Magnanimous of
Hesse (6. 1504).

1519. — June, Charles
v. {since 1516 King
of Spain) — 1556,
Aug. 27, Emperor of
Germany (d. 1558).
1519-1566.— Suliman I.
Sultan.

1517.— Oct. 31, Maetin Luther [b.
1483, Nov. 10, at Eisleben ; 1497,
at Latin School at Magdeburg;
1498, at Eisenach (Frau Cotta, d.
1511); 1501, at Erfurt; 1505,
Master of Arts ; July 17, entered
the Augustinian Cloister at Er
furt; 1518, Professor at Witten
berg ; 1511, at Rome ; 1512, Oct.
19, Dr. of Theology] nailed 95
theses against the abuse of in
dulgences on the door of the
Castle Church at Wittenberg.
Counter - theses of John Tetzel,
composed by Conrad Wimpina.
1518. — Silvester Mazzolini of Prierio:
DiaZogus in prcesumptuosas M.
L. conclusiones de potestate Papce ;
Luther's Resp. ad Silv. Prier.
April 26, Luther at Heidelberg
Disputation. Aug. : Cited to appear at Rome.
Aug. 25, Melanchthon at Wit
tenberg. Oct. 12-15, Luther at Augsburg
before Card. Thomas Vio de
Gaeta ; appeals a papa male m-
formato act melius informandum.
Nov. : Luther, On the Sacra
ment of Penance.
1519. — Jan. : Luther's interview
with Charles of Miltitz, papal
chamberlain at Altenburg ; Truce.
June 27-July 8, Disputation
at Leipzig : (1) between Eck and
Carlstadt, on the Doctrine of Free
Will; and (2) between Eck and
Luther, Deprimatu Papce.
268

Ulrich Zwinqli: S.
1484, Jan. 1, at Wild-
haus, in Canton of St.
Gallen ; scholar of
Henry Wdlfiin (Lupu-
lus) at Berne; of
Thomas Wyttenbach
at Basel ; 1499, student
of Joachim Vadianus
at Vienna ; 1506, M. A.;
1506 - 16, pastor at
Glarus ; 1516 - 18,
preacher at St. Mary's,
Einsiedeln.

1518. — Zwingli against
the indulgence preach
ed by Bernardin Samp
son (Guardian of the
Franciscan Cloister at
Milan). Dec: Zwingli pastor
in the Minster at
Zurich.

1519. — Jan. 1, Zwingli
delivers his first ser
mon in Zurich ; sermons
on St. Matthew's Gos
pel, Acts, and the
Pauline Epistles ; Re
formation sermons,
pointing out a clear

SUMMARY

Revolutionary Movements.

Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Theology.

1513, Mar. 11-1521, Dec. 1.
— Leo x.
1517. — The Lateran Council
grant to the Pope the
tithes of all church pro
perty. Indulgence (the fifth be
tween 1500 and 1517) for
the building of St. Peter's
and for the Pope's private
needs. Three indulgence com
missions granted for Ger
many, one farmed by
Elector Archbishop of
Mainz (consec. 1514), the
Dominican John Tetzel (d.
1519), his commissioner.
Thomas Vio de Gaeta
(Card. Cajetan): "The
Catholic Church is the
bond-slave of the Pope" ;
asserts papal infallibility
in the widest sense.

1519.— The Cortes of Aragon
ask three Briefs (never sent)
from Leo x. to restrain
the Inquisition. Similarly
fruitless applications made
by the Estates of Aragon,
Castile, and Catalonia to
Charles v. in 1516.

Philip Melanchthon (b. 1497,
Feb. 16, at Bretten ; 1509-12,
at Heidelberg; 1512-14, at
Tubingen ; 1514, M.A., 1514-
18, teaches in Tubingen ; 1518,
Prof, of Greek at Witten
berg; Aug. 29, Introductory-
Lecture, Le corrigendis
adolescentice studiis ; 1519,
Sept. 19, Bach, of Theo
logy; d. 1560, April 19).
Loci communes rerum Theo-
logicarum, seu hypotyposes
Thfiologicse, 1521 ; three edi
tions in 1521 ; edition of 1525
modifies absolute predestina
tion ; edition of 1535 recon
structs his theology; edition
of 1543, Synergism.

Zwingli : Oommentarius de vera
et falsa religions, 1525 ; Fidei
ratio ad Oarolum Impera-
torem, 1530, July 3 ; Sermonis
deprovidentiaLei Anamnema.
1530; Ohristiance Fidei ex-
positio, 1531.

270

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1519-1521. —Fernando
Cortez discovers and
conquers Mexico.

1520. — Magellan sails
round the world.

1521-26.— First war
between Charles v.
and Francis 1.
1525.— Battle of Pavia.
1526. — Peace of Madrid .

The controversy is no longer
one about a point in scholastic
theology; it involves the whole
round of ecclesiastical principles.
Break with the Roman Chris
tendom. The doctrine of the Priesthood
of all Believers.
Christian freedom and the right
of private judgment.
Luther's sermons on the Sacra
ments of Repentance and Baptism,
and on Excommunication.
Demand for the celebration of
the Lord's Supper under both
kinds.

1520.— April : Ulrich v. Hutten (b.
1488, April 21 ; d. 1523, Aug. 29) ;
Dialogue : Vadiscus or the Roman
Trinity; June 15, Bull of Excom
munication against 41 propositions
of Luther ; 60 days for recanta
tion; Aug.: Luther, "To the
Christian Nobles of the German
Nation, on the Bettering of the
Christian Estate " ; Oct. : De Cap-
tivitate Eccles. Babylonic. ; Le
libertate Christiana (of the freedom
of a Christian man) ; Dec. 10,
Papal Bull burnt.

1521.— April 17, 18, Luther at the
Diet of Worms ; April 26, leaves
Worms ; at the Wartburg, May 4-
Mar. 3, 1522. [In Dec. begins
translation of N.T. ; Tracts : On
Penance, Against Private Masses,
Against Clerical and Cloister
Vows, The German Postille.}
May 26, Edict of Worms falsely
antedated May 8.
May 28, Imperial decree against
Luther. June : Carlstadt against celi
bacy. Oct. : The Mass abolished at

distinction between
Biblical and Romanist
Christianity; Humanist
study of Scripture
(Pauline Epistles).

In France, spread and
preaching of Reformed
doctrines through
William Briconnet,
Bishop of Meaux from
1521. With him Le
Fevre and Farel.
1521. — Cornelius Hoen,
Dutch jurist, writes
De Eucharistia (The
Lord's Supper purely
symbolical) ; the doc
trine brought to Wit
tenberg and Zurich by

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

271

Revolutionary Movements.

Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Theology.

Romanist Theologians in the
first period of the Refor-

1521.— The (Zwickau)
Prophets in Witten
berg, Nicholas Storch,
Marcus Thomas Stub -
ner ; Martin Cellarius.
Andrew Bodenstein of
Carlstadt: 1504, Prof.
in Wittenberg ; 1520,
at Copenhagen ; 1522,
riots about images
and vestments ; 1523-
24, in Orlamunde ;
then excommunicated
in South Germany,
East Friesland, Swit
zerland ; d. Basel,
1541.

John Eck, Prof, of Theology
at Ingolstadt since 1510 ;
b. 1486, in the Swabian
village of Eck ; d. 1543.

Jerome Emser, court preacher
to Duke George of Saxony ;
d. 1527.

John CochUeus (Dobeneck),
Dean at Frankfort-on-
the-Maine, Canonicus in
Mainz and Breslau ; d.
1552 ; Cmnmentaria de
actis et scriptis M. Lutheri
(1517-46); 1549, His-
torice Hussitarum.
John Faber, 1518, Vicar-
General at Constance ;
1529, Provost at Ofen ;
1530, Bishop of Vienna ; d.
1561 ; 1523, Malleus hcere-
ticorum.
1521.— Henry vm. of Eng
land : Assertatio vii. Sacra-
mentorum contra Lutherum
(Defender of the Faith).
April 15, Decree of the
Sorbonne condemning
Luther's doctrines.
May 8, Edict of Charles
v. (founded on Edict of
Worms) against the spread
of Reformation doctrines
in the Netherlands. [1522,
the Augustinian cloister
at Antwerp closed for
¦•]

(a) Lutheran Theologians.
George Spalatin : b. 1484 at
Spalt, in the bishopric at
Eichstadt ; 1514, court chap
lain to Frederick the Wise ;
1525, Superintendent at Alten
burg; d. 1545.
Justus Jonas : b. 1493, at Nord-
hausen ; 1521, Provost and
Prof, at Wittenberg ; 1541-46,
at Halle ; 1551, Superintend
ent at Eisfeld ; d. 1555.
Nicholas of Amsdorf: b. 1483 ;
since 1504 at Wittenberg;
1524, at Magdeburg ; 1528, at
Goslar; 1542-46, Bishop of
Naumbnrg; after 1550, at
Eisenach ; d. 1565.
John Bugenhagen : b. 1485 ;
from 1521 in Wittenberg ;
1522, pastor; 1536, General
Superintendent there.
Casper Cruciger : 1528-48, when
he died, Prof, at Wittenberg.
Fred. Myconius, Franciscan at
Annaberg, then pastor in
Weimar ; 1524, Court preacher
at Gotha ; d. 1546.
Paul Speratus : 1521, at Vienna,
then at Iglau ; 1523, at Witten
berg (1524, "Salvation has
come to us ") ; 1524, in Kb'nigs-
berg ; 1529-51, when he died,
Bishop of Pomerania in Marien-
werder.
John Brenz, b. 1499: 1520,
Romanist preacher at Heidel
berg; 1522-46, Lutheran
preacher at Hall in Swabia;
from 1563, provost at Stutt
gart ; d. 1570, Sept. 11.

272

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1523-33.— Frederick I.
of Denmark.
1523 - 60. — Gustavus
Vasa of Sweden.

Wittenberg by the Augustinian
monks (Gabriel Didymus).
Dec. : Carlstadt's innovations.
Dec. 25, Lord's Supper in both
kinds. Dec. 27, The Prophets in Wit
tenberg.
1522.— Feb.: Riots in Wittenberg
sgainst images and pictures.
Mar. 7, Luther back in Witten
berg. Mar. 9-16, Sermons against fan
aticism. July: Contra Henricum regem
Anglice. Sept.: Translation of N.T.
finished (whole Bible in 1534).
Dec. : Diet at Niirnberg ; The
Hundred Grievances of the Ger
man Estates, in answer to Hadrian
VI. 's Brief of Nov. 25.
1522-23.— The Reformation con
quers in Pomerania, Livonia, Sil
esia, Prussia, Mecklenburg; in
East Friesland from 1519 ; 1523,
in Frankfort - on - the - Maine, in
Hall in Swabia; 1524, Ulm, Stras-
burg, Bremen, Niirnberg.
1523. — July 1, Henry Voes and
John Esch (Augustinians), burnt
at Brussels ; the first martyrs.
Gustavus Vasa establishes the
Reformation in Sweden (Olaf and
Lorenz Petersen, Lorenz Ander
sen). May 7, Sickingen slain ; revolt
of nobles quelled by the princes.
Luther : Of the Order of Public
Worship ; Dec. : Formula Misses
(Lord's Supper sub utraque).

1524.— The first
Boole. June-May 1525, The Peasants'
War; peasants slaughtered at
Frankenhausen.

John Rhodius, Presi
dent of the Brother
House at Utrecht.

1522.— April 16, Zwingli :
Von Erkiesen und
Fryheit der Spysen ;
Aug. : Apologeticus
A rcheteles, to the
Bishop of Constance.
The Zwinglian theo
logy gradually be
comes the more power
ful in the Netherlands.

1523.— Jan. 29, Disputa
tion in Zurich between
Zwingli and John
Faber, the Bishop's
Vicar-General ; Zwing
li's 67 theses.
Oct. 26, Disputation
at Zurich about image-
worship and the Mass.
Nov. 17, Instruction
of Zurich Council to
pastors and preachers.

1524. — -Thorough reform
of church at Zurich;
pictures taken down ;
Friars' convents closed.
Victory of the Re
formation in Berne
(Berchtholdt Haller,
Nic. Manuel), Ap
penzell, Solothurn ;
Romanist League of
the Forest Cantons at
Lucerne.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

273

Revolutionary Movements

Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Theology.

1523. — Conrad Grebel,
Felix Manz, and
Stumpf in Zurich,
against Zwingli's
State Church.

1524.— Disturbances in
Stockholm ; Melchior
Hoffmann.

1525.— Thomas Miinzer
at Miihlhausen ; exe-
,', cuted May 1525.
Tract: Wider das
geistlose sanftlebende
Fleisch zu Witten
berg, 1522.
Jan. : Rise of the
Anabaptists ; Jurg
Blaurock, a monk
from Chur. 18

1522-23.— Sept. 14, Pope
Hadrian vi. (tutor to
Charles v., Bishop of
Utrecht), learned in the
old learning ; aspiration
after a reform of the clergy
through the hierarchy.

In Spain, from 1520,
circulation of Lutheran
writings in Spanish trans
lations made at Antwerp.

1523.— Juan de Avila, "the
Apostle of Andalusia,"
suffered persecution for
Lutheran doctrine.

1523-34. —Sept. 25, Pope
Clement vii. (Julius
Medici, natural son of
Julian de Medici).

1524.— Cardinal Campeggio,
Pope's Legate at the Diet
of Niirnberg.
League of South Ger
man Roman Catholic
States at Regensburg (Fer
dinand of Austria, the
Dukes of Bavaria, and the
South German bishops).
Terms : A certain measure
of ecclesiastical reform,
and alliance with the civil
power ; but no further
spread of the new doc
trines.

(b) Zwinglian Theologians.
John GScolampadius (Heusgen),
6. 1488 ; 1515, pastor at Basel ;
1519, in Augsburg; 1522,
Prof, and preacher at Basel ;
d. 1531, Nov. 24.

Leo Judaeus : 1523, curate in St.
Peter's at Zurich ; 6. 1482 ; d.
1542.

Oswald Myconius (Geisshiisler) :
b. 1488 at Lucerne; 1532-d.
1552, Oct. 14, Antistes at Basel.

Conrad Pellican (Kiirsner) : b.
1478 ; 1493, Franciscan ; from
1502, Lector in Franciscan
Cloister in Basel; 1527, at
Zurich as Prof, of Hebrew ; d.
1556.

(c) Intermediate Theologians.
Urbanus Rhegius: b. 1490, at
Argau on the Bodensee ; 1512,
Prof, at Ingolstadt; 1519,
Priest at Constance ; 1520-22,
Preacher in Augsburg; from
1530, Reformer in Brunswick,
in the service of Duke Ernest ;
d. at Celle, 1541, May 23.
Ambrose Blaurer: b. 1492, at
Constance ; 1534-38, Reformer
of Wiirtemberg ; to 1548, at
Constance ; d. at Winterthur,
1564. (1534, Stuttgart Con
cord.)

274

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1525.— Albert of Bran
denburg (d. 1568);
last Grand Master of
the Teutonic Knights ;
changed the territory
of the Order into the
Dukedom of Prussia.

1525-32.— Elector John
the Constant of Sax
ony (brother of Fred
erick the Wise).

1526.— Aug. 29 : Lewis,
king of Hungary and
Bohemia, falls fight
ing at Mohacz against
the Turks.
His successor,
Ferdinand of Austria
(Oct. , chosen king
of Bohemia), has to
make good his claims
to Hungary against
the Turks.

1525. — Jan.: Luther: Against the
Heavenly Prophets.
May : Exhorts princes and peas
ants to keep the peace, with com
ments on the twelve articles.
Then : Against the robber-murder
ing Peasants.
June 13, Marries Catherine von
Bora. Conservative tendency of
Lutheran Reformation ; separa
tion from more revolutionary
elements.
1525. — Dec. : Luther, De Servo
Arbitrio against Erasmus, Aiai-pip*
de libero arbitrio, Sept. 1524.

1526. — May 4 : League at Torgau
between Philip of Hesse and John
the Constant, joined in June at
Magdeburg by other evangelical
princes. June 26, League of North Ger
man Roman Catholic princes at
Dessau.

June and July, Diet at Speier.
"In matters of religion each State
shall live, govern, and behave itself,
as it shall answer to God and His
Imperial Majesty."

Oct. 20, Synod at Homberg;
Hessian Church Order by Francis
Lambert (b. 1487, at Avignon ;
Franciscan ; fled 1522 to Switzer
land ; 1527, Prof, in Marburg ;
d. 1530); independence of the
Christian community, andstrictest
church discipline.

1525.— The Mass abolish
ed in Zurich ; pubhc
worship very simple
and in German lan
guage ; Lord's Supper
sub utraque.
Zwingli's Commen
tary and first part of
Zurich translation of
Bible. (First complete
edition 1531.)

Zwingli's distinctive con
fessional statement of
his doctrine of the
Lord's Supper.
[Carlstadt publishes
his theory of the Lord's
Supper in South Ger
many ; ZuxTtxSe : This
My Body, is the Body, :
etc.]
Zwingli to Matth. Alber
at Reutlingen, 1524,
Nov. 16, Manducatio
spiritualis ; then in
his commentary.
Against Zwingli : Bugen
hagen.
For Zwingli : (Ecolampa-
dius.
The Syngramma Suevi-
cum, 1525 (at Hall),
by Brenz, Schnepf,
Griebler, etc., later
Calvin.
Luther against Zwingli—
(1) in his preface to
Agricola's translation
of the Syngramma
Suevicum ; (2) in 1527,
"That the words, This
is My Body, etc."

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

275

Revolutionary Movements.

Severe persecution
of the Anabaptists
(Manz drowned at
Zurich, 1527 ; Balth.
Hubmaier burnt at
Vienna, 1528 ; Hetzer
beheaded at Con
stance, 1529).

Melchior Hoffmann : b.
at Hall, in Swabia
1523, in Livonia
1527, in Holstein
1529, at Strasburg
thence to Friesland.
where he joined the
Baptists ; then in the
. Netherlands ; 1533,
in Strasburg ; d. 1540.
{Ordinanz Gottes) :
a strict millenarian of
the more spiritual
kind ; spreads millen
arian views among
the Baptists.

Roman Catholic Church.

1524.— Peter Caraffa. Bishop
of Theate [Pope Paul iv.],
instituted the Order of
the Theatini to stay the
spread of the Reformation.

1526.— May 29: League at
Cognac against Charles v.
(the Pope, Francis I.,
Venice, and Milan).

Protestant Theology.

Martin Bucer: b. 1491, at
Schlettstadt ; 1505, Domin
ican ; from 1524, pastor in
Strasburg ; 1549, under Ed
ward vi. in England, and Prof,
at Cambridge ; d. 1551, Feb.
28.
Wolfgang Fabricius Capito : b.
1478 ; 1515, in Basel ; 1520, in
Mainz: 1523-rf. 1541, Dec,
Provost of St. Thomas, Stras
burg. (d) Zwinglian Confessions.
1523. — Jan. 29, Zwingli's 67
Articles. Nov. 17, Instructions to the
Council of Zurich.

1530. — July 3, Fidei Ratio ad
Carolum V. (Zwingli, assented
to by GSeolampadius and other
Reformers).

1530. — Confessio Tetrapolitana
(Strasburg, Constance, Lindau,
Memmingen) ; Bucer, Capito,
Hedio ; during the sitting of
the Diet at Augsburg.

1534. — Confessio
(Myconius) accepted by Miihl-
hausen in 1537, and called
Conf. Muhlhusiana.

1536.— Confessio Helvetica Prior
(Basil. 11. ) drawn up at Basel
(Jan. to March) by delegates
from the Evangelical Cantons,
and by their theologians, Bul
linger, Myconius, Grynseus,
Leo Judseus, etc.

276

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

1527.— Sack of Rome.

1527-29.— The second
war between Charles
v. and Francis I.;
Peace of Cambrai,
Aug. 1529.
1527.— Henry vm. of
England seeks di
vorce from Catharine
of Aragon (Charles
v.'s aunt) ; 1529,
Wolsey in disgrace ;
Thomas More, chan
cellor.

1529.— Sept.-Oct. 14,
Sulimanlays siege to
Vienna.

Lutheran Church,

Luther. — German Mass ; Order of
Public Worship.

Frederick I. of Denmark adheres to
the Lutheran doctrine (John
Tausen in Jutland from 1524).

1527. — The first Visitation of
Electoral Saxony ; Gustavus Vasa
proposes the Reformation to the
Diet at Westeras.
Frederick I. of Denmark, at the
Diet of Odensee, gives the reformed
religion the same privileges as the
Roman Catholic.

1528. — Otto v. Pack's statement of a
Roman Catholic League formed at
Breslau, 1527 ; the Reformation
spreads in Norway.

1529.— Feb. 26, Diet at Speler;
April 12, the decision of Roman
Catholic majority of Electors and
Princes, " Whoever has enforced
the Edict of Worms is to do so
still ; the others are to allow no
further innovations ; no one to be
prevented from celebrating Mass " ;
April 19, agreed to by the cities.
Protest: April 25, Appeal
taken to the Emperor and Council
by Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg,
Anhalt, Liineburg, and fourteen
cities.

Reformed Church.

Zwingli's ecclesiastical
and political church
principles; his political
reformation of Switzer
land ; political league
of the Roman Cathohc
Forest Cantons to pre
serve their supremacy.
1526.— The Roman Cath
olic Cantons attacking
the Evangelical.
May : Disputation at
Baden (Eck and GScol-
ampadius.

1528.— The Reformation
victorious in St. Gallen
(Joachim Vadianus,
John Kessler) ; and in
Berne.
1529. — Reformation con
quers in Basel (GScolam-
padius, Capito, Hedio).
League of five Forest
Cantons with the House
of Hapsburg.
June 24, Peace of
Cappel ; the Forest
Cantons abandon the
Hapsburg League and
recognise liberty of con
science.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

277

Revolutionary Movements.

Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Theology.

Caspar Schwenkfeld : b.
1490, at Ossing, near
Liegnitz ; in the ser
vice of the Duke of
Liegnitz ; 1525, be
lieved that he had
found an explanation
of the words of the
institution : " Quod
ipse panis fractus
est corpori esurienti,
nempe cibus, hoc est
corpus meum, cibus
videlicet esurientium
animarum " ; hence
his doctrine of Christ,
The Inner Word (De
cursu Verbi Dei, ori-
gine fidei et ratione
justificationis, 1527) ;
of the Person of
Christ (not made
man, but begotten by
the Divine nature :
His flesh, Divine) ;
1528, driven from
Silesia; in Strasburg,
Augsburg, Speier,
Ulm, persecuted from
1539 by Lutheran
theologians ; in many
controversies ; d.
1561, at Ulm; fol
lowers in Silesia ;
since 1730 in Penn
sylvania.

1527.— Process of the Sor
bonne against Jacques le
F&vre {d. 1537, on a jour
ney to Strasburg, under
the protection of Margaret
of Navarre).
1527. — May 6, Charles of
Bourbon storms Rome ;
the Pope shut up in St.
Angelo till June 6 ; Charles
v., master of most of the
States of the Church, pro
poses to limit the temporal
power of the Pope ; the
Pope appeals to England
and France ; a French
army equipped by English
money marches to his
assistance.
1528.— June 29 : Peace be
tween Emperor and Pope
at Barcelona ; the Pope
gets back the States of the
Church and Florence ;
Heresy to be extermin
ated.

(e) Lutheran Confessions.
1529. — Luther's Larger and
Shorter Catechism in German ;
appeared simultaneously.

1530.— Confessio Augustana; or,
Augsburg Confession, framed
out of— (1) the 15 Marburg
Articles ; (2) the 17 Schmalkald
Articles drawn up by Luther ;
(3) Torgau Articles, compiled
by Luther,Melanchthon, Justus
Jonas, Bugenhagen, and pre
sented to the Elector at Torgau
in March 1530. The work of
Melanchthon assisted by the
evangelical theologians assem
bled at Augsburg, and revised
by Luther.

Statement of Evangelical
Doctrine, " In qua cerni potest,
nihil inesse, quod discrepet a
Scripturis vel ab ecclesia
catholica vel ab ecclesia
Romana, quatenus ex scrip-
toribus nota est. . . . Sed
dissensus est de quibusdam
abusibus, qui sinecertaauctori-
tate in ecclesiamirrepserunt."
Philip 'of Hesse signed with
protest against Article X. on
the Lord's Supper in the In-
variata.
Impossible to fix the exact text
of either the German or the
Latin editions ; Melanchthon's
first printed edition, Witten
berg, 1530, in 4to.
The Variata (variations specially
in Article X.) since 1540.

The Apology for tlie Augsburg
Confession. — The prima de-

278

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1530.— Feb. 24, Charles
v. crowned at Bo
logna by the Pope.
No German princes
present.

1531. — Ferdinand of
Austria, king of the
Romans ; Bavaria
and Electoral Saxony
oppose.

1532. — Aug. - 1547,
John Frederick the
Magnanimous, Elec-
, tor of Saxony; d.
1554.

Separation between the Lutheran and South German Protest
ants ; Luther objects to armed resistance ; Zwingli plans to
abolish the Papacy and the Mediasval and Papal Empire;
Philip of Hesse tries to bring about union.

Oct. 1-4, Religious conference at Marburg (Luther, Melanch
thon, Zwingli, CEcolampadius, Justus Jonas, Osiander,
Brenz, etc.) ; on Oct. 4, union on fourteen articles, division
on fifteenth — Sacrament of Supper. Zwingli : " There are
none on earth's round I would more gladly be at one with
than the men of Wittenberg." Luther : " You have another
Spirit than we." Zwingli's hand refused.

Oct. 16, Luther at the Convent of Schwabach ; Nov. 30, at
Schmalkald ; Saxony breaks away from South German cities.

1530. — Diet at Augsburg: June
15, entry of Emperor ; fruitless
negotiations with the Evangelical
princes to induce them to join the
Corpus-Christi procession ; June
20, Diet opened ; June 25, Augs.
Confess, read and given in (Aug.
3, Confutation read); July 11,
Confes. Tetrapolitana read) ; Con
futation, Oct. 17), and Zwingli's
Fidei Ratio ; Aug. 16-29, Nego
tiations with Melanchthon, in
which he proves too pliable.
Nov. 19. — Decree of Diet. Pro
testants to get till April 15, 1531,
then suppression by force.
1531. — Schmalkald League of Pro
testants — at the head, Hesse and
Saxony.

1532.— Diet of Numberg : Tolera
tion till a General Council.
Dessau receives the Reformation.

The Roman Catholic
Cantons do not observe
the terms of peace.

1531. — May 15, at Aarau
the Forest Cantons
are refused provisions,
Zwingli objecting.

Oct. 11, Battle of
Cappel ; Zwingli slain ;
Second Peace of Cappel.
Henry Bullinger,
Zwingli's successor.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

279

Revolutionary Movements.

Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Theology.

1533.— The Kingdom of
Christ in Miinster.
Bernhard Roth
mann, Evangelical
Superintendent in
Munster, joins the
Anabaptists ; Henry
Roll and the Wassen-
berg preachers from
Jiilich. Summer : Melchio
rites in Munster.
Nov. : Jan Matthie-
sen.

1534— Lent: Riot, de
struction of images
and cloisters.
Easter Eve : Mat-
thiesen overthrown ;
John of Leyden at
the head of the Ana
baptists ; Theocracy.
1535.— Eve of St. John:
Miinster taken.

1530. — Reformed congrega
tions in Spain. In Se
ville : Rodrigo de Valero,
Joh. Egidius, Ponce de la
Fuente. In Valladolid,
1555, Axigustin Cazalla.
Francis Enzinas trans
lates the N.T. ; 1556, new
translation by Juan Perez.
All stamped out by
Philip 11. and the Inquisi
tion.
Italy. — The German Refor
mation awakens religious
life and Augustinian theo
logy ; Contarini, Regi
nald Pole, Joh. de Merone
(Archbishop of Modena),
Peter Paul Vergerius
(went over to the Refor
mation in 1548 ; d. 1565).
Reformation at Ferrara
(Renee married, 1527, to
Hercules II.) ; at Venice ;
at Naples (Juan Valdez,
d. 1540 ; and Bernard
Ochino) ; at Lucca (Peter
Martyr).

1534-49. — Paul III. Pope
(Farnese) ; Vergerius his
legate in Germany.

lineatio apologia; by Melanch
thon in Sept. 1530, at Augs
burg ; fully revised, Nov.
1530-April 1531 ; first edition,
April 1531 ; German edition
by Justus Jonas, Oct. 1531.

The Schmalkald Articles, by
Luther, for the Protestant
Convention at Schmalkald,
1557, and with reference to the
proposed General Council at
Mantua. [Strictly Lutheran.]

Controversies in the Lutheran
Church.
1548-55. — Adiaphoristic : Fla-
cius, Wigand, Amsdorf, against
Leipzig Interim.

1549-66. — Osiander : Andrew
Osiander (at Niirnberg, 1522-
48 ; at Kb'nigsberg, 15i9-d.
1552) ; 1550, De Justifications ;
1551, De Unieo Mediatore Jesu
Christo ; "Justification is a
participation in the righteous
ness of Christ," cujus natura
divina homini quasi infun-
ditur. In connection there
with his doctrine of the Divine
image in man.
In opposition : Francis Stan-
carus from Mantua (1551-52
in Kb'nigsberg, then in the

28o

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

Henry Tin. di

vorced by Parlia

ment from Catharine
of Aragon.
Nov. : Marries
Anne Boleyn.
1534. — Restoration of
1534. — Lutheran Reformation gains
Reformation in French
Duke Ulrich of Wiir
Wiirtemberg, Anhalt, Augsburg,
Switzerland under
temberg by Philip of
and Pomerania.
Calvin.
Hesse.
1535. — Joachim n.,
Elector of Branden-
William Farel (b. 1489,
berg.
in Dauphins' ; 1530, in
Neufchatel; 1532, in
1536-38. —Third war
1536. — Wittenberg Concord ; Melan
Berne ; d. 1565, in
between Charles v.
chthon and Bucer ; Lord's Supper
Geneva) ; and Peter
and Francis I.
in Lutheran sense only; eating
Viret [b. 1511, at Orbe;
of the unworthy, " of the unbeliev
1531-59, at Lausanne ;
ing," avoided ; Baptism ; Absolu
from 1561, at Nismes
tion ; came to nothing ; difficulties
and Lyons ; d. 1571) ;
concealed, not explained.
from 1534, Refor
Reformation victorious in Den
mation preachers in
mark.
Geneva.
1537. — Convention at Schmalkald ;
the Schmalkald Articles.
1536. — John Calvin at
Geneva : b. 1509, July
1538. — Ten years'
1538. — Roman Catholic League at
10, at Noyon ; studied
truce at Nice.
Niirnberg.
at Orleans and Paris ;
1533, joined Reforma
1539. — Reformation victorious in
tion in Paris ; at Basel ;
Ducal Saxony and in Electoral
1536, Institutio Cteis-
Brandenburg.
tiauseReligiouis jthen
in Ferrara ; strict eccle-
1540. — June; ConferenceatHagenau.
. siastical discipline ;
Nov. 25-Jan. 14, at Worms
Easter, 1538, banished
(Granvella, Melanchthon, Bucer,
from Geneva, goes to
Capito, Brenz, Calvin, Eck, Coch-
Strasburg ; recalled
laens).
1541; d. 1564, May 27.
Feb. : Regensburg Interim.
i
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

281

Revolutionary Movements.

1536.— Jan. 22, John of
Leyden, Knipperdoll
ing, and Krechting
executed.

Roman Catholic Church.

1534. — David Joris : 5.
1501, at Delft ; joins
the Anabaptists;
reforms them ; his
influence in the
Netherlands and East
Friesland ; 1542, his
Wunderbuch ; 1544,
in Basel ; a Mystical-
spiritualistic specula
tion with a rationalist
tendency.

The Mennonites.
MennoSimonis: b. 1492,
at Witmarsum ; 1524,
priest ; 1536, resigned
his office, disgusted
with the persecution
of the Munster Ana
baptists ; baptized by
an apostle of Jan
Matthiesen ; reformed
and organised the
Anabaptist commun
ities in Holland and
Friesland ; d. at Olde-
sloe in 1559 ; expelled
the enthusiastic fanat
ical elements, and in
creased the tendency
towards Donatism.

1536. — Paul in.summons the
long-promised Council to
meet at Mantau ; 1537,
adjourned ; called to meet
at Vicenza; again ad
journed.

1542. — Antonio Paleario
(burnt 1570) ; Del beneficio
di Gesu Christo crocifisso
verso i Christiani.

1540.— Sept. 27, Societas
Jesu constituted by Paul
III. ; Don Inigo (Ignatius)
of Loyola, b. 1491, at the
Castle LoyolaintheBasque
Provinces; wounded (1521)
at Pampelona ; legends of
the Saints ; studies at
Barcelona; from 1528 in
Paris. In 1534, with
six companions (Francis
Xavier, Jac. Lainez, Pet.
Lefevre, etc.), he took the
three monastic vows and
a fourth of absolute obedi
ence to the Pope. Loyola,
d. 1556 ; Lainez, d. 1564.
' ' To advance the interests
of the Roman Catholic

Protestant Theology.

Siebenbiirgen and in Poland ;
d. 1574 ; 1562, De Trinitate et
Mediatore, " Christ our right
eousness only as regards His
human nature."

1551-62. — Majorist : George
Major (d. 1574, Prof. at
Wittenberg) ; bona opera
necessaria esse ad salutem.
Against him, Amsdorf; bona
perwkiosa esse ad

1556-60. — Synergist: Pfeffinger,
1555, Propos. de libero arbitrio
(in Melanchthon's synergistic
sense) ; against him, Amsdorf
(ll>58,Confutatio); andFlacius.
1560. — Disputation at Weimar
between Flacius and Strigel.
Flacius : Original Sin is of the
substance of man. The Lu
theran doctrine overcomes.
Heshusius : de servo arbitrio.

1527-40, and renewed 1556.—
Antinomian : John Agricola,
b. 1492, at Eisleben ; d. 1566,
Court preacher at Berlin; 1527,
against Melanchthon ; and
1537, against Luther. Contri
tion is taught not by the Law
but by the Gospel. Recants
1540. From 1556 controversy
about "Tertius usus legis."

1567. — Crypto-Calvinist : Melan
chthon's admissions to Cal
vinists in doctrines of Lord's

282

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

1541-53.— Duke Mau
rice of Saxony; made
Elector, 1546.
1541. — Diet at Regens
burg ; Suliman con-
querstheHungarians.
1542-44.— Fourth war
of Charles v. with
Francis I.; Peace of
Crespi.
1542. — Diet at Speier ;
union against the
Turk.

Lutheran Church.

1541.— April 27-May 22, Conference
at Regensburg (Contarini, Melan
chthon, Bucer, Eck), Transubstan
tiation the difficulty.

1542. — Nicolas v. Amsdorf Bishop
of Naumburg.

1543. — Reformation in the Arch
bishopric of Koln ; Herman v.
Wied, the archbishop, advised by
Bucer and Melanchthon ; excom
municated, 1546 ; abdicates, 1547 ;
d. 1552.

1544._Diet at Speier ; recognition of the Protestants ; peace
all round till a General Council.
1545.— Reformatio Wittenbergensis.
1546, — Second Religious Conference at Regensburg ; Feb. 18,
Luther dies at Eisleben ; the Protestants do not appear at
the Diet.
1546-47.— The Schmalkald War ; June 19, league between
Maurice and the Emperor ; July 20, decree against John
Frederick and Philip ; Oct. 27, Maurice made Elector ;
April 24, Battle of Miihlberg, John Frederick, prisoner ;
Philip surrenders at Halle ; Emperor breaks faith, and
keeps the princes in prison.

1547-59. — Henry II.
of France ; spouse,
Catherine de Medici,
d. 1589.

1548. — May 15, Augsburg Interim
retains Roman Catholic hier
archy, ceremonies, feasts and
fasts ; marriage of clergy and
Lord's Supper sub utrague per
mitted.

Reformed Church.

Calvin's Ecclesiastical
polity in Geneva. —
Worship : prayer and
preaching. Organisa-
tion:Presbyterian.l542. —Jan. ; Ordonnances
ecclesiastiques del' eglise
de Geneve. Pastors,
doctors, elders, deacons.
Church discipline.

Reformation in France
1559-98.
Earlier : Francis I., Hu
manist, careless in
religion, treated the
Reformation as a poli
tician ; his sister Mar
garet, Queen of Navarre
(d. 1549), protected the
Reformers ; severe per- ,
secution of French
Protestants in spite of
alliance with German
Protestant princes, and
an invitation to Melan
chthon to settle in
France, 1535.
Henry n. : Anthony of
Navarre, and his wife
Joan d'Albret, at the
head of the Protestants
in France.
1559.— May 25-29, First
Reformed Synod at
Paris, assembled by a
Parisian pastor, An
thony Chandieu ; Conf.
Gallica.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

283

Revolutionary Movements.

His followers, Men-
nonnites, tolerated in
1572 by William of
Orange in the Nether
lands ; also found in
Emden, Hamburg,
Danzig, Elbing, in
the Palatinate, and
in Moravia; moder
ated the original
Anabaptist spirit ; re
jected all dogmatic ;
forbade oaths and
war ; appealed to the
letter of Scripture.

Roman Catholic Church.

Hierarchy against Protest
antism within and with
out the Romish Church."
Xavier's mission work
in East Asia.
Society's Morals : casu
istry. Its dogmatic: supersti
tion systematised.

1542. — Cardinal Caraffa ad
vises the reconstruction of
the Inquisition to crush
Protestantism in Italy.

1545. — Council of Trent
opened: First period, Mar.
11, 1547, at Trent ; April
21, 1547-Sept. 13, 1549,
at Bologna. Second period,
May 1,1551-April 28, 1552,
at Trent. Third period,
Jan. 13, 1562-Dec. 4, 1563
(25 Sessions). Romanist
doctrinal teaching con
cluded and petrified.

Protestant Theology.

Supper, Christology, and Pre
destination. From these controversies a
need for concord in the Lu
theran Church ; hence various
forms of concord, out of all
which came the Formula Con-
cordics. (1) Swabian Concord of Jac.
Andreas (from 1562
Prof, at Tubingen, d.
1590) in 1574; 1575,
Swabian Concord of
Martin Chemnitz; 1576,
Maulbronn Formula of
Lucas Osiander.
(2) Torgau Convention with
the Torgau Book.
Thence 1577, Formula Con-
cordice.

The principal Lutheran
ans.

Martin Chemnitz : 1554-rf. 1586,
Superintendent in Brunswick ;
Examen Concilii Trid. ; 1565-
73, Loci Theologici.

Matthew Flacius: b. 1520, at
Albona in Illyria; 1545, at
Wittenberg; 1548, at Magde
burg ; 1557-61, at Jena ; d.
at Frankfort-on-Maine, 1575,
March 11.

284

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1547-53.— Edward vi,
of England: 8.1537.

1553-58. — (Bloody)
Mary of England.

1554. — July 9, Maurice
slain in battle near
Sie vershansen,
against Albert, Mar
grave of Branden
burg. Ferdinand beaten
by the Turks in
Hungary.

1555-98.— Philip n. of
Spain.
1556-64. — Ferdinand
I.

1558-1603. —Elizabeth
of England.

1559-60. — Francis ii.
of France (married
Mary of Scotland).

1560-74.— Charles
of France.

IX.

1548. — Leipzig Interim (Maurice of
Saxony and Melanchthon).

1551. — Vehement desire of the
Emperor that the Protestants
should submit to the Council of
Trent ; Secret League of Maurice
of Saxony with Henry II. of
France. Oct. : Wiirtemburg ambassadors,
and Jan. 1552, Saxon ambassa
dors at Trent.

1552. — Mar. 20, Maurice breaks
loose ; May 19, seizes Ehrenberg
Castle and Ehrenberg Pass, the
keys of the Tyrol ; the Council
breaks up ; July, Treaty of
Passau ; John Frederick and
Philip free.

1555. — Sept. 25 : Religious Peace of
Augsburg ; the Lutheran Church
(Augs. Confes. ) has the same legal
rights as the Roman Catholic :
Cujus regio ejus religio ; the Re-
servatum ecclesiasticum ; the Re
formed Church not recognised.

1558. — Disputes between old Lutherr
ans (Gnesiolutherani) and Me
lanchthon's followers.

1560. — Death of Melanchthon,
April 19.
1586-91. — Crypto-Calvinist troubles
in Electoral Saxony ; suppression
of Calvinism; execution of Krells,
1601.

1561. — Sept. : Religious
Conference at Poissy;
Theodore Beza.

1562. — Jan.: Protestants
gain right to worship
outside the towns ;
Francis of Guise mas
sacres Protestant con
gregation at Vassy.

1562-63. —Huguenot war.' '
Anthony of Navarre d. ';' , ,
Francis of Guise shot1-
before Orleans.

1567-68 and 1569-70.—
Huguenot wars.

1572.— Aug. 24, Paris
massacre on eve of St.
Bartholomew ; Coligny
and 20,000 Huguenots
murdered.
1574-76. — Huguenot war;
Holy League of the
Guises.

1588. — Henry and Louis
of Guise slain.

1589.— Henry m. mur
dered by a League
fanatic, J. Clement,
Aug. 1.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

285

Anglican Church.

Roman Catholic Church.

England, 1547-1600,
under Henry vm. :
John Frith, William
Tindal.

1534.— Act of Parlia
ment about Royal
supremacy ; the King
"the only supreme
head on earth of the
Church of England " ;
at the head of the
'. Evangelical party,
Thomas Cranmer
[1533, Archbishop of
Canterbury] and
Thomas Cromwell ;
Translation of the
Bible, 1538.

1539.— July 28, Tran
substantiation ; re
fusal of cup to the
laity; celibacy of the
clergy ; Masses for
the dead; auricular
confession. The Reformation of
Henry Till, the act of
the King, and meant
only revolt from the
mediaeval system,
with the King in the
place of the Pope.

Isolation of the
Church of England ;
no relation to the

Protestant Theology.

1564. — Professio Fidei Tri-
dentince : 1566, Catechis-
mus Romanus (Leonardo
Marini, Egidio Foscarari,
Muzio Calini).
1548. — Philip Neri founds
the Oratory.
1550-64.— Julius ni. (del
Monte).
1551. — Foundation of Jesuit
Collegium Romanum.
1552.— Foundation of Col
legium Germanicum.
1555-59.— Paul it. (Caraffa)
protests against the Peace
of Augsburg ; Inquisition.

1559-65.— Pius it. (Medici)
rules under the influence
of his nephew Cardinal
Charles Borromeo, Arch
bishop of Milan, d. 1584.
1564. — Index librorum pro-
hiMtorum.
1566-72.— Pius T., a zealous
Dominican.

1567. — Bull of excommuni
cation against 79 Augus
tinian propositions of
Michael Bains (d. 1589),
Chancellor of University
of Louvain.

Catalogus Testium Veritatis,
1556 ; Ecclesi. Hist, per ali
quot . . . studiosos et pios viros
in urbe Magdeburgica (the
MagdeburgCenturies), 13 vols. ,
1560-74; Clavis Script. Sac.,
1567 ; Glossa Compendaria in
N.T., 1570, etc.

John Gerhard : b. 1582, at
Quedlinburg; 1606, Superin
tendent at Heldburg ; 1615,
General Superintendent at
Coburg; 1616-rf. 1637, Prof.
at Jena. Loci Theologici, 1610-
25 ; Medit. Sac., etc.

Leonhard Hutter : 1596-d. 1616,
Prof, at Wittenberg ; Com
pendium Loc. Theol. 1610 ;
Loci Commun. Theolog., 1619.

1568. — Bremarium.

The confessional writings of the
Reformed Church universally

Catechismus ecclesia; Gene-
vensis; 1541, French; 1545,
Latin ; Calvin.

Consensio in re sacramen-
taria ministrorum Tigur.
Eccles. et Joh. Calvini.

286

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Reformed Church.

1560-78.— Mary.Queen
of Scots ; executed
1587.
1564-76. — Maximi
lian II. , Emperor.
1574-89. — Henry III.
of France.
1576-1612. — Rudolph
II., Emperor.
1588-1648. — Christian
IV., King of Den
mark.
1589-1610.— Henry iv.
of France ; became
Roman Catholic,
1593 ; murdered by
Ravaillac, 1610, May
14.
1598-1621.— Philip ih.
of Spain.

The Lutheran Church loses to —
(a) The Roman Catholic Church.
1558. — Bavaria.
1578.— The Austrian Duchy (Ru
dolph ii.).
1584. — The Bishoprics of Wurzburg,
Bamberg, Salzburg, Hildesheim,
etc.
1594. — Steiermark, Carinthia (Fer
dinand n.).
1607.— Donauwerth.

(6) The Reformed Church.
1560.— The Palatinate; 1653, Hei
delberg Catechism (Reformed
under Frederick ni. ; Lutheran
under Louis TI., 1576-83; Re
formed under Frederick IV., 1583-
1610.
1568.— Bremen.
1596.— Anhalt (John George, 1587-
1603) ; repeal of Consist. Syst.
and Lutheran Catechism ; 1597-
1628, Calvinist Articles.

1593.— Henry iv. be
comes a Roman Ca
tholic.
1598. — Edict of Nantes:
liberty of conscience;
right of public wor
ship ; full civil privi
leges; cities given to
the Huguenots as
pledges.

1620-28.— Huguenot re
volts.
1629. — La Rochelle taken.
Edict of Nismes.
Ecclesiastical rights
guaranteed to the Hu
guenots.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

287

Anglican Church.

Roman Catholic Church.

Protestant Theology.

Papacy ; no relation
to the Reformed
Churches.
1547.— Under Lord Pro
tector Somerset; Peter
Martyr Vermigli (J.
1500, at Florence ;
1542, in Strasburg ;
d. 1562, in Zurich)
and Bernard Ochino
(b. 1487) brought to
Oxford; Martin Bucer
and Paul Fagius, to
Cambridge.

The Book of Hom
ilies.

1548.— The Book of
Common Prayer ; re
vised, 1552.

1570. — Missale Romanum.
1572-85. — Gregory xm. :
congratulatory letter to
Charles ix. about Mas
sacre of St. Bartholomew ;
Te Deum at Rome in
honour of event.
1582. — Reform of Calendar.
1582-1610. — Jesuit missions
in China.

1585-90.— Sixtus T.
can Library.

Vati-

1588. — Baronius' Eccl. An
nates.
1590.— Infallible edition of
the Vulgate.
1592-1605.— Clement yn.
1592.— New edition of Vul
gate (declared to be the
edition of Sixtus T. ).

The Heidelberg Catech
ism ; 1563, written at the sug
gestion of Frederick III. of the
Palatinate by Zachary Ursinus
(from 1561 Prof, at Heidel
berg ; d. 1583) and Caspar
Olevianus (Prof, at Heidel
berg ; d. 1587).
Confessio Helvetica Posterior:
1566, sent by Bullinger to
Frederick III. of the Palatinate.

The Decrees of the Synod of
Dort : 1619, recognised in the
Netherlands, Switzerland, the
Palatinate, and in 1620 in
France ; not universally recog
nised.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary EventB.

Lutheran Church.

Anglican Church.

The Lutheran Church loses to the
Reformed Church —
1605. — Hesse-Casselreformed, under
Landgrave Maurice (1592-1627).
1613. — Dec. 25, Brandenburg re
formed under the Elector John
Sigismund ; 1614, Confessio Mar-
chica.

Anti- Trinitarians.

Michael Servetus from Aragon : 1530,
in Basel ; 1531, De Trinitatis
erroribus ; 1534, in Lyons ; 1537,
in Paris ; 1540, in Vienne ; 1553,
Christianismi restitutio ; burnt at
Geneva, 1553.

Valentinus Gentilis, from Calabria ;
beheaded at Berne, 1556.

Laelius Soomus : b. 1525, at Siena ;
1546, in Venice ; 1547, travels in
Switzerland, Germany, and Po
land ; d. 1562 in Zurich.

1552.— The 42 Articles.

[1554.— Cardinal Re
ginald Pole, Papal Le
gate ; 1555-58, Bloody
persecutions under
Mary; 1556, Mar. 21,
Cranmer burnt at Ox
ford.]

Reformation restored
under Elizabeth.
1559. — June : Act of
Uniformity, Matthew
Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury.

Book of Common
Prayer revised and re
stored.

1562.-Jan. 23, The 39
Articles : Calvinist doc
trine of Predestination ;
Doctrine of Lord's Sup
per, Calvinist.

1567. — Puritans against
Uniformity. [Puritan
ism ; Reformation from
within through the
Church community; in
England strict accept
ance of the spiritual
priesthood of all be-

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

289

Reformed Church.

Protestant Theology.

Scotland.
1558. — Lords of the
Congregation ; Pure
Gospel ; King Ed
ward's Prayer-Book.

1560. — Meeting of
Estates at Edinburgh ;
Scotch Confession ;
First Book of Disci
pline ; Presbyterian
Government by Gen
eral Assemblies,
Synods, and Kirk-
Sessions ; Superin
tendents.

John Knox: b. 1505,
at Haddington; from
1546, preacher in St.
Andrews ; 1547-49, in
the galleys; 1553-59,
at Frankfort and
Geneva ; 1559 — d.
1572, in Edinburgh.

1572. — Convention of
Leith ; Bishops, but
without episcopal
functions ; Tulchans.

1576. — Government by
visitors appointed by
the Assembly.

1578.— Second Book of
Discipline.

The Netherlands.
1559. —Margaret of Parma
Stadtholder ; Granvella,
Bp. of Arras.
Erection of 13 new
bishoprics ; Inquisition.

1562. — Confessio Belgica ;
Guido de Bres, Adrien de
Savaria, H. Modetus, G.
Wingen ; revised by Francis
Junius, 1571.

1566. — Compromisein favour
of Protestants.
Riots about images and
relics.

1567-73.— Duke of Alva.
Council of Blood ; Per
secution of Protestants ;
18,000 slain ; Egmont and
Horn in 1568.

1572.— Capture of Brill by
the Sea-Beggars ; William
of Orange.

1576.— Nov. 8, Treaty of
Ghent.

John Calvin: Institutio Re-
ligionis Christianas, 1535-36.
Three editions, each an en
largement, 1535, 1539 (-43-45),
1559 ; Commentaries on O.T.
and N.T. from 1539 ; De otter-
na Dei predestinatione, 1552 ;
Defensio orthodoxce fidei de S.
Trinitate, 1554, against Ser
vetus.

Henry Bullinger, Zwingli's suc
cessor in Zurich, b. 1504, at
Bremgarten, d. 1578, Sept. 17 ;
Commentaries on the whole
N.T., 1554 ; Compendium re-
lig. Christiana;; Histoire des
persecutions de I'Eglise.

Theodore Bern : b. 1519 ; 1549, in
Lausanne ; 1558, Professor and
pastor in Geneva ; d. 1605.
N.T. translation with annota
tions, 1565 ; Histoire Eccles.
des riformateurs au royaume
de France, 1580.

Rudolph Hospinian, pastor in
Zurich ; d. 1629 ; De origins et
progres. controv. sacrament-
arice, etc.

J. H. Hottinger, Professor in
Heidelberg and Zurich ; d.
1667 ; Hist. Eccl. N.T.

19

290

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

Contemporary Events.

Lutheran Church.

Anglican Church.

Faustus Socinus : b. 1539, at Siena ;

lievers, and consequent

1559, in Lyons ; 1562, in Zurich ;

objection to clerical

at Florence, then Basel, 1574-78 ;

vestments, cope, and

in Poland, 1579-98 ; d. 1604.— De
surplice.]
Jesu Christo servatore ; De Statu
primi hominis ante lapsum, 1578.
1570. — Thomas Cart-
wright expelled from
Cambridge.
1582.— Robert Browne,
1605. — Racovian Catechism.
chaplain to the Duke
of Norfolk : no union
between Church and
State ; each congrega
tion an independent
church. From 1589 in
England.
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

291

Reformed Church.

Protestant Theology.

Scotland.

The Netherlands.

Caspar Suicer, Professor in
Zurich ; d. 1684 ; Thesaurus

1E80. — Government by

1579. — Jan. 23, Utrecht

Ecclesiasticus.

Presbyteries.

Union of Northern Pro
vinces ; July 26, Declara
tion of Independence.
1584. ^Tuly 10, William of
Orange murdered; Maurice
of Orange succeeds.
Foundation of Universities —
Leyden, 1575 ; Franecker,
1585; Grbningen, 1612;
Utrecht, 1638 ; Harder-
wyk, 1648.

J. Dallasus, Prof, at Saumnr, d.
at Paris, 1670 ; TraiU de I'em-
ploi des S. Peres, 1632.

A LIST OF SOME OF THE BOOKS READ OR
CONSULTED FOR THIS VOLUME
Luther's Writings:
Luther's Sammtliche Werke (in 67 vols.). Erlangen, 1826-57.
(The Weimar Edition, begun in 1883, has reached the
fifteenth vol.)
Luther's Briefe, Sendschreiben, etc., edited by De Wette,
5 vols. 1825-28.
Burchardt, Luther's Briefwechsel. 1866.
Luther's Letters to Women. Collected by Dr. Zimmermann.
Translated by Mrs. Malcolm. 1865.
The following are translations of portions of Luther's
Writings : — -
Wace and Bucheim. Luther's Primary Works. (Trans
lation of the Ninety-five Theses, Larger and Short
Catechism, and the Three Treatises of 1520.) 1896.
The Prefaces to the Early Editions of Luther's Bible,
edited by T. A. Readwin. 1863.
Special and Chosen Sermons. Reprinted from a work
published in London in the year 1578. 1862-65.
The Table Talk of Dr. Martin Luther. 1883.
The Table Talk or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther.
Translated by Wm. Hazlitt. 1848.
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. 1845.
Watchwords for the Warfare of Life. Translated and
arranged by Mrs. Charles. 1869.
293

294 BOOKS CONSULTED
H. E. Bindseil, D. Martini Lutheri Colloquia, Meditationes,
etc., 3 vols. 1863-66.
G. Loesche, Analecta Lutherana et Melanchthoniana, etc.
1892.
Passional Christi et Antichristi (edited by W. Scherer). 1885.
Lives of Luther and Incidents in his Career :
H. E. Jacobs, Heroes of the Reformation. Martin Luther.
1899.
J. Koestlin, Martin Luther ; sein Leben und seine Schriften,
4th ed. 1889.
J. Koestlin, Martin Luther, der deutsehe Reformator. 1883.
(This has numerous illustrations, and was translated
in 1883.)
T. Kolde, Martin Luther, Eine Biographie. 1884.
T. Kolde, Friedrich der Wcise und die anfange der Reforma
tion. 1881.
T. Kolde, Analecta Lutherana. 1883.
Melanchthon, Historia de vita et actis M. Lutheri (Corpus
Reform, vol. vi.).
J. Mathesius, Historien von...D. M. Luther's Anfang, Lehre,
Leben, etc. 1573.
Seckendorf, Lutheranismus.
Cochlaeus, Historia de actis et scriptis M. Lutheri (Rom.
Cath.). 1565.
T. Murner, Von dem grossen Lutherischen Barren. (Rom.
Cath.). 1522.
Dr. Db'llinger, Luther, a Succinct View of his Life and Writ
ings (Rom. Cath.). 1886.
G. Freytag, Doktor Luther, Eine Schilderung. 1883. (This
has been recently translated (in 1897) in America.)
M. Michelet, Memoires de Luther, ecrits par lui-meme, tra-
duits, etc. 1835. (This has been translated several
times, and published, sometimes without acknowledg-

BOOKS CONSULTED 295
ment, under the title " Autobiography of Luther " ;
the best English translation is by W. Hazlitt.
1846.)
J. Rae, Martin Luther, Student, Monk, and Reformer. 1884.
P. Bayne, Martin Luther, his Life and Work. 1887.
The Chronicles of the Schomberg-Cotta Family, by Mrs.
Charles. 1882.
British Museum, Luther Exhibition in 1883.
F. G. Hofmann, Katharina von Bora. 1884.
History of the Times of Luther :
Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution. 1877.
Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation,
6th ed. 1882.
J. Janssen, Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang
des Mittelalters (Rom. Cath.), 17th ed. 1897-99.
Social Life in the Times of the Reformation :
Stern, Die Sozialisten der Reformationszeit. (I haTe drawn
largely from this booklet.)
G. Freytag, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. 1899.
(An earlier edition was translated by Mrs. Malcolm
under the title "Pictures of German Life in the 15th-
17th Centuries." 1862.)
Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im xiv. und xv. Jahrhun-
dert. 1892.
Kriegk, Deutsches Biirgerthum im Mittelalter. 1868-71.
J. Becker, Chronica des fahrenden Schulers. 1869.
H. Boos, Thomas und Felix Platter. 1878.
The Peasants' War :
W. Zimmermann, Allgemeine Geschichte des Grossen Bauern-
kriegs.

296 BOOKS CONSULTED
Baumann, Quellen zur Geschichte des Bauernkriegs. 1878.
B. Bax, The Peasants' War. 1899.
Illustrations of the Times of Luther, Portraits, etc. :
G. Hirth, Kulturgeschlichtes Bilderbuch aus drei Jahrhun-
derten, vols. i. and ii., 2nd ed. 1896. 30s. a volume.
G. Hirth, Bilder aus der Lutherzeit. 1883. 2s. 6d.
Richard Heath, Article on the Portraits of Luther in Cassell
& Co.'s Magazine of Art for November 1883.

INDEX

Address to Nobility of German
Nation, Luther's, 7, 172.
Adrian vi., 155.
Against the Murderous Thieving
Hordes of Peasants, 185.
Albert of Brandenberg, 55, 159.
Albigenses, 14.
Alum, discovery of, 57.
Anabaptism, 7.
Anspach, Margrave of, 158.
Aristotle, 52.
Athanasius, 8.
Augsburg, 75, 214.
Augustine, 51, 66.
Augustinian Order, 12, 32, 34, 52,
73.
Augustinian theology, 82.
Babylonian Captivity of the Church,
93.
" Ban of the Empire," 134.
Beggars, troubles with, 201.
Berlepsch, 137.
Bible, German Versions of, before
Luther's, 143, 144.
Bonaventura, 35.
Brotherhood, Evangelical, 176.
Brotherly Agreement, 164.
Bucer, Martin, 254, 258.
Bull of Condemnation against
Luther, 108.
Bundschuh, 133, 176.
Butzbach, John, 19.
Cajetan, Cardinal, 76.
Calvin, 14.

297

Carlstadt, 82, 146.
Catechisms, Luther's, 232.
Catherine von Bora, 193, 195, 197,
252.
Celibacy of clergy, 191.
Charles v., 2, 113, 121, 215.
Christian Liberty, 93.
Church, Luther's idea of an Evan
gelical, 219, 222, 224.
Commemoration and Participation,
Sacramental, 241.
Consistorial Courts, 232.
Constantinople, 2.
Cotta, Frau, 24.
Council, General, 78.
Cranach, Lucas, 8, 125, 195, 209,
248.
Dominicans, the, 53, 75.
Diirer, Albert, 8, 155, 248.
Eck, John (of Ingolstadt), 73, 84, 87.
Eck, John (of Trier), 129.
Educational reform, Luther and, 235.
Eisenach, 10, 23, 127.
Eisleben, 9, 11.
Emperor, election of, 113, 116.
Empire, Holy Roman, 113, 119.
Erasmus, 2, 109.
Erfurt, 24, 26.
Fassnachtspiele, 15.
Francis, St., 170.
Francis I., 113.
Frederic, Elector, 54, 73, 75, 77,
79, 80, 109, 155, 187.

298

INDEX

Freiherrn, 161.
Frundsberg, General, 129.
Fuggers, the, 55.
George, Duke, 85, 86, 155.
George, Junker, 138.
Germany, political condition of,
119.
Gerson, 35.
Groot, Gerard, 22.
' ' Hundred Grievances '' of Germany
against Borne, 156.
Humanists, 7, 8, 27, 28, 173.
Huss, John, 74, 92, 170.
Hutten, Ulric von, 8, 90, 143, 163,
165.
Hymn, Luther's, Ein Feste Burg,
199.
Hymn-book, Luther's, 157.
Indulgences, the, 53, 54, 55, 62, 64.
Ingolstadt, 73.
Inquisition, the, 75.
Jerusalem, 43.
John, Elector, 196, 215, 249.
John Frederic, Elector, 249, 250.
Julius, Pope, 53.
Kaiser, Leonard, 199.
"Karsthans," 174.
Kaufmann, 12.
Kessler, 12, 147.
Koppe, Leonhard, 193.
Landstuhl, 4.
Leipzig, 81, 85.
Leipzig Disputation, 82, 87, 88, 90.
Leo x., 53, 74.
Liber Vagatorwm, 201
Lombard, Peter, 51.
Lord's Table, the, 229.
Lupfen, Countess of, 176.
Lutheran v. Reformed (Calvinist)
organisations, 2S2.
Luther, Hans (sen.), 10, 26, 196,
247.
Luther, Hans (jun.), 198.
Luther, Margarethe, 10, 12, 26, 247.

Luthek, Maetin, 7 ; birthplace,
9 ; his parents and home, 12,
13 ; peasant life, 15 ; education,
18-29 ; singing boy, 24 ; enters
convent, and reasons for doing
so, 30 ; becomes a monk, 33 ;
studies the Bible and practises
asceticism, 34, 35 ; his anguish
and subsequent peace ; 36, 37 ;
ordained, 38 ; scruples about
performing the Mass, 39 ; goes to
Wittenberg as professor, 40 ;
visit to Rome, 43 ; enthusiasm
over the city, 44 ; the incident
of the Holy Staircase, 44 ; doctor
of theology, 46 ; lectures on the
Bible, 47 ; superintendent of
convents, 50 ; Luther and Tetzel,
59-66 ; nails the Ninety-five
Theses to the door of the Castle
Church of Wittenberg, 64 ;
analysis of the Theses, 71; effect
of the Theses, 72 ; John Eck's
attack on the Theses, 74 ; Lu
ther's defence, ibid. ; summoned
to Rome, 75 ; refuses to go,
demands a trial on German soil,
and obtains his interview with
Cardinal Cajetan, 76 ; appeal to
a General Council, 78 ; Pope
sends special delegate, Charles
von Miltitz, 79 ; Luther writes
to Tetzel when the latter was in
disgrace, 81 ; Leipzig Disputa
tion, 82-86 ; Eck forces Luther
to declare that the Church is not
the hierarchy but the whole com
pany of faithful believers, 86 ;
effects of the Leipzig Disputation
on Luther making him "the man
of Germany," 88 ; Luther'sliterary
activity after the Disputation,
91 ; writes Three Great Re
formation Treatises, 93 ; advised
by Miltitz to write a friendly
letter to the Pope, 94 ; analysis
of Christian Liberty, 95 ; ditto
of Babylonian Captivity of the
Church, 98 ; ditto of Christian-
Estate, 100 ; Bull of Condemna-

INDEX

299

tion against, 108 ; burns the Bull,
111 ; at the Diet of Worms, 113 ;
his spirited speeches, 131 ; ban
of the Empire issued, 134 ; lodged
in the Wartburg, 136 ; " Junker
George," 138 ; translates New
Testament into German, 140 ;
tract on Monastic Vows, 140 ;
Kessler's sketch of Luther ; re
form of service, 151 ; makes tour
in Electoral Saxony, 151 ; issues
tract on Obedience to Secular
Power, 152 ; Pope Adrian de
mands the enforcement of Leo's
Bull against Luther, 155 ; pub
lishes Wittenberg Order of Public
Worship and Evangelical Hymn-
book, 157 ; Luther and the
Peasants' War, 182 ; writes his
pamphlet Against the Murderous
Thieving Hordes of Peasants,
185 ; marriage and family life,
190 ; birth of first child, 198 ; the
plague, 199 ; composes Luther's
hymn, ibid. ; letters to his wife,
205 ; delight in children, 207 ;
the "Luther house," 209 ; Diet
of Augsburg, 214 ; the Emperor
and Luther, 217 ; the idea of an
Evangelical Church, 219 ; the
Visitations, 227-229; the Cate
chisms, 232 ; as an educational
reformer, 235 ; Luther and
Zwingli, 240-245 ; Christian per
fection, 247 ; love of pictures,
248 ; political influence, 249 ;
the Landgrave's bigamy, 255 ;
its effects, 257 ; Protestant union,
259 ; last scenes, 263 ; summing
up, 265, 266.
Mackenrod, 12.
Magdeburg, 22.
Mansfeld, Count of, 158, 261.
Marburg Articles, 215.
Marburg Conference, 244.
Margarethe Luther, 10.
Mazzolini Silvester, 75.
Medisevalism, 2.
Melanchthon, 8, 10, 82, 215.

Miltitz, Charles von, 79.
Mohra, 10.
Monastic Vows, tract on, 140.
Monks, and principle of Monach-
ism, 33.
More, Sir Thomas, 173.
Morgarten, 3.
Muller, Hans, 176.
Miinzer, Thomas, 175.
Myconius, 54, 57.
New Testament, Luther's transla
tion of, 140.
Nobles, revolt of, 166.
Nominalists, 27.
Niirnberg, Diets of, 101, 102.
Obedience to Secular Power, tract
on, 152.
"Obelisks," 74.
Occam, William of, 27.
Order of Public Worship, 157.
Peasants' War, 169.
"Pepper-sacks," 5.
Philip of Hesse, Landgrave, 155,
167, 213, 253.
Plague in Wittenberg, 199.
Platter, Thomas, 20.
Pollich, 41.
Polner, 12.
Protestant Union — North and
South Germany, 258.
Ranke, L. von, 2.
Reformation, 2, 3, 7, 14, 65, 93,
101, 151, 156, 159, 170, 182,
190, 200, 239, 245.
Reformation of the Christian Estate,
93.
Reichsregiment, 153.
Renascence, 3.
Resolutiones, Luther's, 74.
Reuchlin, 8.
Revolts, political and social, 161.
Revolution, French, 3.
Righteousness, the Divine, 66.
Romans, Epistle to the, Luther's
lectures on, 46.
Rome, 43.

300

INDEX

Sachs, Hans, 8, 16.
Schifflein, St. Ursula's, 61.
Sempach, 3.
Service, reform of, 151.
Sickingen, F. von, 4, 8, 90, 133,
163, 165, 166.
Social discontent, 171.
Spalatin, 27, 75, 109, 127, 140,
198.
Speyer, Diets of, 212, 213, 221.
Spiritual v. Temporal Estate —
Romanist view, 102.
Spiritual treasures, 61.
Staupitz, John, 34, 41, 44.
Tauler, John, 47.
Tetzel, John, 50, 55, 58, 65, 72, 80.
Theses, the Ninety-five, 64, 70,
72, 73.
Three Great Reformation Treatises,
93.
Thuringia, 10, 11.
Transubstantiation, 243.
Trudwetter, Johan, 26.

Twelve Articles, the, 179.
Tyler, Wat, 170.
Ursula, St., 61.
Vernacular German, Luther's use
of, 174.
Visitations, tjie, 227.
Waldenses, 14.
Waldshut, 176.
Wandering students, 20.
Wartburg, 24, 137.
Weisthumer (Communes), 15.
Wessel, John, 54.
Wimpina, Conrad, 72.
Wittenberg, 14, 40, 64, 150, 263.
Wittenberg Circle, Visitation of,
227.
Worms, Diet of, 128.
Zulsdorf, purchase of, by Luther,
202.
Zwingli, 14, 240, 245, 258.