Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

distribution of the indulgence in Magdeburg and Halberstadt as well as

in Mainz. An agent of the Fuggers accompanied each of Albrecht's

preachers, checked expenses and receipts, and kept one of the keys

to the strongbox that held the funds. `06161

Albrecht's principal agent was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar

who had acquired skill and reputation as a money-raiser. Since 1500

his main occupation had been in disposing of indulgences. Usually,

on these missions, he received the aid of the local clergy: when he

entered a town a procession of priests, magistrates, and pious laity

welcomed him with banners, candles, and song, and bore the bull of

indulgence aloft on a velvet or golden cushion, while church bells

pealed and organs played. `06162 So propped, Tetzel offered, in an

impressive formula, a plenary indulgence to those who would penitently

confess their sins and contribute according to their means to the

building of a new St. Peter's:

-

May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on thee, and absolve thee by

the merits of His most holy Passion. And I, by His authority, that

of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most holy Pope,

granted and committed to me in these parts, do absolve thee, first

from all ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they may have

been incurred, and then from all thy sins, transgressions, and

excesses, how enormous soever they may be, even from such as are

reserved for the cognizance of the Holy See; and as far as the keys of

the Holy Church extend, I remit to you all punishment which you

deserve in purgatory on their account, and I restore you to the holy

sacraments of the Church... and to that innocence and purity which you

possessed at baptism; so that when you die the gates of punishment

shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delight shall be

opened; and if you shall not die at present, this grace shall remain

in full force when you are at the point of death. In the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. `06163

This splendid bargain for a believer was in harmony with the

official conception of indulgences for the living. Tetzel was again

within the letter of his archiepiscopal instructions when he dispensed

with preliminary confession if the contributor applied the

indulgence to a soul in purgatory. Says a Catholic historian:

-

There is no doubt that Tetzel did, according to what he considered

his authoritative instructions, proclaim as Christian doctrine that

nothing but an offering of money was required to gain the indulgence

for the dead, without there being any question of contrition or

confession. He also taught, in accordance with the opinion then

held, that an indulgence could be applied to any given soul with

unfailing effect. Starting from this assumption, there is no doubt

that his doctrine was virtually that of the drastic proverb: "As

soon as the money in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory's

fire springs." The papal bull of indulgence gave no sanction

whatever to this proposition. It was a vague Scholastic opinion... not

any doctrine of the Church. `06164

-

Myconius, a Franciscan friar perhaps hostile to the Dominicans,

heard Tetzel perform, and reported, for this year 1517: "It is

incredible what this ignorant monk said and preached. He gave sealed

letters stating that even the sins which a man was intending to commit

would be forgiven. The pope, he said, had more power than all the

Apostles, all the angels and saints, more even than the Virgin Mary

herself; for these were all subject to Christ, but the pope was

equal to Christ." This is probably an exaggeration, but that such a

description could be given by an eyewitness suggests the antipathy

that Tetzel aroused. A like hostility appears in the rumor mentioned

skeptically by Luther, `06165 which quoted Tetzel as having said at

Halle that even if, per impossibile, a man had violated the Mother

of God the indulgence would wipe away his sin. Tetzel obtained

certificates from civil and ecclesiastical authorities at Halle that

they had never heard the story. `06166 He was an enthusiastic

salesman, but not quite conscienceless.

He would have escaped history had he not approached too closely to

the lands of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. *06039 Frederick

was a pious and provident ruler. He had no theoretical objection to

indulgences; he had gathered 19,000 saintly relics into his Castle

Church at Wittenberg, `06167 and had arranged to have an indulgence

attached to their veneration; he had procured another indulgence for

contributors to the building of a bridge at Torgau, and had engaged

Tetzel to advertise the benefits of that pontifical indulgence. `06168

However, he had withheld from Pope Alexander VI (1501) the sum

raised in Electoral Saxony by an indulgence for donations to a crusade

against the Turks; he would release the money, he said, when the

crusade materialized. It did not; Frederick the Wise kept the funds,

and applied them to the University of Wittenberg. `06169 Now, moved by

reluctance to let coin of Saxony emigrate, and perhaps by reports of

Tetzel's hyperboles, he forbade the preaching of the 1517 indulgence

in his territory. But Tetzel came so close to the frontiers that

people in Wittenberg crossed the border to obtain the indulgence.

Several purchasers brought these "papal letters" to Martin Luther,

professor of theology in the university, and asked him to attest their

efficacy. He refused. The refusal came to Tetzel's ears; he

denounced Luther, and became immortal.

He had underestimated the pugnacity of the professor. Luther quickly

composed in Latin ninety-five theses, which he entitled Disputatio

pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum ( Disputation for

Clarification of the Power of Indulgences ). He did not consider his

propositions heretical, nor were they indubitably so. He was still a

fervent Catholic who had no thought of upsetting the Church; his

purpose was to refute the extravagant claims made for indulgences, and

to correct the abuses that had developed in their distribution. He

felt that the facile issuance and mercenary dissemination of

indulgences had weakened the contrition that sin should arouse, had

indeed made sin a trivial matter to be amicably adjusted over a

bargain counter with a peddler of pardons. He did not yet deny the

papal "power of the keys" to forgive sins; he conceded the authority

of the pope to absolve the confessing penitent from the terrestrial

penalties imposed by churchmen; but in Luther's view the power of

the pope to free souls from purgatory, or to lessen their term of

punishment there, depended not on the power of the keys- which did not

reach beyond the grave- but on the intercessory influence of papal

prayers, which might or might not be heard. (Theses 20-22.)

Moreover, Luther argued, all Christians shared automatically in the

treasury of merits earned by Christ and the saints, even without the

grant of such a share by a papal letter of indulgence. He exonerated

the popes from responsibility for the excesses of the preachers, but

slyly added: "This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy

matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due the pope

from... the shrewd questionings of the laity, to wit: 'Why does not

the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and of the dire

need of the souls that are there, if he redeems a... number of souls

for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?'"

(Theses 81-82.)

At noon on October 31, 1517, Luther affixed his theses to the main

door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg. Annually, on November 1-

All Saints' Day- the relics collected by the Elector were displayed

there, and a large crowd could be expected. The practice of publicly

announcing theses, which the proponent offered to defend against all

challengers, was an old custom in medieval universities, and the

door that Luther used for his proclamation had been regularly employed

as an academic bulletin board. To the theses he prefixed an amiable

invitation:

-

Out of love for the faith and the desire to bring it to light, the

following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg under the

chairmanship of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts

and Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that

place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present

and debate orally with us may do so by letter.

-

To make sure that the theses would be widely understood, Luther

had a German translation circulated among the people. With

characteristic audacity he sent a copy of the theses to Archbishop

Albrecht of Mainz. Courteously, piously, unwittingly. the

Reformation had begun.

II. THE GENESIS OF LUTHER

-

What circumstances of heredity and environment had molded an obscure

monk, in a town of three thousand souls, into the David of the

religious revolution?

His father Hans was a stern, rugged, irascible anticlerical; his

mother was a timid, modest woman much given to prayer; both were

frugal and industrious. Hans was a peasant at Mohra, then a miner at

Mansfeld; but Martin was born at Eisleben on November 10, 1483. Six

other children followed. Hans and Grethe believed in the rod as a

magic wand for producing righteousness; once, says Martin, his

father beat him so assiduously that for a long time they were open

enemies; on another occasion, for stealing a nut, his mother

thrashed him till the blood flowed; Martin later thought that "the

severe and harsh life I led with them was the reason that I

afterward took refuge in the cloister and became a monk." `061610

The picture of deity which his parents transmitted to him reflected

their own mood: a hard father and strict judge, exacting a joyless

virtue, demanding constant propitiation, and finally damning most of

mankind to everlasting hell. Both parents believed in witches,

elves, angels, and demons of many kinds and specialties; and Martin

carried most of these superstitions with him to the end. A religion of

terror in a home of rigorous discipline shared in forming Luther's

youth and creed.

At school in Mansfeld there were more rods and much catechism;

Martin was flogged fifteen times in one day for misdeclining a noun.

At thirteen he was advanced to a secondary school kept by a

religious brotherhood at Magdeburg. At fourteen he was transferred

to the school of St. George at Eisenach, and had three relatively

happy years lodging in the comfortable home of Frau Cotta. Luther

never forgot her remark that there was nothing on earth more

precious to a man than the love of a good woman. It was a boon that he

took forty-two years to win. In this healthier atmosphere he developed

the natural charm of youth- healthy, cheerful, sociable, frank. He

sang well, and played the lute.

In 1501 his prospering father sent him to the university at

Erfurt. The curriculum centered around theology and philosophy,

which was still Scholastic; but Ockham's nominalism had triumphed

there, and presumably Luther noted Ockham's doctrine that popes and

councils could err. He found Scholasticism in any form so disagreeable

that he complimented a friend on "not having to learn the dung that

was offered" as philosophy. `061611 There were some mild humanists

at Erfurt; he was very slightly influenced by them; they did not

care for him when they found him in earnest about the other world.

He learned a little Greek and less Hebrew, but he read the major Latin

classics. In 1505 he received the degree of master of arts. His

proud father sent him, as a graduation present, an expensive edition

of the Corpus iuris, and rejoiced when his son entered upon the

study of law. Suddenly, after two months of such study, and to his

father's dismay, the youth of twenty-two decided to become a monk.

The decision expressed the contradiction in his character.

Vigorous to the point of sensuality, visibly framed for a life of

normal instincts, and yet infused by home and school with the

conviction that man is by nature sinful, and that sin is an offense

against an omnipotent and punishing God, he had never in thought or

conduct reconciled his natural impulses with his acquired beliefs.

Passing presumably through the usual erotic experiments and

fantasies of adolescence; he could not take these as stages of

development, but viewed them as the operations of a Satan dedicated to

snaring souls into irrevocable damnation. The conception of God that

had been given him contained hardly any element of tenderness; the

consoling figure of Mary had little place in that theology of fear,

and Jesus was not the loving son who could refuse nothing to His

mother; He was the Jesus of the Last Judgment so often pictured in the

churches, the Christ who had threatened sinners with everlasting fire.

The recurrent thought of hell darkened a mind too intensely

religious to forget it in the zest and current of life. One day, as he

was returning from his father's house to Erfurt (July 1505), he

encountered a frightful storm. Lightning flashed about him, and struck

a near-by tree. It seemed to Luther a warning from God that unless

he gave his thoughts to salvation, death would surprise him

unshriven and damned. Where could he live a life of saving devotion?

Only where four walls would exclude, or ascetic discipline would

overcome, the world, the flesh, and the devil: only in a monastery. He

made a vow to St. Anne that if he survived that storm he would

become a monk.

There were twenty cloisters in Erfurt. He chose one known for

faithful observance of monastic rules- that of the Augustinian

Eremites. He called his friends together, drank and sang with them for

what he told them was the last time, and on the morrow he was received

as a novice in a monastery cell. He performed the lowliest duties with

a proud humility. He recited prayers in self-hypnotizing repetition,

he froze in an unheated cubicle, he fasted and scourged himself, in

the hope of exorcizing devils from his body. "I was a pious monk,

and so strictly observed the rules of my order that... if ever a

monk got into heaven by monkery, so should I also have gotten

there.... If it had lasted longer I should have tortured myself to

death with watching, praying, reading, and other work." `061612 On one

occasion, when he had not been seen for several days, friends broke

into his cell and found him lying senseless on the ground. They had

brought a lute; one played it; he revived, and thanked them. In

September 1506, he took the irrevocable vows of poverty, chastity, and

obedience; and in May 1507, he was ordained a priest.

His fellow friars gave him friendly counsel. One assured him that

the Passion of Christ had atoned for the sinful nature of man, and had

opened to redeemed man the gates of paradise. Luther's reading of

the German mystics, especially of Tauler, gave him hope of bridging

the awful gap between a naturally sinful soul and a righteous,

omnipotent God. Then a treatise by John Huss fell into his hands,

and doctrinal doubts were added to his spiritual turmoil; he

wondered why "a man who could write so Christianly and so powerfully

had been burned.... I shut the book and turned away with a wounded

heart." `061613 Johann von Staupitz, provincial vicar of the

Augustinian Eremites, took a fatherly interest in the troubled

friar, and bade him replace asceticism with careful reading of the

Bible and St. Augustine. The monks expressed their solicitude by

giving him a Latin Bible- then a rare possession for an individual.

One day in 1508 or 1509 he was struck by a sentence in St. Paul's

Epistle to the Romans (1: 17): "The just shall live by faith."

Slowly these words led him to the doctrine that man can be

"justified"- i.e., made just and therefore saved from hell- not by

good works, which could never suffice to atone for sins against an

infinite deity, but only by complete faith in Christ and in his

atonement for mankind. In Augustine Luther found another idea that

perhaps renewed his terror- predestination- that God, even before

the creation, had forever destined some souls to salvation, the rest

to hell; and that the elect had been chosen by God's free will to be

saved by the divine sacrifice of Christ. From that consistent

absurdity he fled back again to his basic hope of salvation by faith.

In 1508, by the recommendation of Staupitz, he was transferred to an

Augustinian monastery at Wittenberg, and to the post of instructor

in logic and physics, then professor of theology, in the university.

Wittenberg was the northern capital- seldom the residence- of

Frederick the Wise. A contemporary pronounced it "a poor,

insignificant town, with little, old, ugly wooden houses." Luther

described the inhabitants as "beyond measure drunken, rude, and

given to reveling"; they had the reputation of being the amplest

drinkers in Saxony, which was rated the most drunken province of

Germany. One mile to the east, said Luther, civilization ended and

barbarism began. Here, for the most part, he remained to the close

of his days.

He must have become by this time an exemplary monk, for in October

1510, he and a fellow friar were sent to Rome on some obscure

mission for the Augustinian Eremites. His first reaction on sighting

the city was one of pious awe; he prostrated himself, raised his

hands, and cried: "Hail to thee, O holy Rome!" He went through all the

devotions of a pilgrim, bowed reverently before saintly relics,

climbed the Scala Santa on his knees, visited a score of churches, and

earned so many indulgences that he almost wished his parents were

dead, so that he might deliver them from purgatory. He explored the

Roman Forum, but was apparently unmoved by the Renaissance art with

which Raphael, Michelangelo, and a hundred others were beginning to

adorn the capital. For many years after this trip he made no extant

comment on the worldliness of the Roman clergy or the immorality

then popular in the holy city. Ten years later, however, and still

more in the sometimes imaginative reminiscences of his Table Talk in

old age, he described the Rome of 1510 as "an abomination," the

popes as worse than pagan emperors, and the papal court as being

"served at supper by twelve naked girls." `061614 Very probably he had

no entry to the higher ecclesiastical circles, and had no direct

knowledge of their unquestionably easy morality.

After his return to Wittenberg (February 1511) he was rapidly

advanced in the pedagogical scale, and was made provincial

vicar-general of his order. He gave courses in the Bible, preached

regularly in the parish church, and carried on the work of his

office with industry and devotion. Says a distinguished Catholic

scholar:

-

His official letters breathe a deep solicitude for the wavering, a

gentle sympathy for the fallen; they show profound touches of

religious feeling and rare practical sense, though not unmarred with

counsels that have unorthodox tendencies. The plague which afflicted

Wittenberg in 1516 found him courageously at his post, which in

spite of the concern of his friends, he would not abandon. `061615

-

Slowly, during these years (1512-17), his religious ideas moved away

from the official doctrines of the Church. He began to speak of "our

theology," in contrast with that which was taught at Erfurt. In 1515

he ascribed the corruption of the world to the clergy, who delivered

to the people too many maxims and fables of human invention, and not

the Scriptural world of God. In 1516 he discovered an anonymous German

manuscript, whose mystic piety so supported his own view of the

utter dependence of the soul, for salvation, on divine grace that he

edited and published it as Theologia Germanica or Deutsche

Theologie. He blamed the preachers of indulgences for taking

advantage of the simplicity of the poor. In private correspondence

he began to identify the Antichrist of John's First Epistle with the

pope. `061616 In July 1517, invited by Duke George of Albertine Saxony

to preach in Dresden, he argued that the mere acceptance of the merits

of Christ assured the believer's salvation. The Duke complained that

such stress on faith rather than virtue "would only make the people

presumptuous and mutinous." `061617 Three months later the reckless

friar challenged the world to debate the ninety-five theses that he

had posted on Wittenberg Church.

III. THE REVOLUTION TAKES FORM

-

Cranach's woodcut of 1520 may reasonably suggest the Luther of 1517:

a tonsured monk of middle stature, temporarily slender, with large

eyes of serious intent, larger nose, and resolute chin, a face not

pugnaciously but quietly announcing courage and character. Yet it

was honest anger, rather than jejune audacity, that wrote the

theses. The local bishop saw nothing heretical in them, but mildly

advised Luther to write no more on the subject for a while. The author

himself was at first dismayed by the furor he had aroused. In May

1518, he told Staupitz that his real ambition was to lead a life of

quiet retirement. He deceived himself; he relished battle.

The theses became the talk of literate Germany. Thousands had waited

for such a protest, and the pent-up anticlericalism of generations

thrilled at having found a voice. The sale of indulgences declined.

But many champions rose to meet the challenge. Tetzel himself, with

some professional aid, replied in One Hundred and Six Anti-Theses

(December 1517). He made no concessions or apologies, but "gave at

times an uncompromising, even dogmatic, sanction to mere theological

opinions that were hardly consonant with the most accurate

scholarship." `061618 When this publication reached Wittenberg a

hawker offering it for sale was mobbed by university students, and his

stock of 800 copies was burned in the market square- a proceeding of

which Luther joyously disapproved. He answered Tetzel in "A Sermon

on Indulgences and Grace," concluding with a characteristic

defiance: "If I am called a heretic by those whose purses will

suffer from my truths. I care not much for their brawling; for only

those say this whose dark understanding has never known the

Bible." `061619 Jakob van Hoogstraeten of Cologne thundered invectives

against Luther, and suggested burning him at the stake. Johann Eck,

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, issued a pamphlet,

Obelisci (March 1518), which charged Luther with disseminating

"Bohemian poison" (the heresies of Huss), and subverting all

ecclesiastical order. In Rome Sylvester Prierias, papal censor of

literature, published a Dialogue "maintaining the absolute supremacy

of the pope in terms not altogether free from exaggeration, especially

stretching his theory to an unwarrantable point in dealing with

indulgences." `061620

Luther countered in a Latin brochure Resolutiones (April 1518),

copies of which he sent to his local bishop and to the Pope- in both

cases with assurances of orthodoxy and submission. The text spoke

quite handsomely of Leo X:

-

Although there are in the Church both very learned and very holy

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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