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

I am descended from a long line of Christian emperors of this

noble German nation, of the Catholic kings of Spain, the archdukes

of Austria, and the dukes of Burgundy. They were all faithful to the

death to the Church of Rome, and they defended the Catholic faith

and the honor of God. I have resolved to follow in their steps. A

single friar who goes counter to all Christianity for a thousand years

must be wrong. Therefore I am resolved to stake my lands, my

friends, my body, my blood, my life, and my soul.... After having

heard yesterday the obstinate defense of Luther, I regret that I

have so long delayed in proceeding against him and his false teaching.

I will have no more to do with him. He may return under his

safe-conduct, but without preaching or making any tumult. I will

proceed against him as a notorious heretic, and I ask you to declare

yourselves as you promised me. `061680

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Four electors agreed to this procedure; Frederick of Saxony and

Ludwig of the Palatinate abstained. That night- April 19- anonymous

persons posted upon the door of the town hall, and elsewhere in Worms,

placards bearing the German symbol of social revolution, the peasant's

shoe. Some ecclesiastics were frightened, and privately solicited

Luther to make his peace with the Church, but he stood by his

statement to the Diet. On April 26 he began his return journey to

Wittenberg. Leo X sent orders that the safeconduct should be

respected. `061681 Nevertheless the Elector Frederick, fearful that

Imperial police might attempt to arrest Luther after the expiration of

the safe-conduct on May 6, arranged, with Luther's reluctant

consent, to have him ambushed en route homeward as if by highwaymen,

and taken for concealment to the castle of Wartburg.

On May 6 the Emperor presented to the Diet- now thinned by many

departures- the draft that Aleander had prepared of the "Edict of

Worms." It charged that Luther

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has sullied marriage, disparaged confession, and denied the body

and blood of Our Lord. He makes the sacraments depend upon the faith

of the recipient. He is pagan in his denial of free will. This devil

in the habit of a monk has brought together ancient errors into one

stinking puddle, and has invented new ones. He denies the power of the

keys, and encourages the laity to wash their hands in the blood of the

clergy. His teaching makes for rebellion, division, war, murder,

robbery, arson, and the collapse of Christendom. He lives the life

of a beast. He has burned the decretals. He despises alike the ban and

the sword. He does more harm to the civil than to the ecclesiastical

power. We have labored with him, but he recognizes only the

authority of Scripture, which he interprets in his own sense. We

have given him twenty-one days, dating from April 15.... When the time

is up, no one is to harbor him. His followers also are to be

condemned. His books are to be eradicated from the memory of

Man. `061682

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Two days after the presentation of this edict Leo X transferred

his political support from Francis I to Charles V. The rump Diet

agreed to the edict, and on May 26 Charles promulgated it formally.

Aleander praised God, and ordered that the books of Luther should be

burned wherever found.

VI. THE RADICALS

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The Wartburg was in itself a somber punishment. The ancient

castle, perched on a mountaintop a mile from Eisenach, was hidden from

the world as well as from the Emperor. For almost ten months (May 4,

1521, to February 29, 1522) Luther dwelt there in a gloomy chamber

equipped with bed, table, stove, and a stump as a stool. A few

soldiers guarded the fortress, a warden tended the grounds, two boys

served Luther as pages. For convenience, and perhaps as a local

disguise, he shed his monastic robe, donned knightly garb, and grew

a beard; he was now Junker George. He went out hunting, but he did not

relish killing rabbits when there were so many Antichrists still

unslain. Idleness and insomnia, and too much food and beer, made him

ill and stout. He fretted and cursed like a Junker. "I had rather burn

on live coals," he wrote, "than rot here.... I want to be in the

fray." `061683 But Frederick's minister advised him to stay in

hiding for a year while Charles's fervor cooled. Charles, however,

made no effort to find or arrest him.

In Luther's intellectual solitude doubts and hallucinations

plagued him. Could it be, he wondered, that he was right and so many

pundits wrong? Was it wise to break down the authority of the

established creed? Did the principle of private judgment portend the

rise of revolution and the death of law? If we may believe the story

that he told in his anecdotage, he was disturbed, in the castle, by

strange noises that he could explain only as the activity of demons.

He professed to have seen Satan on several occasions; once, he

vouched, the Devil pelted him with nuts; `061684 once, says a famous

legend, Luther flung an ink bottle at him, but missed his aim. `061685

He solaced himself by writing vivid letters to his friends and his

enemies, by composing theological treatises, and by translating the

New Testament into German. Once he made a flying trip to Wittenberg to

harness a revolution.

His defiance at Worms, and his survival, had given his followers a

heady elation. At Erfurt students, artisans, and peasants attacked and

demolished forty parish houses, destroyed libraries and rent rolls,

and killed a humanist (June 1521). In the fall of that exciting year

the Augustinian friars of Erfurt abandoned their monastery, preached

the Lutheran creed, and denounced the Church as "mother of dogma,

pride, avarice, luxury, faithlessness, and hypocrisy." `061686 At

Wittenberg, while Melanchthon composed his Loci communes rerum

theologicarum (1521)- the first systematic exposition of Protestant

theology- his fellow professor Carlstadt, now archdeacon of the Castle

Church, demanded that Mass should be said (if at all) in the

vernacular, that the Eucharist should be given in wine and bread

without preliminary confession or fasting, that religious images

should be removed from churches, and that the clergy- monks as well as

secular priests- should marry and procreate. Carlstadt set a pace by

marrying, at forty, a girl of fifteen (January 19, 1522).

Luther approved of this marriage, but "Good Heavens!" he wrote,

"will our Wittenbergers give wives to monks?" `061687 Nevertheless

he found something attractive in the idea, for he sent to Spalatin

(November 21, 1521) a treatise On Monastic Vows, defending their

repudiation. Spalatin delayed its publication, for it was

unconventionally frank. It accepted the sexual instinct as natural and

irrepressible, and declared that monastic vows were lures of Satan,

multiplying sins. Four years would elapse before Luther himself

would marry; his belated appreciation of woman apparently played no

part in inaugurating the Reformation.

The revolution proceeded. On September 22, 1521, Melanchthon

administered communion in both kinds; here the Utraquists of Bohemia

won a delayed victory. On October 23 the Mass ceased to be said in

Luther's monastery. On November 12 thirteen of the monks walked out of

the cloister and headed for marriage; soon a similar exodus would

empty half the monasteries of Germany. On December 3 some students and

townsfolk, armed with knives, entered the parish church of Wittenberg,

drove the priests from the altars, and stoned some worshipers who were

praying before a statue of the Virgin. On December 4 forty students

demolished the altars of the Franciscan monastery in Wittenberg. On

that same day Luther, still disguised as a Junker, clandestinely

visited the city, approved the marriage of the monks, but warned

clergy and laity against violence. "Constraint," he said, "is not

all ruled out, but it must be exercised by the constituted

authorities." `061688 On the morrow he returned to the Wartburg.

Shortly thereafter he sent to Spalatin, for publication, an Earnest

Exhortation for All Christians, Warning Them against Insurrection

and Rebellion. He feared that if the religious revolution went too

fast, or became a social revolution, it would alienate the nobility

and destroy itself. But its opening pages were themselves criticized

as an incitation to violence:

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It seems probable that there is danger of an uprising, and that

priests, monks, bishops, and the entire spiritual estate may be

murdered or driven into exile, unless they seriously and thoroughly

reform themselves. For the common man has been brooding over the

injury he has suffered in property, in body, and in soul, and has

become provoked. They have tried him too far, and have most

unscrupulously burdened him beyond measure. He is neither able nor

willing to endure it longer, and could indeed have good reason to

lay about him with flails and cudgels, as the peasants are threatening

to do. Now I am not at all displeased to hear that the clergy are

brought to such a state of fear and anxiety. Perhaps they will come to

their senses and moderate their mad tyranny.... I will go further.

If I had ten bodies, and could acquire so much favor with God that

he would chasten them [the clergy] by the gentle means [Fuchs-schwanz-

the fox's fluffy tail] of bodily death or insurrection, I would most

gladly give all my ten bodies to death in behalf of the poor

peasants. `061689

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Nevertheless, he went on, it is inadvisable for private

individuals to use force; vengeance is God's.

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Insurrection is unreasoning, and generally hurts the innocent more

than the guilty. Hence no insurrection is ever right, no matter how

good the cause in whose interest it is made. The harm resulting from

it always exceeds the amount of reformation accomplished.... When

Sir Mob [Herr Omnes- Mister Everybody] breaks loose he cannot tell the

wicked from the godly; he strikes at random, and then horrible

injustice is inevitable.... My sympathies are and always will be

with those against whom insurrection is made. `061690

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Revolution, more or less peaceful, continued. On Christmas Day 1521,

Carlstadt celebrated Mass in German, in civilian dress, and invited

all to receive communion by taking the bread in their hands and

drinking from the chalice. About this time Gabriel Zwilling, a

leader of the Augustinian Congregation, invited his hearers to burn

religious pictures and demolish altars wherever found. On December

27 oil was poured upon the fire by "prophets" arriving from Zwickau.

That town was one of the most industrial in Germany, having a large

population of weavers under a municipal government of merchant

employers. A socialist movement among the workers was encouraged by

echoes and memories of the suppressed Taborite experiment that had

agitated near-by Bohemia. Thomas Munzer, pastor of the weavers' church

of St. Catherine, became the mouthpiece of their aspirations, and at

the same time an enthusiastic supporter of the Reformation.

Realizing that Luther's exaltation of the Bible as the sole rule of

faith opened the question who should interpret the text, Munzer and

two associates- Nicholas Storch the weaver and Marcus Stubner the

scholar- announced that they were singularly qualified as

interpreters, for they felt themselves directly inspired by the Holy

Ghost. This divine spirit, they declared, bade them defer baptism till

maturity; for the sacrament could have effect only through faith,

which was not to be expected of babies. The world, they predicted, was

soon to suffer a general devastation, in which all ungodly men-

including especially all orthodox priests- would perish; thereafter

the communistic Kingdom of God would begin on earth. `061691 In 1521

an insurrection of the weavers was put down, and the three "Zwickau

Apostles" were banished. Munzer went to Prague, was expelled, and took

a pastorate in Allstedt in Saxony. Storch and Stubner went to

Wittenberg, and in the absence of Luther they made a favorable

impression on Melanchthon and Carlstadt.

On January 6, 1522, the Augustinian Congregation at Wittenberg

completely disbanded. On January 22 Carlstadt's adherents were

strong enough in the municipal council to carry a decree ordering

all images to be removed from Wittenberg churches, and prohibiting

Mass except in Carlstadt's simplified form. Carlstadt included the

crucifix among forbidden images, and, like the early Christians,

banned music from religious services. "The lascivious notes of the

organ," he said, "awaken thoughts of the world. When we should be

meditating on the sufferings of Christ we are reminded of Pyramus

and Thisbe.... Relegate organs, trumpets, and flutes to the

theater." `061692 When the agents of the council proved dilatory in

removing images, Carlstadt led his followers into the churches;

pictures and crucifixes were torn from the walls, and resisting

priests were pelted with stones. `061693 Accepting the view of the

Zwickau Prophets- that God speaks directly to men as well as through

the Scriptures, and speaks rather to the simple in mind and heart than

to the learned in languages and books- Carlstadt, himself erudite,

proclaimed that schools and studies were deterrents to piety, and that

real Christians would shun all letters and learning, and would

become illiterate peasants or artisans. One of his followers, George

Mohr, dismissed the school that he taught, and exhorted the parents to

keep their children innocent of letters. Several students left the

university and went home to learn a handicraft, saying that there

was no further need for study.

Hearing of all this, Luther feared that his conservative critics

would soon be justified in their frequent predictions that his

repudiation of ecclesiastical authority would loosen all bonds of

social discipline. Defying the Emperor's ban, and waiving all

protection by the Elector should Charles seek to arrest him, Luther

left his castle, resumed his monastic robe and tonsure, and hurried

back to Wittenberg. On March 9, 1522, he began a series of eight

sermons that sternly called the university, the churches, and the

citizens to order. He now rejected all appeals to force; had he not

freed millions of men from ecclesiastical oppression without lifting

more than a pen? "Follow me," he said. "I was the first whom God

entrusted with this matter; I was the one to whom He first revealed

how His Word should be preached to you. Therefore you have done

wrong in starting such a piece of work without... having first

consulted me.... `061694 Give me time.... Do not suppose that abuses

are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go

wrong with wine and women; shall we then prohibit wine and abolish

women? The sun, the moon, the stars, have been worshiped; shall we

then pluck them out of the sky?" `061695 Those who wished to keep

pictures, statuary, crucifixes, music, or the Mass should not be

interfered with; he himself approved of religious images. `061696 He

arranged that in one Wittenberg church the Mass should be performed

according to the traditional rite; in another, communion was

administered in bread alone at the high altar, but in bread and wine

at a side altar. The form, said Luther, made little difference; what

counted was the spirit in which the Eucharist was received.

He was at his best and most Christian in those eight sermons in

eight days. He risked all on being able to win Wittenberg back to

moderation, and he succeeded. The Zwickau Prophets sought to convert

him to their views, and offered, as proof of their divine inspiration,

to read his thoughts. He accepted the challenge; they answered that he

was feeling a secret sympathy for their ideas; he attributed their

clairvoyance to the Devil, and ordered them to leave Wittenberg.

Carlstadt, dismissed from his posts by a reconstructed town council,

took a pastorate in Orlamunde, from whose pulpit he denounced Luther

as a "gluttonous ecclesiastic... the new Wittenberg pope." `061697

Anticipating the Quakers, Carlstadt abandoned all clerical garb,

donned a plain gray coat, dispensed with titles, asked to be called

"Brother Andreas," refused payment for his ministry, earned his living

at the plow, renounced all use of drugs, preferred prayer to medicine,

advocated polygamy as Biblical, and adopted a merely symbolical view

of the Eucharist. At the Elector's request Luther went to Orlamunde to

preach against him, but was pelted out of the town with stones and

mud. `061698 When the Peasants' Revolt collapsed, Carlstadt, fearing

arrest as an instigator, sought and received refuge with Luther. After

much wandering, the tired radical found port as a professor in

Basel, and there, in 1541, he achieved a peaceful scholastic death.

VII. THE FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH

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Luther resumed the uneven tenor of his ways as priest to his

congregation and professor in the university. The Elector paid him 200

guilders ($5,000?) a year, to which each student added a slight

honorarium for attending his lectures. Luther and another monk, now

both in layman's garb, lived in the Augustinian monastery with a

student servant. "My bed was not made up for a whole year, and

became foul with sweat. But I worked all day, and was so tired at

night that I fell into bed without knowing that anything was

amiss." `061699 Hard work made his appetite forgivable. "I eat like

a Bohemian and drink like a German, thank God, Amen." `0616100 He

preached often, but with humane brevity, and in simple, vigorous

language that held his rough auditors in hand. His only recreations

were chess and the flute; but he seems to have enjoyed more the

hours that he spent in attacking "papists." He was the most powerful

and uninhibited controversialist in history. Nearly all his writings

were warfare, salted with humor and peppered with vituperation. He let

his opponents elaborate superior Latin to be read by a few scholars;

he too wrote Latin when he wished to address all Christendom; but most

of his diatribes were composed in German, or were at once translated

into German, for his was a nationalist revolution. No other German

author has equaled him in clarity or force of style, in directness and

pungency of phrase, in happy- sometimes hilarious- similes, in a

vocabulary rooted in the speech of the people, and congenial to the

national mind.

Printing fell in with his purposes as a seemingly providential

innovation, which he used with inexhaustible skill; he was the first

to make it an engine of propaganda and war. There were no newspapers

yet, nor magazines; battles were fought with books, pamphlets, and

private letters intended for publication. Under the stimulus of

Luther's revolt the number of books printed in Germany rose from 150

in 1518 to 990 in 1524. Four fifths of these favored the

Reformation. Books defending orthodoxy were hard to sell while

Luther's were the most widely purchased of the age. They were sold not

only in bookstores but by peddlers and traveling students; 1,400

copies were bought at one Frankfurt fair; even in Paris, in 1520, they

outsold everything else. As early as 1519 they were exported to

France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, England. "Luther's books are

everywhere and in every language," wrote Erasmus in 1521; "no one

would believe how widely he has moved men." `0616101 The literary

fertility of the Reformers transferred the preponderance of

publications from southern to northern Europe, where it has remained

ever since. Printing was the Reformation; Gutenberg made Luther

possible.

Luther's supreme achievement as a writer was his translation of

the Bible into German. Eighteen such translations had already been

made, but they were based on Jerome's Vulgate, were crowded with

errors, and were awkwardly phrased. The difficulties of translating

from the original were appalling; there were as yet no dictionaries

from Hebrew or Greek into German; every page of text evoked a

hundred problems of interpretation; and the German language itself was

still crude and but half formed. For the New Testament Luther used the

Greek text that Erasmus had edited with a Latin version in 1516.

This part of the task was completed in 1521, and published in 1522.

After twelve more years of labor, amid constant theological strife,

but aided by Melanchthon and several Jewish scholars, Luther published

the Old Testament in German. Despite their imperfect scholarship,

these translations were epochal events. They inaugurated German

literature, and established Neuhochdeutsch - the New High German of

Upper Saxony- as the literary language of Germany. Yet the

translations were deliberately unliterary, couched in the speech of

the populace. In his usual vivid way Luther explained his method:

"We must not, as asses do, ask the Latin letters how we should speak

German, but we must ask the mothers in their houses, the children in

the streets, the common people in the market place... we must be

guided by them in translating; then they will understand us, and

will know that we are speaking German to them." `0616102 Hence his

translation had the same effect and prestige in Germany as the King

James version in England a century later: it had endless and

beneficent influence on the national speech, and is still the greatest

prose work in the national literature. In Wittenberg, and during

Luther's lifetime, 100,000 copies of his New Testament were printed; a

dozen unauthorized editions appeared elsewhere; and despite edicts

forbidding its circulation in Brandenburg, Bavaria, and Austria, it

became and remained the best-selling book in Germany. The translations

of the Bible shared, as both effect and contributory cause, in that

displacement of Latin by vernacular languages and literatures which

accompanied the nationalist movement, and which corresponded to the

defeat of the universal Church in lands that had not received and

transformed the Latin tongue.

Laboring so long on the Bible, and inheriting the medieval view of

its divine authorship, Luther fondly made it the all-sufficient source

and norm of his religious faith. Though he accepted some traditions

not based on Scripture- like infant baptism and the Sunday Sabbath- he

rejected the right of the Church to add to Christianity elements

resting not on the Bible but on her own customs and authority, like

purgatory, indulgences, and the worship of Mary and the saints.

Valla's revelation of the "Donation of Constantine" (the supposed

bequest of Western Europe to the popes) as a hoary hoax of history had

shaken the faith of thousands of Christians in the reliability of

Church traditions and the compulsive validity of Church decrees; and

in 1537 Luther himself translated Valla's treatise into German.

Tradition was human and fallible, but the Bible was accepted by nearly

all Europe as the infallible word of God.

Reason, too, seemed a weak instrument when compared with faith in

a divine revelation. "We poor, wretched people... presumptuously

seek to understand the incomprehensible majesty of the

incomprehensible light of God's wonders.... We look with blind eyes,

like a mole, on the glory of God." `0616103 You cannot, said Luther,

accept both the Bible and reason; one or the other must go.

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All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to

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

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