Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564
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to Zurich, and to end their alliance with Austria; neither party was
to attack the other because of religious differences; and in the
"common lands" subject to two or more cantons the people were to
decide, by a majority vote, the regulation of their religious life.
Zwingli, however, was dissatisfied: he had demanded, and not received,
freedom for Protestant preaching in Catholic cantons. He predicted
an early rupture of the peace.
It lasted twenty-eight months. In the interim an effort was made
to unite the Protestants of Switzerland and Germany. Charles V had
patched up his quarrel with Clement VII; both were now free to join
forces against the Protestants. But these were already a powerful
political force. Half of Germany was Lutheran; many German cities-
Ulm, Augsburg, Wurttemberg, Mainz, Frankfurt-am-Main, Strasbourg-
had strong Zwinglian sympathies; and in Switzerland, though the
rural districts were Catholic, most of the towns were Protestant.
Obviously self-protection against the Empire and the papacy required
Protestant unity. Only theology stood in the way.
Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, took the initiative by inviting
Luther, Melanchthon, and other German Protestants to meet Zwingli,
Oecolampadius, and other Swiss Protestants in his castle at Marburg,
north of Frankfurt. On September 29, 1529, the rival factions met.
Zwingli made generous concessions; he dispelled Luther's suspicion
that he doubted the divinity of Christ; he accepted the Nicene
Creed, and the dogma of original sin. But he would not withdraw his
view of the Eucharist as a symbol and commemoration rather than a
miracle. Luther chalked on the conference table the words ascribed
to Christ- "This is my body"- and would admit none but a literal
interpretation. On fourteen articles the parties signed an
agreement; on the Eucharist they parted (October 3), and not amicably.
Luther refused Zwingli's proffered hand, saying, "Your spirit is not
our spirit"; he drew up a theological profession in seventeen
articles, including "consubstantiation," and persuaded the Lutheran
princes to reject alliance with any group that would not sign all
seventeen. `061820 Melanchthon agreed with his master. "We told the
Zwinglians," he wrote, "that we wondered how their consciences would
allow them to call us brethren when they held that our doctrine was
erroneous"; `061821 here in one sentence is the spirit of the age.
In 1532 Luther admonished Duke Albrecht of Prussia not to allow any
Zwinglian in his territory, on pain of everlasting damnation. It was
too much to ask of Luther that he should pass at one step from the
Middle Ages into modernity; he had received too profound an impress of
medieval religion to bear patiently with any repudiation of its
fundamentals; he felt, like a good Catholic, that his world of thought
would collapse, the whole meaning of life would fade away, if he
lost any basic element of the faith in which he had been formed.
Luther was the most medieval of modern men.
Crushed with this failure, Zwingli returned to a Zurich that was
becoming restless under his dictatorship. Strict sumptuary laws were
resented; trade was hampered by the religious differences among the
cantons; artisans were dissatisfied with their still small voice in
the government; and Zwingli's sermons, cluttered with politics, had
lost their inspiration and charm. He felt the change so keenly that he
asked the Council's leave to seek a pastorate elsewhere, He was
prevailed upon to stay. He gave much of his time now to writing. In
1530 he sent his Ratio fidei to Charles V, who gave no sign of
receiving it. In 1531 he addressed to Francis I a Christianae fidei
brevis et clara expositio. In this "brief and clear exposition of the
Christian faith" he expressed his Erasmian conviction that a
Christian, on reaching paradise, would find there many noble Jews
and pagans: not only Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Isaiah... but
Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, Aristides, Numa, Camillus, the Catos, the
Scipios; "in short, there has not been any good man, nor any holy
mind, nor any faithful soul, from the very beginning of the world even
to its end, whom you will not see there with God. What could be
imagined more joyful, pleasing, and noble, than this sight?" `061822
This passage so shocked Luther that he concluded that Zwingli must
have been a "heathen"; `061823 and Bishop Bossuet, agreeing for once
with Luther, quoted it to prove that Zwingli had been a hopeless
infidel. `061824
On May 15, 1531, an assembly of Zurich and her allies voted to
compel the Catholic cantons to allow freedom of preaching in their
territory. When the cantons refused, Zwingli proposed war, but his
allies preferred an economic blockade. The Catholic cantons, denied
all imports, declared war. Again rival armies marched; again Zwingli
led the way and carried the standard; again the armies met at Kappel
(October 11, 1531)- the Catholics with 8,000 men, the Protestants with
1,500. This time they fought. The Catholics won, and Zwingli, aged
forty-seven, was among the 500 Zurichers slain. His body was quartered
and then burned on a pyre of dung. `061825 Luther, hearing of
Zwingli's death, pronounced it the judgment of heaven on a
heathen, `061826 and "a triumph for us." `061827 "I wish from my
heart," he is reported to have said, "that Zwingli could be saved, but
I fear for the contrary, for Christ has said that those who deny Him
shall be damned." `061828
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Zwingli was succeeded in Zurich by Heinrich Bullinger, and at
Basel Oswald Myconius carried on after Oecolampadius' death. Bullinger
avoided politics, superintended the city's schools, sheltered fugitive
Protestants, and dispensed charity to the needy of any creed. He
approved the execution of Servetus, but, barring that, he approached a
theory of general religious freedom. He joined with Myconius and Leo
Jud in formulating the First Helvetic Confession (1536), which for a
generation was the authoritative expression of Zwinglian views; and
with Calvin he drew up the Consensus Tigurinus (1549), which brought
the Zurich and Genevan Protestants into one "Reformed Church."
Despite that protective accord, Catholicism regained in later
years much of its lost ground in Switzerland, partly through its
victory at Kappel; theologies are proved or disproved in history by
competitive slaughter or fertility. Seven cantons adhered to
Catholicism- Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Zug, Unterwalden, Fribourg, and
Solothurn; four were definitely Protestant- Zurich, Basel, Bern, and
Schaffhausen; the rest remained poised between the two faiths,
uncertain of their certainties. Zwingli's successor at Glarus,
Valentin Tschudi, compromised by saying Mass in the morning for
Catholics, and preaching an evangelical- purely Scriptural- sermon
in the evening for the Protestants; he argued for mutual toleration,
and was tolerated; he wrote a Chronicle so impartial that no one
could tell from it which faith he favored. Even in that age there were
Christians.
CHAPTER XIX: Luther and Erasmus: 1517-36
I. LUTHER
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HAVING summarized the economic, political, religious, moral, and
intellectual conditions that cradled the Reformation, we must still
count it among the wonders of history that in Germany one man should
have unwittingly gathered these influences into a rebellion
transforming a continent. We need not exaggerate the role of the
hero here; the forces of change would have found another embodiment
had Luther continued in his obedience. Yet the sight of this rough
monk, standing in doubt and terror and immovable resolution against
the most entrenched institutions and most hallowed customs of
Europe, stirs the blood, and points again the distance that man has
come from the slime or the ape.
What was he like, this lusty voice of his time, this peak of
German history? In 1526, as pictured at forty-three by Lucas
Cranach, `06191 he was in transition from slender to stout; very
serious, with only a hint of his robust humor; hair curly and still
black; nose immense; eyes black and brilliant- his enemies said that
demons shone in them. A frank and open countenance made him unfit
for diplomacy. A later portrait (1532), also by Cranach, showed Luther
cheerfully obese, with a broad, full face; this man enjoyed living. In
1524 he abandoned the monastic garb and dressed like a layman,
sometimes in the robes of a teacher, sometimes in ordinary jacket
and trousers. He was not above mending these himself; his wife
complained that the great man had cut a piece out of his son's
pantaloons to patch his own.
He had slipped into marriage by inadvertence. He agreed with St.
Paul that it is better to marry than to burn, and proclaimed sex to be
as natural and necessary as eating. `06192 He retained the medieval
notion that copulation is sinful even in marriage, but "God covers the
sin." `06193 He condemned virginity as a violation of the divine
precept to increase and multiply. If "a preacher of the Gospel...
cannot live chastely unmarried, let him take a wife; God has made that
plaster for that sore." `06194 He considered the human method of
reproduction a bit absurd, at least in retrospect, and suggested
that "had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised Him to
continue the generation of the species by fashioning human beings
out of clay, as Adam was made." `06195 He had the traditional and
German conception of woman as divinely designed for childbearing,
cooking, praying, and not much else. "Take women from their
housewifery, and they are good for nothing." `06196 "If women get
tired and die of bearing, there is no harm in that; let them die as
long as they bear; they are made for that." `06197 The wife should
give her husband love, honor, and obedience; he is to rule her, though
with kindness; she must keep to her sphere, the home; but there she
can do more with the children with one finger than the man with two
fists. `06198 Between man and wife "there should be no question of
mine and thine"; all their possessions should be in common. `06199
Luther had the male's usual dislike for an educated woman. "I wish,"
he said of his wife, "that women would repeat the Lord's Prayer before
opening their mouths." `061910 But he despised writers who composed
satires on women. "What defects women have we must check them for in
private, gently... for woman is a frail vessel." `061911 Despite his
rough candor about sex and marriage he was not insensible to
esthetic considerations. "The hair is the finest ornament women
have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were
in mourning. I like women to let their hair fall down their back; it
is a most agreeable sight." `061912 (This should have made him more
lenient with Pope Alexander VI, who fell in love with Giulia Farnese's
loosened hair.)
Apparently it was for no physical need that Luther married. In a
burst of humor he said that he had married to please his father and
spite the Devil and the pope. But he took a long time to make up his
mind, and then it was made up for him. When, on his recommendation,
some nuns left their convent, he undertook to find them husbands.
Finally only one remained unmatched, Catherine von Bora, a woman of
good birth and character, but hardly designed to arouse precipitate
passion. She had set her sights on a young Wittenberg student of
patrician stock; she failed to get him, and entered domestic service
to keep alive. Luther suggested a Dr. Glatz as a husband; she
replied that Glatz was unacceptable, but that Herr Amsdorf or Dr.
Luther would do. Luther was forty-two, Catherine twenty-six; he
thought the discrepancy prohibitive, but his father urged him to
transmit the family name. On June 27, 1525, the ex-monk and the ex-nun
became man and wife.
The Elector gave them the Augustinian monastery as a home, and
raised Luther's salary to 300 guilders ($7,500) a year; later this was
increased to 400, then to 500. Luther bought a farm, which Katie
managed and loved. She bore him six children, and cared faithfully for
them, for all Martin's domestic needs, for a home brewery, a fish
pond, a vegetable garden, chickens, and pigs. He called her "my lord
Katie," and implied that she could put him in his place when he forgot
the biological subordination of man to woman; but she had much to bear
from his occasional storms and his trustful improvidence; for he cared
nothing for money, and was recklessly generous. He took no royalties
for his books, though they made a fortune for his publisher. His
letters to or about Catherine reveal his growing affection for her,
and a generally happy marriage. He repeated in his own way what had
been told him in his youth: "The greatest gift of God to man is a
pious, kindly, God-fearing, home-loving wife." `061913
He was a good father, knowing as if by instinct the right mixture of
discipline and love. "Punish if you must, but let the sugar-plum go
with the rod." `061914 He composed songs for his children, and sang
these songs with them while he played the lute. His letters to his
children are among the jewels of German literature. His sturdy spirit,
which could face an emperor in war, was almost broken by the death
of his favorite daughter Magdalena at the age of fourteen. "God," he
said, "has given no bishop so great a gift in a thousand years as He
has given me in her." `061915 He prayed night and day for her
recovery. "I love her very much, but, dear God, if it is Thy holy will
to take her, I would gladly leave her with Thee." `061916 And he
said to her: "Lena dear, my little daughter, thou wouldst love to
remain here with thy father; art thou willing to go to that other
Father?" "Yes, dear father," Lena answered, "just as God wills."
When she died he wept long and bitterly. As she was laid in the
earth he spoke to her as to a living soul: "Du liebes Lenichen,
you will rise and shine like the stars and the sun. How strange it
is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet be so
sorrowful!" `061917
Not content with six children, he took into his many-chambered
monastery-home eleven orphaned nephews and nieces, brought them up,
sat with them at table, and discoursed with them tirelessly; Catherine
mourned their monopoly of him. Some of them made uncensored notes of
his table talk; the resulting mass of 6,596 entries rivals Boswell's
Johnson and Napoleon's recorded conversations in weight, wit, and
wisdom. In judging Luther we should remember that he never edited
these Tischreden; few men have been so completely exposed to the
eavesdropping of mankind. Here, rather than in the controversies of
the theological battlefield, is Luther chez lui, en pantoufles, at
home, himself.
We perceive, first of all, that he was a man, not an inkwell; he
lived as well as wrote. No healthy person will resent Luther's
relish for good food and beer, or his fruitful enjoyment of all the
comforts that Catherine Bora could give him. He might have been more
prudently reticent on these points, but reticence came with the
Puritans, and was unknown to Renaissance Italians as well as to
Reformation Germans; even the delicate Erasmus shocks us with his
candid physiological speech. Luther ate too much, but he could
punish himself with long fasts. He drank too much, and deplored
drinking as a national vice; but beer was the water of life to the
Germans, as wine to the Italians and the French; water could literally
be poison in those careless days. Yet we never hear of his
overstepping exuberance into intoxication. "If God can forgive me
for having crucified Him with Masses twenty years running, he can also
bear with me for occasionally taking a good drink to honor
Him." `061918
His faults leaped to the eye and the ear. Proud amid his constant
expressions of humility, dogmatic against dogma, intemperate in
zeal, giving no quarter of courtesy to his opponents, clinging to
superstitions while laughing at superstition, denouncing intolerance
and practicing it- here was no paragon of consistency or Grandison
of virtue, but a man as contrary as life and scorched with the
powder of war. "I have not been slow to bite my adversaries," he
confessed, "but what is the good of salt if it does not bite?" `061919
He spoke of papal decrees as Dreck, dung; `061920 of the pope as
"the Devil's sow" or lieutenant, and as Antichrist; of bishops as
"larvae," unbelieving hypocrites, "ignorant apes"; of sacerdotal
ordination as marking a man with "the sign of the beast in the
Apocalypse"; of monks as worse than hangmen or murderers, or, at best,
"fleas on God Almighty's fur coat"; `061921 we may surmise how his
audiences enjoyed this hilarity. "The only portion of the human
anatomy which the pope has had to leave uncontrolled is the hind
end." `061922 Of the Catholic clergy he wrote: "The Rhine is
scarcely big enough to drown the whole accursed gang of Roman
extortioners... cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and
abbots"; `061923 or, water failing, "may it please God to send down
upon them the rain of fire and sulphur that consumed Sodom and
Gomorrha." `061924 One is reminded of the Emperor Julian's comment:
"There is no wild beast like an angry theologian." `061925 But Luther,
like Clive, marveled at his own moderation.
-
Many think I am too fierce against popery; on the contrary I
complain that I am, alas, too mild; I wish I could breathe out
lightning against pope and popedom, and that every wind were a
thunderbolt.... `061926 I will curse and scold the scoundrels until
I go to my grave, and never shall they have a civil word from me....
For I am unable to pray without at the same time cursing. If I am
prompted to say, "Hallowed be Thy name," I must add, "Cursed,
damned, outraged be the name of papists." If I am prompted to say,
"Thy Kingdom come," I must perforce add, "Cursed, damned, destroyed
must be the papacy." Indeed, I pray thus orally every day and in my
heart, without intermission.... `061927 I never work better than
when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I can write, pray, and
preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my
understanding sharpened. `061928
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Such rhetorical passion was in the temper of the times. "Some of the
preachers and pamphlet writers on the orthodox side," confesses the
learned Cardinal Gasquet, "were Luther's match in this
respect." `061929 Vituperation was expected of intellectual
gladiators, and was relished by their audiences; politeness was
suspected of cowardice. When Luther's wife reproached him- "Dear
husband, you are too rude"- he answered, "A twig can be cut with a
bread knife, but an oak calls for an axe"; `061930 a soft answer could
turn away wrath, but could not overturn the papacy. A man mollified to
refined speech would have shrunk from so mortal a combat. It took a
thick skin- thicker than Erasmus'- to slough off papal
excommunications and Imperial bans.
And it took a strong will. This was Luther's bedrock; hence his
self-confidence, dogmatism, courage, and intolerance. But he had
some gentle virtues too. In his middle years he was the height of
sociability and cheerfulness, and a pillar of strength to all who
needed consolation or aid. He put on no airs, assumed no elegances,
never forgot that he was a peasant's son. He deprecated the
publication of his collected works, begging his readers to study the
Bible instead. He protested against applying the name Lutheran to
the churches that followed his lead. When he preached he turned his
speech to the vocabulary and understanding of his hearers. His humor
was rural- rough, rollicking, Rabelaisian. "My enemies examine all
that I do," he complained; "if I break wind in Wittenberg they smell
it in Rome." `061931 "Women wear veils because of the angels; I wear
trousers because of the girls." `061932 Many of us have committed such
quips, but have not had such merciless reporters. The same man who
uttered them loved music this side of idolatry, composed tender or
thundering hymns, and set them- theological prejudice for a moment
stilled- to polyphonic strains already used in the Roman Church. "I
would not give up my humble musical gift for anything, however
great.... I am quite of the opinion that... next to theology, there is
no art which can be compared to music; for it alone, after theology,
gives us... rest and joy of heart." `061933
His theology led him to a lenient ethic, for it told him that good
works could not win salvation without faith in redemption by Christ,
nor could sin forfeit salvation if such faith survived. A little sin
now and then, he thought, might cheer us up on the straight and narrow
path. Tired of seeing Melanchthon wear himself thin with gloomy
scruples about minor lapses from sanctity, he told him, with
full-blooded humor, Pecca fortiter - "Sin powerfully; God can forgive
only a hearty sinner," but scorns the anemic casuist; `061934 yet it
would be absurd to rear an indictment of Luther on this incidental
raillery. One thing is clear: Luther was no puritan. "Our loving God
wills that we eat, drink, and be merry." `061935 "I seek and accept
joy wherever I can find it. We now know, thank God, that we can be
happy with a good conscience." `061936 He advised his followers to
feast and dance on Sunday. He approved of amusements, played a good
game of chess, called card-playing a harmless diversion for immature
minds, `061937 and said a wise word for dancing: "Dances are
instituted that courtesy may be learned in company, and that
friendship and acquaintance may be contracted between young men and
girls; here their intercourse may be watched, and occasion of
honorable meeting given. I myself would attend them sometimes, but the
youth would whirl less giddily if I did." `061938 Some Protestant
preachers wished to prohibit plays, but Luther was more tolerant:
"Christians must not altogether shun plays because there are sometimes
coarseness and adulteries therein; for such reasons they would have to
give up the Bible too." `061939 All in all, Luther's conception of
life was remarkably healthy and cheerful for one who thought that "all
natural inclinations are either without God or against Him," `061940
and that nine of every ten souls were divinely predestined to
everlasting hell. `061941 The man was immeasurably better than his
theology.
His intellect was powerful, but it was too clouded with the
miasmas of his youth, too incarnadined with war, to work out a
rational philosophy. Like his contemporaries, he believed in
goblins, witches, demons, the curative value of live toads, `061942
and the impish incubi who sought out maidens in their baths or
beds and startled them into motherhood. `061943 He ridiculed astrology
but sometimes talked in its terms. He praised mathematics as
"relying upon demonstrations and sure proofs"; `061944 he admired
the bold reach of astronomy into the stars, but, like nearly all his
contemporaries, he rejected the Copernican system as contradicting
Scripture. He insisted that reason should stay within the limits
laid down by religious faith.
Doubtless he was right in his judgment that feeling, rather than
thought, is the lever of history. The men who mold religions move
the world; the philosophers clothe in new phrases, generation after
generation, the sublime ignorance of the part pontificating about
the whole. So Luther prayed while Erasmus reasoned; and while
Erasmus courted princes Luther spoke to God- now imperiously, as one