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

who had fought strenuously in the battles of the Lord and had a

right to be heard, now humbly as a child lost in infinite space.

Confident that God was on his side, he faced insuperable obstacles,

and won. "I bear upon me the malice of the whole world, the hatred

of the Emperor, of the Pope, and of all their retinue. Well, onward,

in God's name!" `061945 He had the courage to defy his enemies because

he did not have the intellect to doubt his truth. He was what he had

to be to do what he had to do.

II. THE INTOLERANT HERETICS

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It is instructive to observe how Luther moved from tolerance to

dogma as his power and certainty grew. Among the "errors" that Leo

X, in the bull Exsurge Domine, denounced in Luther was that "to burn

heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit." In the Open

Letter to the Christian Nobility (1520) Luther ordained "every man

a priest," with the right to interpret the Bible according to his

private judgment and individual light; `061946 and added, "We should

vanquish heretics with books, not with burning." `061947 In the

essay On Secular Authority (1522) he wrote:

-

Over the soul God can and will let no one rule but Himself.... We

desire to make this so clear that everyone shall grasp it, and that

our Junkers, the princes and bishops, may see what fools they are

when they seek to coerce the people... into believing one thing or

another.... Since belief or unbelief is a matter of everyone's

conscience... the secular power should be content to attend to its own

affairs, and permit men to believe one thing or another as they are

able and willing, and constrain no one by force. For faith is a free

work, to which no one can be compelled.... Faith and heresy are

never so strong as when men oppose them by sheer force, without

God's word. `061948

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In a letter to Elector Frederick (April 21, 1524) Luther asked

toleration for Munzer and other of his own enemies. "You should not

prevent them from speaking. There must be sects, and the Word of God

must face battle.... Let us leave in His hands the combat and free

encounter of minds." In 1528, when others were advocating the death

penalty for Anabaptists, he advised that unless they were guilty of

sedition they should be merely banished. `061949 Likewise, in 1530, he

recommended that the death penalty for blasphemy should be softened to

exile. It is true that even in these liberal years he talked as if

he wished his followers or God to drown or otherwise eliminate all

"papists"; but this was "campaign oratory," not seriously meant. In

January 1521, he wrote: "I would not have the Gospel defended by

violence or murder"; and in June of that year he reproved the Erfurt

students for attacking priests; however, he did not object to

"frightening them" a bit to improve their theology. `061950 In May

1529, he condemned plans for the forcible conversion of Catholic

parishes to Protestantism. As late as 1531 he taught that "we

neither can nor should force anyone into the faith." `061951

But it was difficult for a man of Luther's forceful and positive

character to advocate tolerance after his position had been made

relatively secure. A man who was sure that he had God's Word could not

tolerate its contradiction. The transition to intolerance was

easiest concerning the Jews. Till 1537 Luther argued that they were to

be forgiven for keeping their own creed, "since our fools, the

popes, bishops, sophists, and monks, those coarse assheads, dealt with

the Jews in such a manner that any Christian would have preferred to

be a Jew. Indeed, had I been a Jew, and had seen such idiots and

dunderheads expound Christianity, I should rather have become a hog

than a Christian.... I would advise and beg everybody to deal kindly

with the Jews, and to instruct them in the Scripture; in such case

we could expect them to come over to us." `061952 Luther may have

realized that Protestantism was in some aspects a return to Judaism,

in its rejection of monasticism and clerical celibacy, its emphasis on

the Old Testament, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and its adoption

(Luther himself excepted) of a sterner sexual ethic than that of

Catholicism. He was disappointed when the Jews made no corresponding

move toward Protestantism; and his hostility to the charging of

interest helped to turn him against Jewish moneylenders, then

against Jews in general. When Elector John expelled the Jews from

Saxony (1537) Luther rejected a Jewish appeal for his intercession. In

his Table Talk he united "Jews and papists" as "ungodly wretches...

two stockings made of one piece of cloth." `061953 In his declining

years he fell into a fury of anti-Semitism, denounced the Jews as "a

stiff-necked, unbelieving, proud, wicked, abominable nation," and

demanded that their schools and synagogues should be razed with fire.

-

And let whosoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them; if one

could hurl hell-fire at them, so much the better.... And this must

be done for the honor of Our Lord and of Christianity, so that God may

see that we are indeed Christians. Let their houses also be

shattered and destroyed.... Let their prayer books and Talmuds be

taken from them, and their whole Bible too; let their rabbis be

forbidden, on pain of death, to teach henceforth any more. Let the

streets and highways be closed against them. Let them be forbidden

to practice usury, and let all their money, and all their treasures of

silver and gold be taken from them and put away in safety. And if

all this be not enough, let them be driven like mad dogs out of the

land. `061954

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Luther should never have grown old. Already in 1522 he was

outpapaling the popes. "I do not admit," he wrote, "that my doctrine

can be judged by anyone, even by the angels. He who does not receive

my doctrine cannot be saved." `061955 By 1529 he was drawing some

delicate distinctions:

-

No one is to be compelled to profess the faith, but no one must be

allowed to injure it. Let our opponents give their objections and hear

our answers. If they are thus converted, well and good; if not, let

them hold their tongues and believe what they please.... In order to

avoid trouble we should not, if possible, suffer contrary teachings in

the same state. Even unbelievers should be forced to obey the Ten

Commandments, attend church, and outwardly conform. `061956

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Luther now agreed with the Catholic Church that "Christians

require certainty, definite dogmas, and sure Word of God which they

can trust to live and die by." `061957 As the Church in the early

centuries of Christianity, divided and weakened by a growing

multiplicity of ferocious sects, had felt compelled to define her

creed and expel all dissidents, so now Luther, dismayed by the variety

of quarrelsome sects that had sprouted from the seed of private

judgment, passed step by step from toleration to dogmatism. "All men

now presume to criticize the Gospel," he complained; "almost every old

doting fool or prating sophist must, forsooth, be a doctor of

divinity." `061958 Stung by Catholic taunts that he had let loose a

dissolvent anarchy of creeds and morals, he concluded, with the

Church, that social order required some cloture to debate, some

recognized authority to serve as "an anchor of faith." What should

that authority be? The Church answered, the Church, for only a

living organism could adjust itself and its Scriptures to

inescapable change. No, said Luther; the sole and final authority

should be the Bible itself, since all acknowledge it to be the Word of

God.

In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, in this infallible book,

he found an explicit command, allegedly from the mouth of God, to

put heretics to death: "Neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither

shalt thou conceal him," even though it be "thy brother, or thy son,

or the wife of thy bosom... but thou shalt surely kill him, thy hand

shall be the first upon him to put him to death." On that awful

warrant the Church had acted in annihilating the Albigensians in the

thirteenth century; that divine imprecation had been made a

certificate of authority for the burnings of the Inquisition.

Despite the violence of Luther's speech he never rivaled the

severity of the Church in dealing with dissent; but he proceeded,

within the area and limits of his power, to silence it as peaceably as

he could. In 1525 he invoked the aid of existing censorship

regulations in Saxony and Brandenburg to stamp out the "pernicious

doctrines" of the Anabaptists and the Zwinglians. `061959 In 1530,

in his commentary on the Eighty-second Psalm, he advised governments

to put to death all heretics who preached sedition or against

private property, and "those who teach against a manifest article of

the faith... like the articles children learn in the creed, as, for

example, if anyone should teach that Christ was not God but a mere

man." `061960 Sebastian Franck thought there was more freedom of

speech and belief among the Turks than in the Lutheran states, and Leo

Jud, the Zwinglian, joined Carlstadt in calling Luther another pope.

We should note, however, that toward the end of his life Luther

returned to his early feeling for toleration. In his last sermon he

advised abandonment of all attempts to destroy heresy by force;

Catholics and Anabaptists must be borne with patiently till the Last

Judgment, when Christ will take care of them. `061961

Other reformers rivaled or surpassed Luther in hounding heresy.

Bucer of Strasbourg urged the civil authorities in Protestant states

to extirpate all who professed a "false" religion; such men, he

said, are worse than murderers; even their wives and children and

cattle should be destroyed. `061962 The comparatively gentle

Melanchthon accepted the chairmanship of the secular inquisition

that suppressed the Anabaptists of Germany with imprisonment or death.

"Why should we pity such men more than God does?" he asked, for he was

convinced that God had destined all Anabaptists to hell. `061963 He

recommended that the rejection of infant baptism, or of original

sin, or of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, should be

punished as capital crimes. `061964 He insisted on the death penalty

for a sectarian who thought that heathens might be saved, or for

another who doubted that belief in Christ as the Redeemer could change

a naturally sinful into a righteous man. `061965 He applauded, as we

shall see, the execution of Servetus. He asked the state to compel all

the people to attend Protestant religious services

regularly. `061966 He demanded the suppression of all books that

opposed or hindered Lutheran teaching; so the writings of Zwingli

and his followers were formally placed on the index of prohibited

books in Wittenberg. `061967 Whereas Luther was content with the

expulsion of Catholics from regions governed by Lutheran princes,

Melanchthon favored corporal penalties. Both agreed that the civil

power was in duty bound to promulgate and uphold "the law of God"-

i.e., Lutheranism. `061968 Luther, however, counseled that where two

sects existed in a state the minority should yield to the majority: in

a predominantly Catholic principality the Protestants should yield and

emigrate; in a prevailingly Protestant province the Catholics should

give way and depart; if they resisted, they should be effectively

chastised. `061969

The Protestant authorities, following Catholic precedents,

accepted the obligation of maintaining religious conformity. At

Augsburg (January 18, 1537) the town council issued a decree

forbidding the Catholic worship, and banishing, after eight days,

all who would not accept the new faith. At the expiration of the

period of grace the council sent soldiers to take possession of all

churches and monasteries; altars and statues were removed, and

priests, monks, and nuns were banished. `061970 Frankfurt-am-Main

promulgated a similar ordinance; and the seizure of Catholic church

properties, and the suppression of Catholic services, spread through

the states controlled by Protestants. `061971 Censorship of the press,

already established in Catholic areas, was adopted by the Protestants;

so Elector John of Saxony, at the request of Luther and Melanchthon,

promulgated (1528) an edict that prohibited the publication, sale,

or reading of Zwinglian or Anabaptist literature, or the preaching

or teaching of their doctrines; "and anyone who is aware of such being

done by anybody, whether a stranger or an acquaintance, must give

information to the... magistrates of the place, in order that the

offender may be taken up in due time and punished.... Those who are

aware of such breeches of the orders... and do not give information,

shall be punished by loss of life or property." `061972

Excommunication, like censorship, was adopted by the Protestants

from the Catholics. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 proclaimed the

right of the Lutheran Church to excommunicate any member who should

reject a fundamental Lutheran doctrine. `061973 Luther explained

that "although excommunication in popedom has been and is shamefully

abused, and made a mere torment, yet we must not suffer it to fall,

but make right use of it, as Christ commanded." `061974

III. THE HUMANISTS AND THE REFORMATION

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The intolerant dogmatism of the Reformers, their violence of speech,

their sectarian fragmentation and animosities, their destruction of

religious art, their predestinarian theology, their indifference to

secular learning, their renewed emphasis on demons and hell, their

concentration on personal salvation in a life beyond the grave- all

these shared in alienating the humanists from the Reformation.

Humanism was a pagan reversion to classical culture; Protestantism was

a pious return to gloomy Augustine, to early Christianity, even to Old

Testament Judaism; the long contest between Hellenism and Hebraism was

renewed. The humanists had made remarkable headway within the Catholic

fold; in Nicholas V and Leo X they had captured the papacy; popes

had not only tolerated but protected them, and had helped them to

recover lost treasures of classic literature and art- all on the tacit

understanding that their writings would be addressed, presumably in

Latin, to the educated classes, and would not upset the orthodoxy of

the people. Disturbed now in this cozy entente, the humanists found

that Teutonic Europe cared less for them and their aristocratic

culture than for the soul-warming talk of the new vernacular preachers

about God and hell and individual salvation. They laughed at the

passionate debates of Luther and Eck, Luther and Carlstadt, Luther and

Zwingli, as battles over issues that they had thought long dead or

courteously forgotten. They had no taste for theology; heaven and hell

had become myths to them, less real than the mythology of Greece and

Rome. Protestantism, as they saw it, was treason to the Renaissance,

was restoring all the supernaturalism, irrationalism, and diabolism

that had darkened the medieval mind; this, they felt, was not progress

but reaction; it was the resubjection of the emancipated mind to the

primitive myths of the populace. They resented Luther's vituperation

of reason, his exaltation of a faith that was now to be dogmatically

defined by Protestant popelets or potentates. And what remained of

that human dignity which Pico della Mirandola had so nobly

described, if everything that happened on the earth- every heroism,

every sacrifice, every advance in human decency and worth- was

merely the mechanical fulfillment, by helpless and meaningless men, of

God's foreknowledge and inescapable decrees?

Humanists who had criticized, but never left, the Church-

Wimpheling, Beatus Rhenanus, Thomas Murner, Sebastian Brant- now

hastened to confirm their loyalty. Many humanists who had applauded

Luther's initial rebellion as the wholesome correction of a shameful

abuse drew away from him as Protestant theology and polemics took

form. Willibald Pirkheimer, Hellenist and statesman, who had so openly

supported Luther that he had been excommunicated in the first draft of

the bull Exsurge Domine, was shocked by Luther's violence of speech,

and dissociated himself from the revolt. In 1529, while still critical

of the Church, he wrote:

-

I do not deny that at the beginning all Luther's acts did not seem

to be vain, since no good man could be pleased with all those errors

and impostures that had accumulated gradually in Christianity. So,

with others, I hoped that some remedy might be applied to such great

evils; but I was cruelly deceived. For, before the former errors had

been extirpated, far more intolerable ones crept in, compared with

which the others seemed child's play.... Things have come to a pass

that the popish scoundrels are made to appear virtuous by the

Evangelical ones.... Luther, with his shameless, ungovernable

tongue, must have lapsed into insanity, or been inspired by the Evil

Spirit. `061975

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Mutianus agreed. He had hailed Luther as the "morning star of

Wittenberg"; soon he was complaining that Luther "had all the fury

of a maniac." `061976 Crotus Rubianus, who had opened a path for

Luther by the Letters of Obscure Men, fled back to the Church in

1521. Reuchlin sent Luther a courteous letter, and prevented Eck

from burning Luther's books in Ingolstadt; but he scolded his nephew

Melanchthon for adopting the Lutheran theology, and he died in the

arms of the Church. Johannes Dobenek Cochlaeus, at first for Luther,

turned against him in 1522, and addressed to him a letter of reproach:

-

Do you suppose that we wish to excuse or defend the sins and

wickedness of the clergy? God save us!- we would far rather help you

to root them out, as far as it can be done legitimately.... But Christ

does not teach such methods as you are carrying on so offensively with

"Antichrist," "brothels," "Devil's nests," "cesspools," and other

unheard-of terms of abuse, not to speak of your threatenings of sword,

bloodshed, and murder. O Luther, you were never taught this method

of working by Christ! `061977

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The humanists of Germany had perhaps forgotten the scurrility of

their Italian predecessors- Filelfo, Poggio, and many more- which

had set a pace for Luther's contumelious pen. But the style of

Luther's warfare was only the surface of their indictment. They noted-

as Luther noted- a deterioration of morals and manners in Germany, and

ascribed it to the disruption of ecclesiastical authority, and the

Lutheran discounting of "good works" as a merit for salvation. They

were hurt by the Protestant derogation of learning, Carlstadt's

equating of pundit and peasant, Luther's slighting of scholarship

and erudition. Erasmus voiced the general view of the humanists- and

here Melanchthon sadly concurred- `061978 that wherever Lutheranism

triumphed, letters (i.e., education and literature)

declined. `061979 The Protestants retorted that this was merely

because learning, to the humanist, meant chiefly the study of pagan

classics and history. For a generation the books and pamphlets of

religious polemics so absorbed the mind and presses of Germany and

Switzerland that nearly every other form of literature (except the

satire) lost its audience. Publishing firms like Froben's in Basel and

the Atlansee in Vienna found so few purchasers for the learned works

that they had issued at great cost that they verged on

bankruptcy. `061980 Rival fanaticisms stifled the young German

Renaissance, and the trend of Renaissance Christianity toward

reconciliation with paganism came to an end.

Some humanists, like Eoban Hess and Ulrich von Hutten, remained

faithful to the Reformation. Hess wandered from post to post, returned

to Erfurt to find the university deserted (1533), and died

professing poetry at Marburg (1540). Hutten, after the fall of

Sickingen, fled to Switzerland, robbing for his food on the

way. `061981 Destitute and diseased, he sought out Erasmus at Basel

(1522), though he had publicly branded the humanist as a coward for

not joining the Reformers. `061982 Erasmus refused to see him,

alleging the inadequacy of his stove to warm Hutten's bones. The

poet now composed An Expostulation denouncing Erasmus as a

chicken-hearted renegade; he offered to withhold it from publication

if Erasmus would pay him; Erasmus balked, and urged upon Hutten the

wisdom of settling their differences peaceably. But Hutten had allowed

the manuscript of his lampoon to circulate privately; it came to

Erasmus' knowledge, and moved him to join the clergy of Basel in

urging the city council to banish the irascible satirist. Hutten

sent the Expostulation to the press, and moved to Mulhouse. There

a mob gathered to attack his refuge; he fled again, and was taken in

by Zwingli at Zurich (June 1533). "Behold," said the Reformer, here

more humane than the humanist, "behold this destroyer, the terrible

Hutten, whom we see so fond of the people and of children! This mouth,

which blew storms upon the pope, breathes nothing but gentleness and

goodness." `061983 Meanwhile Erasmus replied to the Expostulation in

a hastily written Spongia Erasmi adversus aspergines Hutteni

( Erasmus'Sponge on Hutten's Aspersions ); and he wrote to the town

council of Zurich protesting against the "lies" Hutten had told of

him, and recommending the poet's banishment. `061984 But Hutten was

now dying; the war of ideas and the ravages of syphilis had

exhausted him. He breathed his last (August 29, 1523) on an island

in the Lake of Zurich, being thirty-five years old, and possessing

nothing but his clothes and a pen.

IV. ERASMUS APPENDIX: 1517-36

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The reaction of Erasmus to the Reformation provides a living

debate among historians and philosophers. Which method was the

better for mankind- Luther's direct attack upon the Church, or

Erasmus' policy of peaceful compromise and piecemeal reform? The

answers almost define two types of personality: "tough-minded"

warriors of action and will, "tender-minded" compromisers given to

feeling and thought. Luther was basically a man of action; his

thoughts were decisions, his books were deeds. His thinking was

early medieval in content, early modern in result; his courage and

decisiveness, rather than his theology, co-operated with nationalism

to establish the modern age. Luther spoke in masculinely vigorous

German to the German people, and aroused a nation to overthrow an

international power; Erasmus wrote in femininely graceful Latin for an

international audience, a cosmopolitan elite of university

graduates. He was too sensitive to be a man of action; he praised

and longed for peace while Luther waged and relished war. He was a

master of moderation, deprecating intemperance and extravagance. He

fled from action into thought, from rash certainties into cautious

doubt. He knew too much to see truth or error all on one side; he

saw both sides, tried to bring them together, and was crushed in

between.

He applauded Luther's Theses. In March 1518, he sent copies of

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

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