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

the worship of images: "the people should be taught that these are

no more than signs; it would be better if there were none at all,

and prayer were addressed only to Christ. But in all things let

there be moderation" `0619108 this was precisely, on this point, the

position of Luther. But the incensed and senseless denudation of

churches seemed to him an illiberal and barbarous reaction. He left

Basel and moved to Freiburg-im-Breisgau, in Catholic Austrian

territory. The city authorities received him with honors, and gave him

the unfinished palace of Maximilian I for a residence. When the

Imperial pension came too irregularly the Fuggers sent him whatever

funds he needed. But the monks and theologians of Freiburg attacked

him as a secret skeptic, and as the real cause of the turmoil in

Germany. In 1535 he returned to Basel. A delegation of university

professors went out to welcome him, and Jerome Froben, son of

Johann, gave him rooms in his home.

He was now sixty-nine, thin, with features drawn taut with age. He

suffered from ulcers, diarrhea, pancreatitis, gout, stone, and

frequent colds; note the swollen hands in Durer's drawing. In his

final year he was confined to his rooms, often to his bed. Harassed

with pain, and hearing almost daily of fresh attacks made upon him

by Protestants and Catholics, he lost the habitual good cheer that had

endeared him to his friends, and became morose. Yet, almost daily,

letters of homage came to him from kings, prelates, statesmen,

scholars, or financiers, and his dwelling was a goal of literary

pilgrimage. On June 6, 1536, he was stricken with acute dysentery.

He knew himself to be dying, but he did not ask for a priest or

confessor, and passed away (June 12) without the sacraments of the

Church, repeatedly invoking the names of Mary and Christ. Basel gave

him a princely funeral and a tomb in the cathedral. The humanists, the

printers, and the bishop of the city joined in erecting over his

remains a stone slab, still in place, commemorating his

"incomparable erudition in every branch of learning " His will left no

legacy for religious purposes, but assigned sums for the care of the

sick or the old, for providing dowries for poor girls, and for the

education of promising youths.

His standing with posterity fluctuated with the prestige of the

Renaissance. Almost all parties, in the fever of religious revolution,

called him a trimmer and a coward. The Reformers charged him with

having led them to the brink, inspired them to jump, and then taken to

his heels. At the Council of Trent he was branded as an impious

heretic, and his works were forbidden to Catholic readers. As late

as 1758 Horace Walpole termed him "a begging parasite, who had parts

enough to discover the truth, and not courage enough to profess

it." `0619109 Late in the nineteenth century, as the smoke of battle

cleared, a learned and judicious Protestant historian mourned that the

Erasmian conception of reform, "a scholar's conception... was soon

interrupted and set aside by ruder and more drastic methods. Yet it

may be questioned whether, after all, the slow way is not in the

long run the surest, and whether any other agent of human progress can

permanently be substituted for culture. The Reformation of the

sixteenth century was Luther's work; but if any fresh Reformation

is... coming, it can only be based on the principles of

Erasmus." `0619110 And a Catholic historian adds an almost

rationalistic appreciation: "Erasmus belonged, intellectually, to a

later and more scientific and rational age. The work which he had

initiated, and which was interrupted by the Reformation troubles,

was resumed at a more acceptable time by the scholarship of the

seventeenth century." `0619111 Luther had to be; but when his work was

done, and passion cooled, men would try again to catch the spirit of

Erasmus and the Renaissance, and renew in patience and mutual

tolerance the long, slow labor of enlightenment.

CHAPTER XX: The Faiths at War: 1525-60

I. THE PROTESTANT ADVANCE: 1525-30

-

WHAT combination of forces and circumstances enabled nascent

Protestantism to survive the hostility of both papacy and Empire?

Mystical piety, Biblical studies, religious reform, intellectual

development, Luther's audacity, were not enough; they might have

been diverted or controlled. Probably the economic factors were

decisive: the desire to keep German wealth in Germany, to free Germany

from papal or Italian domination, to transfer ecclesiastical

property to secular uses, to repel Imperial encroachments upon the

territorial, judicial, and financial authority of the German

princes, cities, and states. Add certain political conditions that

permitted the Protestant success. The Ottoman Empire, after

conquering Constantinople and Egypt, was expanding dangerously in

the Balkans and Africa, absorbing half of Hungary, besieging Vienna,

and threatening to close the Mediterranean to Christian trade; Charles

V and Archduke Ferdinand required a united Germany and Austria-

Protestant as well as Catholic money and men- to resist this Moslem

avalanche. The Emperor was usually engrossed in the affairs of Spain

or Flanders or Italy, or in mortal conflict with Francis I of

France; he had no time or funds for civil war in Germany. He agreed

with his pensioner Erasmus that the Church badly needed reform; he was

intermittently at odds with Clement VII and Paul III, even to allowing

his army to sack Rome; only when Emperor and Pope were friends could

they effectually combat the religious revolution.

But by 1527 the Lutheran "heresy" had become orthodoxy in half of

Germany. The cities found Protestantism profitable; "they do not

care in the least about religion," mourned Melanchthon; "they are only

anxious to get dominion into their hands, to be free from the

control of the bishops"; `06201 for a slight alteration in their

theological garb they escaped from episcopal taxes and courts, and

could appropriate pleasant parcels of ecclesiastical

property. `06202 Yet an honest desire for a simpler and sincerer

religion seems to have moved many citizens. At Magdeburg the members

of St. Ulrich's parish met in the churchyard and chose eight men who

were to select the preacher and manage the affairs of the church

(1524); soon all churches in the city were administering the Lord's

Supper in the Lutheran mode. Augsburg was so fervently Protestant that

when Campeggio came there as papal legate the populace dubbed him

Antichrist (1524). Most of Strasbourg accepted the new theology from

Wolfgang Fabricius Capito (1523), and Martin Bucer, who succeeded

him there, also converted Ulm. In Nuremberg great business leaders

like Lazarus Spengler and Hieronymus Baumgartner won the city

council to the Lutheran creed (1526); the Sebalduskirche and the

Lorenzkirche transformed their ritual accordingly, while keeping their

Catholic art. In Brunswick the writings of Luther were widely

circulated; his hymns were publicly sung; his version of the New

Testament was so earnestly studied that when a priest misquoted it

he was corrected by the congregation; finally the city council ordered

all clergymen to preach only what could be found in the Scriptures, to

baptize in German, and to serve the sacrament in both forms (1528). By

1530 the new faith had won Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Lubeck,

Stralsund, Danzig, Dorpat, Riga, Reval, and almost all the Imperial

cities of Swabia. Iconoclastic riots broke out in Augsburg, Hamburg,

Brunswick, Stralsund. Probably some of this violence was a reaction

against the ecclesiastical use of statues and paintings to inculcate

ridiculous and lucrative legends.

The princes, gladly adopting Roman law- which made the secular ruler

omnipotent as delegate of the "sovereign people"- saw in Protestantism

a religion that not only exalted the state but obeyed it; now they

could be spiritual as well as temporal lords, and all the wealth of

the Church could be theirs to administer or enjoy. John the Steadfast,

who succeeded Frederick the Wise as Elector of Saxony (1525),

definitely accepted the Lutheran faith, which Frederick had never

done; and when John died (1532) his son John Frederick kept

Electoral Saxony firmly Protestant. Philip the Magnanimous,

Landgrave of Hesse, formed with John the League of Gotha and Torgau

(1526) to protect and extend Lutheranism. Other princes fell in

line: Ernest of Luneburg, Otto and Francis of Brunswick-Luneburg,

Henry of Mecklenburg, Ulrich of Wurttemberg. Albert of Prussia,

Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, following Luther's advice,

abandoned his monastic vows, married, secularized the lands of his

order, and made himself Duke of Prussia (1525). Luther saw himself,

apparently by the mere force of his personality and eloquence, winning

half of Germany.

Since many monks and nuns now left their convents, and the public

seemed unwilling to support the remainder, the Lutheran princes

suppressed all monasteries in their territory except a few whose

inmates had embraced the Protestant faith. The princes agreed to share

the confiscated properties and revenues with the nobles, the cities,

and some universities, but this pledge was very laxly redeemed. Luther

inveighed against the application of ecclesiastical wealth to any

but religious or educational purposes, and condemned the precipitate

seizure of church buildings and lands by the nobility. A modest part

of the spoils was yielded to schools and poor relief; the princes

and nobles kept the rest. "Under cover of the Gospel," wrote

Melanchthon (1530), "the princes were only intent on the plunder of

the churches." `06203

For good or evil, for spiritual or material ends, the great

transformation progressed. Whole provinces- East Friesland, Silesia,

Schleswig, Holstein- went over almost unanimously to Protestantism;

nothing could better show how moribund Catholicism had there become.

Where priests survived, they continued their support of

concubines, `06204 and clamored for permission to marry legally as the

Lutheran clergy were doing. `06205 Archduke Ferdinand reported to

the Pope that the desire for marriage was almost universal among the

Catholic secular clergy, that out of a hundred pastors scarcely one

was not openly or secretly married; and Catholic princes pleaded

with the papacy that the abolition of celibacy had become a moral

necessity. `06206 A loyal Catholic complained (1524) that the bishops,

with revolution on their doorsteps, went on with their Lucullan

feasts; `06207 and a Catholic historian, speaking of Albrecht,

Archbishop of Mainz, describes "the luxuriously furnished apartments

which this unholy prince of the Church used for secret intercourse

with his mistress." `06208 "Everybody," says the same historian,

"had become so hostile to priests that these were mocked and annoyed

wherever they went." `06209 "The people everywhere," wrote Erasmus

(January 31, 1530), "are for the new doctrines." `062010 This was

true, however, only in northern Germany; and even there Duke George of

Saxony and Elector Joachim of Brandenburg were resolutely Catholic.

Southern and western Germany- which had been part of the ancient Roman

Empire, and had received some Latin culture- remained for the most

part loyal to the Church; the gemutlich South preferred the gaily

colorful and sexually lenient ways of Catholicism to the

predestinarian stoicism of the North. The powerful elector-archbishops

of Mainz, Trier, and (till 1543) Cologne kept their regions

predominantly Catholic; and Pope Adrian VI saved Bavaria by granting

its dukes, for their secular uses, a fifth of ecclesiastical income in

their state. A similar grant of Church revenues appeased Ferdinand

in Austria.

Hungary entered vitally into the drama. The premature accession of

Louis II at the age of ten (1516), and his premature death, were

formative elements in the Hungarian tragedy. Even his birth was

premature; the medicos of his time barely saved the frail infant by

enclosing it in the warm carcasses of animals slaughtered to give it

heat. Louis grew into a handsome youth, kindly and generous, but given

to extravagance and festivities on meager resources amid a corrupt and

incompetent court. When Sultan Suleiman sent an ambassador to Buda the

nobles refused to receive him, dragged him around the country, cut off

his nose and ears, and turned him back to his master. `062011 The

infuriated Sultan invaded Hungary, and seized two of its most vital

strongholds- Szabacs and Belgrade (1521). After long delays, and

amid the treason or cowardice of his nobles, Louis raised an army of

25,000 men, and marched out with mad heroism to face 100,000 Turks

on a field near Mohacs (August 30, 1526). The Hungarians were

slaughtered almost to a man, and Louis himself was drowned in

stumbling flight. Suleiman entered Buda in triumph; his army sacked

and burned the handsome capital, destroyed all its major buildings

except the royal palace, and gave to the flames most of Matthias

Corvinus's precious library. The victorious host spread over the

eastern half of Hungary, burning and pillaging, and Suleiman drove

100,000 Christian captives before him to Constantinople.

The surviving magnates divided into hostile factions. One group,

judging resistance impossible, chose John Zapolya as king, and

authorized him to sign a submissive peace; Suleiman allowed him to

reign in Buda as his vassal, but the eastern half of Hungary

remained in effect under Turkish domination till 1686. Another faction

united with the nobles of Bohemia to give the crown of both Hungary

and Bohemia to Ferdinand, in the hope of securing the aid of the

Holy-Roman Empire and the powerful Hapsburg family. When Suleiman

returned to the attack (1529), marching 135 miles from Buda along

the Danube to the gates of Vienna, Ferdinand successfully defended his

capital. But during those critical years Charles V had been forced

to humor the Protestants lest all Europe should fall to Islam. The

westward advance of the Turks so obviously protected Protestantism

that Philip of Hesse rejoiced at Turkish victories. When Suleiman,

balked at Vienna, returned to Constantinople, Catholics and

Protestants were free to renew their struggle for the soul of Germany.

II. THE DIETS DISAGREE: 1526-41

-

As internal liberty varies (other things equal) with external

security, Protestantism, during its safe period, indulged in the

sectarian fragmentation that seemed inherent in the principles of

private judgment and the supremacy of conscience. Already in 1525

Luther wrote: "There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds as

there are heads." `062012 Melanchthon was kept grievously busy

moderating his master and finding ambiguous formulas for reconciling

contradictory certitudes. Catholics pointed gleefully to the

mutually recriminating Protestant factions, and predicted that freedom

of interpretation and belief would lead to religious anarchy, moral

disintegration, and a skepticism abominable to Protestants as well

as Catholics. `062013 In 1525 three artists were banished from

Protestant Nuremberg for questioning the divine authorship of the

Bible, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the divinity of Christ.

While Suleiman was preparing the campaign that cut Hungary in

half, a Diet of German princes, prelates, and burghers met at Speyer

(June 1526) to consider the demands of the Catholics that the Edict of

Worms should be enforced, and the counterproposal of the Protestants

that religion be left free until a general council under German

auspices should adjudicate the disputes. The Protestants prevailed,

and the concluding decree of this Diet ruled that- pending such a

council- each German state, in religion, "should so live, rule, and

bear itself as it thought it could answer to God and the Emperor";

that no one should be punished for past offenses against the Edict

of Worms; and that the Word of God should be preached by all

parties, none interfering with the others. The Protestants interpreted

this "Recess of Speyer" *06045 as sanctioning the establishment of

Lutheran churches, the religious autonomy of each territorial

prince, and the prohibition of the Mass in Lutheran areas. The

Catholics rejected these assumptions, but the Emperor, embroiled

with the Pope, accepted them for the time being; and Ferdinand was

soon too busy with affairs in Hungary to make any effectual

resistance.

Having made his peace with Clement, Charles returned to the

natural conservatism of a king, and ordered the Diet of Speyer to

reconvene on February 1, 1529. Under the influence of the presiding

Archduke and the absent Emperor the new assembly repealed the "Recess"

of 1526, and passed a decree permitting Lutheran services- but

requiring the toleration of Catholic services- in Lutheran states,

completely forbidding Lutheran preaching or ritual in Catholic states,

enforcing the Edict of Worms, and outlawing Zwinglian and Anabaptist

sects everywhere. On April 25, 1529, the Lutheran minority published a

"Protest" declaring that conscience forbade their acceptance of this

decree; they appealed to the Emperor for a general council;

meanwhile they would adhere to the original Recess of Speyer at

whatever cost. The term Protestant was applied by the Catholics to

the signers of this Protest, and gradually came into use to

designate the German rebels from Rome.

Still needing German unity against the Turks, Charles called another

diet, which met at Augsburg (June 20, 1530) under his presidency.

During this conference he stayed with Anton Fugger, now head of the

firm that had made him emperor. According to an old story, the

banker pleased the ruler by lighting a fire with an Imperial

certificate of indebtedness. `062014 As the Fuggers were financially

allied with the popes, the gesture may have moved Charles a step

nearer to the papacy. Luther did not attend, for he was still under

the Imperial ban, and might at any moment be arrested; but he went

to Coburg, on the Saxon border, and kept in touch, through messengers,

with the Protestant delegation. He compared the assembly to a

congregation of jackdaws that chattered and maneuvered before his

windows, and he complained that "each bishop brought as many devils"

or voters to the Diet "as there are fleas on a dog on St. John's

Day." `062015 It was apparently at this time that he composed the

greatest of his hymns- "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" - "A mighty

fortress is our God."

On June 24 Cardinal Campeggio appealed to the Diet for the utter

suppression of the Protestant sects. On the twenty-fifth Christian

Bayer read to the Emperor and a portion of the assembly the famous

Augsburg Confession, which Melanchthon had prepared, and which, with

some modifications, was to become the official creed of the Lutheran

churches. Partly because he feared a war of the combined Imperial

and papal forces against the divided Protestants, partly because he

was by temperament inclined to compromise and peace, Melanchthon

gave the statement (says a Catholic scholar) "a dignified, moderate,

and pacific tone," `062016 and strove to minimize the differences

between the Catholic and Lutheran views. He expatiated on the heresies

that the Evangelicals (as the Lutherans called themselves from their

sole reliance on the Gospels or the New Testament) and the Roman

Catholics alike condemned; he dissociated the Lutheran from the

Zwinglian reform, and left the latter to shift for itself. He softened

the doctrines of predestination, "consubstantiation," and

justification by faith; he spoke temperately of the ecclesiastical

abuses that Protestantism had abated; he defended with courtesy the

administration of the sacrament in both forms, the abolition of

monastic vows, the marriage of the clergy; and he appealed to Cardinal

Campeggio to accept this Confession in the conciliatory spirit in

which it had been composed. Luther regretted some of the

concessions, but gave the document his indispensable approval. Zwingli

sent his own Ratio fidei to the Emperor, frankly stating his

disbelief in the Real Presence. Strasbourg, Constance, Lindau, and

Memmingen presented a separate Confession, the Tetrapolitana, in

which Capito and Bucer struggled to bridge the gaps among the

Lutheran, Zwinglian, and Catholic creeds.

The extreme faction of the Catholics, led by Eck, retorted with a

Confutation so intransigeant that the assembly refused to submit it to

the Emperor until it had been twice toned down. So revised, it

insisted on transubstantiation, seven sacraments, the invocation of

saints, clerical celibacy, communion in bread alone, and the Latin

Mass. Charles approved this Confutation, and declared that the

Protestants must accept it or face war. A milder party of Catholics

entered into negotiation with Melanchthon, and offered to permit

communion in bread and wine. Melanchthon in return agreed to recognize

auricular confession, fasts, episcopal jurisdiction, even, with some

provisos, the authority of the popes. But other Protestant leaders

refused to go so far; Luther protested that the restoration of

episcopal jurisdiction would subject the new ministers to the Roman

hierarchy, and would soon liquidate the Reformation. Seeing

agreement impossible, several Protestant princes left for their homes.

On November 19 the diminished Diet issued its final Recess or

decree. All phases of Protestantism were condemned; the Edict of Worms

was to be enforced; the Imperial Chamber of Justice

( Reichskammergericht ) was to start legal actions against all

appropriators of ecclesiastical property; the Protestants were to have

until April 15, 1531 to accept the Confutation peaceably. Charles's

signature made this "Recess of Augsburg" an Imperial decree. To the

Emperor it must have seemed the height of reasonableness to give the

rebels six months to adjust themselves to the will of the Diet. Within

that period he offered them immunity from the Edict of Worms.

Thereafter, if other duties would allow, he might have to submit the

rival theologies to the supreme court of war.

-

While the Diet was yet in session several states formed a Catholic

League for the defense and restoration of the traditional faith.

Interpreting this as a martial gesture, Protestant princes and

cities organized (March 1531) the Schmalkaldic League, which took

its name from its birthplace near Erfurt. When the period of grace ran

out, Ferdinand, now "King of the Romans," proposed to Charles to begin

war. But Charles was not yet ready. Suleiman was planning another

attack upon Vienna; Suleiman's confederate, Barbarossa, was raiding

Christian commerce in the Mediterranean; and Suleiman's ally,

Francis of France, was waiting to pounce upon Milan the moment Charles

became involved in a German civil war. In April 1531, instead of

enforcing the Augsburg decree, he suspended it, and asked for

Protestant aid against the Turks. Luther and the princes responded

loyally; Lutherans and Catholics signed the Peace of Nuremberg (July

23, 1532), pledging united aid to Ferdinand, and mutual religious

toleration until a general council should be convened. So numerous

an army of Protestant and Catholic Germans, of Spanish and Italian

Catholics, gathered under the Emperor's standard at Vienna that

Suleiman found the omens unfavorable and turned back to

Constantinople, while the Christian army, drunk with its bloodless

victory, plundered Christian towns and homes, "spreading greater

disaster," said eyewitness Thomas Cranmer of England, "than the

Turks themselves." `062017

The patriotism of the Protestants gave their movement new dignity

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

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