A History of the Reformation Volume I Part 18

Zwilling's fiery denunciations of the idolatry of the Ma.s.s stirred the commonalty of the town. On Christmas Eve (Dec. 24-25), 1521, a turbulent crowd invaded the parish church and the Church of All Saints. In the former they broke the lamps, threatened the priests, and in mockery of the worship of praise they sang folk-songs, one of which began: "There was a maid who lost a shoe"-so the indignant clergy complained to the Elector.(310)

Next day, Christmas, Carlstadt, who was archdeacon, conducted the service in All Saints' Church. He had doffed his clerical robes, and wore the ordinary dress of a layman. He preached and then dispensed the Lord's Supper in an "evangelical fashion." He read the usual service, but omitted everything which taught a propitiatory sacrifice; he did not elevate the Host; and he placed the Bread in the hands of every communicant, and gave the Cup into their hands. On the following Sundays and festival days the Sacrament of the Supper was dispensed in the same manner, and we are told that "hic paene urbs et cuncta civitas communicavit sub utraque specie."

During the closing days of the year 1521, so full of excitement for the people of Wittenberg, three men, known in history as the _Zwickau Prophets_, came to the town (Dec. 27th). Zwickau, lying about sixty-four miles south of Wittenberg, was the centre of the weaving trade of Saxony, and contained a large artisan population. We have seen that movements of a religious-communistic kind had from time to time appeared among the German artisans and peasants since 1476. Nicolaus Storch, a weaver in Zwickau, proclaimed that he had visions of the Angel Gabriel, who had revealed to him: "Thou shalt sit with me on my throne." He began to preach. Thomas Munzer, who had been appointed by the magistrates to be town preacher in St. Mary's, the princ.i.p.al church in Zwickau, praised his discourses, declaring that Storch expounded the Scriptures better than any priest.

Some writers have traced the origin of this Zwickau movement to Hussite teachings. Munzer allied himself with the extreme Hussites _after_ the movement had begun, and paid a visit to Bohemia, taking with him some of his intimates; but our sources of information, which are scanty, do not warrant any decided opinion about the origin of the outbreak in Zwickau.

After some time Storch and others were forced to leave the town. Three of them went to Wittenberg-Storch himself, the seer of heavenly visions, another weaver, and Marcus Thoma Stubner, who had once been a pupil of Melanchthon, and was therefore able to introduce his companions to the Wittenberg circle of Reformers. Their arrival and addresses increased the excitement both in the town and in the University. Melanchthon welcomed his old pupil, and was impressed by the presence of a certain spiritual power in Stubner and in his companions. Some of their doctrines, however, especially their rejection of infant baptism, repelled him, and he gradually withdrew from their companionship.

Carlstadt took advantage of the strong excitement in Wittenberg to press on the townspeople and on the magistrates his scheme of reformation; and on Jan. 24th, 1522, the authorities of the town of Wittenberg published their famous ordinance.

This doc.u.ment, the first of numerous civic and territorial attempts to express the new evangelical ideas in legislation, deserves careful study.(311) It concerns itself almost exclusively with the reform of social life and of public worship. It enjoins the inst.i.tution of a common chest to be under the charge of two of the magistrates, two of the townsmen, and a public notary. Into this the revenues from ecclesiastical foundations were to be placed, the annual revenues of the guilds of workmen, and other specified monies. Definite salaries were to be paid to the priests, and support for the poor and for the monks was to be taken from this common fund. Begging, whether by ordinary beggars, monks, or poor students, was strictly prohibited. If the common chest was not able to afford sufficient for the support of the helpless and orphans, the townsfolk had to provide what was needed. No houses of ill-fame were allowed within the town. Churches were places for preaching; the town contained enough for the population; and the building of small chapels was prohibited. The service of the Ma.s.s was shortened, and made to express the evangelical meaning of the sacrament, and the elements were to be placed in the hands of the communicants. All this was made law within the town of Wittenberg; and the reformation was to be enforced. Not content with these regulations, Carlstadt engaged in a crusade against the use of pictures and images in the churches (the regulations had permitted three altars in every church and one picture for each altar). Everything which recalled the older religious usages was to be done away with, and flesh was to be eaten on fast days.

This excitement bred fanaticism. Voices were raised declaring that, as all true Christians were taught by the Spirit of G.o.d, there was no need either for civil rulers or for carnal learning. It is believed by many that Carlstadt shared these fancies, and it has been said that in his desire to "simplify" himself, he dressed as a peasant and worked as a labourer (he had married) on his father-in-law's farm. It is more probable that he found himself unable to rule the storm his hasty measures had raised, and that he saw many things proposed with which he had no sympathy.

-- 12. Luther back in Wittenberg.

Melanchthon felt himself helpless in presence of the "tumult," declared that no one save Luther himself could quell the excitement, and eagerly pressed his return. The revolutionary movement was extending beyond Wittenberg, in other towns in Electoral Saxony such as Grimma and Altenberg. Duke George of Saxony, the strenuous defender of the old faith, had been watching the proceedings from the beginning. As early as Nov.

21st, 1521, he had written to John Duke of Saxony, the brother of the Elector, warning him that, against ecclesiastical usage, the Sacrament of the Supper was being dispensed in both kinds in Wittenberg; he had informed him (Dec. 26th) that priests were threatened while saying the Ma.s.s; he had brought the "tumultuous deeds" in Electoral Saxony before the _Reichsregiment_ in January, with the result that imperial mandates were sent to the Elector Frederick and to the Bishops of Meissen, Merseburg, and Naumburg, requiring them to take measures to end the disturbances. The Elector was seriously disquieted. His anxieties were increased by a letter from Duke George (Feb. 2nd, 1522), declaring that Carlstadt and Zwilling were the instigators of all the riotous proceedings. He had commissioned one of his councillors, Hugold of Einsiedel, to try to put matters right; but the result had been small. It was probably in these circ.u.mstances that he wrote his _Instruction_ to Oswald, a burgher of Eisenach, with the intention that the contents should be communicated to Luther in the Wartburg. The _Instruction_ may have been the reason why Luther suddenly left the asylum where he had remained since his appearance at Worms by the command and under the protection of his prince.(312)

If this _Instruction_ did finally determine him, it was only one of many things urging Luther to leave his solitude. He cared little for the influence of the Zwickau Prophets,(313) estimating them at their true value, but the weakness of Melanchthon, the destructive and dangerous impetuosity of Carlstadt, the spread of the tumult beyond Wittenberg, the determination of Duke George to make use of these outbursts to destroy the whole movement for reformation, and the interference of the _Reichsregiment_ with its mandates, made him feel that the decisive moment had come when he must be again among his own people.

He started on his lonely journey, most of it through an enemy's country, going by Erfurt, Jena, Borna, and Leipzig. He was dressed as "Junker Georg," with beard on his chin and sword by his side. At Erfurt he had a good-humoured discussion with a priest in the inn; and Kessler, the Swiss student, tells how he met a stranger sitting in the parlour of the "Bear"

at Jena with his hand on the hilt of his sword, and reading a small Hebrew Psalter. He got to Wittenberg on Friday, March 7th; spent that afternoon and the next day in discussing the situation with his friends Amsdorf, Melanchthon, and Jerome Schurf.(314)

On Sunday he appeared in the pulpit, and for eight successive days he preached to the people, and the plague was stayed. Many things in the movement set agoing by Carlstadt met with his approval. He had come to believe in the marriage of the clergy; he disapproved strongly of private Ma.s.ses; he had grave doubts on the subject of monastic vows; but he disapproved of the violence, of the importance attached to outward details, and of the use of force to advance the Reformation movement:

"The Word created heaven and earth and all things; the same Word will also create now, and not we poor sinners. _Summa summarum_, I will preach it, I will talk about it, I will write about it, but I will not use force or compulsion with anyone; for faith must be of freewill and unconstrained, and must be accepted without compulsion. To marry, to do away with images, to become monks or nuns, or for monks and nuns to leave their convents, to eat meat on Friday or not to eat it, and other like things-all these are open questions, and should not be forbidden by any man. If I employ force, what do I gain? Changes in demeanour, outward shows, grimaces, shams, hypocrisies. But what becomes of the sincerity of the heart, of faith, of Christian love? All is wanting where these are lacking; and for the rest I would not give the stalk of a pear. What we want is the heart, and to win that we must preach the gospel. Then the word will drop into one heart to-day, and to-morrow into another, and so will work that each will forsake the Ma.s.s."

He made no personal references; he blamed no individuals; and in the end he was master of the situation.

When he had won back Wittenberg he made a tour of those places in Electoral Saxony where the Wittenberg example had been followed. He went to Zwickau, to Altenberg, and to Grimma-preaching to thousands of people, calming them, and bringing them back to a conservative reformation.

Chapter IV. From The Diet of Worms to the Close Of the Peasants' War.

-- 1. The continued spread of Lutheran Teaching.

The imperial edict issued against Luther at the Diet of Worms could scarcely have been stronger than it was,(315) and yet, like many another edict of Emperor and Diet, it was wholly ineffective. It could only be enforced by the individual Estates, who for the most part showed great reluctance to put it into operation. It was published in the territories of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, of the Elector of Brandenburg, of Duke George of Saxony, and of the Dukes of Bavaria; but none of these princes, except the Archduke and Duke George, seemed to care much for the old religion. In most of the ecclesiastical States the authorities were afraid of riots following the publication, and did nothing. Thus, in Bremen, we are told that as late as December 1522 the people had never seen the edict. The cities treated it as carelessly. The authorities in Nurnberg, Ulm, Augsburg, and Stra.s.sburg posted it up publicly as an official doc.u.ment, and took no further trouble. In Stra.s.sburg the printers went on issuing Luther's books and tracts as fast as their printing-presses could produce them; and at Constance the populace drove the imperial commissioners from the town when they came to publish the edict.

The action of the newly const.i.tuted _Reichsregiment_ was as indecisive.

When the disturbances broke out at Wittenberg, under Carlstadt and the Zwickau Prophets, Duke George, by playing on the fears of a spread of Hussitism, could get mandates issued to the Elector of Saxony and neighbouring bishops to inquire into and crush the disorders; but after Luther's return and the restoration of tranquillity his pleadings were ineffectual. It was in vain that he insisted that Luther's presence in Wittenberg was an insult to the Empire. He was told that the _Reichsregiment_ was able to judge for itself what were insults, and that when they saw them they would punish. Archduke Ferdinand, the President, doubtless sympathised with Duke George, but he was powerless; the Elector of Saxony had the greatest influence, and it was always exerted on the side of Luther.

In January 1522 a new Pope had been chosen, who took the t.i.tle of Adrian VI. His election was a triumph for the party that confessed the urgent need of reforms, and thought that they ought to be effected by the hierarchy and from within the Church. Adrian was a pious man according to his lights, one who felt deeply the corruption which was degrading the Church. He believed that the revolt of Luther was a punishment sent by G.o.d for the sins of the generation. He had been the tutor of Charles V., and ascended the papal throne with the determination to reform corruptions, and to begin his reforms by attacking the source of all-the Roman Curia.

But he was a Dominican monk, and had all the Dominican ideas about the need of maintaining mediaeval theology intact, and about the strict maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline. He was as ignorant as his predecessor of the state of matters in Germany, and regarded Luther as another Mahomet, who was seducing men from the higher Christian life by pandering to their fleshly appet.i.tes.

The _Reichsregiment_ met with the Diet at Nurnberg in 1522-1523, and to this Diet the Pope sent, as nuncio, Francesco Chieregati, Bishop of Terramo, in the kingdom of Naples. The nuncio was given lengthy instructions, which set forth the Pope's opinion of the corruptions in the Church and his intention to cure them, but which demanded the delivery of Luther into the hands of the Roman Curia, and the punishment of priests, monks, and nuns who had broken their vows of celibacy.(316) Chieregati was no sooner in Germany than he understood that it would be impossible for him to get the Pope's demand carried out, and he informed his master of the state of matters. When he met the Diet and presented the papal requests, he was practically answered that Germany had grievances against Rome, and that they would need to be set right ere the Curia could expect to get its behests fulfilled. They intimated that since the Pope had admitted the corruptions in the Church, it was scarcely to be expected that they should blame Luther for having pointed them out. They presented the nuncio with a list of one hundred German grievances against the Roman Curia;(317) and suggested that the most convenient way of settling them would be for the Pope to make over immediately, for the public use of Germany, the German _annates_,(318) and that a German Council should be held on German soil, and within one of the larger German cities.

The practical result of this fencing at the Diet of 1522, repeated in 1523, was that the progress of the Lutheran movement was not checked. How deeply the people of Germany had drunk in the teaching of Luther may be learnt from the letters of the nuncio to the Curia, and from those of the Archduke Ferdinand to the Emperor. Both use the same expression, that "among a thousand men scarcely one could be found untainted by Lutheran teaching."

Adrian VI. died suddenly after a few months' reign, and the next Pope, Clement VII., a Medici and completely under the influence of the French king, belonged to the old unreforming party, whose only desire was to maintain all the corrupting privileges of the Roman Curia. He selected and sent to Germany, as his nuncio, Lorenzo Campeggio, one of the ablest of Italian diplomatists, to negotiate with the _Reichsregiment_ and the Diet which met at Speyer in 1524.

Campeggio, like his predecessor, found that the German Nation was determinedly hostile to Rome. When he made his official entry into Augsburg, and raised his hands to give the usual benediction to the crowds of people, they received the blessing with open derision. He was so impressed with their att.i.tude, that when he reached Nurnberg he doffed his official robes and entered the town as quietly as possible; indeed he received a message from the authorities asking him "to avoid making the sign of the cross, or using the benediction, seeing how matters then stood." The presence of the Legate seemed to increase the anti-papal zeal of the people. The Pope was openly spoken of as Antichrist. Planitz, the energetic commissary of the Elector of Saxony, reckoned that nearly four thousand people in the city partook of the Sacrament of the Supper in both kinds, and informs us that among them were members of the _Reichsregiment_, and Isabella, Queen of Sweden, the sister of the Emperor.

Yet the experienced Italian diplomatist thought that he could discern signs more favourable to his master than the previous Diet had exhibited.

The _Reichsregiment_, which had hitherto shielded the Lutheran movement, had lost the confidence of many cla.s.ses of people, and was tottering to its fall. It had showed itself unable to enforce the Lands-Peace. It was the princes who had defeated the rising of the Free n.o.bles under Franz von Sickingen; it was the Swabian League, an a.s.sociation always devoted to the House of Austria, that had crushed the Franconian robber n.o.bles; and both princes and League were irritated at the attempts of the _Reichsregiment_, which had endeavoured to rob them of the fruits of their successes. The cities had been made to bear all the taxation needed to support the central government, and the system of monopolies arising from combinations among the great commercial houses had been threatened. The cities and the capitalists had made a secret agreement with the Emperor, and von Hannart had been sent by the Emperor from Spain to the Diet of 1524 to work along with the towns for the overthrow of the central government. The Diet itself had pa.s.sed a vote of no confidence in the government. In these troubled waters a crafty fisher might win some success.

His success was more apparent than real. The Diet of 1524 did not absolutely refuse to enforce the Edict of Worms against Luther and his followers; they promised to execute it "as well as they were able, and as far as was possible," and the cities had made it plain that the enforcement was impossible. They renewed their demand for a General Council to meet in a suitable German town to settle the affairs of the Church in Germany, and again declared that meanwhile nothing should be preached contrary to the Word of G.o.d and the Holy Gospel. They went further, and practically resolved that a National Council, to deliberate on the condition of the Church in Germany, should meet at Speyer in November and make an interim settlement of its ecclesiastical affairs, to last until the meeting of a General Council. It is true that, owing to the exertions of the nuncio and of von Hannart, the phrase National Synod was omitted, and the meeting was to be one of the Estates of Germany at which the councillors and learned divines of the various princes were to formulate all the disputed points, and to consider anew the grievances of the German nation against the Papacy; but neither the nuncio nor von Hannart deceived themselves as to the real meaning of the resolution. "It will be a National Council for Germany," said Hannart in his report.

Nothing could be more alarming to the Pope. There was always a possibility of managing a General Council; but a German National Synod, including a large number of lay representatives, meeting in a German town, foreshadowed an independent National German Church which would insist on separation from the Roman See. The Pope wrote to Henry VIII. of England asking him to hara.s.s the German merchants; he induced the Emperor to forbid the proposed meeting of the German States; and, what was more important, he instructed his nuncio to take steps secretly to form a league of German princes who were still favourable to maintaining the mediaeval Church with its doctrines, ceremonies, and usages. This inaugurated the religious divisions of Germany.

-- 2. The beginnings of Division in Germany.

The Diet of Speyer (1524) may perhaps be taken as the beginning of the separation of Germany into two opposite camps of Protestant and Roman Catholic, although the real parting of the ways actually occurred after the Peasants' War. The overthrow, or at least discrediting of the _Reichsregiment_, placed the management of everything, including the settlement of the religious question, in the hands of the princes, none of whom, with the exception of the Elector of Saxony, cared much for the idea of nationality; while some of them, however anxious they were, or once had been, for ecclesiastical reforms, were genuinely afraid of the "tumult"

which they believed might lurk behind any conspicuous changes in religious usages. Duke George of Saxony, who was keenly alive to the corruptions in the Church, dreaded above all things the beginnings of a Hussite movement in Germany. He knew that an a.s.siduous, penetrating, secret Hussite, or rather Taborite propaganda had been going on in Germany for long. As early as the Leipzig Disputation (1519), when John Eck had skilfully forced Luther into the avowal that he approved of some things in the Hussite revolt, Duke George was seen to put his arms akimbo, to wag his long beard, and was heard to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, "G.o.d help us! The plague!" A fear of Hussite revolution displays itself in his correspondence, and very notably in his letters to Duke John of Saxony and to the Elector about the disturbances in Wittenberg. It was a triumph for the Roman Curia when its partisans, from Eck onwards, were able to fix the stigma of Hussitism on the Lutheran movement; and the career of the Zwickau Prophets, notwithstanding their suppression by Luther, was, to many, an indication of what might lie behind the new preaching. When the Peasants' War came in 1525, many of the earlier sympathisers with Luther saw in it an indication of the dangers into which they fancied that Luther was leading Germany. It is also to be noticed that many of the Humanists now began to desert the Lutheran cause; his Augustinian theology made them think that he was bent on creating a new Scholastic which seemed to them almost as bad as the old, which they had been delighted to see him attack.

The Roman Curia was quick to take advantage of all these alarms. Its efforts were so successful, that it was soon able to create a Roman Catholic Party among the South German princes, and to secure its steadfastness by promising a few concessions, and by permitting the authorities to retain for the secular uses of their States about one-fifth of the ecclesiastical revenues in each State. The leading States in this Roman Catholic federation were Austria and Bavaria, and so long as Duke George lived, Ducal Saxony in middle Germany. This naturally called forth a distinctly Lutheran party, no longer national, which included the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Margraf of Brandenburg, his brother Albert, and many others. Albert was at the head of the Teutonic Order in East Prussia. He secularised his semi-ecclesiastical princ.i.p.ality, became the first Duke of Prussia, and his State from the beginning adopted the evangelical faith.

It was not until the Peasants' War was over that this division was clearly manifested. The Reformation had spread in simple natural fashion, without any attempt at concerted action, or any design to impose a new and uniform order of public worship, or to make changes in ecclesiastical government.

Luther himself was not without hopes that the great ecclesiastical princ.i.p.alities might become secular lordships, that the bishops would a.s.sume the lead in ecclesiastical reform, and that there would be a great National Church in Germany, with little external change-enough only to permit the evangelical preaching and teaching. It is true that the Emperor had shown clearly his position by sending martyrs to the stake in the Netherlands, and that symptoms of division had begun to manifest themselves during 1524, as we have seen. Still these things did not prevent such an experienced statesman as the Elector of Saxony from confidently expecting a peaceful and, so far as Germany was concerned, a unanimous and hearty solution of the religious difficulties. The storm burst suddenly which was to shatter these optimistic expectations, and to change fundamentally the whole course of the Lutheran Reformation. This was the Peasants' War.

-- 3. The Peasants' War.(319)

From one point of view this insurrection was simply the last, the most extensive, and the most disastrous of those revolts which, we have already seen, had been almost chronic in Germany during the later decades of the fifteenth and in the beginning of the sixteenth century. All the social and economic causes which produced them(320) were increasingly active in 1524-1525. It is easy to show, as many Lutheran Church historians have done with elaborate care, that the Reformation under Luther had nothing in common with the sudden and unexpected revolt,-as easy as to prove that there was little in common between the "Spiritual Poverty" of Francis of a.s.sisi and the vulgar communism of the _Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit_, between the doctrines of Wiclif and the gigantic labour strike headed by Wat Tyler and Priest Ball, between the teaching of Huss and the extreme Taborite fanatics. But the fact remains that the voice of Luther awoke echoes whereof he never dreamt, and that its effects cannot be measured by some changes in doctrine, or by a reformation in ecclesiastical organisation. The times of the Reformation were ripe for revolution, and the words of the bold preacher, coming when all men were restless and most men were oppressed, appealing especially to those who felt the burden heavy and the yoke galling, were followed by far-resounding reverberations. Besides, Luther's message was democratic.

It destroyed the aristocracy of the saints, it levelled the barriers between the layman and the priest, it taught the equality of all men before G.o.d, and the right of every man of faith to stand in G.o.d's presence whatever be his rank and condition of life. He had not confined himself to preaching a new theology. His message was eminently practical. In his _Appeal to __ the n.o.bility of the German Nation_, Luther had voiced all the grievances of Germany, had touched upon almost all the open sores of the time, and had foretold disasters not very far off.

Nor must it be forgotten that no great leader ever flung about wild words in such a reckless way. Luther had the gift of strong smiting phrases, of words which seemed to cleave to the very heart of things, of images which lit up a subject with the vividness of a flash of lightning. He launched tracts and pamphlets from the press about almost everything,-written for the most part on the spur of the moment, and when the fire burned. His words fell into souls full of the fermenting pa.s.sions of the times. They drank in with eagerness the thoughts that all men were equal before G.o.d, and that there are divine commands about the brotherhood of mankind of more importance than all human legislation. They refused to believe that such golden ideas belonged to the realm of spiritual life alone, or that the only prescriptions which denied the rights of the common man were the decrees of the Roman Curia. The successful revolts of the Swiss peasants, the wonderful victories of Zisca, the people's leader, in the near Bohemian lands, were ill.u.s.trations, they thought, of how Luther's sledge-hammer words could be translated into corresponding deeds.

Other teachings besides Luther's were listened to. Many of the Humanists, professed disciples of Plato, expounded to friends or in their cla.s.s-rooms the communistic dreams of the _Republic_, and published _Utopias_ like the brilliant sketch of the ideal commonwealth which came from the pen of Thomas More. These speculations "of the Chair" were listened to by the "wandering students," and were retailed, with forcible ill.u.s.trations, in a way undreamt of by their scholarly authors, to audiences of artisans and peasants who were more than ready to give them unexpected applications.(321)

The influence of popular astrology must not be forgotten; for the astrologists were powerful among all cla.s.ses of society, in the palaces of the princes, in the houses of the burghers, and at the peasant market gatherings and church ales. In these days they were busy pointing out heavenly portents, and foretelling calamities and popular risings.(322)

The missionaries of the movement belonged to all sorts and conditions of men-poor priests sympathising with the grievances of their parishioners; wandering monks who had deserted their convents, especially those belonging to the Franciscan Order; poor students on their way from University to University; artisans, travelling in German fashion from one centre of their trade to another. They found their audiences on the village greens under the lime trees, or in the public-houses in the lower parts of the towns. They talked the rude language of the people, and garnished their discourse with many a scriptural quotation. They read to excited audiences small pamphlets and broadsides, printed in thick letters on coa.r.s.e paper, which discussed the burning questions of the day.

The revolt began unexpectedly, and without any pre-concerted preparation or formulation of demands, in June 1524, when a thousand peasants belonging to the estate of Count Sigismund of Lupfen rose in rebellion against their lord at Stuhlingen, a few miles to the north-west of Schaffhausen, and put themselves under the leadership of Hans Muller, an old landsknecht. Muller led his peasants, one of them carrying a flag blazoned with the imperial colours of red, black, and yellow, to the little town of Waldshut, about half-way between Schaffhausen and Basel.