An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 41

[Sidenote: Luther's theses on indulgences.]

142. In October, 1517, Tetzel, a Dominican monk, began granting indulgences in the neighborhood of Wittenberg, and making claims for them which appeared to Luther wholly irreconcilable with the deepest truths of Christianity as he understood and taught them. He therefore, in accordance with the custom of the time, wrote out a series of ninety-five statements in regard to indulgences. These he posted on the church door and invited any one interested in the matter to enter into a discussion with him on the subject, which he believed was very ill understood. In posting these _theses_, as they were called, Luther did not intend to attack the Church, and had no expectation of creating a sensation. The theses were in Latin and addressed only to scholars. It turned out, however, that every one, high and low, learned and unlearned, was ready to discuss the perplexing theme of the nature of indulgences. The theses were promptly translated into German, printed, and scattered throughout the land.

[Sidenote: The nature of indulgences.]

In order to understand the indulgence, it must be remembered that the priest had the right to forgive the sin of the truly contrite sinner who had duly confessed his evil deeds.[276] Absolution freed the sinner from the deadly guilt which would otherwise have dragged him down to h.e.l.l, but it did not free him from the penalties which G.o.d, or his representative, the priest, might choose to impose upon him. Serious penances had earlier been imposed by the Church for wrongdoing, but in Luther's time the sinner who had been absolved was chiefly afraid of the sufferings reserved for him in purgatory. It was there that his soul would be purified by suffering and prepared for heaven. The indulgence was a pardon, usually granted by the pope, through which the contrite sinner escaped a part, or all, of the punishment which remained even after he had been absolved. The pardon did not therefore forgive the guilt of the sinner, for that had necessarily to be removed before the indulgence was granted; it only removed or mitigated the penalties which even the forgiven sinner would, without the indulgence, have expected to undergo in purgatory.[277]

The first indulgences for the _dead_ had been granted shortly before the time of Luther's birth. By securing one of these, the relatives or friends of those in purgatory might reduce the period of torment which the sufferers had to undergo before they could be admitted to heaven.

Those who were in purgatory had, of course, been duly absolved of the guilt of their sins before their death; otherwise their souls would have been lost and the indulgence could not advantage them in any way.

[Sidenote: Leo X issues indulgences in connection with the rebuilding of St. Peter's.]

With a view of obtaining funds from the Germans to continue the reconstruction of the great church of St. Peter,[278] Leo X had arranged for the extensive grant of indulgences, both for the living and for the dead. The contribution for them varied greatly; the rich were required to pay a considerable sum, while the _very_ poor were to receive these pardons gratis. The representatives of the pope were naturally anxious to collect all the money possible, and did their best to induce every one to secure an indulgence, either for himself or for his deceased friends in purgatory. In their zeal they made many reckless claims for the indulgences, to which no thoughtful churchman or even layman could listen without misgivings.

[Sidenote: Contents of Luther's theses.]

Luther was not the first to criticise the current notions of indulgences, but his theses, owing to the vigor of their language and the existing irritation of the Germans against the administration of the Church, first brought the subject into prominence. He declared that the indulgence was very unimportant and that the poor man would better spend his money for the needs of his household. The truly repentant, he argued, do not flee punishment, but bear it willingly in sign of their sorrow. Faith in G.o.d, not the procuring of pardons, brings forgiveness, and every Christian who feels true contrition for his sins will receive full remission of the punishment as well as of the guilt. Could the pope know how his agents misled the people, he would rather have St. Peter's burn to ashes than build it up with money gained under false pretenses.

Then, Luther adds, there is danger that the common man will ask awkward questions. For example, "If the pope releases souls from purgatory for money, why not for charity's sake?" or, "Since the pope is rich as Crsus, why does he not build St. Peter's with his own money, instead of taking that of the poor man?"[279]

[Sidenote: Luther summoned to Rome.]

143. The theses were soon forwarded to Rome, and a few months after they were posted Luther received a summons to appear at the papal court to answer for his heretical a.s.sertions. Luther still respected the pope as the head of the Church, but he had no wish to risk his safety by going to Rome. As Leo X was anxious not to offend so important a person as the elector of Saxony, who intervened for Luther, he did not press the matter, and agreed that Luther should confer with the papal emissaries in Germany.

[Sidenote: The discussion continues.]

Brother Martin was induced to keep silence for a time, but was aroused again by a great debate arranged at Leipsic in the summer of 1519. Here Eck, a German theologian noted for his devotion to the pope and his great skill in debate, challenged one of Luther's colleagues, Carlstadt, to discuss publicly some of the matters in which Luther himself was especially interested. Luther therefore asked to be permitted to take part.

[Sidenote: The debate at Leipsic, 1519.]

The discussion turned upon the powers of the pope. Luther, who had been reading church history, declared that the pope had not enjoyed his supremacy for more than four hundred years. This statement was inaccurate, but, nevertheless, he had hit upon an argument against the customs of the Roman Catholic Church which has ever since been constantly urged by Protestants. They a.s.sert that the mediaeval Church and the papacy developed slowly, and that the apostles knew nothing of ma.s.ses, indulgences, purgatory, and the headship of the Bishop of Rome.

[Sidenote: Eck forces Luther to admit that the Council of Constance was wrong and Huss right.]

Eck promptly pointed out that Luther's views resembled those of Wycliffe and Huss, which had been condemned by the Council of Constance. Luther was forced reluctantly to admit that the council had condemned some thoroughly Christian teachings. This was a decisive admission. Like other Germans, Luther had been accustomed to abhor Huss and the Bohemians, and to regard with pride the great general Council of Constance, which had been held in Germany and under the auspices of its emperor. He now admitted that even a general council could err, and was soon convinced "that we are all Hussites, without knowing it; yes, Paul and St. Augustine were good Hussites." Luther's public encounter with a disputant of European reputation, and the startling admissions which he was compelled to make, first made him realize that he might become the leader in an attack on the Church. He began to see that a great change and upheaval was unavoidable.

[Sidenote: Luther and the humanists natural allies.]

144. As Luther became a confessed revolutionist he began to find friends among other revolutionists and reformers. He had some ardent admirers even before the disputation at Leipsic, especially at Wittenberg and in the great city of Nuremberg. To the humanists, Luther seemed a natural ally. They might not understand his religious beliefs, but they clearly saw that he was beginning to attack a cla.s.s of people that they disliked, particularly the old-fashioned theologians who venerated Aristotle. He felt, moreover, as they did in regard to the many vices in the Church, and was becoming suspicious of the begging monks, although he was himself at the head of the Wittenberg monastery. So those who had defended Reuchlin were now ready to support Luther, to whom they wrote encouraging letters. Luther's works were published by Erasmus' printer at Basel, and sent to Italy, France, England, and Spain.

[Sidenote: Erasmus' att.i.tude toward the Lutheran movement.]

But Erasmus, the mighty sovereign of the men of letters, refused to take sides in the controversy. He a.s.serted that he had not read more than a dozen pages of Luther's writings. Although he admitted that "the monarchy of the Roman high priest was, in its existing condition, the pest of Christendom," he believed that a direct attack upon it would do no good. Luther, he urged, would better be discreet and trust that mankind would become more intelligent and outgrow their false ideas.

[Sidenote: Contrast between Luther and Erasmus.]

To Erasmus, man was capable of progress; cultivate him and extend his knowledge, and he would grow better and better. He was a free agent, with, on the whole, upright tendencies. To Luther, on the other hand, man was utterly corrupt, and incapable of a single righteous wish or deed. His will was enslaved to evil, and his only hope lay in the recognition of his absolute inability to better himself, and in a humble reliance upon G.o.d's mercy. By faith only, not by conduct, could he be saved. Erasmus was willing to wait until every one agreed that the Church should be reformed. Luther had no patience with an inst.i.tution which seemed to him to be leading souls to destruction by inducing men to rely upon their good works. Both men realized that they could not agree. For a time they expressed respect for each other, but at last they became involved in a bitter controversy in which they gave up all pretense to friendship. Erasmus declared that Luther, by scorning good works and declaring that no one could do right, had made his followers indifferent to their conduct, and that those who accepted Luther's teachings straightway became pert, rude fellows, who would not take off their hats to him on the street.

[Sidenote: Ulrich von Hutten espouses Luther's cause.]

Ulrich von Hutten, on the other hand, warmly espoused Luther's cause as that of a German patriot and an opponent of Roman tyranny, intrigue, and oppression. "Let us defend our freedom," he wrote, "and liberate the long enslaved fatherland. We have G.o.d on our side, and if G.o.d be with us, who can be against us?" Hutten enlisted the interest of some of the other knights, who offered to defend Luther should the churchmen attack him, and invited him to take refuge in their castles.

[Sidenote: Luther begins to use violent language.]

145. Thus encouraged, Luther, who gave way at times to his naturally violent disposition, became threatening, and suggested that the civil power should punish the churchmen and force them to reform their conduct. "We punish thieves with the gallows, bandits with the sword, heretics with fire; why should we not, with far greater propriety, attack with every kind of weapon these very masters of perdition, the cardinals, popes, and the whole mob in the Roman Sodom?" "The die is cast," he writes to a friend; "I despise Rome's wrath as I do her favor; I will have no reconciliation or intercourse with her in all time to come. Let her condemn and burn my writings. I will, if fire can be found, publicly condemn and burn the whole papal law."

[Sidenote: Luther's and Hutten's appeal to the German people.]

[Sidenote: Luther's _Address to the German n.o.bility_.]

Hutten and Luther vied with one another during the year 1520 in attacking the pope and his representatives. They both possessed a fine command of the German language, and they were fired by a common hatred of Rome. Hutten had little or none of Luther's religious fervor, but he could not find colors too dark in which to picture to his countrymen the greed of the papal curia, which he described as a vast den, to which everything was dragged which could be filched from the Germans. Of Luther's popular pamphlets, the first really famous one was his _Address to the German n.o.bility_, in which he calls upon the rulers of Germany, especially the knights, to reform the abuses themselves, since he believed that it was vain to wait for the Church to do so.

He explains that there are three walls behind which the papacy had been wont to take refuge when any one proposed to remedy its abuses. There was, first, the claim that the clergy formed a separate cla.s.s, superior even to the civil rulers, who might not punish a churchman, no matter how bad he was. Secondly, the pope claimed to be superior to a council, so that even the representatives of the Church might not correct him.

And, lastly, the pope a.s.sumed the sole right to interpret the meaning of the Scriptures; consequently he could not be refuted by arguments from the Bible. Thus the pope had stolen the three rods with which he might have been punished. Luther claimed to cast down these defenses by denying, to begin with, that there was anything especially sacred about a clergyman except the duties which he had been designated to perform.

If he did not attend to his work he might be deprived of his office at any moment, just as one would turn off an incompetent tailor or farmer, and in that case he became a simple layman again. Luther claimed that it was the right and duty of the civil government to punish a churchman who does wrong just as if he were the humblest layman. When this first wall was destroyed the others would fall easily enough, for the dominant position of the clergy was the very corner stone of the mediaeval Church.[280]

[Sidenote: Luther advocates social as well as religious reforms.]

The pamphlet closes with a long list of evils which must be done away with before Germany can become prosperous. Luther saw that his view of religion really implied a social revolution. He advocated reducing the monasteries to a tenth of their number and permitting those who were disappointed in the good they got from living in them freely to leave.

He would not have them prisons, but hospitals and refuges for the soul-sick. He points out the evils of pilgrimages and of the numerous church holidays, which interfere with daily work. The clergy, he urged, should be permitted to marry and have families like other citizens. The universities should be reformed, and "the accursed heathen, Aristotle,"

should be cast out from them.

It should be noted that Luther appeals to the authorities not in the name of religion chiefly, but in that of public order and prosperity. He says that the money of the Germans flies feather-light over the Alps to Italy, but it suddenly becomes like lead when there is a question of its coming back. He showed himself a master of vigorous language, and his denunciations of the clergy and the Church resounded like a trumpet call in the ears of his countrymen.

[Sidenote: Luther attacks the sacramental system in his _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_, 1520.]

Luther had said little of the doctrines of the Church in his _Address to the German n.o.bility_, but within three or four months he issued a second work, in which he sought to overthrow the whole system of the sacraments, as it had been taught by Peter Lombard and the theologians of the thirteenth century.[281] Four of the seven sacraments--ordination, marriage, confirmation, and extreme unction--he rejected altogether. He completely revised the conception of the Ma.s.s, or the Lord's Supper. He stripped the priest of his singular powers by denying that he performed the miracle of transubstantiation or offered a sacrifice for the living and the dead when he officiated at the Lord's Supper. The priest was, in his eyes, only a minister, in the Protestant sense of the word, one of whose chief functions was preaching.

[Sidenote: Luther excommunicated.]

146. Luther had long expected to be excommunicated. But it was not until late in 1520 that his adversary, Eck, arrived in Germany with a papal bull condemning many of Luther's a.s.sertions as heretical and giving him sixty days in which to recant. Should he fail to come to himself within that time, he and all who adhered to or favored him were to be excommunicated, and any place which harbored him should fall under the interdict. Now, since the highest power in Christendom had p.r.o.nounced Luther a heretic, he should unhesitatingly have been delivered up by the German authorities. But no one thought of arresting him.

[Sidenote: The German authorities reluctant to publish the bull against Luther.]

The bull irritated the German princes; whether they liked Luther or not, they decidedly disliked to have the pope issuing commands to them. Then it appeared to them very unfair that Luther's personal enemy should have been intrusted with the publication of the bull. Even the princes and universities that were most friendly to the pope published the bull with great reluctance. The students of Erfurt and Leipsic pursued Eck with pointed allusions to Pharisees and devil's emissaries. In many cases the bull was ignored altogether. Luther's own sovereign, the elector of Saxony, while no convert to the new views, was anxious that Luther's case should be fairly considered, and continued to protect him. One mighty prince, however, the young emperor Charles V, promptly and willingly published the bull; not, however, as emperor, but as ruler of the Austrian dominions and of the Netherlands. Luther's works were burned at Louvain, Mayence, and Cologne, the strongholds of the old theology.

[Sidenote: Luther defies pope and emperor.]

"Hard it is," Luther exclaimed, "to be forced to contradict all the prelates and princes, but there is no other way to escape h.e.l.l and G.o.d's anger." Never had one man so unreservedly declared war upon pretty much the whole consecrated order of things. As one power arrayed against an equal, the Wittenberg professor opposed himself to pope and emperor, giving back curse for curse and f.a.got for f.a.got. His students were summoned to witness "the pious, religious spectacle," when he cast Leo's bull on the fire, along with the canon law and one of the books of scholastic theology which he most disliked.

[Sidenote: Hutten's plan for an immediate destruction of the old Church.]

Never was the temptation so great for Luther to encourage a violent demolition of the old structure of the Church as at this time. Hutten was bent upon the speedy carrying out of the revolution which both he and Luther were forwarding by their powerful writings. Hutten had taken refuge in the castle of the leader of the German knights, Franz von Sickingen, who he believed would be an admirable military commander in the coming contest for truth and liberty. Hutten frankly proposed to the young emperor that the papacy should be abolished, that the property of the Church should be confiscated, and that ninety-nine out of a hundred of the clergy should be dispensed with as superfluous. In this way Germany would be freed, he argued, from the control of the "parsons" and from their corruption. From the vast proceeds of the confiscation the state might be strengthened and an army of knights might be maintained for the defense of the empire.

[Sidenote: Views of the papal representative on public opinion in Germany.]

Public opinion appeared ready for a revolution. "I am pretty familiar with the history of this German nation," Leo's representative, Aleander, remarked; "I know their past heresies, councils, and schisms, but never were affairs so serious before. Compared with present conditions, the struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII was as violets and roses....

These mad dogs are now well equipped with knowledge and arms; they boast that they are no longer ignorant brutes like their predecessors; they claim that Italy has lost the monopoly of the sciences and that the Tiber now flows into the Rhine." "Nine-tenths of the Germans," he calculated, "are shouting 'Luther,' and the other tenth goes so far at least as 'Death to the Roman curia.'"