The Age of the Reformation Part 6

Not only the Zwickau prophets, but Carlstadt and Zwilling were discredited. Almost all their measures were repealed, including those on divine service which was again restored almost to the Catholic form.

Not until 1525 were a simple communion service and the use of German again introduced.

[Sidenote: Rebellion of the knights, 1522-3]

It soon became apparent that all orders and all parts of Germany were in a state of ferment. The next manifestation of the revolutionary spirit was the rebellion of the knights. This cla.s.s, now in a state of moral and economic decay, had long survived any usefulness it had ever had. The rise of the cities, the aggrandizement of the princes, and the change to a commercial from a feudal society all worked to the disadvantage of the smaller n.o.bility and gentry. About the only means of livelihood left them was freebooting, and that was adopted without scruple and without shame. Envious of the wealthy cities, jealous of the greater princes and proud of their tenure immediately from the emperor, the knights longed for a new Germany, more centralized, more national, and, of course, under their special direction. In the Lutheran movement they thought they saw their opportunity; in Ulrich von Hutten they found their trumpet, in Francis von Sickingen their sword. A knight himself, but with possessions equal to those of many princes, a born warrior, but one who knew how to use the new weapons, gold and cannon, Sickingen had for years before he heard of Luther kept aggrandizing his power by predatory feuds. So little honor had he, that though appointed to high military command in the campaign against France, he tried to win personal advantage by treason, playing off the emperor against King Francis, with whom, for a long time, he almost {84} openly sided. In 1520 he fell under the influence of Hutten, who urged him to espouse the cause of the "gospel" as that of German liberty. By August 1522 he became convinced that the time was ripe for action, and issued a manifesto proclaiming that the feudal dues had become unbearable, and giving the impression that he was acting as an ally of Luther, although the latter knew nothing of his intentions and would have heartily disapproved of his methods.

Sickingen's first march was against Treves. The archbishop's "unchristian cannon" forced him to retire from this city. On October 10 the Council of Regency declared him an outlaw. A league formed by Treves, the Palatinate and Hesse, defeated him and captured his castle at Landstuhl in May, 1523. Mortally wounded he died on May 7.

Alike unhurt and unhelped by such incidents as the revolt of the knights, the main current of religious revolution swept onwards. Leo X died on December 1, 1521, and in his place was elected Adrian of Utrecht, a man of very different character. [Sidenote: Adrian VI, 1522-33] Though he had already taken a strong stand against Luther, he was deeply resolved to reform the corruption of the church. To the Diet called at Nuremberg [Sidenote: Diet of Nuremberg, 1522] in the latter part of 1522 he sent as legate Chieregato with a brief demanding the suppression of the schism. It was monstrous, said he, that one little brother should seduce a whole nation from the path trodden by so many martyrs and learned doctors. Do you suppose, he asked, that the people will longer respect civil government if they are taught to despise the canons and decrees of the spiritual power? At the same time Adrian wrote to Chieregato:

Say that we frankly confess that G.o.d permits this persecution of his church on account of the sins of men, especially those of the priests and prelates. . . . We {85} know that in this Holy See now for some years there have been many abominations, abuses in spiritual things, excesses in things commanded, in short, that all has become perverted. . . . We have all turned aside in our ways, nor was there, for a long time, any who did right,--no, not one.

This confession rather strengthened the reform party, than otherwise, making its demands seem justified; and all that the Diet did towards the settlement of the religious question was to demand that a council, with representation of the laity, should be called in a German city. A long list of grievances against the church was again drawn up and laid before the emperor.

The same Diet took up other matters. The need for reform and the impotence of the Council of Regency had both been demonstrated by the Sickingen affair. A law against monopolies was pa.s.sed, limiting the capital of any single company to fifty thousand gulden. In order to provide money for the central government a customs duty of 4 per cent.

ad valorem was ordered. Both these measures weighed on the cities, which accordingly sent an emba.s.sy to Charles. They succeeded in inducing him to disallow both laws.

[Sidenote: Diet of Nuremberg, 1524]

The next Diet, which a.s.sembled at Nuremberg early in 1524, naturally refrained from pa.s.sing more futile laws for the emperor to veto, but on the other hand it took a stronger stand than ever on the religious question. The Edict of Worms was still nominally in force and was still to all intents and purposes flouted. Luther was at large and his followers were gaining. In reply to a demand from the government that the Edict should be strictly carried out, the Diet pa.s.sed a resolution that it should be observed by each state as far as its prince deemed it possible. Despairing of an oec.u.menical council the estates demanded that a {86} German national synod be called at Spires before the close of the year with power to decide on what was to be done for the time being.

There is no doubt that by this time the public opinion of North Germany, at least, was thoroughly Lutheran. Ferdinand hardly exaggerated when he wrote his brother that throughout the Empire there was scarce one person in a thousand not infected with the new doctrines. [Sidenote: 1523] The place now occupied by newspapers and weekly reviews was taken by a vast swarm of pamphlets, most of which have survived. [Sidenote: Popular pamphlets] Those of the years immediately following the Diet of Worms reveal the first enthusiasm of the people for the "gospel." The greater part of the broadsides produced are concerned with the leader and his doctrines. The comparison of him to Huss was a favorite one. One pamphleteer, at least, drew the parallel between his trial at Worms and that of Christ before Pilate. The whole bent of men's minds was theological.

Doctrines which now seem a little quaint and trite were argued with new fervor by each writer. The destruction of images, the question of the real presence in the sacrament, justification by faith, and free will were disputed. Above all the Bible was lauded in the new translation, and the priests continued, as before, to be the favorite b.u.t.t of sarcasm.

Among the very many writers of these tracts the playwright of Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, took a prominent place. In 1523 he published his poem on "the Nightingale of Wittenberg, whose voice sounds in the glorious dawn over hill and dale." This bird is, of course, Luther, and the fierce lion who has sought his life is Leo. [Sidenote: Hans Sachs] The next year Hans Sachs published no less than three pamphlets favoring the reform. They were: 1. A Disputation between a Canon and a Shoemaker, defending the Word of G.o.d and the Christian {87} Estate. 2.

Conversation on the Hypocritical Works of the Clergy and their Vows, by which they hope to be saved to the disparagement of Christ's Blood. 3.

A Dialogue against the Roman Avarice. Multiply these pamphlets, the contents of which is indicated by their t.i.tles, by one hundred, and we arrive at some conception of the pabulum on which the people grew to Protestantism. Of course there were many pamphlets on the other side, but here, as in a thousand other cases, the important thing proved to be to have the cause ventilated. So long as discussion was forced in the channels selected by the reformers, even the interest excited by their adversaries redounded ultimately to their advantage.

[Sidenote: The Peasants' War, 1524-5]

The denunciation of authority, together with the message of the excellence of the humblest Christian and the brotherhood of man, powerfully contributed to the great rising of the lower cla.s.ses, known as the Peasants' War, in 1524-5. It was not, as the name implied, confined to the rustics, for probably as large a proportion of the populace of cities as of the tillers of the soil joined it. Nor was there in it anything entirely new. The cry for justice was of long standing, and every single element of the revolt, including the hatred of the clergy and demand for ecclesiastical reform, is to be found also in previous risings. Thus, the rebellion of peasants under Hans Bohm, commonly called the Piper of Niklashausen, in 1476, was brought about by a religious appeal. The leader a.s.serted that he had special revelations from the Virgin Mary that serfdom was to be abolished, and the kingdom of G.o.d to be introduced by the levelling of all social ranks; and he produced miracles to certify his divine calling. There had also been two risings, closely connected, the first, in 1513, deriving its name of "Bundschuh" from the peasant's tied shoe, a cla.s.s emblem, and the {88} second, in 1514, called "Poor Conrad" after the peasant's nickname. If the memory of the suppression of all these revolts might dampen the hopes of the poor, on the other hand the successful rise of the Swiss democracy was a perpetual example and encouragement to them.

[Sidenote: Causes]

The most fundamental cause of all these risings alike was, of course, the cry of the oppressed for justice. This is eternal, as is also one of the main alignments into which society usually divides itself, the opposition of the poor and the rich. It is therefore not very important to inquire whether the lot of the third estate was getting better or worse during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In either case there was a great load of wrong and tyranny to be thrown off. But the question is not uninteresting in itself. As there are diametrically opposite answers to it, both in the testimony of contemporaries and in the opinion of modern scholars, it is perhaps incapable of being answered. In some districts, and in some respects, the lot of the poor was becoming a little easier; in other lands and in different ways it was becoming harder. The time was one of general prosperity, in which the peasant often shared. The newer methods of agriculture, manufacture and commerce benefited him who knew how to take advantage of them. That some did so may be inferred from the statement of Sebastian Brant that the rustics dress like n.o.bles, in satin and gold chains. On the other hand the rising prices would bear hard on those laborers dependent on fixed wages, though relieving the burden of fixed rents. The whole people, except the merchants, disliked the increasing cost of living and legislated against it to the best of their ability. Complaints against monopoly were common, and the Diets sometimes enacted laws against them. Foreign trade was looked on with {89} suspicion as draining the country of silver and gold. Again, although the peasants benefited by the growing stability of government, they felt as a grievance the introduction of the new Roman law with its emphasis upon the rights of property and of the state. Burdens directly imposed by the territorial governments were probably increasing. If the exactions from the landlords were not becoming greater, it was simply because they were always at a maximum.

At no time was the rich gentleman at a loss to find law and precedent for wringing from his serfs and tenants all that they could possibly pay. [Sidenote: Peasant cla.s.ses] The peasants were of three cla.s.ses: the serfs, the tenants who paid a quit-rent, and hired laborers. The former, more than the others, perhaps, had now arrived at the determination to a.s.sert their rights. For them the Peasants' War was the inevitable break with a long economic past, now intolerable and hopeless. There is some evidence to show that the number of serfs was increasing. This process, by menacing the freedom of the others, united all in the resolve to stop the gradual enslavement of their cla.s.s, to reckon with those who benefited by it.

How little now there was in the ideals of the last and most terrible of the peasant risings may be seen by a study of the programs of reform put forward from time to time during the preceding century. There is nothing in the manifestos of 1525 that may not be found in the pamphlets of the fifteenth century. The grievances are the same, and the hope of a completely renovated and communized society is the same.

One of the most influential of these socialistic pamphlets was the so-called _Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund_, written by an Augsburg clergyman about 1438, first printed in 1476, and reprinted a number of times before the end of the century. Its t.i.tle bears witness to the Messianic belief of the people that one of their {90} great, old emperors should sometime return and restore the world to a condition of justice and happiness. The present tract preached that "obedience was dead and justice sick"; it attacked serfdom as wicked, denounced the ecclesiastical law and demanded the freedom given by Christ.

The same doctrine, adapted to the needs of the time, is preached in the _Reformation of the Emperor Frederic III_, published anonymously in 1523. Though more radical than Luther it reflects some of his ideas.

Still more, however, does it embody the reforms proposed at Nuremberg in 1523. It may probably have been written by George Ruxner, called Jerusalem, an Imperial Herald prominent in these circles. It advocated the abolition of all taxes and t.i.thes, the repeal of all imperial civil laws, the reform of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, and the limitation of the amount of capital allowed any one merchant to 10,000 gulden.

Though there was nothing new in either the manner of oppression or in the demands of the third estate during the last decade preceding the great rebellion, there does seem to be a new atmosphere, or tone, in the literature addressed to the lower cla.s.ses. While on the one hand the poor were still mocked and insulted as they always had been by foolish and heartless possessors of inherited wealth and position, from other quarters they now began to be also flattered and courted. The peasant became in the large pamphlet literature of the time an ideal figure, the type of the plain, honest, G.o.d-fearing man. [Sidenote: The peasant idealized] n.o.bles like Duke Ulrich of Wurttemberg affected to be called by popular nicknames. Carlstadt and other learned men proclaimed that the peasant knew better the Word of G.o.d and the way of salvation than did the learned. Many radical preachers, especially the Anabaptist {91} Munzer, carried the message of human brotherhood to the point of communism. There were a number of lay preachers, the most celebrated being the physician Hans Maurer, who took the sobriquet "Karsthans." This name, "the man with the hoe," soon became one of the catch-words of the time, and made its way into popular speech as a synonym for the simple and pious laborer. Hutten took it up and urged the people to seize flails and pitchforks and smite the clergy and the pope as they would the devil. [Sidenote: 1521] Others preached hatred of the Jews, of the rich, of lawyers. Above all they appealed to the Bible as the devine law, and demanded a religious reform as a condition and preliminary to a thorough renovation of society. Although Luther himself from the first opposed all forms of violence, his clarion voice rang out in protest against the injustice of the n.o.bles. "The people neither can nor will endure your tyranny any longer," he said to them in 1523, "G.o.d will not endure it; the world is not what it once was when you drove and hunted men like wild beasts."

The rising began at Stuhlingen, not far from the Swiss frontier, in June 1524, and spread with considerable rapidity northward, until the greater part of Germany was in the throes of revolution. The rebels were able to make headway because most of the regular troops had been withdrawn to the Turkish front or to Italy to fight the emperor's battle against France. In South Germany, during the first six months, the gatherings of peasants and townsmen were eminently peaceable. They wished only to negotiate with their masters and to secure some practical reforms. But when the revolt spread to Franconia and Saxony, a much more radically socialistic program was developed and the rebels showed themselves readier to enforce their demands by arms. For the year 1524 there {92} was no general manifesto put forward, but there were negotiations between the insurgents and their quondam masters. In this district or in that, lists of very specific grievances were presented and redress demanded. In some cases merely to gain time, in others sincerely, the lords consented to reply to these pet.i.tions.

They denied this or that charge, and they promised to end this or that form of oppression. Neither side was prepared for civil war. In all it was more like a modern strike than anything else.

In the early months of 1525 several programs were drawn up of a more general nature than those previously composed, and yet by no means radical. The most famous of these was called _The Twelve Articles_, printed and widely circulated in February. [Sidenote: _The Twelve Articles_] The exact place at which they originated is unknown. The authorship has been much disputed, and necessarily so, for they were the work of no one brain, but were as composite a production as is the Const.i.tution of the United States. The material in them is drawn from the mouths of a whole people. Far more than in other popular writings one feels that they are the genuine expression of the public opinion of a great cla.s.s. Probably their draftsman was Sebastian Lotzer, the tanner who for years past had preached apostolic communism. It is not impossible that the Anabaptist Balthasar Hubmaier had a hand in them.

Their demands are moderate and would be considered matters of self-evident justice to-day. The first article is for the right of each community to choose its own pastor. The second protests against the minor t.i.thes on vegetables paid to the clergy, though expressly admitting the legality of the t.i.thes on grain. The third article demands freedom for the serfs, the fourth and fifth, ask for the right to hunt and to cut wood in the forests. The sixth, seventh and eighth articles {93} protest against excessive forced labor, illegal payments and exorbitant rents. The ninth article denounces the new (Roman) law, and requests the reestablishment of the old (German) law. The tenth article voices the indignation of the poor at the enclosure by the rich of commons and other free land. The eleventh demands the abolition of the heriot, or inheritance-tax, by which the widow of a rustic was obliged to yield to her lord the best head of cattle or other valuable possession. The final article expresses the willingness of the insurgents to have all their demands submitted to the Word of G.o.d.

Both here and in the preamble the entire a.s.similation of divine and human law is postulated, and the charge that the Lutheran Gospel caused sedition, is met.

[Sidenote: Other manifestos]

Though the _Twelve Articles_ were adopted by more of the bands of peasants than was any other program, yet there were several other manifestos drawn up about the same time. Thus, in the _Fifty-nine Articles_ of the Stuhlingen peasants the same demands are put forth with much more detail. The legal right to trial by due process of law is a.s.serted, and vexatious payments due to a lord when his peasant marries a woman from another estate, are denounced. But here, too, and elsewhere, the fundamental demands were the same: freedom from serfdom, from oppressive taxation and forced labor, and for unrestricted rights of hunting and woodcutting in the forests. Everywhere there is the same claim that the rights of the people are sanctioned by the law of G.o.d, and generally the peasants a.s.sume that they are acting in accordance with the new "gospel" of Luther. The Swabians expressly submitted their demands to the arbitration of a commission of four to consist of a representative of the emperor, Frederic of Saxony, Luther and either Melanchthon or Bugenhagen.

{94} When the revolt reached the central part of Germany it became at once more socialistic and more b.l.o.o.d.y. [Sidenote: Munzer] The baleful eloquence of Thomas Munzer was exerted at Muhlhausen to nerve the people to strike down the G.o.dless with pitiless sword. Already in September 1524 he preached: "On! on! on! This is the time when the wicked are as fearful as hounds. . . . Regard not the cries of the G.o.dless. . . . On, while the fire is hot. Let not your swords be cold from blood. Smite bang, bang on the anvil of Nimrod; cast his tower to the ground!" Other leaders took up the message and called for the extirpation of the tyrants, including both the clergy and the lords.

Communism was demanded as in the apostolic age; property was denounced as wrong. Regulation of prices was one measure put forward, and the committing of the government of the country to a university another.

The propaganda of deeds followed close upon the propaganda of words.

During the spring of 1525 in central Germany forty-six cloisters and castles were burned to the ground, while violence and rapine reigned supreme with all the ferocity characteristic of cla.s.s warfare. On Easter Sunday, April 16, one of the best-armed bands of peasants, under one of the most brutal leaders, Jacklein Rohrbach, attacked Weinsberg.

The count and his small garrison of eighteen knights surrendered and were ma.s.sacred by the insurgents, who visited mockery and insult upon the countess and her daughters. Many of the cities joined the peasants, and for a short time it seemed as if the rebellion might be successful.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the rising]

But in fact the insurgents were poorly equipped, untrained, without cooperation or leadership. As soon as the troops which won the battle of Pavia in Italy were sent back to Germany the whole movement collapsed. [Sidenote: February 24, 1525] The Swabian League inflicted decisive {95} defeats upon the rebels at Leipheim on April 4, and at Wurzach ten days later. Other blows followed in May. In the center of Germany the Saxon Electorate lay supine. Frederic the Wise died in the midst of the tumult [Sidenote: May 5, 1525] after expressing his opinion that it was G.o.d's will that the common man should rule, and that it would be wrong to resist the divine decree. His young neighbor, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, acted vigorously. After coming to terms with his own subjects by negotiations, he raised troops and met a band of insurgents at Frankenhausen. He wished to treat with them also, but Munzer's fanaticism, promising the deluded men supernatural aid, nerved them to reject all terms. In the very ancient German style they built a barricade of wagons, and calmly awaited the attack of the soldiers. [Sidenote: May 15] Undisciplined and poorly armed, almost at the first shot they broke and fled in panic, more than half of them perishing on the field. Munzer was captured, and, after having been forced by torture to sign a confession of his misdeeds, was executed. After this there was no strength left in the peasant cause.

The lords, having gained the upper hand, put down the rising with great cruelty. The estimates of the numbers of peasants slain vary so widely as to make certainty impossible. Perhaps a hundred thousand in all perished. The soldiers far outdid the rebels in savage reprisals. The laborers sank back into a more wretched state than before; oppression stalked with less rebuke than ever through the land.

SECTION 3. THE FORMATION or THE PROTESTANT PARTY

[Sidenote: Defections from Luther]

In the sixteenth century politics were theological. The groups into which men divided had religious slogans and were called churches, but they were also political parties. The years following the Diet of {96} Worms saw the crystallization of a new group, which was at first liberal and reforming and later, as it grew in stability, conservative.

At Worms almost all the liberal forces in Germany had been behind Luther, the intellectuals, the common people with their wish for social amelioration, and those to whom the religious issue primarily appealed.

But this support offered by public opinion was vague; in the next years it became, both more definite and more limited. At the same time that city after city and state after state was openly revolting from the pope, until the Reformers had won a large const.i.tuency in the Imperial Diets and a place of const.i.tutional recognition, there was going on another process by which one after another certain elements at first inclined to support Luther fell away from him. During these years he violently dissociated himself from the extreme radicals and thus lost the support of the proletariat. In the second place the growing definiteness and narrowness of his dogmatism and his failure to show hospitality to science and philosophy alienated a number of intellectuals. Third, a great schism weakened the Protestant church.

But these losses were counterbalanced by two gains. The first was the increasing discipline and coherence of the new churches; the second was their gradual but rapid attainment of the support of the middle and governing cla.s.ses in many German states.

[Sidenote: The Radicals]

Luther's struggle with radicalism had begun within a year after his stand at Worms. He had always been consistently opposed to mob violence, even when he might have profited by it. At Worms he disapproved Hutten's plans for drawing the sword against the Romanists.

When, from his "watchtower," he first spied the disorders at Wittenberg, he wrote that notwithstanding the great provocation given to the common man by the clergy, yet tumult was the work of {97} the devil. When he returned home he preached that the only weapon the Christian ought to use was the Word. "Had I wished it," said he then, "I might have brought Germany to civil war. Yes, at Worms I might have started a game that would not have been safe for the emperor, but it would have been a fool's game. So I did nothing, but only let the Word act." Driven from Wittenberg, the Zwickau prophets, a.s.sisted by Thomas Munzer, continued their agitation elsewhere. As long as their propaganda was peaceful Luther was inclined to tolerate it. "Let them teach what they like," said he, "be it gospel or lies." But when they began to preach a campaign of fire and sword, Luther wrote, in July 1524, to his elector begging him "to act vigorously against their storming and ranting, in order that G.o.d's kingdom may be advanced by word only, as becomes Christians, and that all cause of sedition may be taken from the mult.i.tude [Herr Omnes, literally Mr. Everybody], more than enough inclined to it already."

When the revolt at last broke out Luther was looked up to and appealed to by the people as their champion. In April 1525 he composed an _Exhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants_, [Sidenote: Exhortation to Peace] in which he distributed the blame for the present conditions liberally, but impartially, on both sides, aristocrats and peasants. To the former he said that their tyranny, together with that of the clergy had brought this punishment on themselves, and that G.o.d intended to smite them. To the peasants he said that no tyranny was excuse for rebellion. Of their articles he approved of two only, that demanding the right to choose their pastors and that denouncing the heriot or death-duty. Their second demand, for repeal of some of the t.i.thes, he characterized as robbery, and the third, for freedom of the serf, as unjustified because it made Christian {98} liberty a merely external thing, and because Paul had said that the bondman should not seek to be free (I Cor. vii, 20 f).

The other articles were referred to legal experts.

Hardly had this pamphlet come from the press before Luther heard of the deeds of violence of Rohrbach and his fellows. Fearing that complete anarchy would result from the triumph of the insurgents, against whom no effective blow had yet been struck, he wrote a tract _Against the Thievish, Murderous Hordes of Peasants_. [Sidenote: The peasants denounced] In this he denounced them with the utmost violence of language, and urged the government to smite them without pity.

Everyone should avoid a peasant as he would the devil, and should join the forces to slay them like mad dogs. "If you die in battle against them," said he to the soldiers, "you could never have a more blessed end, for you die obedient to G.o.d's Word in Romans 13, and in the service of love to free your neighbor from the bands of h.e.l.l and the devil." A little later he wrote: "It is better that all the peasants be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the rustics took the sword without divine authority. The only possible consequence of their Satanic wickedness would be the diabolic devastation of the kingdom of G.o.d." And again: "One cannot argue reasonably with a rebel, but one must answer him with the fist so that blood flows from his nose." Melanchthon entirely agreed with his friend. "It is fairly written in Ecclesiasticus x.x.xiii," said he, "that as the a.s.s must have fodder, load, and whip, so must the servant have bread, work, and punishment. These outward, bodily servitudes are needful, but this inst.i.tution [serfdom] is certainly pleasing to G.o.d."

Inevitably such an att.i.tude alienated the lower cla.s.ses. From this time, many of them looked not to {99} the Lutheran but to the more radical sects, called Anabaptists, for help. The condition of the Empire at this time was very similar to that of many countries today, where we find two large upper and middle-cla.s.s parties, the conservative (Catholic) and liberal (Protestant) over against the radical or socialistic (Anabaptist).

[Sidenote: The Anabaptists]

The most important thing about the extremists was not their habit of denying the validity of infant baptism and of rebaptizing their converts, from which they derived their name. What really determined their view-point and program was that they represented the poor, uneducated, disinherited cla.s.ses. The party of extreme measures is always chiefly const.i.tuted from the proletariat because it is the very poor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they have not usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, many of them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. A complete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrors for them, but only promise.

A radical party almost always includes men of a wide variety of opinions. So the sixteenth century cla.s.sed together as Anabaptists men with not only divergent but with diametrically opposite views on the most vital questions. Their only common bond was that they all alike rejected the authoritative, traditional and aristocratic organization of both of the larger churches and the pretensions of civil society.

It is easy to see that they had no historical perspective, and that they tried to realize the ideals of primitive Christianity, as they understood it, without reckoning the vast changes in culture and other conditions, and yet it is impossible not to have a deep sympathy with the men most of whose demands were just and who sealed their faith with perpetual martyrdom. {100} [Sidenote: Spread of radicalism]

Notwithstanding the heavy blow to reform given in the crushing of the peasants' rising, radical doctrines continued to spread among the people. As the poor found their spiritual needs best supplied in the conventicle of dissent, official Lutheranism became an established church, predominantly an aristocratic and middle-cla.s.s party of vested interest and privilege.