The Age of the Reformation Part 7

It is sometimes said that the origin and growth of the Anabaptists was due to the German translation of the Bible. This is not true and yet there is little doubt that the publication of the German version in 1522 and the years immediately following, stimulated the growth of many sects. The Bible is such a big book, and capable of so many different interpretations, that it is not strange that a hundred different schemes of salvation should have been deduced from it by those who came to it with different prepossessions. While many of the Anabaptists were perfect quietists, preaching the duty of non-resistance and the wickedness of bearing arms, even in self-defence, others found sanction for quite opposite views in the Scripture, and proclaimed that the G.o.dless should be exterminated as the Canaanites had been. In ethical matters some sects practised the severest code of morals, while others were distinguished by laxity. By some marriage was forbidden; others wanted all the marriage they could get and advocated polygamy. The religious meetings were similar to "revivals," frequently of the most hysterical sort. Claiming that they were mystically united to G.o.d, or had direct revelations from him, they rejected the ceremonies and sacraments of historic Christianity, and sometimes subst.i.tuted for them practices of the most absurd, or most doubtful, character. When Melchior Rink preached, his followers howled like dogs, bellowed like cattle, neighed like horses, and brayed like a.s.ses--some of them very {101} naturally, no doubt. In certain extreme cases the meetings ended in debauchery, while we know of men who committed murder in the belief that they were directed so to do by special revelation of G.o.d. Thus at St. Gall one brother cut another's throat, while one of the saints trampled his wife to death under the influence of the spirit. But it is unfair to judge the whole movement by these excesses.

The new sectaries, of course, ran the gauntlet of persecution. In 1529 the emperor and Diet at Spires pa.s.sed a mandate against them to this effect: "By the plenitude of our imperial power and wisdom we ordain, decree, oblige, declare, and will that all Anabaptists, men and women who have come to the age of understanding, shall be executed and deprived of their natural life by fire, sword, and the like, according to opportunity and without previous inquisition of the spiritual judges." Lutherans united with Catholics in pa.s.sing this edict, and showed no less alacrity in executing it. As early as 1525 the Anabaptists were persecuted at Zurich, where one of their earliest communities sprouted. Some of the leaders were drowned, others were banished and so spread their tenets elsewhere. Catholic princes exterminated them by fire and sword. In Lutheran Saxony no less than thirteen of the poor non-conformists were executed, and many more imprisoned for long terms, or banished.

And yet the radical sects continued to grow. The dauntless zeal of Melchior Hofmann braved all for the propagation of their ideas. For a while he found a refuge at Stra.s.sburg, but this city soon became too orthodox to hold him. He then turned to Holland, where the seed sowed fell into fertile ground. Two Dutchmen, the baker John Matthys of Haarlem and the tailor John Beuckelssen of Leyden went to the episcopal city of Munster in Westphalia [Sidenote: Munster] near the Dutch {102} border, and rapidly converted the ma.s.s of the people to their own belief in the advent of the kingdom of G.o.d on earth. An insurrection expelled the bishop's government and installed a democracy in February, 1534. After the death of Matthys on April 5, a rising of the people against the dictatorial power of Beucklessen was suppressed by this fanatic who thereupon crowned himself king under the t.i.tle of John of Leyden. Communism of goods was introduced and also polygamy. The city was now besieged by its suzerain, the Bishop of Munster, and after horrible sufferings had been inflicted on the population, taken by storm on June 25, 1535. The surviving leaders were put to death by torture.

The defeat itself was not so disastrous to the Anabaptist cause as were the acts of the leaders when in power. As the Reformer Bullinger put it: "G.o.d opened the eyes of the governments by the revolt at Munster, and thereafter no one would trust even those Anabaptists who claimed to be innocent." Their lack of unity and organization told against them.

Nevertheless the sect smouldered on in the lower cla.s.ses, constantly subject to the fires of martyrdom, until, toward the close of the century, it attained some cohesion and respectability. The later Baptists, Independents, and Quakers all inherited some portion of its spiritual legacies. To the secular historian its chief interest is in the social teachings, which consistently advocated tolerance, and frequently various forms of anarchy and socialism.

[Sidenote: Defection of the humanists]

Next to the defection of the laboring ma.s.ses, the severest loss to the Evangelical party in these years was that of a large number of intellectuals, who, having hailed Luther as a deliverer from ecclesiastical bondage, came to see in him another pope, not less {103} tyrannous than he of Rome. Reuchlin the Hebrew scholar and Mutian the philosopher had little sympathy with any dogmatic subtlety. Zasius the jurist was repelled by the haste and rashness of Luther. The so-called "G.o.dless painters" of Nuremberg, George Penz and the brothers Hans and Bartholomew Beham, having rejected in large part Christian doctrine, were naturally not inclined to join a new church, even when they deserted the old.

But a considerable number of humanists, and those the greatest, after having welcomed the Reformation in its first, most liberal and hopeful youth, deliberately turned their backs on it and cast in their lot with the Roman communion. The reason was that, whereas the old faith mothered many of the abuses, superst.i.tions, and dogmatisms abominated by the humanists, it had also, at this early stage in the schism, within its close a large body of ripe, cultivated, fairly tolerant opinion. The struggling innovators, on the other hand, though they purged away much obsolete and offensive matter, were forced, partly by their position, partly by the temper of their leaders, to a raw self-a.s.sertiveness, a bald concentration on the points at issue, incompatible with winsome wisdom, or with judicial fairness. How the humanists would have chosen had they seen the Index and Loyola, is problematical; but while there was still hope of reshaping Rome to their liking they had little use for Wittenberg.

I admit that for some years I was very favorably inclined to Luther's enterprise [wrote Crotus Rubea.n.u.s in 1531] [Sidenote: Rubea.n.u.s], but when I saw that nothing was left untorn and undefiled . . . I thought the devil might bring in great evil in the guise of something good, using Scripture as his shield. So I decided to remain in the church in which I was baptized, reared and taught.

Even if some fault might be found in it, yet in time it {104} might have been proved, sooner, at any rate, than in the new church which in a few years has been torn by so many sects.

Wilibald Pirckheimer, the Greek scholar and historian of Nuremberg, hailed Luther so warmly at first that he was put under the ban of the bull _Exsurge Domine_. By 1529, however, he had come to believe him insolent, impudent, either insane or possessed by a devil.

I do not deny [he wrote] that at the beginning all Luther's acts did not seem to be vain, since no good man could be pleased with all those errors and impostures that had acc.u.mulated gradually in Christianity. So, with others, I hoped that some remedy might be applied to such great evils, but I was cruelly deceived. For, before the former errors had been extirpated, far more intolerable ones crept in, compared to which the others seemed child's play.

[Sidenote: Appeal to Erasmus]

To Erasmus, the wise, the just, all men turned as to an arbiter of opinion. From the first, Luther counted on his support, and not without reason, for the humanist spoke well of the Theses and commentaries of the Wittenberger. On March 28, 1519, Luther addressed a letter to him, as "our glory and hope," acknowledging his indebtedness and begging for support. Erasmus answered in a friendly way, at the same time sending a message encouraging the Elector Frederic to defend his innocent subject.

Dreading nothing so much as a violent catastrophe, the humanist labored for the next two years to find a peaceful solution for the threatening problem. Seeing that Luther's two chief errors were that he "had attacked the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks," Erasmus pressed upon men in power the plan of allowing the points in dispute to be settled by an impartial tribunal, and of imposing silence on both parties. At the same time he begged Luther to do nothing {105} violent and urged that his enemies be not allowed to take extreme measures against him. But after the publication of the pamphlets of 1520 and of the bull condemning the heretic, this position became untenable.

Erasmus had so far compromised himself in the eyes of the inquisitors that he fled from Louvain in the autumn of 1521, and settled in Basle.

He was strongly urged by both parties to come out on one side or the other, and he was openly taunted by Ulrich von Hutten, a hot Lutheran, for cowardice in not doing so. Alienated by this and by the dogmatism and intolerance of Luther's writings, Erasmus finally defined his position in a _Diatribe on Free Will_. [Sidenote: 1524] As Luther's theory of the bondage of the will was but the other side of his doctrine of justification by faith only--for where G.o.d's grace does all there is nothing left for human effort--Erasmus attacked the very center of the Evangelical dogmatic system. The question, a deep psychological and metaphysical one, was much in the air, Valla having written on it a work published in 1518, and Pomponazzi having also composed a work on it in 1520, which was, however, not published until much later. It is noticeable that Erasmus selected this point rather than one of the practical reforms advocated at Wittenberg, with which he was much in sympathy. Luther replied in a volume on _The Bondage of the Will_ rea.s.serting his position more strongly than ever. [Sidenote: 1525] How theological, rather than philosophical, his opinion was may be seen from the fact that while he admitted that a man was free to choose which of two indifferent alternatives he should take, he denied that any of these choices could work salvation or real righteousness in G.o.d's eyes. He did not hesitate to say that G.o.d saved and d.a.m.ned souls irrespective of merit. Erasmus answered again in a large work, the _Hyperaspistes_ (_Heavy-Armed Soldier_), which came {106} out in two parts. [Sidenote: 1526-7] In this he offers a general critique of the Lutheran movement. Its leader, he says, is a dogmatist, who never recoils from extremes logically demanded by his premises, no matter how repugnant they may be to the heart of man. But for himself he is a humanist, finding truth in the reason as well as in the Bible, and abhorring paradoxes.

The controversy was not allowed to drop at this point. Many a barbed shaft of wit-winged sarcasm was shot by the light-armed scholar against the ranks of the Reformers. "Where Lutheranism reigns," he wrote Pirckheimer, "sound learning perishes." "With disgust," he confessed to Ber, "I see the cause of Christianity approaching a condition that I should be very unwilling to have it reach . . . While we are quarreling over the booty the victory will slip through our fingers.

It is the old story of private interests destroying the commonwealth."

Erasmus first expressed the opinion, often maintained since, that Europe was experiencing a gradual revival both of Christian piety and of sound learning, when Luther's boisterous attack plunged the world into a tumult in which both were lost sight of. On March 30, 1527, he wrote to Maldonato:

I brought it about that sound learning, which among the Italians and especially among the Romans savored of nothing but pure paganism, began n.o.bly to celebrate Christ, in whom we ought to boast as the sole author of both wisdom and happiness if we are true Christians. . . .

I always avoided the character of a dogmatist, except in certain _obiter dicta_ which seemed to me conducive to correct studies and against the preposterous judgments of men.

In the same letter he tells how hard he had fought the obscurantists, and adds: "While we were waging a fairly equal battle against these monsters, behold {107} Luther suddenly arose and threw the apple of Discord into the world."

In short, Erasmus left the Reformers not because they were too liberal, but because they were too conservative, and because he disapproved of violent methods. His gentle temperament, not without a touch of timidity, made him abhor the tumult and trust to the voice of persuasion. In failing to secure the support of the humanists Protestantism lost heavily, and especially abandoned its chance to become the party of progress. Luther himself was not only disappointed in the disaffection of Erasmus, but was sincerely rebelled by his rationalism. A man who could have the least doubt about a doctrine was to him "an Arian, an atheist, and a skeptic." He went so far as to say that the great Dutch scholar's primary object in publishing the Greek New Testament was to make readers doubtful about the text, and that the chief end of his _Colloquies_ was to mock all piety. Erasmus, whose services to letters were the most distinguished and whose ideal of Christianity was the loveliest, has suffered far too much in being judged by his relation to the Reformation. By a great Catholic[1] he has been called "the glory of the priesthood and the shame," by an eminent Protestant scholar[2] "a John the Baptist and Judas in one."

[Sidenote: Sacramentarian schism]

The battle with the humanists was synchronous with the beginnings of a fierce internecine strife that tore the young evangelical church into two parts. Though the controversy between Luther and his princ.i.p.al rival, Ulrich Zwingli, was really caused by a wide difference of thought on many subjects, it focused its rays, like a burning-gla.s.s, upon one point, the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the {108} eucharist. The explanation of this mystery evolved in the Middle Ages and adopted by the Lateran Council of 1215, was the theory, called "transubstantiation," that the substance of the bread turned into the substance of the body, and the substance of the wine into the substance of the blood, without the "accidents" of appearance and taste being altered. Some of the later doctors of the church, Durand and Occam, opposed this theory, though they proposed a nearly allied one, called "consubstantiation," that the body and blood are present with the bread and wine. Wyclif and others, among whom was the Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola, proposed the theory now held in most Protestant churches that the bread and wine are mere symbols of the body and blood.

At the dawn of the Reformation the matter was brought into prominence by the Dutch theologian Hoen, from whom the symbolic interpretation [Sidenote: Symbolism] was adopted first by Carlstadt and then by the Swiss Reformers Zwingli and Oecolampadius. Luther himself wavered. He attacked the sacrifice of the ma.s.s, in which he saw a "good work"

repugnant to faith, and a great practical abuse, as in the endowed ma.s.ses for souls, but he finally decided on the question of the real presence that the words "this is my body" were "too strong for him" and meant just what they said.

After a preliminary skirmish with Carlstadt, resulting in the latter's banishment from Saxony, there was a long and bitter war of pens between Wittenberg and the Swiss Reformers. Once the battle was joined it was sure to be acrimonious because of the self-consciousness of each side.

Luther always a.s.sumed that he had a monopoly of truth, and that those who proposed different views were infringing his copyright, so to speak. "Zwingli, Carlstadt and Oecolampadius would never have known Christ's gospel rightly," he {109} opined, "had not Luther written of it first." He soon compared them to Absalom rebelling against his father David, and to Judas betraying his Master. Zwingli on his side was almost equally sure that he had discovered the truth independently of Luther, and, while expressing approbation of his work, refused to be called by his name. His invective was only a shade less virulent than was that of his opponent.

The substance of the controversy was far from being the straight alignment between reason and tradition that it has sometimes been represented as. Both sides a.s.sumed the inerrancy of Scripture and appealed primarily to the same biblical arguments. Luther had no difficulty in proving that the words "hoc est corpus meum" meant that the bread was the body, and he stated that this must be so even if contrary to our senses. Zwingli had no difficulty in proving that the thing itself was impossible, and therefore inferred that the biblical words must be explained away as a figure of speech. In a long and learned controversy neither side convinced the other, but each became so exasperated as to believe the other possessed of the devil. In the spring of 1529 Lutherans joined Catholics at the Diet of Spires in refusing toleration to the Zwinglians. The division of Protestants of course weakened them. Their leading statesman, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, seeing this, did his best to reconcile the leaders. For several years he tried to get them to hold a conference, but in vain. Finally, he succeeded in bringing together at his castle at Marburg on the Lahn, Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and a large number of other divines. [Sidenote: Marburg colloquy October 1-3, 1529] The discussion here only served to bring out more strongly the irreconcilability of the two "spirits." Shortly afterwards, when the question of a political alliance came up, the Saxon theologians drafted a memorial stating that {110} they would rather make an agreement with the heathen than with the "sacramentarians." [Sidenote: 1530] The same att.i.tude was preserved at the Diet of Augsburg, where the Lutherans were careful to avoid all appearance of friendship with the Zwinglians lest they should compromise their standing with the Catholics. Zwingli and his friends were hardly less intransigeant.

[Sidenote: October 11, 1531]

When Zwingli died in battle with the Catholic cantons and when Oecolampadius succ.u.mbed to a fever a few weeks later, Luther loudly proclaimed that was a judgment of G.o.d and a triumph for his own party.

Though there was no hope of reconciling the Swiss, the South German Zwinglians, headed by the Stra.s.sburg Reformers Bucer and Capito, hastened to come to an understanding with Wittenberg, without which their position would have been extremely perilous. Bucer claimed to represent a middle doctrine, such as was later a.s.serted by Calvin. As no middle ground is possible, the doctrine is unintelligible, being, in fact, nothing but the statement, in strong terms, of two mutually exclusive propositions. After much humiliation the divines succeeded, however, in satisfying Luther, with whom they signed the Wittenberg Concord on May 29, 1536. The Swiss still remained without the pale, and Luther's hatred of them grew with the years. Shortly before his death he wrote that he would testify before the judgment-seat of G.o.d his loathing for the sacramentarians. He became more and more conservative, bringing back to the sacrament some of the medieval superst.i.tions he had once expelled. He began again to call it an offering and a sacrifice and again had it elevated in church for the adoration of the faithful. He wavered on this point, because, as he said, he doubted whether it were more his duty to "spite" the papists or the sacramentarians. He finally decided on the latter, "and if necessary," {111} continued he, "I will have the host elevated three, seven, or ten times, for I will not let the devil teach me anything in my church."

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism in middle and upper cla.s.ses]

Notwithstanding the bitter controversies just related Lutheranism flourished mightily in the body of the people who were neither peasants nor intellectuals nor Swiss. The appeal was to the upper and middle cla.s.ses, sufficiently educated to discard some of the medievalism of the Roman Church and impelled also by nationalism and economic self-interest to turn from the tyranny of the pope. City after city and state after state enlisted under the banner of Luther. He continued to appeal to them through the press. As a popular pamphleteer he must be reckoned among the very ablest. His faults, coa.r.s.eness and unbridled violence of language, did not alienate most of his contemporaries. Even his Latin works, too harshly described by Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen before. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness and vigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness of ill.u.s.tration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political and theological, which poured from his pen, surpa.s.sed all that had hitherto been written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And he won his battle almost alone, for Melanchthon, though learned and elegant, had no popular gifts, and none of his other lieutenants could boast even second-rate ability.

[Sidenote: German Bible, 1522-32]

Among his many publications a few only can be singled out for special mention. The continuation of the German Bible undoubtedly helped his cause greatly. In many things he could appeal to it against the Roman tradition, and the very fact that he claimed to do so while his opponents by their att.i.tude seemed to {112} shrink from this test, established the Protestant claim to be evangelical, in the eyes of the people. Next came his hymns, many popular, some good and one really great. [Sidenote: Hymns, 1528] _Ein' feste Burg_ has been well called by Heine the Ma.r.s.eillaise of the Reformation. The Longer and Shorter Catechisms [Sidenote: Catechisms, 1529] educated the common people in the evangelical doctrine so well that the Catholics were forced to imitate their enemy, though tardily, by composing, for the first time, catechisms of their own.

Having overthrown much of the doctrine and discipline of the old church Luther addressed himself with admirable vigor and great success to the task of building up a subst.i.tute for it. In this the combination of the conservative and at the same time thoroughly popular spirit of the movement manifested itself. In divine service the vernacular was subst.i.tuted for Latin. New emphasis was placed upon preaching, Bible-reading and hymn-singing. Ma.s.s was no longer incomprehensible, but was an act of worship in which all could intelligently partic.i.p.ate; bread and wine were both given to the laity, and those words of the canon implying transubstantiation and sacrifice were omitted. Marriage was relegated from the rank of a sacrament to that of a civil contract.

Baptism was kept in the old form, even to the detail of exorcizing the evil spirit. Auricular confession was permitted but not insisted upon.

[Sidenote: Church government]

The problems of church government and organization were pressing. Two alternatives, were theoretically possible, Congregationalism or state churches. After some hesitation, Luther was convinced by the extravagances of Munzer and his ilk that the latter was the only practicable course. The governments of the various German states and cities were now given supreme power in ecclesiastical matters. They took over the property belonging to the old church and {113} administered it generally for religious or educational or charitable purposes. A system of church-visitation was started, by which the central authority pa.s.sed upon the competence of each minister. Powers of appointment and removal were vested in the government. The t.i.tle and office of bishop were changed in most cases to that of "superintendent," though in some German sees and generally in Sweden the name bishop was retained.

[Sidenote: Lutheran accessions]

How genuinely popular was the Lutheran movement may be seen in the fact that the free cities, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Stra.s.sburg, Ulm, Lubeck, Hamburg, and many others were the first to revolt from Rome. In other states the government led the way. Electoral Saxony evolved slowly into complete Protestantism. Though the Elector Frederic sympathized with almost everything advanced by his great subject, he was too cautious to interfere with vested interests of ecclesiastical property and endowments. On his death [Sidenote: May 5, 1525] his brother John succeeded to the t.i.tle, and came out openly for all the reforms advocated at Wittenberg. The neighboring state of Hesse was won about 1524, [Sidenote: 1424-5] though the official ordinance promulgating the evangelical doctrine was not issued until 1526. A very important acquisition was Prussia. [Sidenote: 1525] Hitherto it had been governed by the Teutonic Order, a military society like the Knights Templars. Albert of Brandenburg became Grand Master in 1511, [Sidenote: Albert of Brandenburg, 1490-1568] and fourteen years later saw the opportunity of aggrandizing his personal power by renouncing his spiritual ties. He accordingly declared the Teutonic Order abolished and himself temporal Duke of Prussia, shortly afterwards marrying a daughter of the king of Denmark. He swore allegiance to the king of Poland.

The growth of Lutheranism unmolested by the imperial government was made possible by the {114} absorption of the emperor's energies in his rivalry with France and Turkey and by the decentralization of the Empire. [Sidenote: Leagues] Leagues between groups of German states had been quite common in the past, and a new stimulus to their formation was given by the common religious interest. The first league of this sort was that of Ratisbon, [Sidenote: 1524] between Bavaria and other South German princ.i.p.alities; its purpose was to carry out the Edict of Worms. This was followed by a similar league in North Germany between Catholic states, known as the League of Dessau, [Sidenote: 1525] and a Protestant confederation known as the League of Torgau.

[Sidenote: The Diet of Spires, 1526]

The Diet held at Spires in the summer of 1526 witnessed the strength of the new party, for in it the two sides treated on equal terms. Many reforms were proposed, and some carried through against the obstruction by Ferdinand, the emperor's brother and lieutenant. The great question was the enforcement of the Edict of Worms, and on this the Diet pa.s.sed an act, known as a Recess, providing that each state should act in matters of faith as it could answer to G.o.d and the emperor. In effect this allowed the government of every German state to choose between the two confessions, thus antic.i.p.ating the principle of the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555.

The relations of the two parties were so delicate that it seemed as if a general religious war were imminent. In 1528, this was almost precipitated by a certain Otto von Pack, who a.s.sured the Landgrave of Hesse that he had found a treaty between the Catholic princes for the extirpation of the Lutherans and for the expropriation of their champions, the Elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse himself. This was false, but the Landgrave armed and attacked the Bishops of Wurzburg and Bamberg, named by Pack as parties to the treaty, and he forced them to pay an indemnity.

{115}

[Sidenote: Recess of Spires]

The Diet which met at Spires early in 1529 endeavored to deal as drastically as possible with the schism. The Recess pa.s.sed by the Catholic majority on April 7 was most unfavorable to the Reformers, repealing the Recess of the last Diet in their favor. Catholic states were commanded to execute the persecuting Edict of Worms, although Lutheran states were forbidden to abolish the office of the (Catholic) ma.s.s, and also to allow any further innovations in their own doctrines or practices until the calling of a general council. The princes were forbidden to harbor the subjects of another state. The Evangelical members of the Diet, much aggrieved at this blow to their faith, published a Protest [Sidenote: Protest, April 19] taking the ground that the Recess of 1526 had been in the nature of a treaty and could not be abrogated without the consent of both parties to it. As the government of Germany was a federal one, this was a question of "states' rights," such as came up in our own Civil War, but in the German case it was even harder to decide because there was no written Const.i.tution defining the powers of the national government and the states. It might naturally be a.s.sumed that the Diet had the power to repeal its own acts, but the Evangelical estates made a further point in their appeal to the emperor, [Sidenote: April 25] by alleging that the Recess of 1526 had been pa.s.sed unanimously and could only be repealed by a unanimous vote. The Protest and the appeal were signed by the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, a few smaller states, and fourteen free cities. From the Protest they became immediately known as "the Protesting Estates" and subsequently the name Protestant was given to all those who left the Roman communion.

[1] Alexander Pope.

[2] Walther Kohler.