vi. The Treasury of Merits has never been properly defined, it is hard to

say what it is, and it is not properly understood by the people; it cannot be the merits of Christ and of His saints, because these act of themselves and quite apart from the intervention of the Pope; it can mean nothing more than that the Pope, having the power of the keys, can remit ecclesiastical penalties imposed by the Church; the true Treasure-house of merits is the Holy Gospel of the grace and glory of God.

The Archbishop of Mainz, finding that the publication of the _Theses_ interfered with the sale of the Indulgences, sent a copy to Rome. Pope Leo, thinking that the whole thing was a monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking the General of the Augustinian Eremites to keep his monks quiet. Tetzel, in conjunction with a friend, Conrad Wimpina, published a set of counter-theses. John Mayr of Eck, professor at Ingolstadt, by far the ablest opponent Luther ever had, wrote an answer to the _Theses_ which he entitled _Obelisks_;(163) and Luther replied in a tract with the title _Asterisks_. At Rome, Silvester Mazzolini (1460-?) of Prierio, a Dominican monk, papal censor for the Roman Province and an Inquisitor, was profoundly dissatisfied with the _Ninety-five Theses_, and proceeded to criticise them severely in a _Dialogue about the Power of the Pope; against the Presumptuous Conclusions of Martin Luther_. The book reached Germany by the middle of January 1518. The Augustinian Eremites held their usual annual chapter at Heidelberg in April 1518, and Luther heard his _Theses_ temperately discussed by his brother monks. He found the opposition to his views much stronger than he had expected; but the discussion was fair and honest, and Luther enjoyed it after the ominous silence kept by most of his friends, who had thought his action rash. When he returned from Heidelberg he began a general answer to his opponents. The book, _Resolutiones_, was probably the most carefully written of all Luther’s writings. He thought long over it, weighed every statement carefully, and rewrote portions several times. The preface, addressed to his Vicar-General, Staupitz, contains some interesting autobiographical material; it was addressed to the Pope; it was a detailed defence of his _Theses_.(164)

The _Ninety-five Theses_ had a circulation which was, for the time, unprecedented. They were known throughout Germany in a little over a fortnight; they were read over Western Europe within four weeks “as if they had been circulated by angelic messengers,” says Myconius enthusiastically. Luther was staggered at the way they were received; he said that he had not meant to determine, but to debate. The controversy they awakened increased their popularity. In the _Theses_, and especially in the _Resolutiones_, Luther had practically discarded all the practices which the Pope and the Roman Curia had introduced in the matter of Indulgences from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and all the ingenious explanations Scholastic theologians had brought forward to justify these practices. The readiest way to refute him was to assert the power of the Roman Bishop; and this was the line taken by his critics. Their arguments amount to this: the power to issue an Indulgence is simply a particular instance of the power of papal jurisdiction, and Indulgences are simply what the Pope proclaims them to be. Therefore, to attack Indulgences is to attack the power of the Pope, and that cannot be tolerated. The Roman Church is virtually the Universal Church, and the Pope is practically the Roman Church. Hence, as the representative of the Roman Church, which in turn represents the Church Universal, the Pope, when he acts officially, cannot err. Official decisions are given in actions as well as in words, custom has the force of law. Therefore, whoever objects to such a long-established system as Indulgences is a heretic, and does not deserve to be heard.(165)

But the argument which appealed most powerfully to the Roman Curia was the fact that the sales of the _Papal Tickets_ had been declining since the publication of the _Theses_. Indulgences were the source of an enormous revenue, and anything which checked their sale would cause financial embarrassment. Pope Leo X. in his “enjoyment of the Papacy” lived lavishly. He had a huge income, much greater than that of any European monarch, but he lived beyond it. His income amounted to between four and five hundred thousand ducats; but he had spent seven hundred thousand on his war about the Duchy of Urbino; the magnificent reception of his brother Julian and his bride in Rome (1514) had cost him fifty thousand ducats; and he had spent over three hundred thousand on the marriage of his nephew Lorenzo (1518). Voices had been heard in Rome as well as in Germany protesting against this extravagance. The Pope was in desperate need of money. It is scarcely to be wondered that Luther was summoned to Rome (summons dated July 1518, and received by Luther on August 7th) to answer for his attack on the Indulgence system. To have obeyed would have meant death.

The peremptory summons could be construed as an affront to the University of Wittenberg, on whose boards the _Ninety-five Theses_ had been posted. Luther wrote to his friend Spalatin (George Burkhardt of Spalt, 1484-1545), who was chaplain and private secretary to the Elector Frederick, suggesting that the prince ought to defend the rights of his University. Spalatin wrote at once to the Elector and also to the Emperor Maximilian, and the result was that the summons to Rome was cancelled, and it was arranged that the matter was to be left in the hands of the Papal Legate in Germany, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan(166) (1470-1553), and Luther was ordered to present himself before that official at Augsburg. The interview (October 1518) was not very satisfactory. The cardinal demanded that Luther should recant his heresies without any argument. When pressed to say what the heresies were, he named the statement in the 58th Thesis that the merits of Christ work effectually without the intervention of the Pope, and that in the _Resolutiones_ which said that the sacraments are not efficacious apart from faith in the recipient. There was some discussion notwithstanding the Legate’s declaration; but in the end Luther was ordered to recant or depart. He wrote out an appeal from the Pope ill-informed to the Pope well-informed, also an appeal to a General Council, and returned to Wittenberg.

When Luther had posted his _Theses_ on the doors of the Church of All Saints, he had been a solitary monk with nothing but his manhood to back him; but nine months had made a wonderful difference in the situation. He now knew that he was a representative man, with supporters to be numbered by the thousand. His colleagues at Wittenberg were with him; his students demonstratively loyal (they had been burning the Wimpina-Tetzel counter-theses); his theology was spreading among all the cloisters of his Order in Germany, and even in the Netherlands; and the rapid circulation of his _Theses_ had shown him that he had the ear of Germany. His first task, on his return to Wittenberg, was to prepare for the press an account of his interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and this was published under the title, _Acta Augustana_.

Luther was at pains to take the people of Germany into his confidence; he published an account of every important interview he had; the people were able to follow him step by step, and he was never so far in advance that they were unable to see his footprints. The immediate effect of the _Acta Augustana_ was an immense amount of public sympathy for Luther. The people, even the Humanists who had cared little for the controversy, saw that an eminently pious man, an esteemed teacher who was making his obscure University famous, who had done nothing but propose a discussion on the notoriously intricate question of Indulgences, was peremptorily ordered to recant and remain silent. They could only infer that the Italians treated the Germans contemptuously, and wished simply to drain the country of money to be spent in the luxuries of the papal court. The Elector Frederick shared the common opinion, and was, besides, keenly alive to anything which touched his University and its prosperity. There is no evidence to show that he had much sympathy with Luther’s views. But the University of Wittenberg, the seat of learning he had founded, so long languishing with a very precarious life and now flourishing, was the apple of his eye; and he resolved to defend it, and to protect the teacher who had won renown for it.

The political situation in Germany was too delicate, and the personal political influence of Frederick too great, for the Pope to act rashly in any matter in which that prince took a deep interest. The country was on the eve of an election of a King of the Romans; Maximilian was old, and an imperial election might occur at any time; and Frederick was one of the most important factors in either case. So the Pope resolved to act cautiously. The condemnation of Luther by the Cardinal-Legate was held over, and a special papal delegate was sent down to Germany to make inquiries. Every care was taken to select a man who would be likely to be acceptable to the Elector. Charles von Miltitz, a Saxon nobleman belonging to the Meisen district, a canon of Mainz, Trier, and Meissen, a papal chamberlain, an acquaintance of Spalatin’s, the Elector’s own agent at the Court of Rome, was sent to Germany. He took with him the “Golden Rose” as a token of the Pope’s personal admiration for the Elector. He was furnished with numerous letters from His Holiness to the Elector, to some of the Saxon councillors, to the magistrates of Wittenberg, in all of which Luther figured as a child of the Devil. The phrase was probably forgotten when Leo wrote to Luther some time afterwards and called him his dear son.

When Miltitz got among German speaking people he found that the state of matters was undreamt of at the papal court. He was a German, and knew the Germans. He could see, what the Cardinal-Legate had never perceived, that he had to deal not with the stubbornness of a recalcitrant monk, but with the slow movement of a nation. When he visited his friends and relations in Augsburg and Nürnberg, he found that three out of five were on Luther’s side. He came to the wise resolution that he would see both Luther and Tetzel privately before producing his credentials. Tetzel he could not see. The unhappy man wrote to Miltitz that he dared not stir from his convent, so greatly was he in danger from the violence of the people. Miltitz met Luther in the house of Spalatin; he at once disowned the speeches of the pardon-sellers; he let it be seen that he did not think much of the Cardinal-Legate’s methods of action; he so prevailed on Luther that the latter promised to write a submissive letter to the Pope, to advise people to reverence the Roman See, to say that Indulgences were useful in the remission of canonical penances. Luther did all this; and if the Roman Curia had supported Miltitz there is no saying how far the reconciliation would have gone. But the Roman Curia did not support the papal chamberlain, and Miltitz had also to reckon with John Eck, who was burning to extinguish Luther in a public discussion.

The months between his interview at Augsburg (October 1518) and the Disputation with John Eck at Leipzig (June 1519) had been spent by Luther in hard and disquieting studies. His opponents had confronted him with the Pope’s absolute supremacy in all ecclesiastical matters. This was one of Luther’s oldest inherited beliefs. The Church had been for him “the Pope’s House,” in which the Pope was the house-father, to whom all obedience was due. It was hard for him to think otherwise. He had been re-examining his convictions about justifying faith and attempting to trace clearly their consequences, and whether they did lead to his declarations about the efficacy of Indulgences. He could come to no other conclusion. It became necessary to investigate the evidence for the papal claim to absolute authority. He began to study the Decretals, and found, to his amazement and indignation, that they were full of frauds; and that the papal supremacy had been forced on Germany on the strength of a collection of Decretals many of which were plainly forgeries. It is difficult to say whether the discovery brought more joy or more grief to Luther. Under the combined influences of historical study, of the opinions of the early Church Fathers, and of the Holy Scriptures, one of his oldest landmarks was crumbling to pieces. His mind was in a whirl of doubt. He was half-exultant and half-terrified at the result of his studies; and his correspondence reveals how his mood of mind changed from week to week. It was while he was thus “on the swither,” tremulously on the balance, that John Eck challenged him to dispute at Leipzig on the primacy and supremacy of the Roman Pontiff. The discussion might clear the air, might make himself see where he stood. He accepted the challenge almost feverishly.

§ 3. The Leipzig Disputation.(167)

Leipzig was an enemies’ country, and his Wittenberg friends would not allow Luther to go there unaccompanied. The young Duke Barnim, who was Rector of the University of Wittenberg, accompanied Carlstadt and Luther, to give them the protection of his presence. Melanchthon, who had been a member of the teaching staff of Wittenberg since August 1518, Justus Jonas, and Nicholas Amsdorf went along with them. Two hundred Wittenberg students in helmets and halberts formed a guard, and walked beside the two country carts which carried their professors. An eye-witness of the scenes at Leipzig has left us sketches of what he saw:

“In the inns where the Wittenberg students lodged, the landlord kept a man standing with a halbert near the table to keep the peace while the Leipzig and the Wittenberg students disputed with each other. I have seen the same myself in the house of Herbipolis, a bookseller, where I went to dine ... for there was at table a Master Baumgarten ... who was so hot against the Wittenbergers that the host had to restrain him with a halbert to make him keep the peace so long as the Wittenbergers were in the house and sat and ate at the table with him.”

The University buildings at Leipzig did not contain any hall large enough for the audience, and Duke George lent the use of his great banqueting-room for the occasion. The discussions were preceded by a service in the church.

“When we got to the church ... they sang a Mass with twelve voices which had never been heard before. After Mass we went to the Castle, where we found a great guard of burghers in their armour with their best weapons and their banners; they were ordered to be there twice a day, from seven to nine in the morning and from two to five in the afternoon, to keep the peace while the Disputation lasted.”(168)

First, there was a Disputation between Carlstadt and Eck, and then, on the fourth of July, Eck and Luther faced each other—both sons of peasants, met to protect the old or cleave a way for the new.

It was the first time that Luther had ever met a controversialist of European fame. John Eck came to Leipzig fresh from his triumphs at the great debates in Vienna and Bologna, and was and felt himself to be the hero of the occasion.

“He had a huge square body, a full strong voice coming from his chest, fit for a tragic actor or a town crier, more harsh than distinct; his mouth, eyes, and whole aspect gave one the idea of a butcher or a soldier rather than of a theologian. He gave one the idea of a man striving to overcome his opponent rather than of one striving to win a victory for the truth. There was as much sophistry as good reasoning in his arguments; he was continually misquoting his opponents’ words or trying to give them a meaning they were not intended to convey.”

“Martin,” says the same eye-witness,

“is of middle height; his body is slender, emaciated by study and by cares; one can count almost all the bones; he stands in the prime of his age; his voice sounds clear and distinct ... however hard his opponent pressed him he maintained his calmness and his good nature, though in debate he sometimes used bitter words.... He carried a bunch of flowers in his hand, and when the discussion became hot he looked at it and smelt it.”(169)

Eck’s intention was to force his opponent to make some declaration which would justify him in charging Luther with being a partisan of the mediæval heretics, and especially of the Hussites. He continually led the debate away to the Waldensians, the followers of Wiclif, and the Bohemians. The audience swayed with a wave of excitement when Luther was gradually forced to admit that there might be some truth in some of the Hussite opinions:

“One thing I must tell which I myself heard in the Disputation, and which took place in the presence of Duke George, who came often to the Disputation and listened most attentively; once Dr. Martin spoke these words to Dr. Eck when hard pressed about John Huss: ‘Dear Doctor, the Hussite opinions are not all wrong.’ Thereupon said Duke George, so loudly that the whole audience heard, ‘God help us, the pestilence!’ (Das walt, die Sucht), and he wagged his head and placed his arms akimbo. That I myself heard and saw, for I sat almost between his feet and those of Duke Barnim of Pomerania, who was then the Rector of Wittenberg.”(170)

So far as the dialectic battle was concerned, Eck had been victorious. He had done what he had meant to do. He had made Luther declare himself. All that was now needed was a Papal Bull against Luther, and the world would be rid of another pestilent heretic. He had done what the more politic Miltitz had wished to avoid. He had concentrated the attention of Germany on Luther, and had made him the central figure round which all the smouldering discontent could gather. As for Luther, he returned to Wittenberg full of melancholy forebodings. They did not prevent him preparing and publishing for the German people an account of the Disputation, which was eagerly read. His arguments had been historical rather than theological. He tried to show that the acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was barely four hundred years old in Western Europe, and that it did not exist in the East. The Greek Church, he said, was part of the Church of Christ, and it would have nothing to do with the Pope; the great Councils of the Early Christian centuries knew nothing about papal supremacy. Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories, Cyprian himself, had all taken Luther’s own position, and were heretics, according to Eck. Luther’s speeches at Leipzig laid the foundation of that modern historical criticism of institutions which has gone so far in our own days.

In some respects the Leipzig Disputation was the most important point in the career of Luther. It made him see for the first time what lay in his opposition to Indulgences. It made the people see it also. His attack was no criticism, as he had at first thought, of a mere excrescence on the mediæval ecclesiastical system. He had struck at its centre; at its ideas of a priestly mediation which denied the right of every believer to immediate entrance into the very presence of God. It was after the Disputation at Leipzig that the younger German Humanists rallied round Luther to a man; that the burghers saw that religion and opposition to priestly tyranny were not opposite things; and that there was room for an honest attempt to create a Germany for the Germans independent of Rome. Luther found himself a new man after Leipzig, with a new freedom and wider sympathies. His depression fled. Sermons, pamphlets, letters from his tireless pen flooded the land, and were read eagerly by all classes of the population.

§ 4. The Three Treatises.(171)

Three of these writings stand forth so pre-eminently that they deserve special notice: _The Liberty of a Christian Man_, _To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation_, and _On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church_. These three books are commonly called in Germany the _Three Great Reformation Treatises_, and the title befits them well. They were all written during the year 1520, after three years spent in controversy, at a time when Luther felt that he had completely broken from Rome, and when he knew that he had nothing to expect from Rome but a sentence of excommunication. His teaching may have varied in details afterwards, but in all essential positions it remained what is to be found in these books.

The tract on _The Liberty of a Christian Man_, “a very small book so far as the paper is concerned,” said Luther, “but one containing the whole sum of the Christian life,” had a somewhat pathetic history. Miltitz, hoping against hope that the Pope would not push things to extremities, had asked Luther to write out a short summary of his inmost beliefs and send it to His Holiness. Luther consented, and this little volume was the result. It has for preface Luther’s letter to Pope Leo X., which concludes thus: “I, in my poverty, have no other present to make you, nor do you need to be enriched by anything but a spiritual gift.” It was probably the last of the three published (Oct. 1520), but it contains the principles which underlie the other two.

The booklet is a brief statement, free from all theological subtleties, of the priesthood of all believers which is a consequence of the fact of justification by faith alone. Its note of warning to Rome, and its educational value for pious people in the sixteenth century, consisted in its showing that the man who fears God and trusts in Him need not fear the priests nor the Church. The first part proves that every spiritual possession which a man has or can have must be traced back to his faith; if he has faith, he has all; if he has not faith, he has nothing. It is the possession of faith which gives liberty to a Christian man; God is with him, who can be against him?

“Here you will ask, ‘If all who are in the Church are priests, by what character are those whom we now call priests to be distinguished from the laity?’ I reply, By the use of those words _priests_, _clergy_, _spiritual person_, _ecclesiastic_, an injustice has been done, since they have been transferred from the remaining body of Christians to those few who are now, by a hurtful custom, called ecclesiastics. For the Holy Scripture makes no distinction between them, except that those who are now boastfully called Popes, Bishops, and Lords, it calls ministers, servants, and stewards, who are to serve the rest in the ministry of the Word, for teaching the faith of Christ and the liberty of believers. For though it is true that we are all equally priests, yet cannot we, nor ought we if we could, all to minister and teach publicly.”

The second part shows that everything that a Christian man does must come from his faith. It may be necessary to use all the ceremonies of divine service which past generations have found useful to promote the religious life; perhaps to fast and practise mortifications of the flesh; but if such things are to be really profitable, they must be kept in their proper place. They are good deeds not in the sense of making a man good, but as the signs of his faith; they are to be practised with joy because they are done for the sake of the God who has united Himself with man through Jesus Christ.

Nothing that Luther has written more clearly manifests that combination of revolutionary daring and wise conservatism which was characteristic of the man. There is no attempt to sweep away any ecclesiastical machinery, provided only it be kept in its proper place as a means to an end. But religious ceremonies are not an end in themselves; and if through human corruption and neglect of the plain precepts of God’s word they hinder instead of help the true growth of the soul, they ought to be swept away; and the fact that the soul of man needs absolutely nothing in the last resort but the word of God dwelling in him, gives men courage and calmness in demanding their reformation.

Luther applied those principles to the reformation of the Church in his book on the _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_ (Sept.-Oct. 1520). He subjected the elaborate sacramental system of the Church to a searching criticism, and concluded that there are only two, or perhaps three, scriptural sacraments—the Eucharist, Baptism, and Penance. He denounced the doctrine of Transubstantiation as a “monstrous phantom” which the Church of the first twelve centuries knew nothing about, and said that any endeavour to define the precise manner of Christ’s Presence in the sacrament is simply indecent curiosity. Perhaps the most important practical portion of the book deals with the topic of Christian marriage. In no sphere of human life has the Roman Church done more harm by interfering with simple scriptural directions:

“What shall we say of those impious human laws by which this divinely appointed manner of life has been entangled and tossed up and down? Good God! it is horrible to look upon the temerity of the tyrants of Rome, who thus, according to their caprices, at one time annul marriages and at another time enforce them. Is the human race given over to their caprice for nothing but to be mocked and abused in every way, that these men may do what they please with it for the sake of their own fatal gains? ... And what do they sell? The shame of men and women, a merchandise worthy of these traffickers, who surpass all that is most sordid and most disgusting in their avarice and impiety.”

Luther points out that there is a clear scriptural law on the degrees within which marriage is unlawful, and says that no human regulations ought to forbid marriages outside these degrees or permit them within. He also comes to the conclusion that divorce _a mensa et thoro_ is clearly permitted in Scripture; though he says that personally he hates divorce, and “prefers bigamy to it.”

The appeal _To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation_ made the greatest immediate impression. It was written in haste, but must have been long thought over. Luther began the introduction on June 23rd (1520); the book was ready by the middle of August; and by the 18th, four thousand copies were in circulation throughout Germany, and the presses could not print fast enough for the demand. It was a call to all Germany to unite against Rome.

It was nobly comprehensive: it grasped the whole situation, and summed up with vigour and clearness all the German grievances which had hitherto been stated separately and weakly; it brought forward every partial proposal of reform, however incomplete, and quickened it by setting it in its proper place in one combined scheme. All the parts were welded together by a simple and courageous faith, and made living by the moral earnestness which pervaded the whole.

Luther struck directly at the imaginary mysterious semi-supernatural power supposed to belong to the Church and the priesthood which had held Europe in awed submission for so many centuries. Reform had been impossible, the appeal said, because the walls behind which Rome lay entrenched had been left standing—walls of straw and paper, but in appearance formidable. These sham fortifications are: the _Spiritual Power_ which is believed to be superior to the temporal power of kings and princes, the conception that _no one can interpret Scripture but the Pope_, the idea that _no one can summon a General Council but the Bishop of Rome_. These are the threefold lines of fortification behind which the Roman Curia has entrenched itself, and the German people has long believed that they are impregnable. Luther sets to work to demolish them.

The Romanists assert that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks belong to and constitute the _spiritual estate_, while princes, lords, artisans, and peasants are the _temporal estate_, which is subject to the spiritual. But this _spiritual estate_ is a mere delusion. The real _spiritual estate_ is the whole body of believers in Jesus Christ, and they are spiritual because Jesus has made all His followers priests to God and to His Christ. A cobbler belongs to the _spiritual estate_ as truly as a bishop. The clergy are distinguished from the laity not by an indelible character imposed upon them in a divine mystery called ordination, but because they have been set apart to do a particular kind of work in the commonwealth. If a Pope, bishop, priest, or monk neglects to do the work he is there to do, he deserves to be punished as much as a careless mason or tailor, and is as accountable to the civil authorities. The _spiritual priesthood of all believers_, the gift of the faith which justifies, has shattered the first and most formidable of these papal fortifications.

It is foolish to say that the _Pope alone can interpret Scripture_. If that were true, where is the need of Holy Scriptures at all?

“Let us burn them, and content ourselves with the unlearned gentlemen at Rome, in whom the Holy Ghost alone dwells, who, however, can dwell in pious souls only. If I had not read it, I could never have believed that the devil should have put forth such follies at Rome and find a following.”

The Holy Scripture is open to all, and can be interpreted by all true believers who have the mind of Christ and approach the word of God humbly seeking enlightenment.

The third wall falls with the other two. It is nonsense to say that _the Pope alone can call a Council_. We are plainly taught in Scripture that if our brother offends we are to tell it to the Church; and if the Pope offends, and he often does, we can only obey Scripture by calling a Council. Every individual Christian has a right to do his best to have it summoned; the temporal powers are there to enforce his wishes; Emperors called General Councils in the earlier ages of the Church.

The straw and paper walls having been thus cleared away, Luther proceeds to state his indictment. There is in Rome one who calls himself the Vicar of Christ, and who lives in a state of singular resemblance to our Lord and to St. Peter, His apostle. For this man wears a triple crown (a single one does not content him), and keeps up such a state that he needs a larger personal revenue than the Emperor. He has surrounding him a number of men, called cardinals, whose only apparent use is that they serve to draw to themselves the revenues of the richest convents, endowments, and benefices in Europe, and spend the money thus obtained in keeping up the state of a great monarch in Rome. When it is impossible to seize the whole revenue of an ecclesiastical benefice, the Curia joins some ten or twenty together, and mulcts each in a good round sum for the benefit of the cardinal. Thus the priory of Würzburg gives one thousand gulden yearly, and Bamberg, Mainz, and Trier pay their quotas. The papal court is enormous,—three thousand papal secretaries, and hangers-on innumerable; and all are waiting for German benefices, whose duties they never fulfil, as wolves wait for a flock of sheep. Germany pays more to the Curia than it gives to its own Emperor. Then look at the way Rome robs the whole German land. Long ago the Emperor permitted the Pope to take the half of the first year’s income from every benefice—the _Annates_—to provide for a war against the Turks. The money was never spent for the purpose destined; yet it has been regularly paid for a hundred years, and the Pope demands it as a regular and legitimate tax, and uses it to pay posts and offices at Rome.

“Whenever there is any pretence of fighting the Turk, they send out commissions for collecting money, and often proclaim Indulgences under the same pretext.... They think that we, Germans, will always remain such great fools, and that we will go on giving money to satisfy their unspeakable greed, though we see plainly that neither _Annates_ nor _Indulgence-money_ nor anything—not one farthing—goes against the Turks, but all goes into their bottomless sack, ... and all this is done in the name of Christ and of St. Peter.”

The chicanery used to get possession of German benefices for officials of the Curia, the exactions on the bestowal of the _pallium_, the trafficking in exemptions and permissions to evade laws ecclesiastical and moral, are all trenchantly described. The most shameless are those connected with marriage. The Curial Court is described as a place

“where vows are annulled; where a monk gets leave to quit his cloister; where priests can enter the married life for money; where bastards can become legitimate, and dishonour and shame may arrive at high honours, and all evil repute and disgrace is knighted and ennobled; where a marriage is suffered that is in a forbidden degree, or has some other defect.... There is a buying and selling, a changing, blustering, and bargaining, cheating and lying, robbing and stealing, debauchery and villainy, and all kinds of contempt of God, that Antichrist himself could not reign worse.”

The plan of reform sketched includes—the complete abolition of the power of the Pope over the State; the creation of a national German Church, with an ecclesiastical Council of its own to be the final court of appeal for Germany, and to represent the German Church as the Diet did the German State; some internal religious reforms, such as the limitation of the number of pilgrimages, which were destroying morality and creating a distaste for honest work; reductions in the mendicant orders and in the number of vagrants who thronged the roads, and were a scandal in the towns.

“It is of much more importance to consider what is necessary for the salvation of the common people than what St. Francis, or St. Dominic, or St. Augustine, or any other man laid down, especially as things have not turned out as they expected.”

He proposes the inspection of all convents and nunneries, and permission given to those who are dissatisfied with their monastic lives to return to the world; the limitation of ecclesiastical holy days, which are too often nothing but scenes of drunkenness, gluttony, and debauchery; a married priesthood, and an end put to the degrading concubinage of the German priests.

“We see how the priesthood is fallen, and how many a poor priest is encumbered with a woman and children, and burdened in his conscience, and no one does anything to help him, though he might very well be helped.... I will not conceal my honest counsel, nor withhold comfort from that unhappy crowd who now live in trouble with wife and children, and remain in shame with a heavy conscience, hearing their wife called a priest’s harlot, and their children bastards.... I say that these two (who are minded in their hearts to live together in conjugal fidelity) are surely married before God.”

The appeal concludes with some solemn words addressed to the luxury and licensed immorality of the German towns.

None of Luther’s writings produced such an instantaneous effect as this. It was not the first programme urging common action in the interests of a united Germany, but it was the most complete, and was recognised to be so by all who were working for a Germany for the Germans.

The three “Reformation treatises” were the statement of Luther’s case laid before the people of the Fatherland, and were a very effectual antidote to the Papal Bull excommunicating him, which was ready for publication in Germany.

§ 5. The Papal Bull.

The Bull, _Exurge Domine_, was scarcely worthy of the occasion. The Pope seems to have left its construction in the hands of Prierias, Cajetan, and Eck, and the contents seem to show that Eck had the largest share in framing it. Much of it reads like an echo of Eck’s statements at Leipzig a year before. It began pathetically: “Arise, O Lord, plead Thine own cause; remember how the foolish man reproacheth Thee daily; the foxes are wasting Thy vineyard, which Thou hast given to Thy Vicar Peter; the boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.” St. Peter is invoked, and the Pope’s distress at the news of Luther’s misdeeds is described at length. The most disturbing thing is that the errors of the Greeks and of the Bohemians were being revived, and that in Germany, which had hitherto been so faithful to the Holy See. Then came forty-one propositions, said to be Luther’s, which are condemned as “heretical or scandalous, or false or offensive to pious ears, or seducing to simple minds, and standing in the way of the Catholic faith.”(172) All faithful people were ordered to burn Luther’s books wherever they could find them. Luther himself had refused to come to Rome and submit to instruction; he had even appealed to a General Council, contrary to the decrees of Julius II. and Pius II.; he was therefore inhibited from preaching; he and all who followed him were ordered to make public recantation within sixty days; if they did not, they were to be treated as heretics, were to be seized and imprisoned by the magistrates, and all towns or districts which sheltered them were to be placed under an interdict.

Among the forty-one propositions condemned was one—that the burning of heretics was a sin against the Spirit of Christ—to which the Pope seemed to attach special significance, so often did he repeat it in letters to the Elector Frederick and other authorities in Germany. The others may be arranged in four classes—against Luther’s opinions about Indulgences; his statements about Purgatory; his declarations that the efficacy of the sacraments depended upon the spiritual condition of those who received them; that penance was an outward sign of sorrow, and that good works (ecclesiastical and moral) were to be regarded as the signs of faith rather than as making men actually righteous; his denial of the later _curial_ assertions of the nature of the papal monarchy over the Church. Luther’s opinions on all these points could be supported by abundant testimony from the earlier ages of the Church, and most of his criticisms were directed against theories which had not been introduced before the middle of the thirteenth century. The Bull made no attempt to argue about the truth of the positions taken in its sentences. There was nothing done to show that Luther’s opinions were wrong. The one dominant note running all through the papal deliverance was the simple assertion of the Pope’s right to order any discussion to cease at his command.

This did not help to commend the Bull to the people of Germany, and was specially unsuited to an age of restless mental activity. The method adopted for publishing it in Germany was still less calculated to win respect for its decisions. The publication was entrusted to John Eck of Ingolstadt, who was universally recognised as Luther’s personal enemy; and the hitherto unheard of liberty was granted to him to insert at his pleasure the names of a certain number of persons, and to summon them to appear before the Roman Curia. He showed how unfit he was for this responsible task by inserting the names of men who had criticised or satirised him—Adelmann, Pirkheimer, Carlstadt, and three others.(173)

Eck discovered that it was an easier matter to get permission from the Roman Curia to frame a Bull against the man who had stopped the sale of Indulgences, and was drying up a great source of revenue, than to publish the Bull in Germany. It was thought at Rome that no man had more influence among the bishops and Universities, but the Curia soon learnt that it had made a mistake. The Universities stood upon their privileges, and would have nothing to do with John Eck. The bishops made all manner of technical objections. Many persons affected to believe that the Bull was not authentic; and Luther himself did not disdain to take this line in his tract, _Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist_. Eck, who had come down to Germany inflated with vanity, found himself mocked and scorned. Pirkheimer dubbed him _gehobelter Eck_, Eck with the swelled head, and the epithet stuck. Nor was the publication any easier when the pretence of unauthenticity could be maintained no longer. The University of Wittenberg refused to publish the Bull, on the ground that the Pope would not have permitted its issue had he known the true state of matters, and they blamed Eck for misinforming His Holiness: the Council of Electoral Saxony agreed with the Senate; and their action was generally commended. Spalatin said that he had seen at least thirty letters from great princes and learned men of all districts in Germany, from Pomerania to Switzerland, and from the Breisgau to Bohemia, encouraging Luther to stand firm. Eck implored the bishops of the dioceses surrounding Wittenberg—Merseburg, Meissen, and Brandenburg—to publish the Bull. They were either unwilling or powerless.

Luther had been expecting a Bull against him ever since the Leipzig Disputation. His correspondence reveals that he met it undismayed. What harm could a papal Bull do to a man whose faith had given him fellowship with God? What truth could there be in a Bull which clearly contradicted the Holy Scriptures? St. Paul has warned us against believing an angel from heaven if he uttered words different from the Scriptures, which are our strength and our consolation; why should we pin our faith to a Pope or a Council? The Bull had done one thing for him, it had made him an excommunicated man, and therefore had freed him from his monastic vows. He could leave the convent when he liked, only he did not choose to do so. When he heard that his writings had been burnt as heretical by order of the Papal Legates, he resolved to retaliate. It was no sudden decision. Eleven months previously he had assured Spalatin (January 1520) that if Rome condemned and burnt his writings he would condemn and burn the papal Decretal Laws. On December 10th (1520) he posted a notice inviting the Wittenberg students to witness the burning of the papal Constitutions and the books of Scholastic Theology at nine o’clock in the morning.(174) A multitude of students, burghers, and professors met in the open space outside the Elster Gate between the walls and the river Elbe. A great bonfire had been built. An oak tree planted long ago still marks the spot. One of the professors kindled the pile; Luther laid the books of the Decretals on the glowing mass, and they caught the flames; then amid solemn silence he placed a copy of the Bull on the fire, saying in Latin: _As thou hast wasted with anxiety the Holy One of God, so may the eternal flames waste thee_ (_Quia tu conturbasti Sanctum Domini, ideoque te conturbet ignis eternus_). He waited till the paper was consumed, and then with his friends and fellow-professors he went back to the town. Some hundreds of students remained standing round the fire. For a while they were sobered by the solemnity of the occasion and sang the _Te Deum_. Then a spirit of mischief seized them, and they began singing funeral dirges in honour of the burnt Decretals. They got a peasant’s cart, fixed in it a pole on which they hung a six-foot-long banner emblazoned with the Bull, piled the small cart with the books of Eck, Emser, and other Romish controversialists, hauled it along the streets and out through the Elster Gate, and, throwing books and Bull on the glowing embers of the bonfire, they burnt them. Sobered again, they sang the _Te Deum_ and finally dispersed.

It is scarcely possible for us in the twentieth century to imagine the thrill that went through Germany, and indeed through all Europe, when the news sped that a poor monk had burnt the Pope’s Bull. Papal Bulls had been burnt before Luther’s days, but the burners had been for the most part powerful monarchs. This tune it was done by a monk, with nothing but his courageous faith to back him. It meant that the individual soul had discovered its true value. If eras can be dated, modern history began on December 10th, 1520.

§ 6. Luther the Representative of Germany.

Hitherto we have followed Luther’s personal career exclusively. It may be well to turn aside for a little to see how the sympathy of many classes of the people was gathering round him.

The representatives of foreign States who were present at the Diet of Worms, of England, Spain, and Venice, all wrote home to their respective governments about the extraordinary popularity which Luther enjoyed among almost every class of his fellow-countrymen; and, as we shall see, the despatches of Aleander, the papal nuncio at the Diet, are full of statements and complaints which confirm these reports. This popularity had been growing since 1517, and there are traces that many thoughtful men had been attracted to Luther some years earlier. The accounts of Luther’s interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and his attitude at the Leipzig Disputation, had given a great impulse to the veneration with which people regarded him; but the veneration itself had been quietly growing, apart from any striking incidents in his career. The evidence for what follows has been collected chiefly from such private correspondence as has descended to us; and most stress has been laid on letters which were not addressed to Luther, and which were never meant to be seen by him. Men wrote to each other about him, and described the impression he was making on themselves and on the immediate circle of their acquaintances. We learn from such letters not merely the fact of the esteem, but what were the characteristics in the man which called it forth.(175)

A large part of the evidence comes from the correspondence of educated men, who, if they were not all Humanists strictly so called, belonged to that increasing class on whom the New Learning had made a great impression, and had produced the characteristic habit of mind which belonged to its possessors. The attitude and work of Erasmus had prepared them to appreciate Luther. The monkish opponents of the great Humanist had been thoroughly in the right when they feared the effects of his revolutionary ways of thinking, however they might be accompanied with appeals against all revolutionary action. He had exhibited his idea of what a life of personal religion ought to be in his _Enchiridion_; he had exposed the mingled Judaism and paganism of a great part of the popular religion; he had poured scorn on the trifling subtleties of scholastic theology, and had asked men to return to a simple “Christian Philosophy”; above all, he had insisted that Christianity could only renew its youth by going back to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and especially of the New Testament; and he had aided his contemporaries to make this return by his edition of the New Testament, and by his efforts to bring within their reach the writings of the earlier Church Fathers. His Humanist followers in Germany believed that they saw in Luther a man who was doing what their leader urged all men to do. They saw in Luther an Erasmus, who was going to the root of things. He was rejecting with increasing determination the bewildering sophistries of Scholasticism, and, what was more, he was showing how many of these had arisen by exalting the authority of the pagan Aristotle over that of St. Paul and St. Augustine. He had painfully studied these Schoolmen, and could speak with an authority on this matter; for he was a learned theologian. The reports of his lectures, which were spreading throughout Germany, informed them that he based his teaching on a simple exposition of the Holy Scriptures in the Vulgate version, which was sanctioned by the mediæval Church. He had revolted, and was increasingly in revolt, against those abuses in the ordinary religious life which were encouraged from sordid motives by the Roman Curia,—abuses which Erasmus had pierced through and through with the light darts of his sarcasm; and Luther knew, as Erasmus did not, what he was speaking about, for he had surrendered himself to that popular religion, and had sought in it desperately for a means of reconciliation with God without succeeding in his quest. They saw him insisting, with a strenuousness no Humanist had exhibited, on the Humanist demand that every man had a right to stand true to his own personal conscientious convictions. If some of them, like Erasmus, in spite of their scorn of monkery, still believed that the highest type of the religious life was a sincere self-sacrificing Franciscan monk, they saw their ideal in the Augustinian Eremite, whose life had never been stained by any monkish scandal, and who had been proclaimed by his brother monks to be a model of personal holiness. They were sure that when he pled heroically for the freedom of the religious life, his courage, which they could not emulate, rested on a depth and strength of personal piety which they sadly confessed they themselves did not possess. If they complained at times that Luther spoke too strongly against the Pope, they admitted that he was going to the root of things in his attack. All clear-sighted men perceived that the _one_ obstacle to reform was the theory of the papal monarchy, which had been laboriously constructed by Italian canonists after the failure of Conciliar reform,—a theory which defied the old mediæval ecclesiastical tradition, and contradicted the solemn decisions of the great German Councils of Constance and Basel. Luther’s attacks on the Papacy were not stronger than those of Gerson and d’Ailly, and his language was not more unmeasured than that of their common master, William of Occam. There was nothing in these early days to prevent men who were genuinely attached to the mediæval Church, its older theology and its ancient rites, from rallying round Luther. When the marches began to be redd, and the beginnings of a Protestant Church confronted the mediæval, the situation was changed. Many who had enthusiastically supported Luther left him.

Conrad Mutianus, canon of Gotha, and the veteran leader of the Erfurt circle of Humanists, wrote admiringly of the originality of Luther’s sermons as early as 1515. He applauded the stand he took at Leipzig, and spoke of him as _Martinum, Deo devotissimum doctorem_. His followers were no longer contented with a study of the classical authors. Eobanus Hessus, crowned “poet-king” of Germany, abandoned his _Horace_ for the _Enchiridion_ of Erasmus and the Holy Scriptures. Justus Jonas (Jodocus Koch of Nordlingen) forsook classical Greek to busy himself with the Epistles to the Corinthians. The wicked satirist, Curicius Cordus, betook himself to the New Testament. They did this out of admiration for Erasmus, “their father in Christ.” But when Luther appeared, when they read his pamphlets circulating through Germany, when they followed, step by step, his career, they came under the influence of a new spell. The _Erasmici_, to use the phrases of the times, diminished, and the _Martiniani_ increased in numbers. One of the old Erfurt circle, Johannes Crotus Rubeanus, was in Rome. His letters, passed round among his friends, made no small impression upon them. He told them that he was living in the centre of the plague-spot of Europe. He reviled the Curia as devoid of all moral conscience. “The Pope and his carrion-crows” were sitting content, gorged on the miseries of the Church. When Crotus received from Germany copies of Luther’s writings, he distributed them secretly to his Italian friends, and collected their opinions to transmit to Germany. They were all sympathetically impressed with what Luther said, but they pitied him as a man travelling along a very dangerous road; no real reform was possible without the destruction of the whole curial system, and that was too powerful for any man to combat. Yet Luther was a hero; he was the _Pater Patriæ_ of Germany; his countrymen ought to erect a golden statue in his honour; they wished him God-speed. When Crotus returned to Germany and got more in touch with Luther’s work, he felt more drawn to the Reformer, and wrote enthusiastically to his friends that Luther was the personal revelation of Christ in modern times. So we find these Humanists declaring that Luther was the St. Paul of the age, the modern Hercules, the Achilles of the sixteenth century.

No Humanist circle gave Luther more enthusiastic support than that of Nürnberg. The soil had been prepared by a few ardent admirers of Staupitz, at the head of whom was Wenceslas Link, prior of the Augustinian-Eremites in Nürnberg, and a celebrated preacher. They had learned from Staupitz that blending of the theology of Augustine with the later German mysticism which was characteristic of the man, and it prepared them to appreciate the deeper experimental teaching of Luther. Among these Nürnberg Humanists was Christopher Scheurl, a jurist, personally acquainted with Luther and with Eck. The shortlived friendship between the two antagonists had been brought about by Scheurl, whose correspondence with Luther began in 1516. Scheurl was convinced that Luther’s cause was the “cause of God.” He told Eck this. He wrote to him (February 18th, 1519) that all the most spiritually minded clergymen that he knew were devoted to Luther; that “they flew to him in dense troops, like starlings”; that their deepest sympathies were with him; and that they confessed that their holiest desires were prompted by his writings. Albert Dürer expressed his admiration by painting Luther as St. John, the beloved disciple of the Lord. Caspar Nützel, one of the most dignified officials of the town, thought it an honour to translate Luther’s _Ninety-five Theses_ into German. Lazarus Sprengel delighted to tell his friends how Luther’s tracts and sermons were bringing back to a living Christianity numbers of his acquaintances who had been perplexed and driven from the faith by the trivialities common in ordinary sermons. Similar enthusiasm showed itself in Augsburg and other towns. After the Leipzig Disputation, the great printer of Basel, Frobenius, became an ardent admirer of Luther; reprinted most of his writings, and despatched them to Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, England, and Spain. He delighted to tell of the favourable reception they met with in these foreign countries,—how they had been welcomed by Lefèvre in France, and how the Swiss Cardinal von Sitten had said that Luther deserved all honour, for he spoke the truth, which no special pleading of an Eck could overthrow. The distinguished jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg said that Luther was an “angel incarnate,” and while he deprecated his strong language against the Pope, he called him the “Phœnix among Christian theologians,” the “flower of the Christian world,” and the “instrument of God.” Zasius was a man whose whole religious sympathies belonged to the mediæval conception of the Church, yet he spoke of Luther in this way.

It is perhaps difficult for us now to comprehend the state of mind which longed for the new and yet clung to the old, which made the two Nürnberg families, the Ebners and the Nützlers, season the ceremonies at their family gathering to celebrate their daughters taking the veil with speeches in praise of Luther and of his writings. Yet this was the dominant note in the vast majority of the supporters of Luther in these earlier years.

Men who had no great admiration for Luther personally had no wish to see him crushed by the Roman Curia by mere weight of authority. Even Duke George of Saxony, who had called Luther a pestilent fellow at the Leipzig Disputation, had been stirred into momentary admiration by the _Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation_, and had no great desire to publish the Bull within his dominions; and his private secretary and chaplain, Jerome Emser, although a personal enemy who never lost an opportunity of controverting Luther, nevertheless hoped that he might be the instrument of effecting a reformation in the Church. Jacob Wimpheling of Strassburg, a thoroughgoing mediævalist who had manifested no sympathy for Reuchlin, and his friend Christopher of Utenheim, Bishop of Basel, hoped that the movement begun by Luther might lead to that reformation of the Church on mediæval lines which they both earnestly desired.

Perhaps no one represented better the attitude of the large majority of Luther’s supporters, in the years between 1517 and 1521, than did the Prince, who is rightly called Luther’s protector, Frederick the Elector of Saxony. It is a great though common mistake to suppose that Frederick shared those opinions of Luther which afterwards grew to be the Lutheran theology. His brother John, and in a still higher degree his nephew John Frederick, were devoted Lutherans in the theological sense; but there is no evidence to show that Frederick ever was.

Frederick never had any intimate personal relations with Luther. At Spalatin’s request, he had paid the expenses of Luther’s _promotion_ to the degree of Doctor of the Holy Scriptures; he had, of course, acquiesced in his appointment to succeed Spalatin as Professor of Theology; and he must have appreciated keenly the way in which Luther’s work had gradually raised the small and declining University to the position it held in 1517. A few letters were exchanged between Luther and Frederick, but there is no evidence that they ever met in conversation; nor is there any that Frederick had ever heard Luther preach. When he lay dying he asked Luther to come and see him; but the Reformer was far distant, trying to dissuade the peasants from rising in rebellion, and when he reached the palace his old protector had breathed his last.

The Elector was a pious man according to mediæval standards. He had received his earliest lasting religious impressions from intercourse with Augustinian Eremite monks when he was a boy at school at Grimma, and he maintained the closest relations with the Order all his life. He valued highly all the external aids to a religious life which the mediæval Church had provided. He believed in the virtue of pilgrimages and relics. He had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and had brought back a great many relics, which he had placed in the Church of All Saints in Wittenberg, and he had agents at Venice and other Mediterranean ports commissioned to secure other relics for his collection. He continued to purchase them as late as the year 1523. He believed in Indulgences of the older type,—Indulgences which remitted in whole or in part ecclesiastically imposed _satisfactions_,—and he had procured two for use in Saxony. One served as an endowment for the upkeep of his bridge at Torgau, and he had once commissioned Tetzel to preach its virtues; the other was to benefit pilgrims who visited and venerated his collection of relics on All Saints’ Day. But it is clear that he disliked Indulgences of the kind Luther had challenged, and had small belief in the good faith of the Roman Curia. He had prevented money collected for one plenary Indulgence leaving the country, and he had forbidden Tetzel to preach the last Indulgence within his territories. His sympathies were all with Luther on this question. He was an esteemed patron of the pious society called _St. Ursula’s Schifflein_. He went to Mass regularly, and his attendances became frequent when he was in a state of hesitation or perplexity. When he was at Köln (November 1520), besieged by the papal nuncios to induce him to permit the publication of the Bull against Luther within his lands, Spalatin noted that he went to Mass three times in one day. His reverence for the Holy Scriptures must have created a bond of sympathy between Luther and himself. He talked with his private secretary about the incomparable majesty and power of the word of God, and contrasted its sublimities with the sophistries and trivialities of the theology of the day. He maintained firmly the traditional policy of his House to make the decisions of the Councils of Constance and of Basel effective within Electoral Saxony, in spite of protests from the Curia and the higher ecclesiastics, and was accustomed to consider himself responsible for the ecclesiastical as well as for the civil good government of his lands. Aleander had considered it a master-stroke of policy to procure the burning of Luther’s books at Köln while the Elector was in the city. Frederick only regarded the deed as a petty insult to himself. He was a staunch upholder of the rights and liberties of the German nation, and remembered that by an old concordat, which every Emperor had sworn to maintain, every German had the right to appeal to a General Council, and could not be condemned without a fair trial; and this Bull had made Luther’s appeal to a Council one of the reasons for his condemnation. So, in spite of the “golden rose” and other blandishments, in spite of threats that he might be included in the excommunication of his subject and that the privileges of his University might be taken away, he stood firm, and would not withdraw his protection from Luther. He was a pious German prince of the old-fashioned type, with no great love for Italians, and was not going to be browbeaten by papal nuncios. His attitude towards Luther represents very fairly that of the great mass of the German people on the eve of the Diet of Worms.