Chapter III. The Diet Of Worms.(176)

§ 1. The Roman Nuncio Aleander.

Rome had done its utmost to get rid of Luther by ecclesiastical measures, and had failed. If he was to be overthrown, if the new religious movement and the national uprising which enclosed it were to be stifled, this could only be done by the aid of the supreme secular authority. The Curia turned to the Emperor.

Maximilian had died suddenly on the 12th of January 1519. After some mouths of intriguing, the papal diplomacy being very tortuous, his grandson Charles, the young King of Spain, was unanimously chosen to be his successor (June 28th, 1519). Troubles in Spain prevented him leaving that country at once to take possession of his new dignities. He was crowned at Aachen on the 23rd of October 1520, and opened his first German Diet on January 22nd, 1521, at Worms.

The Pope had selected two envoys to wait on the young Emperor, the Protonotary Marino Caraccioli (1469-1530), who was charged with the ordinary diplomatic business, and Jerome Aleander, the Director of the Vatican Library, who was appointed to secure the outlawry of Luther.

The Roman Curia had in Aleander one of the most clear-sighted, courageous, and indefatigable of diplomatists. He was an Italian, born of a burgher family in the little Venetian town of Motta (1480-1542), educated at Padua and Venice; he had begun life as a Humanist, had lectured on Greek with distinction in Paris, and had been personally acquainted with many of the German Humanists, who could not forgive the “traitor” who had deserted their ranks to serve an obscurantist party. His graphic letters, full of minute details, throb with the hopes and fears of the papal diplomacy. The reader has his fingers on the pulse of those momentous mouths. The Legate was in a land where “every stone and every tree cried out, ‘Luther.’ ” Landlords refused him lodging. He had to shiver during these winter months in an attic without a stove. The stench and dirt of the house were worse than the cold. When he appeared on the streets he saw scowling faces, hands suddenly carried to the hilts of swords, heard curses shrieked after him. He was struck on the breast by a Lutheran doorkeeper when he tried to get audience of the Elector of Saxony, and no one in the crowd interfered to protect him. He saw caricatures of himself hanging head downwards from a gibbet. He received the old deadly German feud-letters from Ulrich von Hutten, safe in the neighbouring castle of Ebernberg, about a day’s ride distant.(177) The imperial Councillors to whom he complained had neither the men nor the means to protect him. When he tried to publish answers to the attacks on the Papacy which the Lutheran presses poured forth, he could scarcely find a printer; and when he did, syndicates bought up his pamphlets and destroyed them. As the weeks passed he came to understand that there was only one man on whom he could rely—the young Emperor, believed by all but himself to be a puppet in the hands of his Councillors, whom Pope Leo had called a “good child,” but whom Aleander from his first interview at Antwerp had felt to be endowed with “a prudence far beyond his years,” and to “have much more at the back of his head than he carried on his face.” He also came to believe that the one man to be feared was the old Elector of Saxony, “that basilisk,” that “German fox,” that “marmot with the eyes of a dog, who glanced obliquely at his questioners.”

Aleander was a pure worldling, a man of indifferent morals, showing traces of cold-blooded cruelty (as when he slew five peasants for the loss of one of his dogs, or tried to get Erasmus poisoned). He believed that every man had his price, and that low and selfish motives were alone to be reckoned with. But he did the work of the Curia at Worms with a thoroughness which merited the rewards he obtained afterwards.(178) He had spies everywhere—in the households of the Emperor and of the leading princes, and among the population of Worms. He had no hesitation in lying when he thought it useful for the “faith,” as he frankly relates.(179) The Curia had laid a difficult task upon him. He was to see that Luther was put under the ban of the Empire at once and unheard. The Bull had condemned him: the secular power had nothing to do but execute the sentence. Aleander had little difficulty in persuading the Emperor to this course within his hereditary dominions. An edict was issued ordering Luther’s books to be burnt, and the Legate had the satisfaction of presiding at several literary _auto-da-fés_ in Antwerp and elsewhere. He was also successful with some of the ecclesiastical princes of Germany.(180) But it was impossible to get this done at Worms. Failing this, it was Aleander’s business to see that Luther’s case was kept separate from the question of German national grievances against the Papacy, and that, if it proved to be impossible to prevent Luther appearing before the Diet, he was to be summoned there simply for the purpose of making public recantation. With the assistance of the Emperor he was largely successful.(181)

§ 2. The Emperor Charles V.

Aleander was not the real antagonist of Luther at Worms; he was not worthy of the name. The German Diet was the scene of a fight of faiths; and the man of faith on the mediæval side was the young Emperor. He represented the believing past as Luther represented the believing future.(182) “What my forefathers established at Constance and other Councils,” he said, “it is my privilege to uphold. A single monk, led astray by private judgment, has set himself against the faith held by all Christians for a thousand years and more, and impudently concludes that all Christians up till now have erred. I have therefore resolved to stake upon this cause all my dominions, my friends, my body and my blood, my life and soul.”(183) The crisis had not come suddenly on him. As early as May 12th, 1520, Juan Manuel, his ambassador at Rome, had written to him asking him to pay some attention to “a certain Martin Luther, who belongs to the following of the Elector of Saxony,” and whose preaching was causing some discontent at the Roman Curia. Manuel thought that Luther might prove useful in a diplomatic dispute with the Curia.(184) Charles had had time to think over the matter in his serious, reserved way; and this was the decision he had come to. The declaration was all the more memorable when it is remembered that Charles owed his election to that rising feeling of nationality which supported Luther,(185) and that he had to make sure of German assistance in his coming struggle with Francis I. A certain grim reality lurked in the words, that he was ready to stake his dominions on the cause he adopted. There is much to be said for the opinion that “the Lutheran question made a man of the boy-ruler.”(186)

On the other hand, it is well to remember that the young Emperor did not take the side of the Pope nor commit himself to the Curial ideas of the absolute character of papal supremacy. He laid stress on the unity of the Catholic (mediæval) Church, on the continuity of its rites, and on the need of maintaining its authority; but the seat of that authority was for him a General Council. The declaration in no way conflicts with the changes in imperial policy which may be traced during the opening weeks of the Diet, nor with that future action which led to the Sack of Rome and to the Augsburg Interim (1548). It is possible that the young ruler had read and admired Luther’s earlier writings, and that he had counted on him as an aid in bringing the Church to a better condition. It is more than probable that he already believed that it was his duty to free the Church from the abuses which abounded;(187) but Luther’s fierce attack on the Pope disgusted him, and a reformation which came from the people threatened secular as well as ecclesiastical authority. He had made up his mind that Luther must be condemned, and told the German princes that he would not change one iota of his determination. But this did not prevent him making use of Luther to further his diplomatic dealings with the Pope and wring concessions from the Curia. For one thing, the Pope had been interfering with the Inquisition in Spain, trying to mitigate its severity; and Charles, like his maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, believed that the Holy Office was a help in curbing the freedom-loving people of Spain, and had no wish to see his instrument of punishment made less effectual. For another, it was evident that Francis I. was about to invade Italy, and Charles wished the Pope to take his side. If the Pope gave way to him on both of these points, he was ready to carry out his wishes about Luther as far as that was possible.(188)

§ 3. In the City of Worms.

The city of Worms was crowded with men of diverse opinions and of many different nationalities. The first Diet of the youthful Emperor (Charles was barely one and twenty), from whom men of all parties expected so much, had attracted much larger numbers than usually attended these assemblies. Weighty matters affecting all Germany were down on the _agenda_. There was the old constitutional question of monarchy or oligarchy bequeathed from the Diets of Maximilian; curiosity to see whether the new ruler would place before the Estates a truly imperial policy, or whether, like his predecessors, he would subordinate national to dynastic considerations; the deputies from the cities were eager to get some sure provisions made for ending the private wars which disturbed trade; all classes were anxious to provide for an effective central government when the Emperor was absent from Germany; local statesmen felt the need of putting an end to the constant disputes between the ecclesiastical and secular powers within Germany; but the hardest problem of all, and the one which every man was thinking, talking, disputing about, was: “To take notice of the books and descriptions made by Friar Martin Luther against the Court of Rome.”(189) Other exciting questions were stirring the crowds met at Worms besides those mentioned on the _agenda_ of the Diet. Men were talking about the need of making an end of the papal exactions which were draining Germany of money, and the air was full of rumours of what Sickingen and the knights might attempt, and whether there was going to be another peasant revolt. These questions were instinctively felt to hang together, and each had an importance because of the way in which it was connected with the religious and social problems of the day. For the people of Germany and for the foreign representatives who were gathered together at Worms, it is unquestionable that the Lutheran movement, and how it was to be dealt with, was the supreme problem of the moment. All these various things combined to bring together at Worms a larger concourse of people than had been collected in any German town since the meeting of the General Council at Constance in 1414.

Worms was one of the oldest towns in Germany. Its people were turbulent, asserting their rights as the inhabitants of a free imperial city, and in constant feud with their bishop. They had endured many an interdict, were fiercely anti-clerical, and were to a man on Luther’s side. The crowded streets were thronged with princes, their councillors and their retinues; with high ecclesiastical dignitaries and their attendant clergy; with nobles and their “riders”; with landsknechts, artisans, and peasants. Spanish, French, and Italian merchants, on their way home-wards from the Frankfurt fair, could be seen discussing the last phase of the Lutheran question, and Spanish nobles and Spanish merchants more than once came to blows in the narrow thoroughfares. The foreign merchants, especially the Spaniards, all appeared to take the Lutheran side; not because they took much interest in doctrines, but because they felt bound to stand up for the man who had dared to say that no one should be burned for his opinions. These Spanish merchants made themselves very prominent. They joined in syndicates with the more fervent German partisans of Luther to buy up and destroy papal pamphlets; they bought Luther’s writings to carry home. Aleander curses these _marrani_,(190) as he calls them, and relates that they are getting Luther’s works translated into Spanish. It is probable that many of them had Moorish blood in them, and knew the horrors of the Inquisition. Aleander’s spies told him that caricatures of himself and other prominent papalists were hawked about, and that pictures of Luther with the Dove hovering over his head, Luther with his head crowned with a halo of rays, Luther and Hutten,(191) the one with a Bible and the other with a sword, were eagerly bought in the streets. These pictures were actually sold in the courts and rooms of the episcopal palace where the Emperor was lodged. On the steps of the churches, at the doors of public buildings, colporteurs offered to eager buyers the tracts of Luther against the Pope, and the satires of Ulrich von Hutten in Latin and in German. On the streets and in open spaces like the Market, crowds of keen disputants argued about the teaching of Luther, and praised him in the most exaggerated ways.

Inside the Electoral College opinion was divided. The Archbishop of Köln, the Elector of Brandenburg, and his brother the Archbishop of Mainz, were for Luther’s condemnation, while the Elector of Saxony had great influence over the Archbishop of Trier and the Count Palatine of the Rhine. The latter, says Aleander, scarcely opened his mouth during the year, but now “roared like ten bulls” on Luther’s behalf. Aleander had his first opportunity of addressing the Diet on February 13th. He spoke for three hours, and made a strong impression. He dwelt on Luther’s doctrinal errors, which he said were those of the Waldenses, of Wiclif, and of the Hussites. He said that Luther denied the Presence of Christ in the Holy Supper, and that he was a second Arius.(192) During the days that followed the members of the Diet came to a common understanding. They presented a memorial in German (February 19th) to the Emperor, in which they reminded him that no imperial edict could be published against Luther without their consent, and that to do so before Luther had a hearing would lead to bloodshed; they proposed that Luther should be invited to come to Worms under a safe conduct, and in the presence of the Diet be asked whether he was the author of the books that were attributed to him, and whether he could clear himself of the accusation of denying fundamental articles of the faith; that he should also be heard upon the papal claims, and the Diet would judge upon them; and, finally, they prayed the Emperor to deliver Germany from the papal tyranny.(193) The Emperor agreed that Luther should be summoned under a safe conduct and interrogated about his books, and whether he had denied any fundamental doctrines. But he utterly refused to permit any discussion on the authority of the Pope, and declared that he would himself communicate with His Holiness about the complaints of Germany.(194)

The documents in the _Reichstagsakten_ reveal not only that there was a decided difference of opinion between the Emperor and the majority of the Estates about the way in which Luther ought to be treated, but that the policy of the Emperor and his advisers had changed between November 1520 and February 1521. Aleander had found no difficulty in persuading Charles and his Flemish councillors that, so far as the Emperor’s hereditary dominions were concerned, the only thing that the civil power had to do was to issue an edict homologating the Papal Bull banning Luther and his adherents, and ordering his books to be burnt. This had been done in the Netherlands. They had made difficulties, however, about such summary action within the German Empire. Aleander was told that the Emperor could do nothing until after the coronation at Aachen (October 1520);(195) and in November, much to the nuncio’s disgust, the Emperor had written to the Elector of Saxony (November 28th, 1520) from Oppenheim asking him to bring Luther with him to the Diet.(196) At that time Luther had no great wish to go to the Diet, unless it was clearly understood that he was summoned not for the purpose of merely making a recantation, but in order that he might defend his views with full liberty of speech. He was not going to recant, and he could say so as easily and clearly at Wittenberg as at Worms. The situation had changed at Worms. The Emperor had come over to the nuncio’s side completely. He now saw no need for Luther’s appearance. The Diet had nothing to do but to place Luther under the ban of the Empire, because he had been declared to be a heretic by the Roman Pontiff. Aleander claimed all the credit for this change; but it is more than probable that the explanation lies in the shifting imperial and papal policy. In the end of 1520 the policy of the Roman Curia was strongly anti-imperialist. The Emperor’s ambassador at Rome, Don Manuel, had been warning his master of the papal intrigues against him, and suggesting that Charles might show some favour to a “certain Martin Luther”; and this advice might easily have inspired the letter of the 28th of November. At all events the papal policy had been changing, and showing signs of becoming less hostile to the Emperor. However the matter be accounted for, Aleander found that after the Emperor’s presence within Worms it was much more easy for him to press the papal view about Luther upon Charles and his advisers.(197)

On the other hand, the Germans in the Diet held stoutly to the opinion that no countryman of theirs should be placed under the ban of the Empire without being heard in his defence, and that they and not the Bishop of Rome were to be the judges in the matter.

The two months before Luther’s appearance saw open opposition between the Emperor and the Diet, and abundant secret intrigue—an edict proposed against Luther,(198) which the Diet refused to accept;(199) an edict proposed to order the burning of Luther’s books, which the Diet also objected to;(200) this edict revised and limited to the seizure of Luther’s writings, which was also found fault with by the Diet; and, finally, the Emperor issuing this revised edict on his own authority and without the consent of the Diet.(201)

The command to appear before the Diet on April 16th, 1521, and the imperial safe conduct were entrusted to the imperial herald, Caspar Strum, who delivered them at Wittenberg on the 26th of March.(202) Luther calmly finished some literary work, and left for the Diet on April 2nd. He believed that he was going to his death. “My dear brother,” he said to Melanchthon at parting, “if I do not come back, if my enemies put me to death, you will go on teaching and standing fast in the truth; if you live, my death will matter little.” The journey seemed to the indignant Papists like a royal progress; crowds came to bless the man who had stood up for Germany against the Pope, and who was going to his death for his courage; they pressed into the inns where he rested, and often found him solacing himself with music. His lute was always comforting to him in times of excitement. Justus Jonas, the famous German Humanist, who had turned theologian much to Erasmus’ disgust, joined him at Erfurt. The nearer he came to Worms, the sharper became the disputes there. Friends and foes feared that his presence would prove oil thrown on the flames. The Emperor began to wish he had not sent the summons. Messengers were despatched secretly to Sickingen, and a pension promised to Hutten to see whether they could not prevent Luther’s appearance.(203) Might he not take refuge in the Ebernberg, scarcely a day’s journey from Worms? Was it not possible to arrange matters in a private conference with Glapion, the Emperor’s confessor? Bucer was sent to persuade him. The herald significantly called his attention to the imperial edict ordering magistrates to seize his writings. But nothing daunted Luther. He would not go to the Ebernberg; he could see Glapion at Worms, if the confessor wished an interview; what he had to say would be said publicly at Worms.

Luther had reached Oppenheim, a town on the Rhine about fifteen miles north from Worms, and about twenty east from the Ebernberg, on April 14th. There he for the last time rejected the insidious temptations of his enemies and the distracted counsels of his friends, that he should turn aside and seek shelter with Francis von Sickingen. There he penned his famous letter to Spalatin, that he would come to Worms if there were as many devils as tiles on the house roofs to prevent him, and at the same time asked where he was to lodge.(204)

The question was important. The Romanists had wished that Luther should be placed under the Emperor’s charge as a prisoner of State, or else lodged in the Convent of the Augustinian Eremites, where he could be under ecclesiastical surveillance. But the Saxon nobles and their Elector had resolved to trust no one with the custody of their countryman. The Elector Frederick and part of his suite had found accommodation at an inn called _The Swan_, and the rest of his following were in the House of the Knights of St. John. Both houses were full; but it was arranged that Luther was to share the room of two Saxon gentlemen, v. Hirschfeld and v. Schott, in the latter building.(205) Next morning, Justus Jonas, who had reached Worms before Luther, after consultation with Luther’s friends, left the town early on Tuesday morning (April 16th) to meet the Reformer, and tell him the arrangements made. With him went the two gentlemen with whom Luther was to lodge.(206) A large number of Saxon noblemen with their attendants accompanied them. When it was known that they had set out to meet Luther, a great crowd of people (nearly two thousand, says Secretary Vogler), some on horseback and some on foot, followed to welcome Luther, and did meet him about two and a half miles from the town.(207)

§ 4. Luther in Worms.

A little before eleven o’clock the watcher on tower by the Mainz Gate blew his horn to announce that the procession was in sight, and soon afterwards Luther entered the town. The people of Worms were at their _Morgenimbiss_ or _Frühmahl_, but all rushed to the windows or out into the streets to see the arrival.(208) Caspar Sturm, the herald, rode first, accompanied by his attendant, the square yellow banner, emblazoned with the black two-headed eagle, attached to his bridle arm. Then came the cart,—a genuine Saxon _Rollwegelin_,—Luther and three companions sitting in the straw which half filled it. The waggon had been provided by the good town of Wittenberg, which had also hired Christian Goldschmidt and his three horses at three gulden a day.(209) Luther’s companions were his _socius itinerarius_, Brother Petzensteiner of Nürnberg;(210) his colleague Nicholas Amsdorf; and a student of Wittenberg, a young Pomeranian noble, Peter Swaven, who had been one of the Wittenberg students who had accompanied Luther with halbert and helmet to the Leipzig Disputation (July 1519). Justus Jonas rode immediately behind the waggon, and then followed the crowd of nobles and people who had gone out to meet the Reformer.

Aleander in his attic room heard the shouts and the trampling in the streets, and sent out one of his people to find out the cause, guessing that it was occasioned by Luther’s arrival. The messenger reported that the procession had made its way through dense crowds of people, and that the waggon had stopped at the door of the House of the Knights of St. John. He also informed the nuncio that Luther had got out, saying, as he looked round with his piercing eyes, _Deus erit pro me_, and that a priest had stepped forward, received him in his arms, then touched or kissed his robe thrice with as much reverence as if he were handling the relics of a saint. “They will say next,” says Aleander in his wrath, “that the scoundrel works miracles.”(211)

After travel-stains were removed, Luther dined with ten or twelve friends. The early afternoon brought crowds of visitors, some of whom had come great distances to see him. Then came long discussions about how he was to act on the morrow before the Diet. The Saxon councillors v. Feilitzsch and v. Thun were in the same house with him: the Saxon Chancellor, v. Brück, and Luther’s friend Spalatin, were at _The Swan_, a few doors away. Jerome Schurf, the Professor of Law in Wittenberg, had been summoned to Worms by the Elector to act as Luther’s legal adviser, and had reached the town some days before the Reformer.

How much Luther knew of the secret intrigues that had been going on at Worms about his affairs it is impossible to say. He probably was aware that the Estates had demanded that he should have a hearing, and should be confronted by impartial theologians, and that the complaints of the German nation against Rome should be taken up at the same time; also that the Emperor had refused to allow any theological discussion, or that the grievances against Rome should be part of the proceedings. All that was public property. The imperial summons and safe conduct had not treated him as a condemned heretic.(212) He had been addressed in it as _Ehrsamer_, _lieber_, _andächtiger_—terms which would not have been used to a heretic, and which were ostentatiously omitted from the safe conduct sent him by Duke George of Saxony.(213) He knew also that the Emperor had nevertheless published an edict ordering the civil authorities to seize his books, and to prevent more from being printed, published, or sold, and that such an edict threw doubts upon the value of the safe conduct.(214) But he probably did not know that this edict was a third draft issued by the Emperor without consulting the Diet. Nor is it likely that he knew how Aleander had been working day and night to prevent his appearance at the Diet from being more than a mere formality, nor how far the nuncio had prevailed with the Emperor and with his councillors. His friends could tell him all this—though even they were not aware until next morning how resolved the Emperor was that Luther should not be permitted to make a speech.(215) They knew enough, however, to be able to impress on Luther that he must restrain himself, and act in such a way as to force the hands of his opponents, and gain permission to speak at length in a second audience. The Estates wished to hear him if the Emperor and his entourage had resolved to prevent him from speaking. These consultations probably settled the tactics which Luther followed on his first appearance before the Diet.(216)

Next morning (Wednesday, April 17th), Ulrich von Pappenheim, the marshal of ceremonies, came to Luther’s room before ten o’clock, and, greeting him courteously and with all respect, informed him that he was to appear before the Emperor and the Diet that day at four o’clock, when he would be informed why he had been summoned.(217) Immediately after the marshal had left, there came an urgent summons from a Saxon noble, Hans von Minkwitz, who was dying in his lodgings, that Luther would come to hear his confession and administer the sacrament to him. Luther instantly went to soothe and comfort the dying man, notwithstanding his own troubles.(218) We have no information how the hours between twelve and four were spent. It is almost certain that there must have been another consultation. Spalatin and Brück had discovered that the conduct of the audience was not to be in the hands of Glapion, the confessor of the Emperor, as they had up to that time supposed, but in those of John Eck, the Orator or Official of the Archbishop of Trier.(219) This looked badly for Luther. Eck had been officiously busy in burning Luther’s books at Trier; he lodged in the same house and in the room next to the papal nuncio.(220) Aleander, indeed, boasts that Eck was entirely devoted to him, and that he had been able to draft the question which Eck put to Luther during the first audience.(221)

§ 5. Luther’s first Appearance before the Diet of Worms.(222)

A little before four o’clock, the marshal and Caspar Sturm, the herald, came to Luther’s lodging to escort him to the audience hall. They led the Reformer into the street to conduct him to the Bishop’s Palace, where the Emperor was living along with his younger brother Ferdinand, afterwards King of the Romans and Emperor, and where the Diet met.(223) The streets were thronged; faces looked down from every window; men and women had crowded the roofs to catch a glimpse of Luther as he passed. It was difficult to force a way through the crowd, and, besides, Sturm, who was responsible for Luther’s safety, feared that some Spaniard might deal the Reformer a blow with a dagger in the crowd. So the three turned into the court of the Swan Hotel; from it they got into the garden of the House of the Knights of St. John; and, as most of the courts and gardens of the houses communicated with each other, they were able to get into the court of the Bishop’s Palace without again appearing on the street.(224)

The court of the Palace was full of people eager to see Luther, most of them evidently friendly. It was here that old General Frundsberg, the most illustrious soldier in Germany, who was to be the conqueror in the famous fight at Pavia, clapped Luther kindly on the shoulder, and said words which have been variously reported. “My poor monk! my little monk! thou art on thy way to make a stand as I and many of my knights have never done in our toughest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause, then forward in the name of God, and be of good courage: God will not forsake thee.” From out the crowd, “here and there and from every corner, came voices saying, ‘Play the man! Fear not death; it can but slay the body: there is a life beyond.’ ”(225) They went up the stair and entered the audience hall, which was crammed. While the marshal and the herald forced a way for Luther, he passed an old acquaintance, the deputy from Augsburg. “Ah, Doctor Peutinger,” said Luther, “are you here too?”(226) Then he was led to where he was to stand before the Emperor; and these two lifelong opponents saw each other for the first time. “The fool entered smiling,” says Aleander (perhaps the lingering of the smile with which he had just greeted Dr. Peutinger): “he looked slowly round, and his face sobered.” “When he faced the Emperor,” Aleander goes on to say, “he could not hold his head still, but moved it up and down and from side to side.”(227) All eyes were fixed on Luther, and many an account was written describing his appearance. “A man of middle height,” says an unsigned Spanish paper preserved in the British Museum, “with a strong face, a sturdy build of body, with eyes that scintillated and were never still. He was clad in the robe of the Augustinian Order, but with a belt of hide, with a large tonsure, newly shaven, and a coronal of short thick hair.”(228) All noticed his gleaming eyes; and it was remarked that when his glance fell on an Italian, the man moved uneasily in his seat, as if “the evil eye was upon him.” Meanwhile, in the seconds before the silence was broken, Luther was making _his_ observations. He noticed the swarthy Jewish-looking face of Aleander, with its gleam of hateful triumph. “So the Jews must have looked at Christ,” he thought.(229) He saw the young Emperor, and near him the papal nuncios and the great ecclesiastics of the Empire. A wave of pity passed through him as he looked. “He seemed to me,” he said, “like some poor lamb among swine and hounds.”(230) There was a table or bench with some books upon it. When Luther’s glance fell on them, he saw that they were his own writings, and could not help wondering how they had got there.(231) He did not know that Aleander had been collecting them for some weeks, and that, at command of the Emperor, he had handed them over to John Eck, the Official of Trier, for the purposes of the audience.(232) Jerome Schurf made his way to Luther’s side, and stood ready to assist in legal difficulties.

The past and the future faced each other—the young Emperor in his rich robes of State, with his pale, vacant-looking face, but “carrying more at the back of his head than his countenance showed,” the descendant of long lines of kings, determined to maintain the beliefs, rites, and rules of that Mediæval Church which his ancestors had upheld; and the monk, with his wan face seamed with the traces of spiritual conflict and victory, in the poor dress of his Order, a peasant’s son, resolute to cleave a way for the new faith of evangelical freedom, the spiritual birthright of all men.

The strained silence(233) was broken by the Official of Trier, a man of lofty presence, saying, in a clear, ringing voice so that all could hear distinctly, first in Latin and then in German:

“ ‘Martin Luther, His Imperial Majesty, Sacred and Victorious (_sacra et invicta_), on the advice of all the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire, has ordered you to be summoned here to the throne of His Majesty, in order that you may recant and recall, according to the force, form, and meaning of the citation-mandate decreed against you by His Majesty and communicated legally to you, the books, both in Latin and in German, published by you and spread abroad, along with their contents: Wherefore I, in the name of His Imperial Majesty and of the Princes of the Empire, ask you: First, Do you confess that these books exhibited in your presence (I show him a bundle of books written in Latin and in German) and now named one by one, which have been circulated with your name on the title-page, are yours, and do you acknowledge them to be yours? Secondly, Do you wish to retract and recall them and their contents, or do you mean to adhere to them and to reassert them?’ ”(234)

The books were not named; so Jerome Schurf called out, “Let the titles be read.”(235) Then the notary, Maximilian Siebenberger (called Transilvanus),(236) stepped forward and, taking up the books one by one, read their titles and briefly described their contents.(237) Then Luther, having briefly and precisely repeated the two questions put to him, said:

“ ‘To which I answer as shortly and correctly as I am able. I cannot deny that the books named are mine, and I will never deny any of them:(238) they are all my offspring; and I have written some others which have not been named.(239) But as to what follows, whether I shall reaffirm in the same terms all, or shall retract what I may have uttered beyond the authority of Scripture,—because the matter involves a question of faith and of the salvation of souls, and because it concerns the Word of God, which is the greatest thing in heaven and on earth, and which we all must reverence,—it would be dangerous and rash in me to make any unpremeditated declaration, because in unpremeditated speech I might say something less than the fact and something more than the truth; besides, I remember the saying of Christ when He declared, “Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven, and before His angels.” For these reasons I beg, with all respect, that your Imperial Majesty give me time to deliberate, that I may answer the question without injury to the Word of God and without peril to my own soul.’ ”(240)

Luther made his answer in a low voice—so low that the deputies from Strassburg, who were sitting not far from him, said that they could not hear him distinctly.(241) Many present inferred from the low voice that Luther’s spirit was broken, and that he was beginning to be afraid. But from what followed it is evident that Luther’s whole procedure on this first appearance before the Diet was intended to defeat the intrigues of Aleander, which had for their aim to prevent the Reformer addressing the Diet in a long speech; and in this he succeeded, as Brück and Spalatin hoped he would.

The Estates then proceeded to deliberate on Luther’s request. Aleander says that the Emperor called his councillors about him; that the Electors talked with each other; and that the separate Estates deliberated separately.(242) We are informed by the report of the Venetian ambassadors that there was some difficulty among some of them in acceding to Luther’s request. But at length the Official of Trier again addressed Luther:

“ ‘Martin, you were able to know from the imperial mandate why you were summoned here, and therefore you do not really require any time for further deliberation, nor is there any reason why it should be granted. Yet His Imperial Majesty, moved by his natural clemency, grants you one day for deliberation, and you will appear here tomorrow at the same hour,—but on the understanding that you do not give your answer in writing, but by word of mouth.’ ”(243)

The sitting, which, so far as Luther was concerned, had occupied about an hour, was then declared to be ended, and he was conducted back to his room by the herald. There he sat down and wrote to his friend Cuspinian in Vienna “from the midst of the tumult”:

“This hour I have been before the Emperor and his brother, and have been asked whether I would recant my books. I have said that the books were really mine, and have asked for some delay about recantation. They have given me no longer space and time than till to-morrow for deliberation. Christ helping me, I do not mean to recant one jot or tittle.”(244)

§ 6. Luther’s Second Appearance before the Diet.

The next day, Thursday, April 18th, did not afford much time for deliberation. Luther was besieged by visitors. Familiar friends came to see him in the morning; German nobles thronged his hostel at midday; Bucer rode over from the Ebernberg in the afternoon with congratulations on the way that the first audience had been got through, and bringing letters from Ulrich von Hutten. His friends were almost astonished at his cheerfulness. “He greeted me and others,” said Dr. Peutinger, who was an early caller, “quite cheerfully—‘Dear Doctor,’ he said, ‘how is your wife and child?’ I have never found or seen him other than the right good fellow he is.”(245) George Vogler and others had “much pious conversation” with him, and wrote, praising his thorough heroism.(246) The German nobles greeted Luther with a bluff heartiness—“Herr Doctor, How are you? People say you are to be burnt; that will never do; that would ruin everything.”(247)

The marshal and the herald came for Luther a little after four o’clock, and led him by the same private devious ways to the Bishop’s Palace. The crowds on the streets were even larger than on the day before. It was said that more than five thousand people, Germans and foreigners, were crushed together in the street before the Palace. The throng was so dense that some of the delegates, like Oelhafen from Nürnberg, could not get through it.(248) It was six o’clock before the Emperor, accompanied by the Electors and princes, entered the hall. Luther and the herald had been kept waiting in the court of the Palace for more than an hour and a half, bruised by the dense moving crowd. In the hall the throng was so great that the princes had some difficulty in getting to their seats, and found themselves uncomfortably crowded when they reached them.(249) Two notable men were absent. The papal nuncios refused to be present when a heretic was permitted to speak. Such proceedings were the merest tomfoolery (_ribaldaria_), Aleander said. When Luther reached the door, he had still to wait; the princes were occupied in reaching their places, and it was not etiquette for him to appear until they were seated.(250) The day was darkening, and the gloomy hall flamed with torches.(251) Observers remarked Luther’s wonderful cheerful countenance as he made his way to his place.(252)

The Emperor had intrusted the procedure to Aleander, to his confessor Glapion, and to John Eck, who had conducted the audience on the previous day.(253) The Official was again to have the conduct of matters in his hands. As soon as Luther was in his place, Eck “rushed into words” (_prorupit in verba_)(254) He began by recapitulating what had taken place at the first audience; and in saying that Luther had asked time for consideration, he insinuated that every Christian ought to be ready at all times to give a reason for the faith that is in him, much more a learned theologian like Luther. He declared that it was now time for Luther to answer plainly whether he adhered to the contents of the books he had acknowledged to be his, or whether he was prepared to recant them. He spoke first in Latin and then in German, and it was noticed that his speech in Latin was very bitter.(255)

Then Luther delivered his famous speech before the Diet. He had freed himself from the web of intrigue that Aleander had been at such pains to weave round him to compel him to silence, and stood forth a free German to plead his cause before the most illustrious audience the Fatherland could offer to any of its sons.

Before him was the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, destined to be King of the Romans and Emperor in days to come, and beside them, seated, all the Electors and the great Princes of the Empire, lay and ecclesiastical, among them four Cardinals. All round him standing, for there was no space for seats, the Counts, Free Nobles and Knights of the Empire, and the delegates of the great cities, were closely packed together.(256) Ambassadors and the political agents of almost all the countries in Europe were there to swell the crowd—ready to report the issue of this momentous day. For all believed that whatever weighty business for Germany was discussed at this Diet, the question raised by Luther was one of European importance, and affected the countries which they represented. The rumour had gone about, founded mainly on the serene appearance of Luther, that the monk was about to recant;(257) and most of the political agents earnestly hoped it might be true. That and that only would end, they believed, the symptoms of disquiet which the governments of every land were anxiously watching.

The diligence of Wrede has collected and printed in the _Reichstagsakten_(258) several papers, all of which profess to give Luther’s speech; but they are mere summaries, some longer and some shorter, and give no indication of the power which thrilled the audience. Its effect must be sought for in the descriptions of the hearers.

The specimens of his books which had been collected by Aleander were so representative that Luther could speak of all his writings. He divided them into three classes. He had written books for edification which he could truly say had been approved by all men, friends and foes alike, and it was scarcely to be expected that he, the author, should be the only man to recant the contents of such writings as even the Papal Bull had commended. In a second class of writings he had attacked the papal tyranny which all Germany was groaning under; to recant the contents of these books would be to make stronger and less endurable the monstrous evil he had protested against; he therefore refused to recall such writings; no loyal German could do so. He had also written against individual persons who had supported the Papacy; it was possible that he had written too strongly in some places and against some men; he was only a man and not God, and was liable to make mistakes; he remembered how Christ, who could not err, had acted when He was accused, and imitating Him, he was quite ready, if shown to be wrong, by evangelical or prophetic witnesses, to renounce his errors, and if he were convinced, he assured the Emperor and princes assembled that he would be the first to throw his books into the fire. He dwelt upon the power of the word of God which must prevail over everything, and showed that many calamities in times past had fallen upon nations who had neglected its teachings and warnings. He concluded as follows:

“I do not say that there is any need for my teaching or warning the many princes before me, but the duty I owe to _my_ Germany will not allow me to recant. With these words I commend myself to your most serene Majesty and to your principalities, and humbly beg that you will not permit my accusers to triumph over me causelessly. I have spoken (_Dixi_).”

Luther had spoken in Latin; he was asked to repeat what he had said in German. The Hall had been packed; the torches gave forth warmth as well as light. Luther steamed with perspiration, and looked wan and overpowered; the heat was intense. Friends thought that the further effort would be too much for his strength. The Saxon councillor, Frederick von Thun, regardless of etiquette, called out loudly, “If you cannot do it you have done enough, Herr Doctor.”(259) But Luther went on and finished his address in German. His last words were. “Here I stand (_Hic bin Ich_).”

Aleander, the papal nuncio, who was not present, relates that while Luther was speaking of the books in which he had attacked the Papacy, and was proceeding “with great venom” to denounce the Pope,(260) the Emperor ordered him to pass from that subject and to proceed with his other matters. The Emperor had certainly told the Estates that he would not allow the question of Luther’s orthodoxy and complaints against the Holy See to be discussed together; and that lends some support to Aleander’s statement.(261) But when it is seen that not one of the dozen deputies present who write accounts of the scene mentions the interruption; when it is not found in the official report; when it is remembered that Charles could not understand either German or Latin, the story of the interruption is a very unlikely one. Aleander was not remarkable for his veracity—“a man, to say the least, not bigotedly truthful (_non superstitiose verax_)” says Erasmus;(262) and the nuncio on one occasion boasted to his masters in Rome that he could lie well when occasion required it.(263)

Several letters descriptive of the scene, written by men who were present in the Diet, reveal the intense interest taken by the great majority of the audience in the appearance and speech of Luther. His looks, his language, the attitude in which he stood, are all described. When artists portray the scene, either on canvas or in bronze, Luther is invariably represented standing upright, his shoulders squared, and his head thrown back. That was not how he stood before Charles and the Diet. He was a monk, trained in the conventional habits of monkish humility. He stood with a stoop of the head and shoulders, with the knees slightly bent, and without gestures. The only trace of bodily emotion was betrayed by bending and straightening his knees.(264) He addressed the Emperor and the Estates with all respect,—“Most serene Lord and Emperor, most illustrious Princes, most clement Lords,”—and apologised for any lack of etiquette on the ground that he was convent-bred and knew nothing of the ways of Courts; but it was noticed by more than one observer that he did not address the spiritual princes present.(265) Many a witness describes the charm of his cheerful, modest, but undaunted bearing.(266) The Saxon official account says, “Luther spoke simply, quietly, modestly, yet not without Christian courage and fidelity—in such a way, too, that his enemies would have doubtless preferred a more abject spirit and speech”; and it goes on to relate that his adversaries had confidently counted on a recantation, and that they were correspondingly disappointed.(267) Many expected that, as he had never before been in such presence, the strange audience would have disconcerted him; but, to their surprise and delight, he spoke “confidently, reasonably, and prudently, as if he were in his own lecture-room.”(268) Luther himself was surprised that the unaccustomed surroundings affected him so little. “When it came to my turn,” he says, “I just went on.”(269) The beauty of his diction pleased his audience—“many fair and happy words,” say Dr. Peutinger and others.(270)

When Luther had finished, the Official, mindful that it was his duty to extract from Luther a distinct recantation, addressed him in a threatening manner (_increpabundo similis_), and told him that his answer had not been to the point. The question was that Luther, in some of his books, denied decisions of Councils: Would he reaffirm or recant what he had said about these decisions? the Emperor demanded a plain (_non cornutum_) answer. “If His Imperial Majesty desires a plain answer,” said Luther, “I will give it to him, _neque cornutum neque dentatum_, and it is this: It is impossible for me to recant unless I am proved to be in the wrong by the testimony of Scripture or by evident reasoning; I cannot trust either the decisions of Councils or of Popes, for it is plain that they have not only erred, but have contradicted each other. My conscience is thirled to the word of God, and it is neither safe nor honest to act against one’s conscience. God help me! Amen!”(271)

When he had finished, the Emperor and the princes consulted together; then at a sign from Charles,(272) the Official addressed Luther at some length. He told him that in his speech he had abused the clemency of the Emperor, and had added to his evil deeds by attacking the Pope and Papists (_papistæ_) before the Diet. He briefly recapitulated Luther’s speech, and said that he had not sufficiently distinguished between his books and his opinions; there might be room for discussion had Luther brought forward anything new, but his errors were old—the errors of the Poor Men of Lyons, Wiclif, of John and Jerome Huss (the learned Official gave Huss a brother unknown to history),(273) which were decided upon at the Council of Constance, where the whole German nation had been gathered together; he again asked him to retract such opinions. To this Luther replied as before, that General Councils had erred, and that his conscience did not allow him to retract. By this time the torches had burnt to their sockets, and the hall was growing dark.(274) Wearied with the crowd and the heat, numbers were preparing to leave. The Official, making a last effort, called out loudly, “Martin, let your conscience alone; recant your errors and you will be safe and sound; you can never show that a Council has erred.” Luther declared that Councils had erred, and that he could prove it.(275) Upon this the Emperor made a sign to end the matter.(276) The last words Luther was heard to say were, “God come to my help” (_Got kum mir zu hilf_).(277)

It is evident from almost all the reports that from the time that Luther had finished his great speech there was a good deal of confusion, and probably of conversation, among the audience. All that the greater portion of those present heard was an altercation between Luther and the Official, due, most of the Germans thought, to the overbearing conduct of Eck, and which the Italians and Spaniards attributed to the pertinacity of Luther.(278) “Luther asserted that Councils had erred several times, and had given decisions against the law of God. The Official said No; Luther said Yes, and that he could prove it. So the matter came to an end for that time.”(279) But all understood that there was a good deal said about the Council of Constance.

The Emperor left his throne to go to his private rooms; the Electors and the princes sought their hotels. A number of Spaniards, perceiving that Luther turned to leave the tribunal, broke out into hootings, and followed “the man of God with prolonged howlings.”(280) Then the Germans, nobles and delegates from the towns, ringed him round to protect him, and as they passed from the hall they all at once, and Luther in the midst of them, thrust forward arms and raised hands high above their heads, in the way that a German knight was accustomed to do when he had unhorsed his antagonist in the tourney, or that a German landsknecht did when he had struck a victorious blow. The Spaniards rushed to the door shouting after Luther, “To the fire with him, to the fire!”(281) The crowd on the street thought that Luther was being sent to prison, and thought of a rescue.(282) Luther calmed them by saying that the company were escorting him home. Thus, with hands held high in stern challenge to Holy Roman Empire and mediæval Church, they accompanied Luther to his lodging.

Friends had got there before him—Spalatin, ever faithful; Oelhafen, who had not been able to reach his place in the Diet because of the throng. Luther, with beaming face, stretched out both his hands, exclaiming, “I am through, I am through!”(283) In a few minutes Spalatin was called away. He soon returned. The old Elector had summoned him only to say, “How well, father, Dr. Luther spoke this day before the Emperor and the Estates; but he is too bold for me.” The sturdy old German prince wrote to his brother John, “From what I have heard this day, I will never believe that Luther is a heretic”; and a few days later, “At this Diet, not only Annas and Caiaphas, but also Pilate and Herod, have conspired against Luther.” Frederick of Saxony was no Lutheran, like his brother John and his nephew John Frederick; and he was the better able to express what most German princes were thinking about Luther and his appearance before the Diet. Even Duke George was stirred to a momentary admiration; and Duke Eric of Brunswick, who had taken the papal side, could not sit down to supper without sending Luther a can of Einbecker beer from his own table.(284) As for the commonalty, there was a wild uproar in the streets of Worms that night—men cursing the Spaniards and Italians, and praising Luther, who had compelled the Emperor and the prelates to hear what he had to say, and who had voiced the complaints of the Fatherland against the Roman Curia at the risk of his life. The voice of the people found utterance in a placard, which next morning was seen posted up on the street corners of the town, “Woe to the land whose king is a child.” It was the beginning of the disillusion of Germany. The people had believed that they were securing a German Emperor when, in a fit of enthusiasm, they had called upon the Electors to choose the grandson of Maximilian. They were beginning to find that they had selected a Spaniard.

§ 7. The Conferences.

Next day (April 19th) the Emperor proposed that Luther should be placed under the ban of the Empire. The Estates were not satisfied, and insisted that something should be done to effect a compromise. Luther had not been treated as they had proposed in their memorandum of the 19th February. He had been peremptorily ordered to retract. The Emperor had permitted Aleander to regulate the order of procedure on the day previous (April 18th), and the result had not been satisfactory. Even the Elector of Brandenburg and his brother, the hesitating Archbishop of Mainz, did not wish matters to remain as they were. They knew the feelings of the German people, if they were ignorant of the Emperor’s diplomatic dealings with the Pope. The Emperor gave way, but told them that he would let them hear his own view of the matter. He produced a sheet of paper, and read a short statement prepared by himself in the French tongue—the language with which Charles was most familiar. It was the memorable declaration of his own religious position, which has been referred to already.(285) Aleander reports that several of the princes became pale as death when they heard it.(286) In later discussions the Emperor asserted with warmth that he would never change one iota of his declaration.

Nevertheless, the Diet appointed a Commission (April 22nd) to confer with Luther, and at its head was placed the Archbishop of Trier, who was perhaps the only one among the higher ecclesiastics of Germany whom Luther thoroughly trusted. They had several meetings with the Reformer, the first being on the 24th of April. All the members of the Commission were sincerely anxious to arrange a compromise; but after the Emperor’s declaration that was impossible, as Luther himself clearly saw. No set of resolutions, however skilfully framed, could reconcile the Emperor’s belief that a General Council was infallible and Luther’s phrase, “a conscience bound to the Holy Scriptures.” No proposals to leave the final decision to the Emperor and the Pope, to the Emperor alone, to the Emperor and the Estates, to a future General Council (all of which were made), could patch up a compromise between two such contradictory standpoints. Compromise must fail in a fight of faiths, and that was the nature of the opposition between Charles V. and Luther throughout their lives. What divided them was no subordinate question about doctrine or ritual; it was fundamental, amounting to an entirely different conception of the whole round of religion. The moral authority of the individual conscience confronted the legal authority of an ecclesiastical assembly. In after days the monk regretted that he had not spoken out more boldly before the Diet. Shortly before his death, the Emperor expressed his regret that he had not burned the obstinate heretic. When the Commission had failed, Luther asked leave to reveal his whole innermost thoughts to the Archbishop of Trier, under the seal of confession, and the two had a memorable private interview. Aleander fiercely attacked the Archbishop for refusing to disclose what passed between them; but the prelate was a German bishop with a conscience, and not an unscrupulous dependant on a shameless Curia. No one knew what Luther’s confession was. The Commission had to report that its efforts had proved useless. Luther was ordered to leave Worms and return to Wittenberg, without preaching on the journey; his safe conduct was to expire in twenty-one days after the 26th of April. At their expiry he was liable to be seized and put to death as a pestilent heretic. There remained only to draft and publish the edict containing the ban. The days passed, and it did not appear.

Suddenly the startling news reached Worms that Luther had disappeared, no one knew where. Aleander, as usual, had the most exact information, and gives the fullest account of the rumours which were flying about. Cochlæus, who was at Frankfurt, sent him a man who had been at Eisenach, had seen Luther’s uncle, and had been told by him about the capture. Five horsemen had dashed at the travelling waggon, had seized Luther, and had ridden off with him. Who the captors were or by whose authority they had acted, no one could tell. “Some blame me,” says Aleander, “others the Archbishop of Mainz: would God it were true!” Some thought that Sickingen had carried him off to protect him; others, the Elector of Saxony; others, the Count of Mansfeld. One persistent rumour declared that a personal enemy of the Elector of Saxony, one Hans Beheim, had been the captor; and the Emperor rather believed it. On May 14th a letter reached Worms saying that Luther’s body had been found in a silver-mine pierced with a dagger. The news flew over Germany and beyond it that Luther had been done to death by emissaries of the Roman Curia; and so persistent was the belief, that Aleander prepared to justify the deed by alleging that the Reformer had broken the imperial safe conduct by preaching at Eisenach and by addressing a concourse of people at Frankfurt.(287) Albert Dürer, in Ghent, noted down in his private diary that Luther, “the God-inspired man,” had been slain by the Pope and his priests as our Lord had been put to death by the priests in Jerusalem. “O God, if Luther is dead, who else can expound the Holy Gospel to us!”(288) Friends wrote distracted letters to Wittenberg imploring Luther to tell them whether he was alive or imprisoned.(289) The news created the greatest consternation and indignation in Worms. The Emperor’s decision had been little liked even by the princes most incensed against Luther. Aleander could not get even the Archbishop of Mainz to promise that he would publish it. When the Commission of the Diet had failed to effect a compromise, the doors of the Rathhaus and of other public buildings in Worms had been placarded with an intimation that four hundred knights had sworn that they would not leave Luther unavenged, and the ominous words _Bundschuh_, _Bundschuh_, _Bundschuh_ had appeared on it. The Emperor had treated the matter lightly; but the German Romanist princes had been greatly alarmed.(290) They knew, if he did not, that the union of peasants with the lower nobility had been a possible source of danger to Germany for nearly a century; they remembered that it was this combination which had made the great Bohemian rising successful. Months after the Diet had risen, Romanist partisans in Germany sent anxious communications to the Pope about the dangers of a combination of the lesser nobility with the peasants.(291) The condition of Worms had been bad enough before, and when the news of Luther’s murder reached the town the excitement passed all bounds. The whole of the Imperial Court was in an uproar. When Aleander was in the royal apartments the highest nobles in Germany pressed round him, telling him that he would be murdered even if he were “clinging to the Emperor’s bosom.” Men crowded his room to give him information of conspiracies to slay both himself and the senior Legate Caraccioli.(292) The excitement abated somewhat, but the wiser German princes recognised the abiding gravity of the situation, and how little the Emperor’s decision had done to end the Lutheran movement. The true story of Luther’s disappearance was not known until long afterwards. After the failure of the conferences, the Elector of Saxony summoned two of his councillors and his chaplain and private secretary, Spalatin, and asked them to see that Luther was safely hidden until the immediate danger was past. They were to do what they pleased and inform him of nothing. Many weeks passed before the Elector and his brother John knew that Luther was safe, living in their own castle on the Wartburg. This was his “Patmos,” where he doffed his monkish robes, let the hair grow over his tonsure, was clad as a knight, and went by the name of Junker Georg. His disappearance did not mean that he ceased to be a great leader of men; but it dates the beginning of the national opposition to Rome.

§ 8. The Ban.

After long delay, the imperial mandate against Luther was prepared. It was presented (May 25th) to an informal meeting of some members of the Diet after the Elector of Saxony and many of Luther’s staunchest supporters had left Worms.(293) Aleander, who had a large share in drafting it, brought two copies, one in Latin and the other in German, and presented them to Charles on a Sunday (May 26th) after service. The Emperor signed them before leaving the church. “Are you contented now?” said Charles, with a smile to the Legate; and Aleander overflowed with thanks. Few State documents, won by so much struggling and scheming, have proved so futile. The uproar in Germany at the report of Luther’s death had warned the German princes to be chary of putting the edict into execution.

The imperial edict against Luther threatened all his sympathisers with extermination. It practically proclaimed an Albigensian war in Germany. Charles had handed it to Aleander with a smile. Aleander despatched the document to Rome with an exultation which could only find due expression in a quotation from Ovid’s _Art of Love_. Pope Leo celebrated the arrival of the news by comedies and musical entertainments. But calm observers, foreigners in Germany, saw little cause for congratulation and less for mirth. Henry VIII. wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz congratulating him on the overthrow of the “rebel against Christ”; but Wolsey’s agent at the Diet informed his master that he believed there were one hundred thousand Germans who were still ready to lay down their lives in Luther’s defence.(294) Velasco, who had struck down the Spanish rebels in the battle of Villalar, wrote to the Emperor that the victory was God’s gratitude for his dealings with the heretic monk; but Alfonso de Valdès, the Emperor’s secretary, said in a letter to a Spanish correspondent:

“Here you have, as some imagine, the end of this tragedy; but I am persuaded it is not the end, but the beginning of it. For I see that the minds of the Germans are greatly exasperated against the Roman See, and they do not seem to attach great importance to the Emperor’s edicts; for since their publication, Luther’s books are sold with impunity at every step and corner of the streets and market-places. From this you will easily guess what will happen when the Emperor leaves. This evil might have been cured with the greatest advantage to the Christian commonwealth, had not the Pope refused a General Council, had he preferred the public weal to his own private interests. But while he insists that Luther shall be condemned and burnt, I see the whole Christian commonwealth hurried to destruction unless God Himself help us.”

Valdès, like Gattinara and other councillors of Charles, was a follower of Erasmus. He lays the blame of all on the Pope. But what a disillusion this Diet of Worms ought to have been to the Erasmians! The Humanist young sovereigns and the Humanist Pope, from whom so much had been expected, congratulating each other on Luther’s condemnation to the stake!

The foreboding of Alfonso de Valdès was amply justified. Luther’s books became more popular than ever, and the imperial edict did nothing to prevent their sale either within Germany or beyond it. Aleander was soon to learn this. He had retired to the Netherlands, and busied himself with _auto-da-fés_ of the prohibited writings; but he had to confess that they were powerless to prevent the spread of Luther’s opinions, and he declared that the only remedy would be if the Emperor seized and burnt half a dozen Lutherans, and confiscated all their property.(295) The edict had been published or repeated in lands outside Germany and in the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg. Henry VIII. ordered Luther’s books to be burnt in England;(296) the Estates of Scotland prohibited their introduction into the realm under the severest penalties in 1525.(297) But such edicts were easily evaded, and the prohibited writings found their way into Spain, Italy, France, Flanders, and elsewhere, concealed in bales of merchandise. In Germany there was no need for concealment; the imperial edict was not merely disregarded, but was openly scouted. The great Strassburg publisher, Gruniger, apologised to his customers, not for publishing Luther’s books, but for sending forth a book against him; and Cochlæus declared that printers gladly accepted any MS. against the Papacy, printed it _gratis_, and spent pains in issuing it with taste, while every defender of the established order had to pay heavily to get his book printed, and sometimes could not secure a printer at any cost.

§ 9. Popular Literature.

The Reformation movement may almost be said to have created the German book trade. The earliest German printed books or rather booklets were few in number, and of no great importance—little books of private devotion, of popular medicine, herbals, almanacs, travels, or public proclamations. Up to 1518 they barely exceeded fifty a year. But in the years 1518-1523 they increased enormously, and four-fifths of the increase were controversial writings prompted by the national antagonism to the Roman Curia. This increase was at first due to Luther alone;(298) but from 1521 onwards he had disciples, fellow-workers, opponents, all using in a popular way the German language, the effective literary power of which had been discovered by the Reformer.(299) These writers spread the new ideas among the people, high and low, throughout Germany.(300)

There are few traces of combined action in the anti-Romanist writings in the earlier stages of the controversy; it needed literary opposition to give them a semblance of unity. Each writer looks at the general question from his own individual point of view. Luther is the hero with nearly all, and is spoken about in almost extravagant terms. He is the prophet of Germany, the Elias that was to come, the Angel of the Revelation “flying through the mid-heaven with the everlasting Gospel in his hands,” the national champion who was brought to Worms to be silenced, and yet was heard by Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios. Some of the authors were still inclined to make Erasmus their leader, and declared that they were fighting under the banner of that “Knight of Christ”; others looked on Erasmus and Luther as fellow-workers, and one homely pamphlet compares Erasmus to the miller who grinds the flour, and Luther to the baker who bakes it into bread to feed the people. Perhaps the most striking feature of the times was the appearance of numberless anonymous pamphlets, purporting to be written by the unlearned for the unlearned. They are mostly in the form of dialogues, and the scene of the conversations recorded was often the village alehouse, where burghers, peasants, weavers, tailors, and shoemakers attack and vanquish in argument priests, monks, and even bishops. One striking feature of this new popular literature is the glorification of the German peasant. He is always represented as an upright, simple-minded, reflective, and intelligent person skilled in Bible lore, and even in Church history, and knowing as much of Christian doctrine “as three priests and more.” He may be compared with the idealised peasant of the pre-revolution literature in France, although he lacks the refinement, and knows nothing of high-flown moral sentiment; but he is much liker the Jak Upland or Piers Plowman of the days of the English Lollards. Jak Upland and Hans Mattock (_Karsthans_), both hate the clergy and abominate the monks and the begging friars, but the German exhibits much more ferocity than the Englishman. The Lollard describes the fat friar of the earlier English days with his swollen dewlap wagging under his chin “like a great goose-egg,” and contrasts him with the pale, poverty-stricken peasant and his wife, going shoeless to work over ice-bound roads, their steps marked with the blood which oozed from the cut feet; the German pamphleteer pours out an endless variety of savage nicknames—cheese-hunters, sausage-villains, begging-sacks, sourmilk crocks, the devil’s fat pigs, etc. etc. It is interesting to note that most of this coarse controversial literature, which appeared between 1518 and 1523, came from those regions in South Germany where the social revolution had found an almost permanent establishment from the year 1503. It was the sign that the old spirit of communist and religious enthusiasm, which had shown itself spasmodically since the movement under Hans Böhm, had never been extinguished, and it was a symptom that a peasants’ war might not be far off. Very little was needed to kindle afresh the smouldering hatred of the peasant against the priests. When German patriots declaimed against the exactions of the Roman Curia, the peasant thought of the great and lesser tithes, of the marriage, baptismal, and burial fees demanded from him by his own parish priest. When Reformers and popular preachers denounced the scandals and corruptions in the Church, the peasant applied them to some drunken, evil-living, careless priest whom he knew. It should be remembered that the character _Karsthans_ was invented in 1520, not by a Lutheran sympathiser, but by Thomas Murner, one of Luther’s most determined opponents,(301) when he was still engaged in writing against the clerical disorders of the times. This virulent attack on priests and monks had other sources than the sympathy for Luther.(302) It was the awakening of old memories, prompted partly by an underground ceaseless Hussite propaganda, and partly, no doubt, by the new ideas so universally prevalent.

Some of this coarse popular literature had a more direct connection with the Lutheran movement. A booklet which appeared in 1521, entitled _The New and the Old God_, and which had an immense circulation, may be taken as an example. Like many of its kind, it had an illustrated title-page, which was a graphic summary of its contents. There appeared as the representatives of the New God, the Pope, some Church Fathers, and beneath them, Cajetan, Silvester Prierias, Eck, and Faber; over-against them were the Old God as the Trinity, the four Evangelists, St. Paul with a sword, and behind him Luther. It attacked the ceremonies, the elaborate services, the obscure doctrines which had been thrust on the Church by bloody persecutions, and had changed Christianity into Judaism, and contrasted them with the unchanging Word of the Old God, with its simple story of salvation and its simple doctrines of faith, hope, and love. To the same class belong the writings of the voluminous controversialist, John Eberlin of Günzburg, whom his opponents accused of seducing whole provinces, so effective were his appeals to the “common” man. He began by a pamphlet addressed to the young Emperor, and published, either immediately before or during the earlier sitting of the Diet of Worms in 1521, a daring appeal, in which Luther and Ulrich von Hutten are called the messengers of God to their generation. It was the first of a series of fifteen, all of which were in circulation before the beginning of November of the same year.(303) They were called the “Confederates” (_Bundsgenossen_). The contents of these and other pamphlets by Eberlin may be guessed from their titles—_Of the forty days’ fast before Easter and others which pitifully oppress Christian folk._ _An exhortation to all Christians that they take pity on Nuns._ _How very dangerous it is that priests have not wives_ (the frontispiece represents the marriage of a priest by a bishop, in the background the marriage of two monks, and two musicians on a raised seat). _Why there is no money in the country._ _Against the false clergy, bare-footed monks, and Franciscans_, etc., etc. He exposes as trenchantly as Luther did the systematic robbery of Germany to benefit the Roman Curia—300,000 gulden sent out of the country every year, and a million more given to the begging friars. He wrote fiercely against the monks who take to this life, because they were too lazy to work like honest people, and called them all sorts of nicknames—_cloister swine_, _the Devil’s landsknechts_, etc., twenty-four thousand of them sponge on Germany and four hundred thousand on the rest of Europe. He tells of a parish priest who thought that he must really begin to read the Scriptures: his parishioners are reading it, the mothers to the children and the house-fathers to the household; they trouble him with questions taken from it, and he is often at his wit’s end to answer; he asked a friend where he ought to begin, and was told that there was a good deal about priests and their duties in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus; he read, and was horrified to find that bishops and priests ought to be “husbands of one wife,” etc. Eberlin had been a Franciscan monk, and was true to the revolutionary traditions of his Order. He preached a social as well as an evangelical reformation. The Franciscan Order sent forth a good many Reformers: men like Stephen Kampen, who had come to adopt views like those of Eberlin without any teaching but the leadings of his heart; or John Brissmann, a learned student of the Scholastic Theology, who like Luther had found that it did not satisfy the yearnings of his soul; or like Frederick Mecum (Myconius), whose whole spiritual development was very similar to that of Luther. Pamphlets like those of Eberlin, and preaching like that of Kampen, had doubtless some influence in causing popular risings against the priests that were not uncommon throughout Germany in 1521, after the Diet of Worms had ended its sittings—the Erfurt tumult, which lasted during the months of April, May, June, and July, may be instanced as an example.

§ 10. The Spread of Luther’s Teaching.

It may be said that the very year in which the imperial edict against Luther was published (1521) gave evidence that a silent movement towards the adoption of the principles for which Luther was testifying had begun among monks of almost all the different Orders. The Augustinian Eremites, Luther’s own Order, had been largely influenced by him. Whole communities, with the prior at their head, had declared for the Reformation both in Germany and in the Low Countries. No other monastic Order was so decidedly upon the side of the Reformer, but monks of all kinds joined in preaching and teaching the new doctrines. Martin Bucer had been a Dominican, Otto Braunfells a Carthusian, Ambrose Blauer a Benedictine. The case of Oecolampadius (John Hussgen (?) Hausschein) was peculiar. He had been a distinguished Humanist, had come under serious religious impressions, and had entered the Order of St. Bridget; but he was not long there when he joined the ranks of the Reformers, and was sheltered by Franz von Sickingen in his castle at Ebernberg.(304) Urban Rhegius, John Eck’s most trusted and most talented student at Ingolstadt, had become a Carmelite, and had quitted his monastery to preach the doctrines of Luther. John Bugenhagen belonged to the Order of the Præmonstratenses. He was a learned theologian. Luther’s struggle against Indulgences had displeased him. He got hold of _The Babylonian Captivity of the Christian Church_, and studied it for the purpose of refuting it. The study so changed him that he felt that “the whole world may be wrong, but Luther is right”; he won over his prior and most of his companions, and became the Reformer of Pomerania.

Secular priests all over Germany declared for the new evangelical doctrines. The Bishop of Samlund in East Prussia boldly avowed himself to be on Luther’s side, and was careful to have the Lutheran doctrines preached throughout his diocese; and other bishops showed themselves favourable to the new evangelical faith. Many of the most influential parish priests did the like, and their congregations followed them. Sometimes the superior clergy forbade the use of the church, and the people followed their pastor while he preached to them in the fields. Sometimes (as in the case of Hermann Tast) the priest preached under the lime trees in the churchyard, and his parishioners came armed to protect him. If priests were lacking to preach the Lutheran doctrines, laymen came forward. If they could not preach, they could sing hymns. Witness the poor weaver of Magdeburg, who took his stand near the statue of Kaiser Otto in the market-place, and sang two of Luther’s hymns, “Aus tiefer Not schrei Ich zu dir,” and “Es woll’ uns Gott gnädig sein,” while the people crowded round him on the morning of May 6th, 1524. The Burgermeister coming from early Mass heard him, and ordered him to be imprisoned, but the crowd rescued him. Such was the beginning of the Reformation in Magdeburg.(305) When men dared not, women took their place. Argula Grunbach, a student of the Scriptures and of Luther’s writings, challenged the University of Ingolstadt, under the eyes of the great Dr. Eck himself, to a public disputation upon the truth of Luther’s position.

Artists lent their aid to spread the new ideas, and many cartoons made the doctrines and the aims of the Reformers plain to the common people. These pictures were sometimes used to illustrate the title-pages of the controversial literature, and were sometimes published as separate broadsides. In one, Christ is portrayed standing at the _door_ of a house, which represents His Church. He invites the people to enter by the door; and Popes, cardinals, and monks are shown climbing the walls to get entrance in a clandestine fashion.(306) In another, entitled the _Triumph of Truth_, the common folk of a German town are represented singing songs of welcome to honour an approaching procession. Moses, the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles, carry on their shoulders the Ark of the Holy Scriptures. Hutten comes riding on his warhorse, and to the tail of the horse is attached a chain which encloses a crowd of ecclesiastics—an archbishop with his mitre fallen off, the Pope with his tiara in the act of tumbling and his pontifical staff broken; after them, cardinals, then monks figured with the heads of cats, pigs, calves, etc. Then comes a triumphal car drawn by the four living creatures, who represent the four evangelists, on one of which rides an angel. Carlstadt stands upright in the front of the car; Luther strides alongside. In the car, Jesus sits saying, _I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life_. Holy martyrs follow, singing songs of praise. German burghers are spreading their garments on the road, and boys and girls are strewing the path with flowers.(307) Perhaps the most important work of this kind was the _Passional Christi et Antichristi_.(308) Luther planned the book, Luke Cranach designed the pictures, and Melanchthon furnished the texts from Scripture and the quotations from Canon Law. It is a series of pairs of engravings representing the lives of our Lord and of the Pope, so arranged that wherever the book opened two contrasting pictures could be seen at the same time. The contrasts were such as these:—Jesus washing the disciples’ feet; the Pope holding out his toe to be kissed: Jesus healing the wounded and the sick; the Pope presiding at a tournament: Jesus bending under His Cross; the Pope carried in state on men’s shoulders: Jesus driving the money-changers out of the Temple; the Pope and his servants turning a church into a market for Indulgences, and sitting surrounded with strong boxes and piles of coin. It was a “good book for the laity,” Luther said.

One of the signs of the times was the enthusiasm displayed in the imperial cities for the cause of Luther. The way had been prepared. Burgher songs had for long described the ecclesiastical abuses, and had borne witness to the widespread hatred of the clergy shared in by the townsfolk. Wolfgang Capito and Frederick Mecum (Myconius), both sons of burghers, inform us that their fathers taught them when they were boys that Indulgences were nothing but a speculation on the part of cunning priests to get their hands into the pockets of simple-minded laity. Keen observers of the trend of public feeling like Wimpheling and Pirkheimer had noticed with some alarm the gradual spread of the Hussite propaganda in the towns, and had made the fact one of their reasons for desiring and insisting on a reformation of the Church. The growing sympathy for the Hussite opinions in the cities is abundantly apparent. Some leading Reformers, Capito for instance, told their contemporaries that they had frequently listened to Hussite discourses when they were boys; and the libraries of burghers not infrequently contained Hussite pamphlets. Men in the towns had been reading, thinking, and speaking in private to their familiar friends about the disorders in the life and doctrine of the Church of their days, and were eager to welcome the first symptoms of a genuine attempt at reform.

The number of editions of the German Vulgate, rude as many of these versions were, shows what a Bible-reading people the German burghers had become, enables us to wonder less at the way in which the controversial writers assume that the laity knew as much of the Scriptures as the clergy, and lends credibility to contemporary assertions that women and artisans knew their Bibles better than learned men at the Universities.

These things make us understand how the townsmen were prepared to welcome Luther’s simple scriptural teaching, how his writings found such a sale all over Germany, how they could say that he taught what all men had been thinking, and said out boldly what all men had been whispering in private. They explain how the burghers of Strassburg nailed Luther’s Ninety-five Theses to the doors of every church and parsonage in the city in 1518; how the citizens of Constance drove away with threats the imperial messenger who came to publish the Edict of Worms in their town; how the people of Basel applauded their pastor when he carried a copy of the Scriptures instead of the Host in the procession on Corpus Christi Day; how the higher clergy of Strassburg could not expel the nephew and successor of the famed Geiler of Keysersberg although he was accused of being a follower of Luther; and how his friend Matthew Zell, when he was prohibited from preaching in the pulpit from which Geiler had thundered, was able to get carpenters to erect another in a corner of the great cathedral, from which he spoke to the people who crowded to hear him. When the clergy persuaded the authorities in many towns (Goslar, Danzig, Worms, etc.) to close the churches against the evangelical preachers, the townspeople listened to their sermons in the open air; but generally from the first the civic authorities sided with the people in welcoming a powerful evangelical preacher. Matthew Zell and, after him, Martin Bucer became the Reformers of Strassburg; Kettenbach and Eberlin, of Ulm; Oecolampadius and Urbanus Rhegius, of Augsburg; Andrew Osiander, of Nürnberg; John Brenz, of Hall, in Swabia; Theobald Pellicanus (Pellicanus, _i.e._ of Villigheim), of Nördlingen; Matthew Alber, of Reutlingen; John Lachmann, of Heilbron; John Wanner, of Constance; and so on. The gilds of _Mastersingers_ welcomed the Reformation. The greatest of the civic poets, Hans Sachs of Nürnberg, was a diligent collector and reader of Luther’s books. He published in 1523 his famous poem, “The Wittenberg Nightingale” (_Die Wittembergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetz höret überall_). The nightingale was Luther, and its song told that the moonlight with its pale deceptive gleams and its deep shadows was passing away, and the glorious sun was rising. The author praises the utter simplicity of Luther’s scriptural teaching, and contrasts it with the quirks and subtleties of Romish doctrine. Even a peasant, he says, can understand and know that Luther’s teaching is good and sound. In a later short poem he contrasts evangelical and Romish preaching. The original edition was illustrated by a woodcut showing two preachers addressing their respective audiences. The one is saying, _Thus saith the Lord_; and the other, _Thus saith the Pope_.

§ 11. Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt.(309)

Every great movement for reform bears within it the seeds of revolution, of the “tumult,” as Erasmus called it, and Luther’s was no exception to the general rule. Every Reformer who would carry through his reforming ideas successfully has to struggle against men and circumstances making for the “tumult,” almost as strenuously as against the abuses he seeks to overcome. We have already seen how these germs of revolution abounded in Germany, and how the revolutionists naturally allied themselves with the Reformer, and the cause he sought to promote.

While Luther was hidden away in the Wartburg, the revolution seized on Wittenberg. At first his absence did not seem to make any difference. The number of students had increased until it was over a thousand, and the town itself surprised eye-witnesses who were acquainted with other University towns in Germany. The students went about unarmed; they mostly carried Bibles under their arms; they saluted each other as “brothers at one in Christ.” No rift had yet appeared among the band of leaders, although his disappointment in not obtaining the Provostship of All Saints had begun to isolate Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. Unanimity did not mean dulness; Wittenberg was seething with intellectual life. Since its foundation the University had been distinguished for weekly Public Disputations in which students and professors took part. In the earlier years of its existence the theses discussed had been suggested by the Scholastic Theology and Philosophy in vogue; but since 1518 the new questions which were stirring Germany had been the subjects of debate, and this had given a life and eagerness to the University exercises. When Justus Jonas came to Wittenberg from Erfurt, he wrote enthusiastically to a friend about the “unbelievable wealth of spiritual interests in the little town of Wittenberg.” None of the professors took a keener interest in these Public Discussions than Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. He had been a very successful teacher; had come under Luther’s magnetic influence; and had accepted the main ideas of the new doctrines. He had not the full-blooded humanity of Luther, nor his sympathetic tact, nor his practical insight into how things would work. He lacked altogether Luther’s solid basis of conservative feeling, which made him know by instinct that new ideas and new things could only flourish and grow if they were securely rooted in what was old. It was enough for Carlstadt that his own ideas, however hastily evolved, were clear, and his aims beneficent, to make him eager to see them at once reduced to practice. He had the temperament of a revolutionary rather than that of a Reformer.

He was strongly impressed with the fundamental contradictions which he believed to exist between the new evangelical doctrines preached by Luther and the theories and practices of the mediæval religious life and worship. This led him to attack earnestly and bitterly monastic vows, celibacy, a distinctive dress for the clergy, the idea of a propitiatory sacrifice in the Mass, and the presence and use of images and pictures in the churches. He introduced all these questions of practical interest into the University weekly Public Discussions; he published theses upon them; he printed two books—one on monastic vows and the other on the Mass—which had an extensive circulation both in German and in Latin (four editions were speedily exhausted). The prevailing idea in all these publications, perhaps implied rather than expressed, was that the new evangelical liberty could only be exercised when everything which suggested the ceremonies and usages of the mediæval religious life was swept away. His strongest denunciations were reserved for the practice of celibacy; he dwelt on the divine institution of marriage, its moral and spiritual necessity, and taught that the compulsory marriage of the clergy was better than the enforced celibacy of the mediæval Church. Zwilling, a young Augustinian Eremite, whose preaching gifts had been praised by Luther, went even further than Carlstadt in his fiery denunciation of the Mass as an idolatrous practice.

The movement to put these exhortations in practice began first among the clergy. Two priests in parishes near Wittenberg married; several monks left their cloisters and donned lay garments; Melanchthon and several of his students, in semi-public fashion, communicated in both kinds in the parish church on Michaelmas Day (Sept. 29th), 1521, and his example seems to have been followed by other companies.

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

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

During the closing days of the year 1521, so full of excitement for the people of Wittenberg, three men, known in history as the _Zwickau Prophets_, came to the town (Dec. 27th). Zwickau, lying about sixty-four miles south of Wittenberg, was the centre of the weaving trade of Saxony, and contained a large artisan population. We have seen that movements of a religious-communistic kind had from time to time appeared among the German artisans and peasants since 1476. Nicolaus Storch, a weaver in Zwickau, proclaimed that he had visions of the Angel Gabriel, who had revealed to him: “Thou shalt sit with me on my throne.” He began to preach. Thomas Münzer, who had been appointed by the magistrates to be town preacher in St. Mary’s, the principal church in Zwickau, praised his discourses, declaring that Storch expounded the Scriptures better than any priest. Some writers have traced the origin of this Zwickau movement to Hussite teachings. Münzer allied himself with the extreme Hussites _after_ the movement had begun, and paid a visit to Bohemia, taking with him some of his intimates; but our sources of information, which are scanty, do not warrant any decided opinion about the origin of the outbreak in Zwickau. After some time Storch and others were forced to leave the town. Three of them went to Wittenberg—Storch himself, the seer of heavenly visions, another weaver, and Marcus Thomä Stubner, who had once been a pupil of Melanchthon, and was therefore able to introduce his companions to the Wittenberg circle of Reformers. Their arrival and addresses increased the excitement both in the town and in the University. Melanchthon welcomed his old pupil, and was impressed by the presence of a certain spiritual power in Stubner and in his companions. Some of their doctrines, however, especially their rejection of infant baptism, repelled him, and he gradually withdrew from their companionship.

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

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

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

§ 12. Luther back in Wittenberg.

Melanchthon felt himself helpless in presence of the “tumult,” declared that no one save Luther himself could quell the excitement, and eagerly pressed his return. The revolutionary movement was extending beyond Wittenberg, in other towns in Electoral Saxony such as Grimma and Altenberg. Duke George of Saxony, the strenuous defender of the old faith, had been watching the proceedings from the beginning. As early as Nov. 21st, 1521, he had written to John Duke of Saxony, the brother of the Elector, warning him that, against ecclesiastical usage, the Sacrament of the Supper was being dispensed in both kinds in Wittenberg; he had informed him (Dec. 26th) that priests were threatened while saying the Mass; he had brought the “tumultuous deeds” in Electoral Saxony before the _Reichsregiment_ in January, with the result that imperial mandates were sent to the Elector Frederick and to the Bishops of Meissen, Merseburg, and Naumburg, requiring them to take measures to end the disturbances. The Elector was seriously disquieted. His anxieties were increased by a letter from Duke George (Feb. 2nd, 1522), declaring that Carlstadt and Zwilling were the instigators of all the riotous proceedings. He had commissioned one of his councillors, Hugold of Einsiedel, to try to put matters right; but the result had been small. It was probably in these circumstances that he wrote his _Instruction_ to Oswald, a burgher of Eisenach, with the intention that the contents should be communicated to Luther in the Wartburg. The _Instruction_ may have been the reason why Luther suddenly left the asylum where he had remained since his appearance at Worms by the command and under the protection of his prince.(312)

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

He started on his lonely journey, most of it through an enemy’s country, going by Erfurt, Jena, Borna, and Leipzig. He was dressed as “Junker Georg,” with beard on his chin and sword by his side. At Erfurt he had a good-humoured discussion with a priest in the inn; and Kessler, the Swiss student, tells how he met a stranger sitting in the parlour of the “Bear” at Jena with his hand on the hilt of his sword, and reading a small Hebrew Psalter. He got to Wittenberg on Friday, March 7th; spent that afternoon and the next day in discussing the situation with his friends Amsdorf, Melanchthon, and Jerome Schurf.(314)

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

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

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

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