Part 1212

"An increase in pilgrimages first begins to mark a new phase of religious life which was encouraged by the admonitions of preachers of repentance like Capistrano. Like an avalanche did the numbers grow of the pilgrims who streamed together from all parts of Upper and Central Germany, from the foot of the Alps to the Harz Mountains. Thirty, even seventy thousand might have been counted of those who assembled at Niklashausen to hear the words of the prophet (Boeheim) who was already reverenced as a saint. … This 'saint' was burned with an Ave Maria upon his lips. … It might have been supposed that the sad outcome of these movements would have frightened men away, but no; one can boldly maintain on the contrary that never, save during the crusades, were so many pilgrimages made as in the last 60 or 70 years before the reformation. … If that way of striving after righteousness before God, vain and mistaken as it seems to us, may be looked upon as religion, then the last fifty or sixty years before the reformation show an exceptionally high degree of religious feeling, or at least of religions need; a feeling ever increasing through lack of means to satisfy it. With regard to the clergy, indeed, things looked dark enough, especially in North and Central Germany. One does not know which was greater, their lack of knowledge or their lack of morality. … The most incredible facts were brought to light by the later visitations. … The result might have been a complete return to heathenism had such a clergy, which could show, especially in the larger South German cities, but few redeeming exceptions, had the whole spiritual guidance of the people in its hands. But it did not; and the doings of the secular clergy by no means affected the religious life of the community as they would have done to-day. The exponents and fosterers of this religious life at that time in Germany were the mendicant friars: Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinian friars. … Many things in the outer world, especially at the end of the century, came to aid the church's efforts: the needs of an age in which so much was unstable; the anger of Heaven which, as the monks so drastically preached and the multitude piously believed, so evidently threatened to vent itself. That period of history, indeed, might be called a prosperous one by anyone regarding merely superficially the condition of social and political affairs. It is well known how German commerce prospered at that time, extending to all parts of the world and ever having new paths opened up for it by the new discoveries. Frenchmen and Italians, astounded at the riches and princely splendor which the commercial magnates in the South German trade-centres were able to display, sang the praises of the prosperity and culture of the land. Industry and commerce were on the increase and art, realizing its highest aims, found an abiding-place and self-sacrificing patrons in the houses of the citizens. With every year the number of high and low-grade schools on the Rhine and in South Germany increased in number, and were still scarcely able to do justice to the pressing educational needs. An undercurrent of fresh and joyous creative impulse, full of promise for the future, can be traced among the burghers. But if one regards the age as a whole one sees everywhere not only a threatening, but actually a present decline. The abundant popular literature, more even than the writings of scholars, gives a clear insight into these matters. … Since the days of antiquity, on the eve of the French Revolution alone do we find the opposing principles so sharply contrasted with each other as they were at the end of the Middle Ages. In the rich commercial cities themselves there was already an immense proletariat as opposed to the excessive wealth; and there is reason to believe that never, even counting the present day, have there been so many beggars as in those decades. It must be borne in mind that, both practically and theoretically, beggary was furthered by the church. Much from her rich table fell into the lap of the poor man, and actually not only was it no shame to beg but beggary was a vocation like any other. The man who ate the bread of beggary stood morally higher than he who toiled to gain a living. … Men did, on the other hand, have the consciousness that the great accumulation of capital in the hands of individuals furthered poverty as it always does. The complaints are general against 'selfishness'; the pauper, the town artisan, the noble and the scholar are remarkably in accord on this one point, that deception, usury and cheating are the only explanation of the prosperity of the merchant. When the knight attacked the goods-waggons of the traders he believed that he was only taking what rightfully belonged to himself. The merchants and the rich prelates were responsible to his mind for the deterioration of his own class or estate which can no longer hold its own against the rich civilians. All the more does he oppress his own serfs. Only seldom among the higher classes do we hear a word of pity for the poor man, a word of blame against the fleecing and harrassing of the peasants; much oftener bitter scorn and mockery, which nevertheless is founded on fear; for men know well enough in their inmost souls that the peasant is only waiting for a suitable moment in which to strike out and take bloody vengeance, and anxiously do they await the future. Even among the citizens themselves those who were without possessions were filled with hatred against the rich and against those of high degree. The introduction of Roman law, unintelligible to the burgher and peasant, made the feeling of being without law a common one. The more firmly did men pin their faith on that future in which the Last Judgment of God was to come and annihilate priests and lords. Such impressions, which were kept vivid by an ever spreading popular literature, by word of mouth and by pictorial representations, could only be heightened by the state of political affairs in the last decades of the 15th century and the first years of the 16th. Well known are the many struggles for the firmer organization of the empire, for the carrying through of the reform-plans of a Berthold of Mainz. The publicists of the time, and to no small degree the Emperor Maximilian himself, who, if he wanted to carry through any measure addressed himself directly to the people, cast broadside among the populace numerous pamphlets containing the most unintelligible ideas and promises. {3766} And what a host of plans and ideas did this much loved, knightly emperor not have! How beautifully could he talk of old German might and glory and draw pictures of a rosy future. With intense interest did men follow the transactions of the diets which promised to better affairs. One plan of taxation followed on the heels of another. What project was left undiscussed for the better carrying out of the Peace of the Land! In the end everything remained as it had been save the want and general discomfort which increased from year to year. Bad harvests and consequent rise in prices, famine, severe sicknesses and plagues are once more the stock chapters in the chronicles. Frightful indeed were the ravages caused by the first, almost epidemic, appearance of the Syphilis; with regard to which, during the whole period of the reformation, the moral judgment wavered. … It is a wondrous, gloomy time, torn by contradictions, a time in which all is in a ferment, everything seems to totter. Everything but one institution, the firmly welded edifice of the Roman church. To Germany also came the news of the horrible vices with which the popes just at this time disgraced the Holy See: people knew that no deed was too black for them when it was a question of satisfying their greed of power and their lust. But nevertheless they remained the successors of Peter and the representatives of Christ, and so little can one speak of a process of dissolution in the church, that the latter appears on the contrary the only stable power and the religious-ecclesiastical idea is rather the one that rules all things. Although men to a great extent scorn and mock her servants and long often with burning hatred for their annihilation, yet it continues always to be the church that holds the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and that can avert the wrath of God; the church, to which the anxious soul turns as the last anchor of hope and tries to outdo itself in her service. It is not indeed pious reverence for a God who is holy and yet gracious that draws the sinners to their knees, but the dread of the tortures of purgatory and of the wrath of Him who sits above the world to judge it. This causes the soul, restless, dissatisfied, to be ceaseless in its endeavors to conciliate the Angry One through sacrificial service—the whole religious activity being one half-despairing 'Miserere' called forth by fear. Such was the spirit of the age in which Martin Luther was born and in which he passed his youth."

_Kolde, Martin Luther (translated from the German), volume 1, pages 5-27._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1471-1513, to 1517-1521 (pages 2441-2450).

GERMANY: 16th Century. The Catholic Reaction.

"Altogether about the year 1570 the spread of protestantism in Germany and the lands under its influence had reached its zenith. It had been accepted by the great majority of the nation—already in 1558 about seven tenths; the gaining over of the rest also seemed only a question of the near future. Yet beyond a doubt its lasting success was only legally assured in places where it had won over the governing power and could stand on the generally recognized basis of the religious peace. This was the case in the secular principalities of the protestant dynasties, but not in the Wittelsbach and Hapsburgh lands, where its lawful existence depended only on the personal concessions of the existing ruler, and still less in the ecclesiastical territories. … To give it here the secure legal basis which it lacked was the most important problem, as regarded internal German affairs, of the protestant policy. … The only way to attain this was to secure the recognition on the part of the empire of the free right of choosing a confession in the bishoprics; in other words the renunciation of the 'Ecclesiastical reservation.' … This goal could only be attained if the protestants advanced in a solid phalanx. This is, however, just what they could not do. For they themselves were torn by bitter contentions with regard to the faith. … From this point of view it was no boon that Calvinism, the specifically French form of protestantism, found entrance also into Germany. … Under its influence, to begin with, the Saxon-Thuringian church became divided in its interpretation of the teachings concerning justification and the Lord's Supper. … The complications were still further increased when Frederick III of the Palatinate, elector since 1559, disgusted at the quarrelsomeness of the Lutheran theologians, dismissed the zealot Tilemann in August 1560, and in 1563 gave over the recognized church of the Palatinate to Calvinism. Herewith he completely estranged the Lutherans who did not regard the Calvinists as holding the same faith. … Germany could no longer count itself among the great powers and at home the discord was ever increasing. The motion of the Palatinate in the electoral diet of October 1575 to incorporate in the religious peace the so-called 'Declaration of King Ferdinand' with regard to it, and thus to secure the local option with regard to a creed in the bishoprics, was opposed not only by the ecclesiastical members of the electoral college but also by the electorate of Saxony. In consequence of the same party strife a similar motion of the Palatinate, made in the diet of Regensburg, was lost. … On the one hand hostilities grew more bitter among the German protestants, on the other the Roman church, supported by the power of the Spanish world-monarchy, advanced everywhere, within and without the German empire, to a well-planned attack. … She had won her first victory in the empire with the refusal in 1576 to grant the local option of creed, for this was almost equivalent to a recognition on the protestant side of the 'Ecclesiastical Reservation.' The more eagerly did Rome, by demanding the oath drawn up in the council of Trent, strive to chain fast her bishops to her, to remove those who made opposition even if it had to happen by disregarding the law of the land and the religious treaties, to bring zealous catholic men into the episcopal sees—everywhere to set the reaction in motion. The manner of proceeding was always the same: the protestant pastors and teachers were banished; the catholic liturgy, in which the utmost splendor was unfolded, was reintroduced into the churches, and competent catholic clergy were put in office. The members of the community, left without a leader, had now only the choice allowed to them of joining the catholic church or of emigrating; the protestant officials were replaced by catholic ones; new institutions of learning, conducted by Jesuits, were founded for the purpose of winning the rising generation, inwardly also, for Catholicism. {3767} Beyond a doubt this whole work of restoration put an end in many cases to a confused and untenable state of affairs, but at least as often it crushed down by force a healthy, natural development and wrought havoc in the moral life of the people. Thus did the reaction gain the ascendancy in most of the ecclesiastical principalities of the South; in the North the scale still hung in the balance. … And in this condition of affairs the discord among the protestants grew worse year by year! 'Their war is our peace' was the exultant cry of the Catholics when they looked upon this schism. In order to preserve pure Lutheranism from any deviation, the electoral court of Saxony caused the 'Formula of Concord' to be drawn up by three prominent theologians in the monastery of Bergen near Madgeburg (20 May 1577), and compelled all pastors and teachers of the land to accept them under pain of dismissal from office. As this necessarily accentuated the differences with the Calvinists, John Casimir of the Palatinate endeavored, in the Convention of Frankfort on the Main in 1577, to unite the protestants of all denominations and all lands … in a common effort at defence; but his appeal and the embassy which he sent to the evangelical princes met with no very favorable reception. On the contrary in course of time 86 estates of the empire accepted the Formula of Concord which was now published in Dresden, together with the names of those who had signed it, on the 25th of June 1580, the 50th anniversary of handing in the Augsburg Confession. What a pass had matters come to since that great epoch! … At any rate the unity of the German protestants was completely at an end, and especially any joint action between Saxony and the Palatinate had been rendered impossible. … In 1582 the Roman party opened a well-planned campaign for the purpose of putting itself in full possession of the power in the empire. The emperor belonged as it was to their confession, so all depended on the manner in which the diet should be made up; and this again depended on who should be members of the college of princes: for in the college of electors the votes of the protestants and catholics were equal inasmuch as the Bohemian vote was 'dormant,' and of the imperial cities only a few were still catholic. In the electoral college, then, the protestants possessed the majority so long as the 'administrators' [of the bishoprics] maintained as hitherto their seat and their vote. In the first place the catholics succeeded in the diet of 1582 in persuading Magdeburg for the nonce to renounce in favor of Salzburg its presidency in the assembly of the princes; herewith, however, a precedent was given, not only for this ecclesiastical foundation but for all the evangelical administrators, that permitted of the most fateful conclusions being drawn to the disadvantage of the protestants. Scarcely had this happened when the Roman party gave a decisive turn to affairs on the Lower Rhine. Archbishop Gebhard of Cologne prepared to follow the example of his predecessor Hermann of Wied, chiefly induced, it must be said, by the wish to gain the hand of the fair countess Agnes of Mansfeld. Relying on the Cologne protestants and the Counts of the Wetterau and reckoning on help from the Netherlands he formally went over to the protestant church on the 19th of December 1582, proclaimed the local option of a creed for his diocese on the 16th of January 1583, and married the Countess Agnes a few weeks later in Bonn. While on the one hand, now, the diet of the duchy of Westphalia declared for him and the local option was here put through, the Cologne diet, on the other, called together by the cathedral chapter, declared against him, under pressure as it was from both Spain and Rome. Pope Gregory XIII deposed him … and on the 23rd of May the pupil of the Jesuits, Ernest of Bavaria, who already since 1566 had been bishop of Freisingen, since 1573 of Hildesheim, since 1581 also of Liege, was placed in the see of Cologne. The war began. On the one side Spanish and Bavarian troops marched into the land, on the other forces from the Netherlands and the Palatinate, led by John Casimir in person under the approval of Louis VI. … The fortunes of war soon turned completely against him [Gebhard], … he himself was beaten and compelled to flee to the Netherlands, and Westphalia was then conquered. This victory was decisive not only for Northern Germany, but for the fate of the bishoprics altogether—indeed for the whole form which the administration of the empire was to take. Had Gebhard held his own, the majority in the electoral college would have become protestant; the bishoprics in the northwest which had not yet taken a decisive stand, and probably others also, would have followed the example of Cologne and would never have allowed their seats in the assembly of princes to be taken from them; the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian provinces would then have been gained for protestantism. The opposite of all this now happened. In the first place Archbishop Ernest restored the Roman church by the most oppressive means in Westphalia; he called the Jesuits to Bonn, Neuss, Emmerich and Hildesheim. His election as bishop of Munster (May 1585) decided the victory in that bishopric also. … The Roman party succeeded now, actually, in driving the administrators from the diet. In order not to cause the violent dissolution of the diet which met in April 1594 for the purpose of granting a tax which was pressingly needed for the Turkish war, Magdeburg renounced once more Its presidency in the college of princes; and when, in December 1597, the diet was again called for the same purpose, the catholic estates, in spite of all protests to the contrary, regarded the matter as having been settled by the precedents of the last two diets. Herewith the administrators lost their seats in the diet, and in the college of princes the majority was in the hands of the catholics. Inasmuch also as the evangelical members of the college of electors did not hold together, the total majority of the diet was at the disposal of the catholics. … On the 27th of April 1608 the Palatinate, together with Brandenburg and nine lesser protestant estates, but without the electorate of Saxony [Luther's state!], declared to Duke Ferdinand of Styria, the emperor's representative, that they would leave the diet but would maintain the possession of the ecclesiastical estates by force if necessary. The schism with the church had already paralyzed the judicial system of the empire; it now paralyzed also its highest political corporation."

_Käemmel, Deutsche Geschichte (translated from the German), pages 701-715._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1537-1563 (page 2458).

{3768}

GERMANY: A. D. 1615. First newspaper publications.

See PRINTING AND PRESS: A. D. 1612-1650 (page 2592).

GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1700. The rise of Prussia.