FRESH CONTROVERSIES WITH ERASMUS (1534, 1536) AND DUKE GEORGE († 1539)

1. Luther and Erasmus Again

In reply to Luther’s “De servo arbitrio” against Erasmus the latter had published, in 1526, a sharp retort entitled “Hyperaspistes,” which, in the following year, he enlarged by adding to it a second part.[583] In this work the author’s able pen brings into the light of day the weakness of Luther’s objections, his distortion of the Church’s teaching, his frequent misrepresentations of Erasmus and his own self-contradictions.

Luther did not then reply to the work of the chief of the Humanists. In the ensuing years, however, he became painfully aware that the hostility of Erasmus had lost him many adherents belonging to the Erasmian school. A great cleavage had become apparent in the scholar’s circle of friends till then so closely united, the greater number taking their master’s side against the smaller group which remained true to Luther. It was in vain that several of Erasmus’s admirers intervened and besought Luther to spare the feelings of the elder man. The Wittenberg professor made many cutting allusions to his opponent and assumed more and more an attitude which foreboded another open outburst of furious controversy.

With the art peculiar to him, he came to persuade himself, that the champion of free-will was hostile to the idea of any Divine supremacy over the human will, scoffed at all religion, denied the Godhead and was worse than any persecutor of the Church; he was confirmed in this belief by the sarcastic sayings about his Evangel, to which Erasmus gave vent in his correspondence and conversations, and which occasionally came to Luther’s knowledge. It is true that if we look at the matter through Luther’s spectacles we can understand how certain darker sides of Erasmus and his Humanist school repelled him. Luther fixed on these, and, as was his wont, harshly exaggerated and misrepresented them. The too-great attention bestowed on the outward form, seemingly to the detriment of the Christian contents, displeased him greatly; still more so did the undeniable frivolity with which sacred things, still dear to him, were treated. At the same time it was strange to him, and rightly so, how little heed the Humanists who remained faithful to the Church paid to the principle of authority and of ecclesiastical obedience, preferring to follow the lax example set by Erasmus himself, more particularly during the first period of his career; they appeared to submit to the yoke of the Church merely formally and from force of habit, and showed none of that heart-felt conviction and respect for her visible supremacy which alone could win the respect of those without.[584]

Luther’s pent-up wrath at length vented itself in print. He had received a letter sent him from Magdeburg, on Jan. 28, 1534, by Nicholas Amsdorf, the old friend who knew so well how to fan the flames of enthusiasm for the new teaching, and who now pointed out Erasmus as the source whence George Wicel had drawn all his material for his latest attack on Lutheranism.[590] It was high time, he wrote, that Luther should paint Erasmus “in his true colours and show that he was full of ignorance and malice.” This he would best do in a tract “On the Church,” for this was the Erasmians’ weak point: They stick to the Church, because “bishops and cardinals make them presents of golden vessels,” and then “they cry out: Luther’s teaching is heresy, having been condemned by Emperor and Pope.” “I, on the other hand, see all about me the intervention and the wonders of God; I see that faith is a gift of God Who works when and where He wills, just as he raised His Son Christ from the dead. Oh, that you could see the country folk here and admire in them the glory of Christ!”

The letter pleased Luther so well that he determined to print it, appending to it a lengthy answer to Amsdorf, both being published together.[591]

In this answer, before launching out into invective against Erasmus he joins in his friend’s enthusiastic praise of the Evangel which has dawned: “Our cause was heard at Augsburg before the Emperor and the whole world, and has been found blameless; they could not but recognise the purity of our teaching.... We have confessed Christ before the evil generation of our day, and He too will confess us before God the Father and His angels.” “Wicel, I shall vanquish by silence and contempt, as my custom is. How many books I have disposed of and utterly annihilated merely by my silence, Eck, Faber, Emser, CochlÆus and many others could tell. Had I to fight with filth, I should, even if victorious, get dirty in the process. Hence I leave them to revel in their blasphemy, their lying and their calumny.”

He might, he proceeds, leave Erasmus too to dissolve into smoke like those others. For a long time past he had looked on him as one crazy (“delirus”); since he had given birth to the “viperaspides” (i.e. “brood of vipers,” a play on the title of the “Hyperaspistes”) he had given up all hopes of his theology, but would follow Amsdorf’s advice and expose his malice and ignorance to the world.

In contradiction to the facts he goes on to declare, that, in his “Explanatio symboli,” of 1533, Erasmus had “slyly planned” to undermine all respect for the Christian doctrines, and for this purpose ingratiated himself with his readers and sought to befool them, as the serpent did in Paradise. The Creed was nothing to him but a “fable,”—in support of which Luther adduces what purports to be a verbal quotation—nothing but the “mouthpiece and organ of Satan”; his method was but “a mockery of Christ”; according to him, the Redeemer had come into the world simply to give an example of holiness; His taking flesh of a virgin Erasmus described in obscene and blasphemous language; naturally the Apostles fared no better at his hands, and he even said of John the Evangelist, “meros crepat mundos” (because he mentions the “world” too often): there were endless examples of this sort to be met with in the writings of Erasmus. He was another Democrites or Epicurus; even what was doubtful in his statements had to be taken in the worst sense, and he himself (Luther) would be unable to believe this serpent even should he come to him with the most outspoken confession of Christianity.

All this he wrote seemingly with the utmost conviction, as though it were absolutely certain. At about that same time he sent a warning to his friend Amsdorf not to allege anything against Erasmus, which was not certain, should he be tempted to write against him.[592] Yet Luther’s fresh charges were undoubtedly unjust to his opponent, although his letter really does forcibly portray much that was blame-worthy in Erasmus, particularly in his earlier work, for instance, his ambiguous style of writing, so often intentionally vague and calculated to engender scepticism.[593]

Not even in Luther’s immediate circle did this letter meet with general approval. Melanchthon wrote, on March 11, 1534, to Camerarius: “Our Arcesilaus [Luther] is starting again his campaign against Erasmus; this I regret; the senile excitement of the pair disquiets me.”[594] On May 12, 1535, he even expressed himself as follows to Erasmus, referring to the fresh outbreak of hostilities: “The writings published here against you displease me, not merely on account of my private relations with you, but also because they do no public good.”[595]

Boniface Amerbach, a friend of Erasmus’s, sent Luther’s letter to his brother, calling it a “parum sana epistola,” and adding, “Hervagius [the Basle printer] told me recently that Luther, for more than a year, had been suffering from softening of the brain (‘cephalÆa’), I think the letter proves this, and also that he has not yet recovered, for in it there is no trace of a sound mind.”[596]

Recent Protestant historians speak of the letter as “on the whole hasty and dictated by jealousy,”[597] and as based “in part on inaccurate knowledge and a misapprehension of Erasmus’s writings.”[598]

Shortly after this Luther expressed himself with rather more moderation in a Preface which he composed for Anton Corvinus’s reply to Erasmus’s proposals for restoring the Church to unity. In this writing he sought to make his own the more moderate tone which dominated Corvinus’s works. He represented as the chief obstacle to reunion the opinion prevalent amongst his opponents of the consideration due to the Church. Their one cry was “the Church, the Church, the Church”; this has confirmed Erasmus in his unfounded opposition to the true Evangel, in spite of his having himself thrown doubt on all the doctrines of the Church.[599] He could not as yet well undertake a work on the subject of the Church, such as Amsdorf wished, as he was fully occupied with his translation of the Bible. In the Preface referred to above he announced, however, his intention of doing so later. The result was his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen,” of 1539, which will be treated of below.[600]

Erasmus was unwilling to go down to the grave bearing the calumnies against his faith which Luther had heaped upon him. He owed it to his reputation to free himself from these unjust charges. This he did in a writing which must be accounted one of the most forcible and sharpest which ever left his pen. The displeasure and annoyance which he naturally felt did not, however, interfere with his argument or prevent him from indulging in sparkling outbursts of wit. Amerbach had judged Luther’s attack “insane”; Erasmus, for his part, addressed his biting reply to “one not sober.” The title of the writing, published at Basle in 1534, runs: “Purgatio adversus epistolam non sobriam M. Lutheri.”[601]

It was an easy matter for Erasmus to convict the author of manifest misrepresentation and falsehood.

Luther took good care to say nothing in public about the rebuff he had received from Erasmus; nor did he ever make any attempt to refute the charge of having “lied.”

In the circle of his intimate friends, however, he inveighed all the more against the leader of the Humanists as a sceptic and seducer to infidelity.

An obvious weapon, one constantly employed against Luther by his foes, was to twit him with his lies; a reply addressed to him in 1531 by a friend of George of Saxony, Franz Arnoldi of CÖllen, near Meissen, was no exception to the rule. In this little work entitled “Antwort auf das BÜchlein,” etc., it is not merely stated that Luther, in his “Auff das vermeint Keiserlich Edict,” had put forward “as many lies as there were words,”[607] but it is also pointed out that the Augsburg Edict, “which is truly Christian and requires no glosses,” had been explained by him most abominably and shamefully, and given a meaning such as His Imperial Majesty and those who promulgated or executed it had never even dreamt of.[608] “He promises us white and gives us black. This has come down to him from his ancestor, the raging devil, who is the father of lies.... With such lies does Martin Luther seek to deck out his former vices.”[609]

2. Luther on George of Saxony and George on Luther

The hostile relations between Luther and Duke George of Saxony found expression at the end of 1525 in a correspondence, which throws some light on the origin and extent of the tension and on the character of both men. The letters exchanged were at once printed and spread rapidly through the German lands, one serving to enlist recruits to Luther’s standard, the other constituting a furious attack on the innovations.[610]

Luther’s letter of Dec. 21, 1525, to the Duke, “his gracious master,” was “an exhortation to join the Word of God,” as the printed title runs. Sent at a time when the peasants, after their defeat, had deserted Luther, and when the latter was attaching himself all the more closely to those Royal Courts which were well disposed towards him, the purpose of the letter was to admonish the chief opponent of the cause, “not so barbarously to attack Christ, the corner-stone,” but to accept the Evangel “brought to light by me.” He bases his “exhortation” on nothing less than the absolute certainty of his mission and teaching. “Because I know it, and am sure of it, therefore I must, under pain of the loss of my own soul, care, beg and implore for your Serene Highness’s soul.” He had already diligently prayed to God to “turn his heart,” and he was loath now “to pray against him for the needs of the cause”; his prayers and those of his followers were invincibly powerful, yea, “stronger than the devil himself,” as the failure of all George’s and his friends’ previous persecutions proved, “though men do not see or mark God’s great wonders in me.”

It is hard to believe that the author, in spite of all he says, really expected his letter to effect the conversion of so energetic and resolute an opponent; nevertheless, his assurances of his peaceable disposition were calculated to promote the Lutheran cause in the public eye, whatever the answer might be. He will, he says in this letter, once again “beseech the Prince in a humble and friendly manner, perhaps for the last time”; George and Luther might soon be called away by God; “I have now no more to lose in this world but my carcase, which each day draws closer to the grave.” Formerly he had, it is true, spoken “harshly and crossly” to him, as God also does “to those whom He afterwards blesses and consoles”; he had, however, also published “many kindlier sermons and booklets in which everyone might discern that I mean ill to no one but desire to serve every man to the best of my ability.”

The letter partook of the nature of a manifesto, intended to place the Catholic-minded Prince publicly in the wrong, if it did not, as was hardly to be expected, draw him over to the side of the innovators.

The Duke replied, on Dec. 28, in a manner worthy of his status in the Empire and of the firm attitude he had maintained so far. “As a layman” he refused to enter upon a “Scriptural disputation” with Luther; it was not untrue that Luther had attacked him “harshly and contrary to the ordinance of God and the command of the Gospel”; Luther might, if he chose, compare his former severity with that of God, but he certainly would not find, “in the Gospels or anywhere in Scripture,” abusive epithets such as he employed; for him, as a sovereign, to have had to put up with such treatment from a man under the ban of the Empire, had cost him much; he had been compelled to put pressure on himself to accept “persecution for justice’ sake.” Luther’s “utterly shameful abuse of our most gracious Lord, the Roman Emperor,” made it impossible for him to be Luther’s “gracious master.”

Few Princes were to suffer worse treatment at Luther’s hands than Duke George. The Duke frequently retaliated by charging Luther with being a liar.

He wrote, for instance, in 1531, that Luther simply bore witness to the fact that the “spirit of lying” dwelt in him, “who speaks nothing but his own fabrications and falsehood.” “You forsworn Luther,” he says to him, “you who treacherously and falsely calumniate His Imperial Majesty.”[612]

Luther’s anger against the most influential Prince in the Catholic League was not diminished by the fact, that the Duke severely censured the real evils on the Catholic side, was himself inclined to introduce reforms on his own, and even, at times, to go too far. Such action on George’s part annoyed Luther all the more, because in all this the Duke would not hear of any relinquishing of ancient dogma. Hence we find Luther, quite contrary to the real state of the case, abusing George as follows: The Duke was secretly in favour of the new teaching and his resistance was merely assumed; he was opposed to the reception of the Sacrament under both kinds, only because he wished to tread under foot the whole teaching of Christ, to forbid Holy Scripture altogether and particularly to condemn St. Paul;[613] if he, Luther, were not allowed to abuse the Duke, then neither might he call the devil a murderer and a liar.[614] “He is my sworn, personal enemy,” he says, and proceeds in the same vein: “Had I written in favour of the Pope, he would now be against the Pope, but because I write against the Pope, he fights for him and defends him.”[615]

Luther, as his manner was, announced as early as 1522 that “the Judgment of God would inevitably overtake him.”[616] When the Duke, in 1539, had died the death of a Christian, Luther said: “It is a judgment on those who despise the one true God.” “It is an example when a father and two fine grown-up sons sink into the grave in so short a time, but I, Dr. Luther, prophesied that Duke George and his race would perish.”[617] There was, according to Luther, only one ray of hope for the eternal happiness of the Duke, viz. that, when his son Hans lay dying in 1537, not so long before his own death, it was reported he had consoled him in the Lutheran fashion. According to Luther he had encouraged him with the article on Justification by Faith in Christ and reminded him, “that he must look only to Christ, the Saviour of the world, and forget his own works and merits.”[618] Needless to say the pious thoughts suggested to the dying man were simply those usually placed before the mind of faithful Catholics at the hour of death.

Luther’s imagination and his polemics combine to trace a picture of Duke George which is as characteristic of himself as it is at variance with the figure of the Duke, as recorded in history. He accused the Duke of misgovernment and tyranny and incited his subjects against him; and, in his worst fit of indignation, launched against the Duke the booklet “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen” (1531).[619] Yet the Saxons generally did not regard the Duke’s government as tyrannical or look upon him as an “assassin,” not even the Lutherans who formed the majority. On the contrary, they were later on to acknowledge, that, under the Duke’s reign, they had enjoyed “prosperity and peace” with the Emperor, amongst themselves and with their neighbours. His firmness and honour were no secret to all who knew him. The King of France admired his disinterestedness, when, in 1532, he rejected the proffered yearly pension of at least 5000 Gulden which was to detach him from the Empire. At the Diet of Worms this Catholic Duke had been the most outspoken in condemning the proposal made, that Luther should be refused a safe conduct for his return journey; he pointed out how much at variance this was with German ways and what a lasting shame it would bring on the German Princes. As for the rest he favoured the use of strong measures to safeguard Germany from religious and political revolution. He also befriended, more than any other German Prince or Bishop, those scholars who attacked Luther in print.

After the appearance of the libel “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” he wrote a reply entitled “About the insulting booklet which Martin Luther has published against the Dresden murderer,” though it was issued in 1531, not under his own name, but under that of Franz Arnoldi.[620]

The work is more a vindication of the Empire’s Catholic standpoint and of the honour of the Catholics against Luther’s foul suspicions and calumnies, than a personal defence of his own cause. It is couched in the language we might expect from a fighter and a sovereign pelted with filth before the eyes of his own subjects. It hails expressions of the roughest against Luther, the convicted “rebel against the Emperor and all authority,” the inventor of “slimy fabrications and palpable lies” not worth an answer, amongst which was the “downright false” assertion, that “the Papists are up in arms” against the Protestant Estates.[621] In order to understand its tone we must bear in mind Luther’s own method of belabouring all his foes with the coarsest language at his command.

It has been said, that, among the defenders of Catholicism, no voice was raised which could compare in any way in emphasis and power with that of Luther. DÖllinger in later life considered that, in comparison with Luther, his opponents could only “stammer”; what they advanced sounded “feeble, weak and colourless.”[624] Yet, what we have just quoted from Duke George cannot in fairness be charged with weakness. Their indignation and fiery zeal inspired other Catholics too to express with eloquence and rudeness their conviction of the evil consequences of Luther’s action.