Hartmann Grisar

LUTHER AT THE ZENITH OF HIS LIFE AND SUCCESS, FROM 1540 ONWARDS. APPREHENSIONS AND PRECAUTIONS

1. The Great Victories of 1540-1544.

The opening of the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541[595] coincided with the advance of Protestantism in one of the strongholds of the power and influence of Albert of Mayence. The usual residence of the Archbishop and Elector was at Halle, in his diocese of Magdeburg. Against this town accordingly all the already numerous Protestants in Albert’s sees of Magdeburg and Halberstadt directed their united efforts. Albert was compelled by the local Landtag to abolish the Catholic so-called “Neue Stift” at Halle, and to remove his residence to Mayence. Thereupon Jonas, Luther’s friend, at once, on Good Friday, 1541, commenced to preach at the church of St. Mary’s at Halle. He then became permanent preacher and head of the growing movement in the town, while two other churches were also seized by Lutheran preachers.

The town and bishopric of Naumburg, which had been much neglected by its bishop, Prince Philip of Bavaria, who resided at Freising, fell a prey to the innovations under the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony; this in spite of being an imperial city under the immediate protection of the Emperor. The Elector had taken advantage of his position as arbitrator, thanks to his influence and to the authority he soon secured, gradually to establish himself in Naumburg. By his orders, in 1541, as soon as Philip was dead, Nicholas Medler began to preach at the Cathedral as “Superintendent of Naumburg”; Julius Pflug, the excellent Provost, who had been elected bishop by the Cathedral chapter, was prevented by the Elector from taking possession of the see. Even the Wittenberg theologians were rather surprised at the haste and violence with which the Elector proceeded to upset the religious conditions there, and—a matter which concerned him deeply—to seize the city and the whole diocese. (See below, p. 191 f.)

The storm was already gathering over the archbishopric of Cologne under the weak and illiterate Archbishop, Hermann von Wied. This man, who was in reality more of a secular ruler, after having in earlier days shown himself kindly disposed to the Church, was won over, first by Peter Medmann in 1539 and then by Martin Bucer in 1541, and persuaded to introduce Lutheranism. Only by the energetic resistance of the chapter, and particularly of the chief Catholics of the archdiocese, was the danger warded off; to them the Archbishop owed, first his removal, and then his excommunication.

On March 28, 1546, shortly before the excommunication, the Emperor Charles V said to Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who had been pleading the cause of Hermann: “Why does he start novelties? He knows no Latin, and, in his whole life, has only said three Masses, two of which I attended myself. He does not even understand the Confiteor. To reform does not mean to bring in another belief or another religion.”[596]

“We are beholders of the wonders of God,” so Luther wrote to Hermann Bonn, his preacher, at OsnabrÜck; “such great Princes and Bishops are now being called of God by the working of the Holy Ghost.”[597] He was speaking not only of the misguided Archbishop of Cologne but also of the Bishop of MÜnster and OsnabrÜck, who had introduced the new teaching at OsnabrÜck by means of Bonn, Superintendent of LÜbeck. Luther, however, was rather too sanguine. In the same year he announced to Duke Albert of Prussia: “The two bishops of ‘Collen’ and MÜnster, have, praise be to God, accepted the Evangel in earnest, strongly as the Canons oppose it. Things are also well forward in the Duchy of Brunswick.”[598] As a matter of fact he turned out right only as regards Brunswick. Henry, the Catholic Duke, was expelled in 1542 by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse after the war which broke out on account of Goslar had issued in his loss of the stronghold of WolfenbÜttel; thereupon with the help of Bugenhagen the churches of the land were forcibly brought over to Lutheranism.

In 1544 the appointment at Merseburg of a bishop of the new faith in the person of George of Anhalt followed on Duke Maurice of Saxony’s illegal seizure of the see. So barefaced was this act of spoliation that even Luther entered a protest against “this rapacious onslaught on Church property.”[599] The appointment of an “Evangelical bishop” at Naumburg took place in 1542 under similar circumstances.

From Metz, where the preacher Guillaume Farel was working for the Reformation, an application was received for admission into the Schmalkalden League. The Lutherans there received at least moral support from Melanchthon who, in the name of the League, addressed a writing to the Duke of Lorraine. Not only distant Transylvania, but even Venice, held correspondence with Luther in order to obtain from him advice and instructions concerning the Protestant congregations already existing in those regions.

Thus the author of the religious upheaval might well congratulate himself, when, in the evening of his days, he surveyed the widespread influence of his work.

He was at the same time well aware what a potent factor in all this progress was the danger which menaced Germany from the Turks. The Protestant Estates continued to exploit the distress of the Empire to their own advantage in a spirit far from loyal. They insisted on the Emperor’s granting their demands within the Empire before they would promise effectual aid against the foe without; their conduct was quite inexcusable at such a time, when a new attack on Vienna was momentarily apprehended, and when the King of France was quite openly supporting the Turks.

In the meantime as a result of the negotiations an Imperial army was raised and Luther published his prudent “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den TÜrcken.” In this he advised the princes to do their duty both towards God and the Evangel and towards the Empire by defending it against the foe. The Pope is as much an enemy as the Turk, and the world has reached its close, for the last Judgment is at hand.[600]

The Emperor found it advisable to show himself even more lenient than before; the violent encroachments of the Protestants, which so unexpectedly strengthened their position, were allowed to pass unresisted; the ecclesiastical and temporal penalties pronounced against the promoters of the innovations remained a dead letter, and for the time being the Church property was left in their hands. At the Diet of Spires, in 1544, the settlement was deferred to a General Council which the Reichsabschied describes as a “Free Christian Council within the German Nation.”

As was only to be expected, Paul III, the supreme head of Christendom, energetically protested against such a decision. With dignity, and in the supreme consciousness of his rights and position, the Pope reminded the Emperor that a Council had long since been summoned (above, vol. iii., p. 424) and was only being delayed on account of the war. It did not become the civil power, nor even the Emperor, to inaugurate the religious settlement, least of all at the expense of the rights of Church and Pope as had been the case; to the Vicar of Christ and the assembly summoned by him it fell to secure the unity of the Church and to lay down the conditions of reunion; yet the civil power had left the Pope in the lurch in his previous endeavours to summon a Council and to establish peace in Germany; “God was his witness that he had nothing more at heart than to see the whole of the noble German people reunited in faith and all charity”; “willingly would he spend life and blood, as his conscience bore him witness, in the attempt to bring this about in the right way.”[601]

These admonitions fell on deaf ears, as the evil work was already done. The consent, which, by dint of defiance and determination, the Protestant princes wrung from Empire and Emperor, secured the triumph of the religious revolution in ever wider circles.

2. Sad Forebodings

In spite of all his outward success, Luther, at the height of his triumph, was filled with melancholy forebodings concerning the future of his work.

He felt more and more that the new Churches then being established lacked inward stability, and that the principle on which they were built was wanting in unity, cohesion and permanence. Neither for the protection of the faith nor for the maintenance of an independent system of Church government were the necessary provisions forthcoming. Indeed, owing to the very nature of his undertaking, it was impossible that such could be effectually supplied; thus a vision of coming disunion, particularly in the domain of doctrine, unrolled itself before his eyes; this was one of the factors which saddened him.

As early as the ‘thirties we find him giving vent to his fears of an ever-increasing disintegration. In the ‘forties they almost assume the character of definite prophecies.

In the Table-Talk of 1538, which was noted down by the Deacon Lauterbach, he seeks comfort in the thought that every fresh revival of religion had been accompanied by quarrels due to false brethren, by heresies and decay; it was true that now “the morning star had arisen” owing to his preaching, but he feared “that this light would not endure for long, not for more than fifty years”; the Word of God would “again decline for want of able ministers of the Word.”[602] “There will come want and spiritual famine”; “many new interpretations will arise, and the Bible will no longer hold. Owing to the sects that will spring up I would rather I had not printed my books.”[603]

“I fear that the best is already over and that now the sects will follow.”[604] The pen was growing heavy to his fingers; there “will be no end to the writings,” he says; “I have outlived three frightful storms, MÜnzer, the Sacramentarians and the Anabaptists; these are over, but now others will come.” “I wish not to live any longer since no peace is to be hoped for.”[605] “The Evangel is endangered by the sectarians, the revolutionary peasants and the belly servers, just as once the Roman empire was at Rome.”[606]

“On June 27 [1538],” we read, “Dr. Luther and Master Philip were dining together at his house. They spoke much, with many a sigh, of the coming times when many dangers would arise.” The greatest confusion would prevail. No one would then allow himself to be guided by the doctrine or authority of another. “Each one will wish to be his own Rabbi, like Osiander and Agricola. From this the worst scandals and the greatest desolation will come. Hence it would be best [one said], that the Princes should forestall it by some council, if only the Papists would not hold back and flee from the light. Master Philip replied: The Pope will never be brought to hold a General Council.... Oh, that our Princes and the Estates would bring about a council and some sort of unity in doctrine and worship so as to prevent each one undertaking something on his own account to the scandal of many, as some are already doing. The Church is a spectacle of woe, with so much weakness and scandal heaped upon her.”[607]

Shortly after this Luther instituted a comparison—which for him must have been very sad—between the “false Church [of the Pope] which stands erect, a cheerful picture of dignity, strength and holiness,” and the Church of Christ “which lies in such misery and ignominy, sin and insignificance as though God had no care for her.” He fancied he could find some slight comfort in the Article of the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Church,” for, so he observes, “because we don’t see it, therefore we believe in it.”[608]

In the midst of the great successes of those years he still gives utterance to the gloomiest of predictions for the future of his doctrine, which dissensions would eat to the very core. His pupil Mathesius reports him as holding forth as follows:

“Alas, good God,” he groaned in 1540, “how we have to suffer from divisions!... And many more sects will come. For the spirit of lies and murder does not sleep.... But God will save His Christendom.”[609]—In 1542 someone remarked in his presence: “Were the world to last fifty years longer many things would happen.” Thereupon Luther interjected: “God forbid, things would get worse than ever before; for many sects will arise which yet are hidden in men’s hearts, so that we shall not know how we stand. Hence, dear Lord, come with Thy Judgment Day, for no further improvement is now to be looked for!”[610]—After instancing the principal sects that had arisen up to that time he said, in 1540: “After our death many sects will arise, God help us!”[611] “But whoever after my death despises the authority of this school—so long as the Church and the school remain as they are—is a heretic and an evil man. For in this school [of Wittenberg] God has revealed His Word, and this school and town can take a place side by side with any others in the matter of doctrine and life, even though our life be not yet quite above reproach.... Those who flee from us and secretly contemn us have denied the faith.... Who knew anything five-and-twenty years ago [before my preaching started]? Alas for ambition; it is the cause of all the misfortunes.”[612]

Frequently he reverts to the theory, that the Church must needs put up with onsets and temptations to despair. “Now even greater despair has come upon us on account of the sectarians,” he said in 1537; “the Church is in despair according to the words of the Psalmist (cviii. 92): ‘Unless Thy Law had been my meditation I had then perhaps perished in my abjection.’”[613]

At an earlier period (1531) a sermon of Luther’s vividly pictures this despair: “If, in spiritual matters, it comes about, that the devil sows his seed in Christ’s kingdom and it springs up both in doctrine and life, then we have a crop of misery and distress. In the preaching it happens, that although God has appointed one man and commanded him to preach the Evangel, yet others are found even amongst his pupils who think they know how to do it ten times better than he.... Every man wants to be master in doctrine.... Now they are saying: ‘Why should not we have the Spirit and understand Scripture just as well as anyone else?’ Thus a new doctrine is at once set up and sects are formed.... Hence a deadly peril to Christendom ensues, for it is torn asunder and pure doctrine everywhere perishes.”[614] Christ had indeed “foretold that this would happen”; true enough, it is not forbidden to anyone “who holds the public office of preacher to judge of doctrine”; but whoever has not such an office has no right to do so; if he does this of “his own doctrine and spirit,” then “I call such judging of doctrine one of the greatest, most shameful and most wicked vices to be found upon earth, one from which all the factious spirits have arisen.”[615]

Duke George of Saxony unfeelingly pointed out to the innovator that his fear, that many, very many indeed, would say: “Do we not also possess the Spirit and understand Scripture as well as you?” would only too surely be realised.

“What man on earth,” wrote the Duke in his usual downright fashion, “ever hitherto undertook a more foolish task than you in seeking to include in your sect all Christians, especially those of the German nation? Success is as likely in your case as it was in that of those who set about building a tower in Babylonia which was to reach the very heavens; in the end they had to cease from building, and the result was seventy-two new tongues. The same will befall you; you also will have to stop, and the result will be seventy-two new sects.”[616]

Luther’s letters speak throughout in a similar strain of the divisions already existing and the gloomy outlook for the future; in the ‘forties his lamentation over the approaching calamities becomes, however, even louder than usual in spite of the apparent progress of his cause. Much of what he says puts us vividly in mind of Duke George’s words just quoted.

Amidst the excitement of his struggle with the fanatics he wrote as early as 1525 to the “Christians at Antwerp”: “The tiresome devil begins to rage amongst the ungodly and to belch forth many wild and mazy beliefs and doctrines. This man will have nothing of baptism, that one denies the Sacrament, a third awaits another world between this and the Last Day; some teach that Christ is not God; some say this, some that, and there are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads; no peasant is so rude but that if he dreams or fancies something, it must forsooth be the Holy Spirit which inspires him, and he himself must be a prophet.”[617]

After the bitter experiences of the intervening years we find in a letter of 1536 this bitter lament: “Pray for me that I too may be delivered from certain ungodly men, seeing you rejoice that God has delivered you from the Anabaptists and the sects. For new prophets are constantly arising against me one after the other, so that I almost wish to be dissolved in order not to see such evils without end, and to be set free at last from this kingdom of the devil.”[618]

Even in the strong pillars of the Evangel, in the Landgrave of Hesse and Bucer the theologian, he apprehended treason to his cause and complains of them as “false brethren.” At the time of the negotiations at Ratisbon, in 1541, he exclaims in a letter to Melanchthon: “They are making advances to the Emperor and to our foes, and look on our cause as a comedy to be played out among the people, though as is evident it is a tragedy between God and Satan in which Satan’s side has the upper hand and God’s comes off second best.... I say this with anger and am incensed at their games. But so it must be; the fact that we are endangered by false brethren likens us to the Apostle Paul, nay, to the whole Church, and is the sure seal that God stamps upon us.”[619]

In spite of this “seal of God,” he is annoyed to see how his Evangel becomes the butt of “heretical attacks” from within, and suffers from the disintegrating and destructive influence of the immorality and godlessness of many of his followers.

This, for instance, he bewails in a letter of condolence sent in 1541 to Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg. At Nuremberg according to Link’s account the evil seemed to be assuming a menacing shape. Not the foe without, writes Luther, but rather “our great gainsayers within, who repay us with contempt, are the danger we must fear, according to the words of the common prophecy: ‘After Antichrist has been revealed men will come who say: There is no God!’ This we see everywhere fulfilled to-day.... They think our words are but human words!”[620]

About this time he often contemplates with sadness the abundance of other crying disorders in his Churches,[621] the wantonness of the great and the decadence of the people; he cries: “Hasten, O Jesus, Thy coming; the evils have come to a head and the end cannot be delayed. Amen.”[622] “I am sick of life if this life can be called life.... Implacable hatred and strife amongst the great ... no hopes of any improvement ... the age is Satan’s own; gladly would I see myself and all my people quickly snatched from it!”[623] The evil spirit of apostasy and fanatism which had raged so terribly at MÜnster, was now, according to him, particularly busy amongst the great ones, just as formerly it had laid hold on the peasants. “May God prevent him and resist him, the evil spirit, for truly he means mischief.”[624]

And yet he still in his own way hopes in God and clings to the idea of his call; God will soon mock at the devil: “The working of Satan is patent, but God at Whom they now laugh will mock at Satan in His own time.”[625]

We can understand after such expressions descriptive of his state of mind, the assurance with which, for all his confidence of victory, he frequently seems to forecast the certain downfall of his cause. In the German Table-Talk, for instance, we read: “So long as those who are now living and who teach the Word of God diligently are still with us, those who have seen and heard me, Philip, Pomeranus and other pious, faithful and honest teachers, all may be well; but when they all are gone and this age is over, there will be a falling away.”[626] He also sees how two great and widely differing parties will arise among his followers: unbelievers on the one hand and Pietists and fanatics on the other; we have a characteristic prophecy of the sort where he says of the one party, that, like the Epicureans, they would acknowledge “no God or other life after this,” and of the other, that many people would come out of the school of enthusiasm, “following their own ideas and speculations and boasting of the Spirit”; “drunk with their own virtues and having their understanding darkened,” they would “obstinately insist on their own fancies and yield to no one.”[627]

And again he says sadly: “God will sweep His threshing-floor. I pray that after my death my wife and children may not long survive me; very dangerous times are at hand.”[628] “I pray God,” he frequently said, “to take away this our generation with us, for, when once we are gone, the worst of times will follow.”[629] The preacher, “M. Antonius Musa once said,” so he recalls: “We old preachers only vex the world, but on you young ones the world will pour out its wrath; therefore take heed to yourselves.”[630]

This is not the place to investigate historically the fulfilment of these predictions. We shall content ourselves with quoting, in connection with Musa, the words of another slightly later preacher. Cyriacus Spangenberg saw in Luther a prophet, for one reason because his gloomiest predictions were being fulfilled before the eyes of all. In the third sermon of his book, “Luther the Man of God,” he shows to what frightful contempt the preachers of Luther’s unadulterated doctrine were everywhere exposed, just as he himself (Spangenberg) was hated and persecuted for being over-zealous for the true faith of the “Saint” of Wittenberg. “Ah,” he says in a sermon in 1563 couched in Luther’s style, “Shame on thy heart, thy neck, thy tongue, thou filthy and accursed world. Thy blasphemy, fornication, unchastity, gluttony and drunkenness ... are not thought too much; but that such should be scolded is too much.... If this be not the devil himself, then it is something very like him and is assuredly his mother.”[631]

3. Provisions for the Future

Luther failed to make the effectual and systematic efforts called for in order to stave off the fate to which he foresaw his work would be exposed. He was not the man to put matters in order, quite apart from the unsurmountable difficulties this would have involved, seeing he possessed little talent for organisation. He was very well aware that one expedient would be to surrender church government almost entirely into the hands of the secular authorities.

A Protestant Council?

The negotiations which preceded the Œcumenical Council of the Catholic Church, had for one result not only to impress the innovators with a sense of their own unsettled state, but to lead them to discuss the advisability of holding a great Protestant council of their own. Luther himself, however, wisely held aloof from such a plan, nay his opposition to it was one of the main obstacles which prevented its fulfilment.

When the idea was first mooted in 1533 it was rejected by Luther and his theologians Jonas, Bugenhagen and Melanchthon in a joint memorandum. “Because it is plain,” so they declare, “that we ourselves are not at one, and must first of all consider how we are to arrive at unity amongst ourselves. In short, though an opposition council might be good and useful it is needless to speak of such a thing just now.”[632]

In 1537 the Landgrave of Hesse, and more particularly the Elector of Saxony, again proposed at Schmalkalden that Luther, following the example of the Greeks and the Bohemians, should summon a council of his own, a national Evangelical council, to counteract the Papal Council.[633] The Elector proposed that it should be assembled at Augsburg and comprise at least 250 preachers and men of the law; the Emperor might be invited to attend and a considerable army was also to be drafted to Augsburg for the protection of the assembly. At that time Luther’s serious illness saved him from an embarrassing situation.

Bucer and Melanchthon were now the sole supporters of the plan of a council. Both were men who believed in mediation and Melanchthon may really have hoped for a while, that the “philosophy of dissimulation,” for which he stood,[634] might, even in a council, palliate the inward differences and issue in something tolerably satisfactory. Luther himself was never again to refer to the Evangelical Council.

It was the theologians headed by Martin Bucer, who, at the Diet of Schmalkalden in 1540 at which Luther was not present, lodged a memorandum on the advisability of holding a council. The petitioners declared it “very useful and called for, both for the saving of unity in doctrine and for the bettering of many other things, that, every one or two years, the Estates should convene a synod.” Visitors chosen there were to “silence any errors in doctrine” that they might discover.[635] The Estates, however, did not agree to this proposal; it was easy to foresee that it would be unworkable and productive of evil. It was only necessary to call to mind the fruitlessness of the great assemblies at Cassel and Wittenberg which had brought about the so-called Wittenberg Concord and the disturbances to which the Concord gave rise.[636]

Bucer keenly regretted the absence of any ecclesiastical unity and cohesion amongst his friends.

“Not even a shadow of it remains,” so he wrote to Bullinger. “Every church stands alone and every preacher for himself. Not a few shun all connection with their brethren and any discussion of the things of Christ. It is just like a body the members of which are cut off and where one cannot help the other. Yet the spirit of Christ is a spirit of harmony; Christ wills that His people should be one, as He and the Father are one, and that they love one another as He loved us.... Unless we become one in the Lord every effort at mending and reviving morals is bound to be useless. For this reason,” he continues, “it was the wish of Œcolampadius when the faith was first preached at Basle, to see the congregations represented and furthered by synods. But he was not successful even amongst us [who stood nearest to him in the faith]. I cannot say that to-day there is any more possibility of establishing this union of the Churches; but the real cause of our decline certainly lies in this inability. Possibly, later on, others may succeed where we failed. For, truly, what we have received of the knowledge of Christ and of discipline will fade away unless we, who are Christ’s, unite ourselves more closely as members of His Body.”

He proceeds to indicate plainly that one of the main obstacles to such a union was Luther’s rude and offensive behaviour towards the Swiss theologians: Luther had undoubtedly heaped abuse on “guiltless brethren.” But with this sort of thing, inevitable in his case, it would be necessary to put up. “Will it not be better for us to let this pass than to involve so many Churches in even worse scandals? Could I, without grave damage to the Churches, do something to stop all this vituperation, then assuredly I should not fail to do so.”[637]

Unfortunately the peacemaker’s efforts could avail nothing against a personality so imperious and ungovernable as Luther’s.

Bucer continued nevertheless to further the idea of a Protestant council, though, so long as Luther lived, only with bated breath. He endeavoured at least to interest the Landgrave of Hesse in his plan for holding small synods of theologians.

It was the want of unity in the matter of doctrine and the visible decline of discipline that drove him again and again to think of this remedy. On Jan. 8, 1544, he wrote to Landgrave Philip: In so many places there is “no profession of faith, no penalties, no excommunication of those who sin publicly, nor yet any Visitation or synod. Only what the lord or burgomaster wished was done, and, in place of one Pope, many Popes have arisen and things become worse and worse from day to day.” He reminds the Prince of the proposal made at Schmalkalden; because nothing was done to put this in effect, scandals were on the increase. “We constantly find that scarcely a third or fourth part communicate with Christ. What sort of Christians will there be eventually?”[638]—In the same way he tells him later: Because no synods are held “many things take place daily which ought really greatly to trouble all of us.”[639] In WÜrtemberg and in some of the towns of Swabia the authorities were dissuaded by the groundless fear lest the preachers should once more gain too much influence; this was why the secular authorities were averse to synods and Visitations; but “on this account daily arise gruesome divisions in matters of doctrine and unchastity of life; we find some who are daily maddened with drink and who give such scandal in other matters that the enemies of Christ have a terrible excuse for blaspheming and hindering our true Gospel.... At the last Schmalkalden meeting all the preachers were anxious that synods and Visitations should be ordered and held everywhere. But who has paid any heed to this?” And yet this is the best means whereby “our holy religion might be preserved and guarded from the new Papists amongst us, i.e. those who do not accept the Word of God in its purity and entirety, but explain it away, pull it to pieces, distort and bend it as their own sensual passions and temptations move them.”[640]

Once the main obstacle had been removed by Luther’s death, Bucer, who was very confident of his own abilities, again mooted the idea of a great council. In the same letter to Landgrave Philip of Hesse in which he refers to the death of Luther, “the father and teacher of us all,” which had occurred shortly before, he exhorts the Landgrave more emphatically than ever to co-operate, so that “first of all a general synod may be held of our co-religionists of every estate,” to which all the sovereigns should despatch eminent preachers and councillors—i.e. be formally convened by the secular authorities—and, that, subsequently “particular synods be held in every country of the Churches situated there.”[641] “Short of this the Churches will assuredly fare badly.”[642]

The Landgrave was not averse, yet the matter never got any further. The terrible quarrels amongst the theologians in the camp of the new faith after Luther’s decease[643] put any general Protestant council out of the question.

We can imagine what such a council would have become, if, in addition to the theologians, the lay element had been represented to the extent demanded at a certain Disputation held at Wittenberg under Luther’s presidency in 1543.[644] From the idea of the whole congregation taking its share in the government of the Church, Luther could never entirely shake himself free. Nevertheless it is probable, that, in spite of this Disputation, he had not really changed his mind as to the impossibility of an Evangelical council.

If, with Luther’s, we compare Melanchthon’s attitude towards the question of a Lutheran council we find that the latter’s wish for such a council and his observations about it afforded him plentiful opportunity for voicing his indignation at the religious disruption then rampant.[645]

“Weak consciences are troubled,” he said in 1536, “and know not which sect to follow; in their perplexity they begin to despair of religion altogether.”[646]—“Violent sermons, which promote lawlessness and break down all barriers against the passions, are listened to greedily. Such preaching, more worthy of cynics than of Christians, it is which thunders forth the false doctrine that good works are not called for. Posterity will marvel that there should ever have been an age when such madness was received with applause.”[647]—“Had you made the journey with us,” he writes on his return from a visit to the Palatinate and Swabia, “and, like us, seen the woeful desolation of the Churches in so many places, you would doubtless long with tears and sighs that the Princes and the learned should confer together how best to come to the help of the Churches.”[648]—Later again we read in his letters: “Behold how great is everywhere the danger to the Churches and how difficult their government; for everywhere those in the ministry quarrel amongst themselves and set up strife and division.” “We live like the nomads, no one obeys any man in anything whatsoever.”[649]

Two provisions suggested by Luther for the future in lieu of the impracticable synods were, the establishment of national consistories and the use of a sort of excommunication.

Luther’s Attitude towards the Consistories introduced in 1539

With strange resignation Luther sought to persuade himself that, even without the help of any synods and general laws, it would still be possible to re-establish order by means of a certain supervision to be exercised with the assistance of the State, backed by the penalty of exclusion. Against laws and regulations for the guidance of the Church’s life, he displayed an ever-growing prejudice, the reason for this being partly his peculiar ideas on the abrogation of all governing authority of the Church, partly the experiences with which he had met.

“So long as the sense of unity is not well rooted in the heart and mind”—he wrote in 1545, i.e. after the establishment of the consistories—“outward unity is not of much use, nor will it last long.... The existing observances [in matters of worship] must not become laws. On the contrary, just as the schoolmaster and father of the family rule without laws, and, in the school and in the home, correct faults, so to speak only by supervision, so, in the same way, in the Church, everything should be done by means of supervision, but not by rules for the future.... Everything depends on the minister of the Word being prudent and faithful. For this reason we prefer to insist on the erection of schools, but above all on that purity and uniformity of doctrine which unites minds in the Lord. But, alas, there are too few who devote themselves to study; many are just bellies and no more, intent on their daily bread.... Time, however, will mend much that it is impossible to settle beforehand by means of regulations.”[650]

“If we make laws,” he continues, “they become snares for consciences and pure doctrine is obscured and set aside, particularly if those who come after are careless and unlearned.... Already during our lifetime we have seen sects and dissensions enough under our very noses, how each one follows his own way. In short, contempt for the Word on our side and blasphemy on the other [Catholic] side proclaim loudly enough the advent of the Last Day. Hence, above all, let us have pure and abundant preaching of the Word! The ministers of the Word must first of all become one heart and one soul. For if we make laws our successors will lay claim to the same authority, and, fallen human nature being what it is, the result will be a war of the flesh against the flesh.”[651]

In other words Luther foresaw a war of all against all as likely sooner or later to be the result of any thoroughgoing attempt to regulate matters by means of laws as the Catholics did in their councils. He and his friends were persuaded that laws could only be made effectual by virtue of the power of the State.

Melanchthon declared: “Unless the Court supports our arrangements, what else will they become but Platonic laws, to use a Greek saying?”[652]

The idea to which Luther had clung so long as there was any hope, viz. to make the congregations self-governing, was but a fanciful and impracticable one; when again, little by little, he came to seek support from the secular authority, he did so merely under compulsion; he felt it to involve a repudiation of his own principles, nor could he control his jealousy when the far-reaching interference of the State speedily became manifest.

In the Saxon electorate the consistories had been introduced in 1539, not so much at the instance of Luther as of the committee representing the Estates. They were to deal with ecclesiastical affairs and disputes, with complaints against, and grievances of, the clergy, but chiefly with the matrimonial cases. The earlier “Visitors” had lacked executive powers. The consistory established by the Elector at Wittenberg for the whole electorate was composed of two preachers (Jonas and Agricola), and two lawyers. Luther raised many objections, particularly to the consistory’s proposed use of excommunication; he feared that, unless they stuck to his theological views, the consistories would lead to “yet another scrimmage.” Later, however, he gave the new organisation his support. It was not till 1541 that the work of the consistories was more generally extended.[653]

Luther consoled himself and Spalatin as follows for the loss of dignity which they apprehended: “The consistory will deal only with matrimonial cases, with which we no longer will or can have any more to do; also with the bringing back of the peasants to some sort of discipline and the payment of stipends to the preachers.”[654]

For the Wittenberg consistory to relieve him of the matrimonial cases was in many respects just what he desired. He had himself frequently dealt with these cases according to the dictates of his own ever-changing views on marriage, so far as he was allowed by his frequent quarrels with the lawyers who questioned his right to interfere. He now declared: “I am glad that the consistoria have been established, especially on account of the matrimonial cases.”[655] As early as 1536, he had written: “The peasants and rude populace who seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers, who, whenever possible, oppose our decisions, have wearied me so much that I have flung aside the matrimonial cases and written to some telling them that they may do just as they please in the name of all the devils; let the dead bury their dead; for though I give much advice, I cannot help the people when afterwards they are robbed and teased [by the lawyers]. If the world will have the Pope then let it have him if otherwise it cannot be.”

“So far I have not found one single lawyer,” he continues, speaking of a certain matrimonial question, “who would hold with me against the Pope in this or any similar case.... We theologians know nothing, and are not supposed to count.”[656]

It was in part nausea and wounded vanity, in part also his abhorrence for the ecclesiastical and sacramental side of marriage which caused him repeatedly to declare: “I would we were rid of the matrimonial business”;[657] “marriage and all its circumstances is a political affair” (both statements date from 1538);[658] “leave the matrimonial cases to the secular authorities, for they concern, not the conscience, but the external law of the Princes and magistrates” (1532).[659]

Of the ecclesiastical powers of the sovereign he declared however (1539), “We must make the best of him as bishop, since no other bishop will help us.”[660]

“But if things come to such a pass that the Courts try to rule as they please,” so he wrote at a time when this principle had already begun to bear its bitter fruit, “then the last state will be worse than the first ... in that case let the Lords themselves be our pastors and preachers, let them baptise, visit the sick, give communion and perform all the other offices of the Church! Otherwise let them stop confusing the two callings, attend to their own Courts and leave the Churches to the clergy.... It is Satan who in our day is seeking to introduce into the Church the counsels and the authority of the government officials; we shall, however, resist him and keep the two callings separate.”[661]

Yet the “two callings,” the secular and the ecclesiastical, were to become more and more closely intermingled. As was inevitable, the weak spiritual authority set up by Luther was soon absorbed by a strong secular authority well aware of its own aims; the secular power treated the former as its sacristan charged with carrying out the services of the Church, and gradually assumed exclusive control, even in matters of doctrine. A moral servitude such as had never been seen at any period in the history of the German Church was the consequence of the State government of the Church, brought about by the consistories.

The secular authorities to which Protestantism looked for support had been well organised throughout the Empire by the League of Schmalkalden. Subsequent to 1535 the warlike alliance had been extended for a further ten years. In 1539 the state of things became so threatening, that Luther feared lest the Catholic princes should attack the Protestants. In a sermon he referred to the “fury of Satan amongst the blinded Papists who incite the Emperor and other kings against the Evangel”; he, however, also added, that “we, by our boundless malice and ingratitude, have called down the wrath of God.” They ought to pray, “that the Emperor might not turn his arms against us who have the pure Word of Christ.”[668] As a matter of fact, however, the Emperor and the Empire were not in a position even to protect themselves against the wanton behaviour of the innovators.

Amongst the outward provisions made for the future benefit of the new Church, the League of Schmalkalden deserves the first place. In the very year before his death Luther took steps to ensure the prolongation of this armed alliance.[669]

Among the efforts made at home to improve matters a place belongs to Luther’s attempts to introduce a more frequent use of excommunication.

Luther seeks to introduce the so-called Lesser Excommunication

The introduction of the ban engrossed Luther’s attention more particularly after 1539, but without any special results. In 1541 we find the question raised under rather peculiar circumstances in one of the numerous letters in which Luther complains of the secular authorities. At Nuremberg, Wenceslaus Link had threatened certain persons of standing with excommunication, whereupon one of the town-councillors hurled at him the opprobrious epithet of “priestling.” Full of indignation, Luther wrote: “It is true the civil authorities ever have been and always will be enemies of the Church.... God has rejected the world and, of the ten lepers, scarcely one takes His side, the rest go over to the prince of this world.” “Excommunication is part of the Word of God.” If they look upon our preaching as the Word of God then it is a disgrace that they should refuse to hear of excommunication, despise the ministers of the Word and hate the God Whom they have confessed; they wickedly blaspheme in thus hurling the term ‘priestling’ at His ministers.[670]

Here we get a glimpse of the difficulty which attended the introduction of the ban: “They refuse to hear of excommunication.”

With the Greater Excommunication which involved civil disabilities, and in particular exclusion to some extent from social intercourse, Luther had no sympathy; he was interested in the reintroduction merely of the Lesser Excommunication prohibiting the excommunicate to take part in public worship, or at least to receive the Supper or to stand as godparent. In his view the Greater Excommunication was a matter for the sovereign and did not in the least concern the ministers of the Church; this he points out in his Schmalkalden Articles.[671] He even was inclined to look upon any such action of the ruler with a jealous eye; from anything of the sort it were better for the sovereign to abstain for fear of any awkward confusion of the spiritual with the secular power.[672]

The “Unterricht der Visitatorn,” printed in 1528, had already suggested to the ministers the use of a kind of Lesser Excommunication, but, in the absence of anything definite, the proposal remained practically a dead letter. We learn, however, that Luther pronounced his first ban of this sort against some alleged witches.[673] Subsequently he had strongly urged at the Court of the Elector that the authorities should at least threaten gross contemners of religion with “exile and punishment” as in the case of blasphemers, and that then the pastors, after instruction and admonition had proved of no avail, should proceed to exclude such men from church membership[674] as “heathen to be shunned.” When mentioning this he fails to state whether or to what extent his proposal was carried out.[675] On the other hand, he often declares that the actual state of the masses rendered quite impossible any ordering of ecclesiastical life according to the Gospel; he is also fond of speaking of the danger there would be of falling back into the Popish regulations abolished by the freedom of the Gospel, were disciplinary measures reintroduced.

What moved Luther in 1538 to advocate the use of the ban was, first, the action of the Elector’s haughty Captain and Governor, Hans Metzsch at Wittenberg, who, in addition to Luther’s excommunication, was threatened with dismissal from his office, or, as Luther expresses it, with the Greater Excommunication of the ruler (1538), and, secondly, the doings of a Wittenberg burgher who (Feb., 1539) dared to go to the Supper in spite of having committed homicide. In the case of Metzsch a form of minor excommunication was resorted to, Luther declaring invalid the absolution and permission to communicate granted by the Deacon FrÖschel; whether or not, after this, he pronounced a further excommunication, this much is certain, viz. that, not long after the pair were reconciled.[676]

Many of the well-disposed on Luther’s side were in favour of the ban as a disciplinary measure; others were intensely hostile to it. Of his latest intention, Luther speaks at some length in a sermon of Feb. 23, 1539. He there explains how the whole congregation must be behind the clergy in enforcing the ban; they were to be notified publicly of any man who proved obstinate and were to pray against him; then was to follow the formal expulsion from the congregation; re-admission to public worship was also to take place publicly.

The plan of using the ban as a disciplinary measure was, however, brought to nought by the efforts of the Court and the lawyers, who wished all proceedings of the sort to devolve upon the government as represented in the consistories.[677] Luther also encountered the further difficulty, that, in many cases, the ban was simply ignored, even greater scandal arising out of this public display of contempt. Hence, owing to his experience, he came to enjoin the greatest caution.

The want of a Hierarchy. Ordinations

Sebastian Franck of DonauwÖrth, a man responsible for some fanatical doctrines, but a good observer of events, wrote in 1534 in his “Cosmography”: “Every sect has its own teacher, leader and priest, so that now no one can write of the German faith, and a whole volume would be necessary, and indeed would not suffice, to enumerate all their sects and beliefs.” “Men will and must have a Pope,” he says, “they will steal one or dig one out of the earth, and if you take one from them every day they will soon find a new one.”[684]

It was not, however, exactly a “Pope” that the various sects desired; the great and commanding name of the author of the schism could endure none other beside it, quite apart from the impossibility of anything of the sort being realised. On the other hand, the appointment of bishops to the new Churches, i.e. the introduction of a kind of hierarchy, had been discussed since about 1540.

Luther saw well enough what a firm foundation the Church of the “Papists” possessed in its episcopate. Would not the introduction of eminent Lutheran preachers into the old German episcopal sees and their investment with the secular authority and quality of bishops, serve to strengthen the cause of the Evangel where it was weakest? The Superintendents did not suffice, though these officers, first introduced in the Saxon Visitation of 1527, held a post of supervision duly recognised in the Church.

4. Consecration of Nicholas Amsdorf as “Evangelical Bishop” of Naumburg (1542)

At first Luther was loath under the circumstances to advise the setting up in Naumburg of a bishop of the new faith. To him and to his advisers the step appeared too dangerous. Nevertheless, on hearing of the election of Pflug, he wrote as follows to the Elector: These Naumburg canons “are desperate people and the devil’s very own. But what cannot be carried off openly, may be won by waiting. Some day God will let it fall into your Electoral Highness’s hands, and the devil’s wiseacres will be caught in their own wisdom.”[694]

When, however, the Elector obstinately insisted on putting into execution his plan, contrary to justice and to the laws of the Empire as it was, and when his agents had already begun to govern the new territory, Luther’s views and those of the Wittenberg theologians gradually changed. It was difficult, they wrote, to “map out beforehand the order” of the German Church; the question whether they would have bishops, or do without, had not yet been decided; meanwhile the Prince had better establish a consistory. Later on, however, they advised the appointment of a bishop, for the Church cannot be without its bishop and the Chapter had forfeited its rights; there was, nevertheless, to be a real and genuine election at which the faithful were to be represented.[695]

Luther and his friends wanted to have as bishop Prince George of Anhalt, Canon of Magdeburg and Merseburg, who shared the Wittenberg views.

To the Elector, however, who had other plans of his own, it seemed, that, owing to his position, this Prince might not prove an easy tool in his sovereign’s hands. Nicholas Amsdorf, preacher at Magdeburg, who for long years had been Luther’s associate, was accounted one of his most determined supporters and, as time went on, even gained for himself the reputation of being “more Lutheran than Luther,” appeared a more likely candidate. It was no difficult matter to secure Luther’s consent. He gave Amsdorf the following testimonial: “He was richly endowed by God, learned and proficient in Holy Scripture, more so than the whole crowd of Papists; also a man of good life and faithful and upright at heart.” The fact that he was unmarried was a recommendation for the post, even from the point of view of “Papal law.”[696]

It has already been mentioned that Amsdorf was later on to write the book “That good works are harmful to Salvation,” and that, previously, about 1525, he was active in making matches between the escaped nuns and the leaders of the innovations. Melanchthon, writing to Johannes Ferinarius, says: “He was an adulterer, and lay with the wife of his deacon at Magdeburg”; of this we hear from the Luther researcher J. K. Seidemann, who quotes from a Dresden MS.[697]

The Ceremony at Naumburg

The 20 Jan., 1542, was appointed for the “consecration” of the bishop. Two days before, the Elector of Saxony made his solemn entry into the little town on the Saale escorted by some three hundred horsemen, the gentlemen all clothed in decorous black. His brother Johann Ernest and Duke Ernest of Brunswick were in his train. Luther, Melanchthon and Amsdorf also took part in the procession. It was a mere formality when the Chapter (or rather the magistrates of the towns of Zeitz and Naumburg, and the knights, though only such as were Protestant) were asked to cast their votes in favour of Amsdorf; in reality the will of Johann Frederick was law. Their scruples concerning the oath they had taken under the former bishop, of everlasting fidelity to the Catholic Chapter were, at their desire, dealt with by Luther himself, who argued that no oath taken by the sheep to the wolves could be of any account, and that no duty “could be binding which ran counter to God’s commandment to do away with idolatrous doctrine.”[698]

The “consecration” then took place on the day appointed, within the venerable walls of the mediÆval Cathedral of Naumburg, ostensibly according to the usage of the earliest ages, when the Church had not as yet fallen away from the Gospel. The Blessing and imposition of hands were to signify that the Church of Naumburg, i.e. the whole flock, was wedded to its bishop; he too, in like manner, would ceremonially proclaim his readiness to take charge of this same flock. The bishops of the adjoining sees, who, in accordance with the custom of antiquity should have assembled to perform the consecration, were represented by three superintendents and one apostate Abbot. “At this consecration [to quote Luther’s own words] the following bishops, or as we shall call them parsons, shall officiate: Dr. Nicholas Medler, parson and super-attendant of Naumburg, Master George Spalatin, parson and super-attendant at Aldenburg [the former preacher at the Court of the Elector], Master Wolfgang Stein, parson and super-attendant at Weissenfels”[699] (also Abbot Thomas of St. George’s near Naumburg).

Luther is silent concerning the two requirements which, according to the olden views, were the most essential for the consecration of a bishop, viz. the ritual consecration, which only a consecrated bishop could impart, and the jurisdiction or authority to rule, only to be derived from bishops yet more highly placed in the hierarchy, or from the Pope. Both these Luther himself had to supply.

At the outset of the ceremony Nicholas Medler announced the deed which was about to be undertaken “through God’s Grace,” to which the people assented by saying “Amen.” After this Luther preached a sermon on the Bible-text addressed to the Church’s heads: “Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops to rule the church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood” (Acts xx. 28). After the sermon Amsdorf knelt before the altar surrounded by the four assistants and the “Veni Creator” was sung. Luther admonished the future bishop concerning his episcopal duties, and, on the latter giving a satisfactory answer, in common with the four others, he laid his hands on his head; after this Luther himself offered a prayer for him. The “Te Deum” was then sung in German. Hence the bishop’s consecration took place in much the same way as the ordination of the preachers, viz. by imposition of hands and prayer.

Luther himself had some misgivings concerning the step and its far-reaching consequences.

He wrote not long after to Jacob Probst, pastor at Bremen, whom he here addresses as bishop: “I wonder you have not heard the news, how, namely, on Jan. 20, Dr. Nicholas Amsdorf was ordained by the heresiarch Luther bishop of the church of Naumburg. It was a daring act and will arouse much hatred, animosity and indignation against us. I am hard at work hammering out a book on the subject. What the result will be God knows.” He adds: “Jonas is working successfully for the kingdom of Christ at Halle [where he had been appointed pastor] in spite of the accursed Heinz and Meinz [Duke Henry of Brunswick and Archbishop Albert of Mayence]. My own lordship and Katey my Moses greet you and your spouse. Pray for me that I may die at the right hour, for I am sick of this life, or rather of this unspeakably bitter death.”[700]

Luther’s booklet on the Consecration of Bishops

The bitter work which Luther, at the request of the Elector and the Naumburg Estates, “hammered out,” in vindication of this act of violence, appeared in the same year, i.e. 1542, under the title “Exempel einen rechten Christlichen Bischoff zu weihen.”[701]

How little Luther really knew of the cunning policy of his sovereign is plain from his assuring his reader in the same booklet, apparently in the best of faith, that it was no motive of self-interest that had led the Elector to intervene in the Naumburg business; “the lands were to remain the property of the see,” the Elector did not wish “to subjugate it, to deprive it of its liberty, or alienate it from the Empire,” etc.[707] He declares that whatever reports Julius Pflug was spreading to the contrary were a “stinking lie.” Yet the Elector had ousted the rightful occupant of the see, as he had intended to do all along, and those who ventured to oppose his commands he was to punish by sequestration of lands and even by imprisonment.

The Protestant bishop was assigned a miserable pittance of six hundred Gulden so that Amsdorf, as Luther declared, had been better off at Magdeburg.[708] Practically nothing was done by the sovereign for the ordering of the Church. Luther bewailed to Amsdorf: “The negligence of our government gives me great concern. They so often take rash steps and, then, when we are down in the mire, snore idly and leave us on the lurch. I intend, however, to open the ears of Dr. Pontanus [Chancellor BrÜck] and of the Prince and give them some plain speaking.”[709]

“How is this?” Luther wrote about this time to Justus Jonas, who, at Halle, had gone through much the same experience, “We pray against the Turk, we are the teachers of the people and their intercessors with God and yet those who wish to be accounted ‘Evangelicals’ rashly excite the wrath of God by their avarice, their robbing and plundering of the Church. The people let us go on teaching, praying and suffering while they heap sin upon sin!”[710]

Excerpts from Luther’s Letters to the New “Bishop”

Luther’s correspondence with his friend Amsdorf affords an instructive psychological insight into the working of his mind. During those last years of his life he took refuge more and more in a certain fanatical mysticism. He sought comfort in the thought of his exalted calling and in a kind of inspiration; yet all he could do availed but little against his inward gloom.

Amsdorf, the whilom Catholic priest, found little pleasure in his episcopal status and felt bitterly both his isolation and the contrast between a pomp that was irksome to him and the real emptiness of his position; Luther, accordingly, in the letters of consolation he wrote him, appealed to the Divine inspiration, which had led to his appointment as bishop. The consecration was surely undertaken at the express command of God which no man may oppose. “In these Divine matters,” he writes, “it is far safer to allow oneself to be carried away than to take any active part; this is what happened in your case, and yours is a noble and unusual example. We are never in worse case than when we fancy we are acting with discernment and understanding, because then self-complacency slinks in; but the blinder we are, the more God acts through us. He does more than we can think or understand.” We have here the same principle to which he had been so fond of appealing in the early days of his career so as to be able to attribute to God the unforeseen and far-going consequences of his deeds, and to reassure himself and urge himself on.

“We must never seek to know,” he said to Amsdorf, “what God wills to accomplish through us.” “The most foolish thing is the wisest.”[711] “God rules the world by means of fools and children, He will finish His work [in you] by our means, just as in the Book of Proverbs (xxx. 2), where we are called the greatest fools on earth.”[712]

“It is the counsel of a fool,” so Luther said in his “Exempel” of his intentions regarding the bishops’ sees, “and I am a fool. But because it is God’s counsel, therefore it is at least the counsel of a wise fool.”[713]

This pseudo-mystical bent though usual enough in Luther seems to have become very much stronger in him at that time. To this his sad experiences contributed. More than ever convinced, on the one hand, that everything in the world was of the devil and that “Satan and his whole kingdom, full of a terrible wrath, were harassing” the Elector, as he declares in a letter to Amsdorf,[714] he tends, on the other, to fall back with a fanatical enthusiasm on the Evangel “revealed” to him. More than one statement which is no mere empty form, shows that he was really anxious to find consolation in the Divine truths; again and again he strove to rouse himself to a firm confidence. He is also more diligent in his peculiar sort of prayer and strongly urges his friends, notably Amsdorf to whom he frankly imparts his fears and hopes, to seek for help in prayer. His words are really those of one who feels in need of assistance.

Amidst the trials of increasing bodily ailments and in other temporal hardships he knows how to encourage his life’s partner, Catharine Bora, whose anxiety distressed him: “You want to provide for your God,” he says to her in one of his letters, “just as though He were not all-powerful and able to create ten Dr. Martins should your old one get drowned in the Saale, or smothered in the coal-hole or elsewhere. Do not worry me with your cares; I have a better caretaker than even you or all the angels. He lies in the crib and sucks at a Virgin’s breast, but nevertheless is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Hence be at peace, Amen.”[715] “Do you pray,” he admonishes her not long after, “and leave God to provide, for it is written: ‘Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee,’ Ps. lv.”[716]

Such ready words of encouragement do not however prevent him, when dealing with other more stout-hearted friends who were aware of the precarious state of the cause, from giving full voice to the depression, nay despair, which overwhelmed him. The following example from his correspondence with the “bishop” of Naumburg is characteristic.

After an attempt to parry the charge brought against him of being responsible for the public misfortunes which had arisen through the religious revolt, and to reassure Amsdorf, and incidentally himself too, he goes on gloomily to predict the coming chastisement: “Were we the cause of all the evils that have befallen us [and others], how much blood should we have already shed!... It is, however, Christ’s business to see to this, since He Himself by His Word has called forth so much evil and such great hatred on the part of the devil. All this, so they fancy, is a scandal and a disgrace to our teaching! Nevertheless ingratitude for God’s proffered grace is so great, the contempt for the Word goes such lengths, vice, avarice, usury, luxury, hatred, perfidy, envy, pride, godlessness and blasphemy are increasing by such leaps and bounds that it is hard to believe God can much longer deal indulgently and patiently with Germany. Either the Turk will chastise us [‘while we brood full of hate over the wounds of our brethren’] or some inner misfortune [civil war] will break over us. It is true we feel the chastisement, we pay the penalty in grief and tears, but yet we remain sunk in terrible sins whereby we grieve the Holy Ghost and rouse the anger of God against us.”

What faithful Catholics feared for him owing to his obstinacy, this, in his sad blindness, he now predicts for the foes of his Evangel. “Who can wonder,” he cries, “should God, as Holy Scripture says, laugh at our destruction in spite of the weeping and sighing of the guilty.... The worst end awaits the impenitent.”

“Let none of us expect the least good of the future. Our sins cry aloud to heaven and on earth and there is no hope of any good. Now, in a time of peace, Germany affords the eye a terrible spectacle, seeing that God’s honour is outraged everywhere by so many wicked men and that the churches and schools are being destroyed.... Meanwhile, we at least [the despised preachers of the truth] will bewail our own sins and those of Germany; we will pray and humble our souls, devote ourselves to our office, teaching, exhorting and consoling. What else can we do? Germany has become blind and deaf and rises up in insolence; we cannot hope against hope.”

“But do you be brave and give thanks to the Lord for the holy calling He has deigned to bestow upon us; He has willed to sunder us from these reprobates, who are bent on ruining others too, to preserve us clean and blameless in His pure and holy Word, and will continue so to preserve us. Let us, however, weep for the foes of the cross of Christ, even though they mock at our tears. Though we be filled with grief on account of their misery still our grief will be assuaged by the holy joy which will attend the again-rising of the Lord on the day of our salvation, Amen.”

He concludes this curious letter, written on Easter Sunday, with the following benediction: “May the Lord be with you to support and comfort you together with us. Outside of Christ, in the kingdom of the raging devil, there is nothing but sadness to be seen or heard.” Thus, at the close, he returns to the opening thought suggested by the very object of the letter. Amsdorf had deplored the warlike acts undertaken by Duke Maurice of Saxony against the Elector. Luther, in turn, had informed him, that “here, we are quite certain that what the Duke is doing is the direct work of Satan.”[717]

5. Some Further Deeds of Violence. Fate of Ecclesiastical Works of Art

End of the Bishopric of Meissen

The Elector of Saxony, after having been so successful in seizing the bishopric of Naumburg, sought to obtain control of that of Meissen also.

Here, however, there was another Protestant claimant in the field in the person of the young Duke Maurice of Saxony, successor of the late Duke Henry. As for the chartered rights, temporal and spiritual, of the bishop of Meissen they were simply ignored. The Elector, by a breach of the peace, sent a military force on March 22, 1542, to occupy the important town of Wurzen, where there was a collegiate Chapter depending on Meissen. The Chapter was “reformed” by compulsion, the prebendaries who were faithful to the Church being threatened with deposition and corporal penalties, and many sacred objects being flung out of their church. When eventually war threatened to break out between the two branches of the house of Saxony, Landgrave Philip of Hesse stepped in as mediator in the interests of the new Evangel. He twice sent express messengers to summon Luther to intervene. But, even before this, the latter, horrified at the prospect of the “dreadful disgrace” which civil war between two Evangelical princes would bring upon the Evangel, had addressed a long and earnest letter of admonition to both combatants: It was the devil who was seeking to kindle a great fire from such a spark; both sides should have recourse to law instead of falling upon each other over so insignificant a matter, like tipsy yokels fighting in a tap-room over a broken glass; if they refused to do this, he would take the part of the one who first suffered acts of violence at the hands of the other and would free all the latter’s followers from their duty and oath of obedience in the war.[718] The writing, which was intended for publication and to be forwarded “to both armies,” was only half-printed when the Landgrave intervened. The author withdrew it in order to be able to take up a different attitude in the struggle and to proceed at once to denounce Maurice.

In the meantime, owing to Philip’s exertions, a compromise was effected between the two parties ready for the fray; by this it was agreed that each should have a free hand in one of the two portions of the diocese, the Elector retaining Wurzen; as for the defenceless bishop of Meissen, who was not even informed of this, he had simply to bow to his fate. Maurice, however, was so greatly angered that he soon after abandoned the League of Schmalkalden and began to make advances to the Emperor.

After the conclusion of peace “the Elector had all the images in the chief church of Wurzen destroyed, except those which were overlaid with gold or which represented ‘serious events,’ and the rest buried in the vaults.” The new teaching was then introduced throughout the diocese.[725] Maurice on his part carried off from the cathedral of Meissen, which had fallen to his share, all the gold and silver vessels richly studded with jewels and precious stones and all the treasures of art. He was taking them, he said, under his protection “because the times were so full of risk and danger.” After he had taken them into his “care” all trace of them disappeared for all time.

Destruction of Church Property

The fate of the treasures of Meissen Cathedral resembles that which befell the riches of many churches at that time.

We are still in possession of the inventory made by Blasius Kneusel of Meissen which gives us a glimpse of the wealth and magnificence of the treasures of mediÆval German art and industry which perished in this way.

No one can adequately describe the material damage which the Catholic parsonages and benefices, convents and bishoprics had to suffer on their suppression. A simple list of the spoliations from the hundreds of cases on record, would give us a shocking picture of the temporal consequences involved in the ecclesiastical upheaval. Apart from the injustice of thus robbing the churches and, incidentally, the numberless poor who looked to the Church for help, it was regrettable that there was no other institution ready to take the place of the olden Church, and assume possession of the properties which fell vacant. The Catholic Church was a firmly knit and well-established community, capable of possessing property. The new Churches on the contrary did not constitute an independent and united body; the universal priesthood, the invisibility of the Church of Christ and its utter want of independence were ideas altogether at variance with the legal conception of ownership upon which, in the topsyturvydom of that age of transition it was more than ever necessary to insist.

Hence the secular element had necessarily to assume the guardianship of the property. But of the secular authorities, which was to take control? For these authorities, which all were looking forward expectantly to their share of the church property heaped up by their Catholic ancestors, were not one but many: There was the sovereign with his Court, the civil administration, the towns with their councils, not to speak of other local claimants; to make the confusion worse there were the church patrons, the trustees of monasteries, the founders of institutions, and their heirs, and also those endowed with certain privileges under letters patent. Moreover, the leaders of the religious innovations insisted that the property acquired was to be devoted to the support of the preachers, the schools and the poor. Hence to the above already lengthy list of claimants must be added the preachers, or the consistories representing them, likewise the administrators of the relief funds, the governors of the schools, and the senates of the universities which had to furnish the preachers.

The war-council of the town of Strasburg, in 1538, addressed a letter to Luther concerning their prospects or intention of securing a share of the church property there. On Nov. 20 of that year he replied, peremptorily telling them to do nothing of the sort; under the conditions then prevailing they must “de facto stand still.” Yet no less plain was his hint to them to warn Catholic owners “who hold church property but pay no heed to the cure of souls,” to amend and to accept the new Evangel; if they “wished to go,” i.e. preferred banishment, so much the better, otherwise they must once for all by some means be “at last brought to see that further persistence in their wantonness” was out of question.[729]

To add to the general chaos in many places the powerful nobles, as Luther frequently laments, without a shadow of a right, set violent hands on the tempting possessions, and, by entering into possession, frustrated all other claims.

The leading theologians of Wittenberg gradually gave up in despair their attempts to interfere, and contented themselves with exhortations to which nobody paid much heed.

They saw how the lion’s share fell to the strongest, i.e. to the Elector, and how everywhere the State took the pennies of the devout and the poor, using them for purposes of its own, which often enough had nothing whatever to do with the Church.

Nowhere do we find any evidence to show that the theologians made use of the authority on which on other occasions they laid so much stress, or made any serious attempt to check arbitrary action and to point out the way to a just distribution, or to lay down some clear and general rules in accordance with which the graduated claims of the different competitors might have been settled. They might at least have associated themselves with the lawyers in the Privy Council and formulated some rule whereby the rights of the State, of the towns and of the church patrons could have been protected against the worst attacks of the plunderers. But no check of this sort was imposed by the theologians on the prevailing avarice and greed of gain. It is plain that they despaired of the result, and, possibly, silence may not have been the worst policy. No one can be blind to the huge difficulties which attended interference, but who was after all to blame for these and so many other difficulties which had arisen in public order, and which could be solved only by the use of force?

When an exceptionally conscientious town-council sent a messenger to Luther in 1544 to ask for advice and instructions how to deal with the property of two monasteries which had been suppressed, the “honourable, prudent and beloved masters and friends” received from him only a short and evasive answer: “We theologians have nothing to do with this ... such things must be decided by the lawyers ... our theology teaches us to obey the worldly law, to protect the pious and to punish the wicked.”[730]

If, however, the lawyers were to follow the jurisprudence in which they had been trained, then they could but insist upon the property being restored to its rightful owners, who had never ceased to claim it for the Church, and had even appealed to the imperial authority. Luther’s reply constituted a formal retreat from the domain of moral questions, questions indeed which had become burning largely through the action of his theologians. It was an admission that their theology was of no avail to solve an eminently practical question of ethics coming well within its purview which was the safeguarding of the moral law, and for which, indeed, this theology was itself responsible. In this, however, as in so many other instances, they sowed the wind, but when the whirlwind came they ran for shelter to their theological cell.[731]

Still, the question of church property caused Luther so much heart-burning in his old age that his death was hastened thereby.

The lamentations wrung from him in 1538, his description of himself as “tormented” and the “unhappiest of all unhappy mortals,”[732] were due in no small measure to the rapacity he had seen in connection with the church lands. The bulwarks he strove to erect against this disorder were constantly being torn down afresh by the unevangelical disposition of the Evangelicals, and yet he refused to admit, even to himself, that he had been the first to open the way to such arbitrary action. As in his own house he had set an example of destruction of church property, so in his turn he met with bitter experiences even in his own dwelling and in the case of his own private concerns. His tenure of the Black Monastery at Wittenberg was uncertain, and, as already stated, hostile lawyers at Court even questioned his right to dispose of his possessions by Will on the ground that his marriage was null in law, whether canon or civil. The Monastery had been given him by the Prince, and Luther and Catherine Bora used it both as their residence and as a boarding-house for lodgers. It had not, however, been given to Luther’s family, and from this the difficulty arose. He was most careful to note down in his account books the things that were to be Katey’s inalienable property on his death, but, when he was no more, Katey and her children had in their turn to make acquaintance with the poverty and vicissitudes endured by so many churchmen whose means of livelihood had been filched from them.

Luther and the Images

Can the charge be brought against Luther’s teaching of being in part responsible for the outbreaks of iconoclastic violence which accompanied the spread of the Reformation in Germany? Did his writings contribute to the destruction of those countless, admirable and often costly creations of art and piety which fell a prey to the blind fury of the zealot, or to greed of gain?

Assuredly he would, had he seen them, have disapproved of many of the acts of vandalism which history tells us were perpetrated against Catholic churches, monasteries and institutions. Generally speaking the ideas of Carlstadt and Zwingli, wherever they gained the upper hand, proved far more destructive to ecclesiastical works of art than Luther’s gentler admonitions against the veneration of images. Nevertheless, his exhortations, though more guarded, made their way among both the mighty and the masses, and were productive of much harm.

He himself declared frankly, about the end of 1524, that “by his writings he had done more harm to the images than Carlstadt with all his storming and fanaticism will ever do.”[733] In the course of the next year he boasted of having “brought contempt” on the images even before Carlstadt’s time. He had repudiated the latter’s acts of violence and his ill-judged appeal to the law of Moses;[734] on the other hand, he had undermined the very foundations of image-worship by his Evangelical doctrines; this was a better kind of “storming,” for in this way those who once had bowed to images now “refused to have any made.” As much as the most fanatical of the iconoclasts, he too wished to see the images “torn out of men’s hearts, despised and abolished,” but he “destroyed them [the images] outwardly and also inwardly,”[735] and so went one better than Carlstadt, who attacked them only from the outside.

He had, so he continues, speaking to the German people, “consented” that the images should be “done away with outwardly so long as this took place without fanaticism and violence, and by the hand of the proper authorities.”[736] “We drive them out of men’s hearts until the time comes for them to be torn down by the hands of those whose duty it is to do this.”[737] Meanwhile, however, it was “every man’s duty” to “destroy them by the Evangel,” “especially the images of God and other idolatrous ones.”[738]

In his Church-sermons he makes his own the complaint, that, though these images which attracted a great “concourse of people” should be “overthrown,” the bishops were actually attaching indulgences to them and thus increasing the disorder.[739]

In his sermons against Carlstadt at Wittenberg he had said things, and afterwards disseminated them in print, little calculated to impose restraint on the zeal of the multitude: “It were better we had none of these images on account of the tiresome and execrable abuse and unbelief.”[740]

The iconoclasts at Wittenberg were anxious, he says, to set about hewing down the images. His reply was: “Not yet! For you will not eradicate the images in this way, indeed you will only establish them more firmly than ever.”[741]

Accordingly it was then his own opinion that they should be “abolished” and “overthrown,” particularly such images as were held in peculiar veneration; in 1528 he again admitted that this was his object, when once more proposing his own less noisy and more cautious policy as the more effectual; in his sermons on the Ten Commandments printed at this time he declared that the way to “hew down and stamp out the images was to tear and turn men’s hearts away from them.”[742] Then the “images would tumble down of their own accord and fall into disrepute; for they [the faithful] will say: If it is not a good work to make images, then it is the devil who makes them and the pictures. In future I shall keep my money in my pocket or lay it out to better advantage.”[743]—“The iconoclasts rush in and tear down the images outwardly. To this I do not object so much. But then they go on to say that it must be so, and that it is well pleasing to God”; this, however, is false; it is a mistake to say that such a Divine command exists to tear them down.[744]

The grounds on which he opposed the old-time use of images were the following: By erecting them people sought to gain merit in God’s sight and to perform good works; they also trusted in images and in the Saints instead of in Christ, Who is our only ground for confidence; finally—a reason alleged by him but seldom—people adored the images and thus became guilty of idolatry. Here it is plain how much his peculiar theology on good works and the worship of the saints contribute to his condemnation of the ancient Catholic practice. In his zeal against the existing abuses he overlooks the fact, that to invoke before their images the Saints’ intercession with Christ was not in the least opposed to belief in Christ as the one mediator. As for the charge of adoring the images to which he resorts exceptionally—more with the object of making an impression and shielding himself—it amounted to an act of injustice against all his forefathers to accuse them of having been so grossly stupid as to confuse the images with the divinity; even he himself had elsewhere sufficiently absolved them of the charge of adoring saints, let alone images.[745]

The real cause of this premature attack on images found in these sermons was the storm called forth by Carlstadt, which Luther hoped to divert and dominate[746] by the attitude he assumed; otherwise it is very likely he would have refrained from assailing the religious feelings of the people in so sensitive a spot for many years to come, or at any rate would not have done so in the manner he chose by way of reply to Carlstadt.

Nor assuredly would he have gone so far had he himself ever vividly realised the profoundly religious and morally stimulating character of the veneration of images, and its sympathetic and consoling side as exemplified at many of the regular places of pilgrimage at that time. Owing to the circumstances of his early years he had never enjoyed the opportunity of tasting the refreshment and the blessings to be found in those sacred resorts visited by thousands of the devout, where those suffering from any ill of soul or body were wont to seek solace from the cares and trials of life. Indeed it was particularly against such images as were the object of special devotion and to which the people “flocked” with a “false confidence” that his anger was directed.

His animosity to image-worship would also appear to have been psychologically bound up with two tendencies of his: first, with the desire to attack the hated Church of the Papists at those very spots where her influence with the people was most apparent; secondly, with his plan to bring everything down to a dead level, which led him on the specious pretext of serving the religion of the spirit to abolish, or to curtail, the most popular and cheering phenomena of outward worship.

We have just quoted Luther’s reservation, viz. that he was willing to tolerate the use of images which “simply represent, as in a glass, past events and things.” Statements of this sort occur frequently in his writings. They go hand in hand with a radical insistence on inward disdain for image-worship, and a tendency to demand its entire suppression in the churches. It was on these lines that the Elector of Saxony acted when ordering the destruction of the images in the principal church of Wurzen (above, p. 202); images which represented “serious events” and those overlaid with gold were not to be hewn to pieces.

Such kindlier expressions did not, however, do full justice to the veneration of images as practised throughout the olden Church, nor did they counteract what he had said of the idols of silver and gold, of the uselessness and harmfulness of bestowing money on sacred pictures and religious works of art to be exposed for the devotion of the people. All was drowned in his incitement to “destroy,” “break in pieces,” “pull down” and “fall upon” the images, first by means of the Evangel, and, then through the action of the authorities. It is plain what fate was in store particularly for those religious works of art which served as symbols of, or to extol, those dogmas and institutions peculiarly odious to him, for instance, the sacrifice of the Mass, around which centred the ornaments of the altar, the fittings of the choir, and, more or less, all the decorations of the church. As for the sacred vessels, often of the most costly character, and all else that pertained to the dispensing of the sacraments, their destruction had already been decreed.

Further details regarding the Fate of the Works of Art and of Art itself

The account already given above of the squandering and destruction of ecclesiastical works of art, in particular of the valuable images of the Saints in the towns of Meissen and Wurzen,[759] may be supplemented by the reports from Erfurt of the damage done there at the coming of the religious innovations; we must also bear in mind, that the suppression of Catholic worship in this town which looms so large in Luther’s life, took place under his particular influence and with the co-operation of preachers receiving their instructions from Wittenberg.

Before the lawless peasants entered the town on April 28, 1525, the Council had already “taken into safe custody” the treasures of the churches and monasteries; chalices and other vessels of precious metal were on this occasion carried away in “tubs and trogs,” and eventually the public funds were enriched with the profit derived from their sale.[760]

Amongst the objects taken, were: a silver censer in the shape of a small boat, the silver caskets containing the heads of Saints Severus, Vincentia and Innocentia, the silver reliquary with the bones of SS. Eobanus and Adolarius in which they were carried in solemn procession every seven years. This art-treasure which belonged to St. Mary’s, was, not long after, melted down by the town-council when pressed for money, “and cast into bars which were taken to the mint at Weimar.” The silver pennies minted from them were later on called coffin pennies. Other valuables which the Council had taken in charge were put up for auction secretly, without their owners learning anything of the matter. “The prebendaries were well-justified in urging,” writes the Protestant historian who has collected these data, “as against these high-handed proceedings that the Council should first have laid hands on the valuables belonging to the burghers, or at the very least have summoned the rightful owners to be present at the sale of their property, in order that they might make a note of the prices obtained and thus be able to claim compensation later. The Council suffered a moral set-back, while at the same time reaping no appreciable material advantage.”[761]

Not only the Council but the peasants too, led by the Lutheran preachers, were greatly to blame for the destruction of art treasures wrought at Erfurt in that same year. When, in order to put an end to the rule over the town of the Elector, Albert of Brandenburg, they stormed the so-called Mainzer Hof at Erfurt, “all the jewels, gold, silver and valuable household stuff were carried off.” Shortly after “the peasants, thanks to their sharpness, managed to unearth a pastoral staff in silver, worth 300 florins [in the then currency], which had been concealed in the privy attached to the room of the master cook to save it from the greed of the robbers.”[762] At the Mainzer Hof they removed all monumental tablets, pictures and statues as well as the elaborate coats of arms bearing witness to the Archbishop’s sovereignty. A stone effigy of St. Martin which stood in front of the Rathaus and the ancient symbols of the sovereignty of Mayence were pulled down and smashed to bits. In place of these they scrawled on the new stone edifice which had been erected there another coat of arms in chalk and charcoal, having a plough, coulter and hoe in the shield and in the field a horse-shoe. “During all this Adolarius Huttner [with Eberlin of GÜnzburg, the apostate Franciscan] and other Lutheran preachers were going to and fro amongst them.” The whole row of priests’ houses standing alongside the torrent was searched and the valuables plundered.[763]

“The people of Erfurt did almost as much damage as the peasants.”[764]

As a matter of fact the citizens frequently outdid the agricultural population in this work of destruction. The chronicles of the times relate, that they broke down the walls of the vaults of the two collegiate churches in hopes of finding hidden treasure behind them, and, then, in their disappointment, sacrilegiously tore open the tabernacles, threw the holy oils to the dogs and treated the things in the churches in such a manner as is “heartrending beyond description.” The mob destroyed not merely the books and parchments in which their obligations were recorded, but a number of others of importance for literature and learning were also wantonly spoiled.

From another contemporary source we have the following on the destruction of the old writings: “And besides all this on St. Walpurgis Day in the Lauwengasse the peasants and those who were with them tore up more than two waggonloads of books, and threw them out of the houses into the street. These the burgher folk carried home in large baskets. While gathering up the torn books as best they could, putting them into baskets and binding them with ropes as one does straw, a whirlwind sprang up and lifted the torn books, letters and papers high into the air and over all the houses, so that many of them were afterwards found sticking to the poles in the vineyards.”[765]

In very many instances, particularly during the Peasant War, the destruction and scattering of ecclesiastical works of art went much beyond Luther’s injunctions. We shall hear him protest, that many were good Evangelicals only so long as there were still chalices, monstrances and monkish vessels to be had.[766] It was naturally a very difficult task to check the greed of gain and wanton love of destruction once this had broken loose, particularly after the civil authorities had tasted the sweets to be derived from the change of religion, and after the peasants in the intoxication of their newly found freedom of the Gospel, and in their lust for plunder, had begun to lay violent hands on property.

It was in accordance with Luther’s express injunctions that the “proper authorities” proceeded to destroy such images as were not a record of history. They went further, however, nor was the zeal confined solely to the authorities.

In Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Order, the crosses and the images of the Saints had been doomed to destruction by the revolution of 1525; the silver treasures of art in the churches were hammered into plate for use at the new Lutheran Duke’s dining-table. The Estates of his country, when he had asked them to vote supplies, retorted that he might as well help himself to the treasures of the churches. The result was, so the chronicler of that day relates, “that all the chalices and other ornaments” were removed from the houses of God, barely one chalice being left in each church; some of the country churches were even driven to use pewter chalices. “When they had taken all the silver they fell upon the bells”; they left but one in each village, the rest being carried off to KÖnigsberg and sold to the smelters.[767] At Marienwerder only did the prebendaries, appealing to the King of Poland, make a stand for the retention of their church plate and other property, until they themselves were sent in chains to Preuschmark.[768]

In 1524, during the fair, the images were dragged out of the churches at Riesenburg in Pomerania, shamelessly dishonoured and finally burnt. The bishop-elect, a dignitary whom the Pope had refused to confirm and who was notoriously a “zealous instrument of the Evangel,” excused the proceeding. In other towns similar outrages were perpetrated by the iconoclasts.

On the introduction of Lutheranism at Stralsund almost all the churches and monasteries were stormed, the crucifixes and images being broken up in the presence of members of the town-council (1525).[769]

In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations and had 128 clergy attached to it. A list of the articles confiscated or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes, twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths, ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770]

When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus (1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St. Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771]

The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]

During this so-called “Evangelical War” five thousand burghers and mercenaries of the town of Brunswick, shouting their war-cry: “The Word of God remaineth for ever,” set out, on July 21, 1542, against the monastery of Riddaghausen; there they broke down the altars, images and organs, carried off the monstrances, mass vestments and other treasures of the church, plundering generally and perpetrating the worst abominations. The mob also broke in pieces the images and pictures in the monastery of Steterburg and then demolished the building. Nor did the abbey of Gandersheim fare much better. The prebendaries there complained to the Emperor, that all the crucifixes and images of the Saints had been destroyed together with other objects set up for the adornment of the church and churchyard outside.[773]

The Lutheran preacher, K. Reinholdt, looking back two decades later on the devastation wrought in Germany, reminded his hearers that Luther himself had repeatedly preached that, “it would be better that all churches and abbeys in the world were torn down and burnt to ashes, that it would be less sinful, even if done from criminal motives, than that a single soul should be led astray into Popish error and be ruined”; “if they would not accept his teaching, then, so Luther the man of God had exclaimed, he would wish not merely that his doctrine might be the cause of the destruction of Popish churches and convents, but that they were already lying in a heap of ashes.”[774]

At Hamburg iconoclastic disturbances began in Dec., 1528. The Cistercian convent, Harvestehude, where the clergy still dare to say Mass, was rased to the ground.[775]

At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed, part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of the beer”;[776] stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the neighbouring churches.”[777]

The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778] Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779] From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells, one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780]

When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain SchÄrtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of FÜssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.”

This was only the beginning of SchÄrtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the WÜrtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781]

During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.

In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances, episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor Henry II had presented to it.[782]

Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,” by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783] before it was besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under the rule of a Council banned by the Empire, it passed through a period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784] The town, “for the protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with great uproar.”

Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]

Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-KÜstrin, was one who had war against the Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.” It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he ordered the church of St. Mary at GÖrlitz to be pillaged and destroyed by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to the Margrave at KÜstrin.[786]

In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs. weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady, St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or sold.[787]

In June and July, 1552, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach laid waste the country around Mayence with fire and sword to such an extent, that the bishop of WÜrzburg, in order to raise the unheard-of sums demanded, had, as we find it stated in a letter of Zasius to King Ferdinand dated July 10, to lump together “all the gold and silver plate in the churches, the jewels, reliquaries, monstrances, statues and vessels of the sanctuary” and have them minted into thalers. “At NeumÜnster one reliquary was melted down which alone was worth 1000 florins.”[788] The citizens of WÜrzburg were obliged to give up all their household plate and the cathedral itself the silver statue of St. Kilian, patron of the diocese.[789]

When the commanders and the troops of the Elector Maurice withdrew from the Tyrol after the frustration of their undertaking owing to the flight of the Emperor to Carinthia, all the sacred objects of value in the Cistercian monastery of Stams in the valley of the upper Inn were either broken to pieces or carried off. The soldiers broke open the vault, where the earthly remains of the ruling Princes had rested for centuries, dragged the corpses out of their coffins and stripped them of their valuables.[790] The inventory of the treasures of art made of precious metal and other substances which perished at Stams must be classed with numerous other sad records of a similar nature dating from that time.[791]

After the truce of Passau, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, with the help of France, turned his attention to Frankfurt, Mayence and Treves. At Mayence, after making a vain demand for 100,000 gold florins from the clergy, he gave orders to ransack the churches, and set on fire the churches of St. Alban, St. Victor and Holy Cross, the Charterhouse and the houses of the Canons. He boasted of this as a “right princely firebrand we threw into the damned nest of parsons.” In Treves all the collegiate churches and monasteries were “sacked down to the very last farthing,” as an account relates; the monastery of St. Maximin, the priory of St. Paul, the castle of Saarburg on the Saar, Pfalzel and Echternach were given to the flames.[792] “Such proceedings were incumbent on an honourable Prince who had the glory of God at heart and was zealous for the spread of the Divine Gospel, which God the Lord in our age has allowed to shine forth with such marvellous light.” So Albert boasted to an envoy of the Archbishop of Mayence on June 27, 1552, when laying waste WÜrzburg.[793]

“The archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence, the bishoprics of Spires, Worms and EichstÄtt are laid waste with pillage,” wrote Melchior von Ossa the Saxon lawyer, “the stately edifices at Mayence, Treves and other places, where lay the bones of so many pious martyrs of old, are reduced to ashes.”[794] The complaints of a Protestant preacher who had worked for a considerable time at SchwÄbisch-Hall ring much the same: “Our parents were willing to contribute towards the building of churches and to the adornment of the temples of God.... But now the churches have been pilfered so badly that they barely retain a roof over them. Superb Mass vestments of silk and velvet with pearls and corals were provided for the churches by our forefathers; these have now been removed and serve the woman-folk as hoods and bodices; indeed so poor have some of the churches become under the rule of the Evangel, that it is impossible to provide the ministers of the Church even with a beggarly surplice.”[795]

The wanton waste and destruction which took place in the domain of art under Lutheran rule during the first fifty years of the religious innovations, great as they were, do not by any means approach in magnitude the losses caused elsewhere by Zwinglianism and Calvinism.

Yet two things in Lutheranism had a disastrous effect in checking the revival of religious art, even when the first struggles for mastery were over: first, there was the animosity against the Sacrifice of the Mass and the perpetual eucharistic presence of Christ in the tabernacle; this led people to view with distrust the old alliance existing between the Eucharistic worship and the liberal arts for exalting the dignity and beauty of the churches. After the Mass had been abolished and the Sacrament had ceased to be reserved within the sacred walls, respect for and interest in the house of God, which had led to so much being lavished on it, began to wane. The other obstacle lay in Luther’s negative attitude towards the ancient doctrine and practice of good works. The belief in the meritoriousness of works had in the past been a stimulus to pecuniary sacrifices and offerings for the making of pious works of art. Now, however, artists began to complain, that, owing to the decline of zeal for church matters their orders were beginning to fall off, and that the makers of works of art were being condemned to starvation.

In a protocol of the Council of Strasburg, dated Feb. 3, 1525, we read in a petition from the artists: “Painters and sculptors beg, that, whereas, through the Word of God their handicraft has died out they may be provided with posts before other claimants.” The Council answered that their appeal would “be borne in mind.”[796]

The verses of Hans Sachs of Nuremberg are well-known:

“Bell-founders and organists,
Gold-beaters and illuminists,

Hand-painters, carvers and goldsmiths,
Glass-painters, silk-workers, coppersmiths,

Stone-masons, carpenters and joiners,
’Gainst all these did Luther wield a sword.

From Thee we ask a verdict, Lord.”

In the poet’s industrious and artistic native town the decline must have been particularly noticeable. According to the popular Lutheran poet of Nuremberg the fault is with the complainants themselves, who,

“With scorn disdain
From greed of gain”

the Word of Christ. “They must cease worrying about worldly goods like the heathen, but must seek the Kingdom of God with eagerness.”[797]

It is perfectly true that the words that Hans Sachs on this occasion places in the mouth of the complainant are unfair to Luther:

“All church building and adorning he despises,

Treats with scorning,
He not wise is.”[798]

For in spite of his attacks on the veneration of images, on the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and the meritoriousness of pious foundations, Luther was, nevertheless, not so “unwise” as to despise the “building and adorning” of the churches, where, after all, the congregation must assemble for preaching, communion and prayer.[799]

That Luther was not devoid of a sense of the beautiful and of its practical value in the service of religion is proved by his outspoken love of music, particularly of church-music, his numerous poetic efforts, no less than by that strongly developed appreciation of well-turned periods, clearness and force of diction so well seen in his translation of the Bible. His life’s struggle, however, led him along paths which make it easy to understand how it is that he has so little to say in his writings in commendation of the other liberal arts. It also explains the baldness of his reminiscences of his visit to Italy and the city of Rome; the young monk, immersed in his theology, was even then pursuing quite other interests than those of art. It is true Luther, once, in one of the rare passages in favour of ecclesiastical art, speaking from his own point of view, says: “It is better to paint on the wall how God created the world, how Noah made the ark and such-like pious tales, than to paint worldly and shameless subjects; would to God I could persuade the gentry and the rich to have the whole Bible story painted on their houses, inside and out, for everyone’s eye to see; that would be a good Christian work.”[800] Manifestly he did not intend his words to be taken too literally in the case of dwelling-houses. A fighter such as Luther was scarcely the right man to give any real stimulus in the domain of art. The heat of his religious polemics scorched up in his soul any good dispositions of this sort which may once have existed, and blighted in its very beginnings the growth of any real feeling for art among his zealous followers. Hardly a single passage can be found in which he expresses any sense of satisfaction in the products of the artist.

It is generally admitted that in the 16th century German art suffered a severe set-back. For this the bitter controversies which for the while transformed Germany into a hideous battlefield were largely responsible; for such a soil could not but prove unfavourable for the arts and crafts. The very artists themselves were compelled to prostitute their talents in ignoble warfare. We need only call to mind the work of the two painters Cranach, the Elder and the Younger, and the horrid flood of caricatures and base vilifications cast both in poetry and in prose. “The rock on which art suffered shipwreck was not, as a recent art-writer says, the fact that ‘German art was too early severed from its bond with the Church,’ but that, with regard to its subject-matter and its methods of expression, it was forced into false service by the intellectual and religious leaders.”[801]