Hartmann Grisar

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT IS CONVOKED, 1542. LUTHER’S POLEMICS AT THEIR HIGHEST TENSION

1. Steps taken and Tracts Published subsequent to 1537 against the Council of the Church

At the meeting held in 1537 by the protesting Princes and Estates at Schmalkalden the General Council, which had been suggested as a means of bringing about a settlement and of establishing religious peace, was most outspokenly rejected, and that in a way very insulting to Rome.[1514] In its blunt refusal the assembly was more logical than Luther and his theologians, who as yet were averse to an absolute repudiation of the Council. The hatred of the Pope which Luther himself had been so earnest in inculcating at Schmalkalden caused those with whom the decision rested to overlook certain considerations of prudence and diplomacy.

If Luther opposed a thoroughgoing rejection of the Council it was not because he had the slightest intention of accepting any Council that did not at once declare in his favour. He knew very well that under the conditions on which he insisted there could be no question of a real Council as the Church had always understood it. The real motive for his hesitation was that, for him and his followers, it was a delicate matter, in view of the attitude they had previously adopted on this question, to oppose too abruptly the idea of a Council. He foresaw that the Catholic Imperialists would overwhelm the Protestants with most righteous and bitter reproaches for now turning their backs upon the Council after having at one time been loudest in their demands for it, and outdone themselves in complaints and murmurs on account of its postponement. What impression would the attitude of the protesting Princes make on the Emperor, who was now full of plans for the Council? And would not many be scared away who were still halting at the parting of the ways and were inclined to delay their decision until the looked-for Council? “The Papists assert that we are so reprobate,” wrote Luther, “that we refuse to listen to anybody, whether Pope, Church, Emperor, or Empire, or even the Council which we had so often called for.”[1515] Such considerations, however, were not strong enough to prevent him at once lending the whole weight of his voice in support of the resolution arrived at by the Schmalkalden Leaguers.

After so offensive a rejection of any further attempts at reunion, the armed conflict with the Emperor which had so long been threatening now seemed bound to come. Luther, putting all subterfuge aside, looked this contingency boldly in the face. In a memorandum to his Elector dating from the end of January, 1539, he expressed himself even more strongly than before in favour of the right of armed resistance to the Emperor and the Empire; should the former have recourse to violent measures against the Evangel, then there would be no difference between the Emperor and a hired assassin; if the overlord attempts to impose on his subjects blasphemy and idolatry, he must expect to meet with bloody resistance on the part of those attacked.[1516]

While negotiations on which hung war or peace were in progress at Frankfurt, and while, in consequence of this, the question of the Council receded once more into the background, Luther was putting the finishing touch to his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen,” which appeared in the spring of 1539.[1517] In spite of being weak and unwell his powers of work seemed inexhaustible; his own troubles and worries were all forgotten when it was a question of entering the lists as the leader of the movement. The work was intended to forestall the Œcumenical Council should it ever become an accomplished fact, and to frustrate as far as possible its harmful effects on himself. In it with the utmost audacity the author pits his own authority against that of the highest secular and ecclesiastical powers; his tone is at once so self-confident and so coarse that here again it provides the psychologist with an enigma.

With his projected Council, so he says at the commencement, the Pope in reality only wanted to deal the Emperor and all Christians “a blow on the snout.” He held out the Council to them just as, in playing with a dog, we offer him a morsel on the point of a knife, and, when he snaps at it, we hit him with the handle. He declares roundly that, “the Papists would not and could not hold a Council unless indeed they first took captive the Emperor, the kings and all the princes.”[1518] If the Emperor and the Princes wished “reprobates to slap their cheeks,” then let them continue to debate about the Council. The alleged impossibility of the Council he proclaims still more rudely, asserting that, the Papists being what they are, the whole world must despair of any amelioration of the Church: “They would rather leave Christendom to perish, and have the devil himself for their God and Lord, than accept Christ and give up even one jot of their idolatry.” Hence we must look for reformation from Christ our Lord, “and let them fare devilwards as they are bent on doing.”[1519]

He then goes on to explain that amendment was impossible on the olden principles of the Fathers and canons, but could come about only by means of Holy Scripture; the Fathers and canons were not at one; even the first four Œcumenical Councils—the history of which he treats summarily though with little real historical knowledge—had only been able to ratify the belief laid down in Scripture; for faith a surer and more stable foundation was necessary than that of ecclesiastical Councils ever subject to make mistakes. At the same time he has nothing but scorn for the claims of the ancient and universal Church to be the permanent infallible teacher on matters of faith; he has no eye for her divinely guaranteed power as it had been exemplified in the General Councils, so solemnly representing the Churches of the whole world. On the other hand, his own pretensions are far above question. He knows, so he asserts, much more about the ancient Councils than all the Papists in a lump. He could instruct the Council, should one actually be summoned, on its procedure and its standards. It has, according to him, no power in the Church save to reject new errors which do not agree with Scripture (as though a Council had ever adopted any other course). Even the office of a clergyman or schoolmaster may, he says, be compared with that of the Councils in so far as, within their own small sphere, they judge human opinions and human rules by the standard of the Word of God, and seek to oppose the devil. But just as, in the case of these, he cannot guarantee that they will always read Holy Scripture aright, so also in the case of the Councils.

If, however, such a solemn Council was convened—and such a thing might conceivably be of some use—then the first requirement, so he declares with surprising frankness, was “that, in the Council, the Pope should not merely lay aside his tyranny of human law, but also hold with us.... The Emperor and the kings must also help in this and compel the Pope should he refuse.”[1520] This he wrote for the disabusal of the infatuated, for at that time, strange to say, some Germans of the greatest influence still fancied it possible to pave the way for a reconciliation by means of negotiations and religious conferences, and were anxious to leave the Lutheran question in suspense until a General Council should meet. Luther further demands, that “the thoroughly learned in Holy Scripture ... and a few prudent and well-disposed laymen ... should also be invited to the Council. Then the abominations of the Pope would speedily be condemned.”

He adds: “Yes, you will say, but of such a Council there is no hope. That is what I think too.”[1521]

He is ready, however, to be content with a Provincial Council of the same sort held in Germany, and expresses the strange hope, that “the other monarchs would in time approve and accept the decisions of such a Council.” With this reference to the Provincial Council he is dallying with a proposal made by some short-sighted imperial advisers, viz. that a “free, German Council” should attempt to settle the controversy.

The author then proceeds to set forth his jumbled theories on the “Church” and finally brings the lengthy work to a conclusion with a protestation that his doctrine forms the very pillars on which the Church rests: “Whoever teaches differently, even were he an angel from heaven, let him be anathema” (Gal. i. 8). “We are determined to be the Pope’s master and to tread him under foot, as Psalm xci.[13] says: Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon.”[1522]

In many parts of the “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” Luther is inclined to repeat himself, whilst the style exhibits a certain dreariness and monotony often met with in this class of Luther’s productions, at least when the ardour of his polemics begins to fail, or when his object in view is not popular instruction and edification. He himself on its completion wrote of it to Melanchthon who was attending the meeting at Frankfurt: “The book sadly vexes me, I find it weak and wordy.”[1523] At any rate with many who lacked any real discernment it no doubt served to cover Luther’s and his friends’ retreat from a position they had so long and persistently defended, viz. that a Council was the chief thing called for.

The fruitless meetings of Frankfurt and Hagenau and the equally fruitless conferences of Worms and Ratisbon were followed, in 1541, by the Ratisbon Interim. This, as might have been foreseen, satisfied neither party. As for the Council it had been repeatedly postponed by Paul III on account of the embroilments between the Emperor and France and the opposition of the Protestants.

At last, on May 22, 1542, the Pope convened a General Synod to begin in the town of Trent on Nov. 1 of that same year. The head on earth of the Catholic Church, in the Bull summoning the Council, spoke of the political obstacles now at last happily removed. The aim of the assembly was to be to debate, and by the light of divine wisdom and truth, settle on such steps “as might appear effective for the safeguarding of the purity and truth of the Christian religion, for the restoration of good morals and the amendment of the bad, for the establishing of peace, harmony and concord among Christians, both rulers and ruled, and lastly for opposing the inroads of the unbelievers [the Turks].” The Pope most earnestly implores the Emperor and the other Christian monarchs “by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose faith and religion are being most violently assailed both from within and from without,” not to forsake God’s cause but by active co-operation to support it in every way.

The grand project of a Council was, however, further delayed by the war which suddenly broke out between Charles V and France. Only on Dec. 13, 1545, could the first session be held at Trent. It was then indeed high time, for the Emperor Charles V, in the hope of securing a united front against the French, had shown himself much too disposed to yield to the German Protestants, as is evident from the Reichsabschied of Spires in 1544.

As to Luther: up to the very last moment he scoffed at the efforts of Rome, as though her proposals for reform were all mere sham. Under this cloak of contempt he concealed his real annoyance at the opening of the Council.

As soon as the new Bull of Convocation for 1545 appeared he wrote to his old friend, Wenceslaus Link: “I have seen the Pope’s writing and the Bull convening the Council to Trent for LÆtare Sunday. May Christ laugh last at the reprobates who laugh at Him. Amen.”[1524] A few days later he said in a letter to his confidant, Justus Jonas: “To believe the Pope’s promises would be like placing faith in the father of lies whose own darling son he is.”[1525]—“The Pope is mad and foolish from top to toe,” so he informs his Elector.[1526] A “Feast of Fools”[1527] is the only fit word with which he can describe the assembly of the ablest and most learned men in the Church, who came from every land, honourably intent on bringing peace to Christians and gaining a victory for truth. Luther had not the slightest doubt where the real well-spring of truth undefiled was to be found; on the same day that he wrote to his Elector the words just quoted, in a letter to Nicholas Amsdorf, the “true and genuine bishop of the Church of Naumburg,” as he styles him, he says: “I glory in the fact that this at least is certain: The Son of God is seated at the right hand of the Father and by His Spirit speaks most sweetly to us here below, just as He spoke to the Apostles; we, however, are His disciples and hear the Word from His lips. Praise be to God Who has chosen us unworthy sinners to be thus honoured by His Son and has permitted us to hearken to His Majesty through the Word of the Evangel. The angels and the whole of God’s creation wish us luck; but the Pope, Satan’s own monster, grieves and is affrighted, and all the gates of hell shake. Let us rejoice in the Lord. For them the Day approaches and the end. I have in mind another book against Popery, but the state of my head and my endless correspondence hinders me. Yet with God’s help I shall set about it shortly.”[1528] What he is thinking of is a continuation—which death prevented him from carrying out—of a new book with which we must now deal.

2. “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel Gestifft.” The Papacy renews its Strength

Luther’s anger against the Papacy had been kindled into a glowing flame by the sight of the unity displayed by the Catholic Church in view of the Council. It seemed incredible to him that the old body which he had pronounced dead should again sit in Council and prepare to infuse new life into itself, to revive ecclesiastical discipline and to condemn the Church he himself had founded. His soreness at such a consolidation of Catholicism he relieved by a sort of last effort in his book “Against the Roman Papacy founded by the devil.”[1529]

It was only his broken health, a foretoken of approaching death, and his many cares that prevented his following it up as he had threatened in his letter to Amsdorf just quoted. As he says there, he only hopes that God will give him “bodily strength and ghostly energy enough” to enable him, “like Samson of old, to wreak one act of vengeance on these Philistines.” The simile is truly a horrible one; the unhappy man, broken down from the effects of a life of tireless labour and endless excitement, still burns with the desire once more to shake the pillars of the ancient Church so as to bury all faithful Catholics beneath her ruins. As to what would be his, the blind Samson’s, fate beneath the ruins he does not consider as seriously as the true members of the ancient Church would have wished him to do.

The occasion of the book was the following. Pope Paul III had sent to the Emperor two briefs in quick succession to dissuade him from making perilous concessions to the Protestants, and, in particular, in the interests of the Œcumenical Council, to oppose the project of holding a German National Council. Luther received from two different quarters an invitation to write against the supposed interference of the Pope. His Elector, through Chancellor BrÜck, requested, “that the said Martin may deal with the Pope’s writing, particularly as the formal announcement of the Council is now to hand; for we have no doubt that he is well able to do this. The same might then be printed and launched into the public.”[1530] Another invitation to the same effect, supported by information to be used against the Pope, reached Luther indirectly from the Imperial chancery itself through the intermediary of Nicholas Perrenoti, a councillor; some of the officials seem to have been anxious to avenge themselves on Paul III for crossing their plans.[1531]

The work was published on March 26, 1545. As early as April 13, Marsupino, Secretary to King Ferdinand, was able to present a copy to the Papal Legates at the Council of Trent. Justice Jonas at once brought out a Latin translation entitled “Contra papatum romanum a diabolo inventum.” Thus at the very time the General Council made its bow before the world, Luther’s attack was brought to the notice of educated readers of all nations. No great harm was done to Catholic interests by Luther’s hanging up the drastic picture of himself, depicted in this scurrilous writing, as a warning to the whole world; humanistic culture and the grand classic idiom had, however, scarcely ever before suffered such degradation as in the Latin rendering of this foul book.

The first and chief part of the work was to prove, that it was both wrong and presumptuous for the Popes to style themselves heads of Christendom, and that it was the devil alone who had put such a notion into their heads. In the second part it is demonstrated that in particular the claim made by the Popes that no one had the right to judge or to depose them was of fiendish origin. Finally, in the third, it is shown that the alleged handing over of the Roman Empire by the Greeks to the Germans through the instrumentality of the Popes was also a mere hellish lie.

Sincere admirers of Luther read with amazement this book, which, for all its ferocity, is so reminiscent of the gutter. Some, even of his followers, again openly expressed the opinion that by it he had harmed himself more than any foe could have done—so unmeasured are his words and so utterly crazy the things he propounds. At times the pages seem to have been written in nothing short of a paroxysm of hate, and can only be understood by bearing in mind the author’s frightful state of inward turmoil.

The very first words give us a glimpse of what is to come: “The most hellish Father, St. Paulus Tertius, as though he were Bishop of the Roman Churches, has written two briefs to Carolus Quintus, our Lord Emperor.... He has also, to speak by permission, issued a Bull almost for the fifth time, and now once more the Council is to meet at Trent; no one, however, may attend it but only his own brew, the Epicureans and those who please him.” Luther proceeds to ask whether this can really be a Council, which is ruled by the “gruesome abomination at Rome, who styles himself Pope,” and not rather some “puppet-show got up during the Carnival to tickle the Pope’s fancy.”

The fury of the writer increases as he proceeds and he goes on to make the following demands: “Now let Emperor, kings, princes, lords and whoever can, set the axe to the root, and may God give no luck to hands that hang idle. First of all let them take from the Pope, Rome, Romandiol, Urbino, Bononia and all that he holds as Pope.... He won them by blasphemy and idolatry, and has laid waste the kingdom of Christ, wherefore he is termed the abomination of desolation [Mt. xxiv. 15]. After this the Pope himself, the Cardinals and the whole scoundrely train of his idolatrous Popish Holiness should be seized, and, as blasphemers, have their tongues torn from their throats and nailed in a row on the gallows-tree, in like manner as they affix their seals in a row to their Bulls; though even this would be but slight punishment for all their blasphemy and idolatry. After this let them hold as many Councils as they please on the gallows, or in hell with all the demons.... They are criminal, shameless, obstinate creatures.”[1532]

The gloomy fancy that inspires his furious pen has, however, another kind of death in readiness for such opponents. “Were I Emperor I know full well what I should do: I would couple together all the blasphemous knaves, Pope, Cardinals and all the Popish crew, bind them and take them down to Ostia where there is a little stretch of water called in Latin the Mare Tyrrhenum.... Into it I would drop the lot and give them a good bath, along with the keys with which they bind and loose everything.... They might also take their pastoral staves so as to be able to smite the face of the waters.... And, lastly, as refreshing fodder and drink, they might have all the decrees, decretals, bulls, indulgences, etc. What do you wager that after half an hour in this healing bath all their diseases would cease?... On it I would risk Christ our Lord.”[1533]

“The Pope,” so he exclaims on the same page, “is the head of the accursed Churches of all the worst knaves upon earth, a Vicar of the devil, a foe of God, an adversary of Christ and a destroyer of His Churches, a teacher of all lies, blasphemy and idolatry, an arch-church-thief and robber of the Church’s keys, a murderer of kings and an inciter to all kinds of bloodshed, a whoremonger above all whoremongers and the author of every kind of immorality, even of that which may not be mentioned, an antichrist, a man of sin, a child of destruction, a real werewolf. Whoever refuses to believe this, let him fare away with his God, the Pope.”[1534]

“As an elect teacher and preacher to the Churches of Christ bound to speak the truth, I have herewith done my part. He who is set on stinking may go on stinking.... Let a Church be where it may throughout the world it can have no other Gospel ... than we have here in our Churches at Wittenberg.”[1535]

As to how high Luther as a preacher and man of learning set himself and his Church above the Pope and his, we can see from what follows: “The whole Roman mob is nothing else but a stable full of great, rude, loutish, shameless donkeys, who know nothing of Holy Scripture, or of God, or of Christ, or what a bishop is, what God’s Word, or the Spirit, or baptism is, or what are sacraments, the keys and good works.... I, Dr. Martin, am still living, and having been brought up in the Pope’s school and donkey’s stable became a Doctor of Theology, and was even accounted a good and learned Doctor, which I assuredly was, so that I can truly testify how deep, and high, and broad, and long is their skill in Holy Scripture.”[1536]—And lest someone should object: “Have you any right to judge?” he replies lightheartedly: “It is enough for us to know that the Pope-Ass has been condemned by God Himself and all the angels.” “We cannot be heretics, for we have believed and confessed the Scriptures.”[1537]

An earlier saying of his to the effect that: “I am carried away and know not by what spirit” (“rapior nescio quo spiritu”), comes before the mind of the reader when Luther describes yet a third form of death for the Pope and his courtiers. He would fain see him, the Cardinals and the whole court, dealt with according “to fox-law, their hides being dragged over their heads, that they may thus be taught to pay with their skins; after this the hides may be thrown into the healing bath of Ostia, or into the fire.” “See and behold,” he exclaims, “how my blood boils! How it longs to see the Papacy punished though my spirit is well aware that no temporal penalty can make amends, even for one single Bull or decree!”[1538]

Luther’s defenders have, strange to say, thought it necessary to lay stress on the fact that these three proposals cannot have been seriously meant.[1539] Everyone will admit that they are not a settled plan, for the carrying out of one would have rendered the others difficult or unfeasible. But does this fact modify in any way the revolting character of these words or cancel the invitation to make use of violence? It would be better to argue, that, owing to his fanatism about which only a pathologist can judge, he was not fully aware of what he was doing.—Some Catholics have suggested that the abnormal virulence of many pages of this book was due to the excitement caused by intoxicating liquors. Of this unfortunately there is no proof. That the reason for his horrible language must be sought rather in mental overstrain, in the preponderance just then of an abnormal side of his spiritual life, seems fairly clear also from the other quotations from this work which we were obliged to adduce elsewhere.[1540]

Some time before the work in question was written, BrÜck, the Chancellor, had written to the Elector that, if the Council convened by the Pope “were to resume and continue its knavery” it would be necessary for Luther “to put the axe to the root of the tree, which by the Grace of God he is better able to do than other men”; this he wrote on Jan. 20, 1545.[1541]

At that same time a calmer scene was being enacted in Saxony. On Jan. 14, the Wittenberg theologians, headed by Luther, presented to the Elector the so-called Wittenberg Reformation, drawn up at the sovereign’s request. This work had a close connection with the Œcumenical Council. It is true it was merely written in view of the approaching negotiations at the Diet, to facilitate one of those “religious compromises” which had now become so common. It was, however, at the same time, so to speak, a theological manifesto of the Protestants called forth by the Council. Hence it had been drawn up by Melanchthon (and not by Luther) in terms cautious and moderate. “The theologians,” wrote BrÜck, “have drawn up their ‘Reformation’ very courteously, nor is there any trace of Dr. Martin’s boisterousness” in it.[1542]

The “Reformation” treats successively of “doctrine true and undefiled,” which it asserts is to be found in the Confession of Augsburg, “of the right use of the sacraments,” of the preaching office and episcopal government, of the ecclesiastical courts and spiritual jurisdiction, of learning and the schools, and of the defence and support of the churches. Many useful elements which meet the actual needs of the time are found scattered through the document. Stress is laid on the need of some direction and supervision of the preachers in such a way as to suggest the recognition of episcopal authority; the German episcopate is to be retained ... provided it accepts Luther’s doctrine![1543]

It would in many respects be instructive to draw a parallel between the “Wittenberg Reformation” and the Catholic reformation proclaimed by the Council of Trent in the course of its successive sessions. We shall emphasise only one point. In the case of proceedings against “false doctrine” the Wittenbergers go much further than the Council in their demands for submission on the part of the individual. According to them the ecclesiastical courts (Consistories) were to lend their firm support to Luther’s own doctrine and interpretation of the Bible—for which, as a matter of fact, his name offered the sole guarantee—these courts were moreover to comprise “God-fearing men, chosen from among the laity of high standing in the Church.” The question of any deviation from the faith, was, with their assistance, “first to be examined into and then judgment pronounced in the ordinary way.” So painful a subordination of the individual to private opinions concerning faith, and so uncalled-for an introduction of the lay element into the spiritual courts, never entered the mind of any member of the Council.

Conscious of its divine right the Council of Trent, even during Luther’s lifetime, solemnly laid the foundations of those decisions on doctrine which are now, and for ever will be, binding on the Catholic Church. It rose far above the quarrels of the day and the personal attacks on the successor of Peter and the venerable hierarchy; in what it laid down it was careful ever to preserve intact the great bond with the past.

It was but a few days before Luther departed this life that the “Holy Œcumenical and General Synod legitimately called together in the Holy Ghost,” as in accordance with ancient usage it styles itself, declared in its third session, that its highest task was to oppose the heresies of the day and to reform the morals of the people. During this session, on Feb. 4, 1546, the Council renewed the creed of the Roman Church as the “basis on which all who confess the faith of Christ are agreed and as the one firm foundation against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.”

As the opposing camp had the habit of constantly appealing to Holy Writ so the Council, in its next session, held after Luther’s death on April 8, 1546, solemnly declared Holy Scripture to be the “Spring of wholesome truth and discipline of morals,” though at the same time, agreeably to the ancient and uninterrupted teaching of the Church, it also included tradition: “Which truth is contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which the Apostles received from the lips of Christ ... and which, having been as it were handed down, have survived to our own day”; it, on the one hand, declared the sacred books of both Old and New Testament, the Canon of which it fixed anew, to have God for their author (“Deus auctor”) and to be worthy of equal affection and reverence; on the other, it reasserted the rights of the teaching office of the Church and of the tradition handed down from ages past, both of which Protestantism had questioned. To prevent any abuse of the Word of God, it also enacted that no member of the Church, relying on his own prudence, should, in matters of faith and morals, twist Holy Writ so as to make it mean anything else “than Holy Mother Church held and holds, seeing that it is hers to interpret Scripture” in accordance “with the unanimous consensus of the Fathers.” The Council’s first reforming decree also seeks to safeguard the treasure of Holy Scripture by forbidding any profanation of it or its use for superstitious purposes.

After long adjournments, necessitated by the state of public affairs and after the ground had been prepared by careful study of the Bible, the Fathers and the Schoolmen, there followed, in 1546 and 1547, the weighty discussions on original sin and justification. In the final Canon on the justification of the sinner by grace (vol. iii., p. 185), the point on which all the questions raised by the innovations turned, the Synod pronounces an anathema on any man who shall declare that the Catholic doctrine it has just laid down “detracts from the glory of God or the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord, and does not rather enhance the truth of our faith and the glory of God and of Jesus Christ.” There followed resolutions concerning the sacraments in general, then, in 1551, on the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance; and finally, to pass over other points, in 1562 and 1563, the decrees on Communion, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrament of priestly ordination, and on Marriage. The 25th and last session, on Dec. 4, 1563, was devoted to the doctrine of Purgatory, of the veneration of the saints and relics, indulgences, fast-days and festivals, and also to the drawing up of various far-reaching regulations on discipline.

The Synod had striven throughout to make its disciplinary decrees keep pace with its doctrinal promulgations. Thereby it provided a lasting and effectual foundation for the reform of the Church. This, taken in connection with so clear a statement of the unanimity of the Church’s teaching throughout the ages, deprived the separatists of every pretext for remaining estranged from the unity of the faith. The main point was that the Church, purified from the many abuses to which human frailty had given rise, or at least earnestly resolved to remove those still remaining, stood forth again as the city on the hill, visible afar off in her splendour and calling all to her in order to make them sharers in the hope of life. She was confident that He Who had said: “I will be with you all days, even to the consummation of the world,” had extended His protecting Hand over the assembly, and had spoken through it for the instruction of the faithful and also of the erring brethren. The infallibility of such general Councils was never questioned by any Catholic.

A fresh outburst of zeal was the result, and the ancient Church soon showed that she had within her unsuspected powers for self-improvement.

3. Some Sayings of Luther’s on the Council and his own Authority

“They now seek to get at us under cover of a nominal Council,” says Luther, “in order to be able to shriek at us.... This is Satan’s wisdom as against the foolishness of God. How will God extricate Himself from their cunning schemes? Still, he is the Lord Who will mock at His contemners. If we are to submit to this Council we might as well have submitted twenty-five years since to the lord of the Councils, viz. the Pope and his Bulls. We shall not consent to discuss the matter until the Pope admits that the Council stands above him, and until the Council takes sides [with us] against the Pope, for even the Pope’s own conscience already reproaches him. They are mad and crazy. ‘Deo gratias.’”[1544]

A series of similar utterances may be quoted.

“The Papists are ashamed of themselves and stand in fear of their own conscience. Us they do not fear because, like Virgil of old, they console themselves with having already survived worse things. The paroxysm will cease suddenly.... They put to death the pious John Hus, who never departed in the least from the Papacy but only reproved moral disorders.”[1545] “For it was then not yet the time to unmask the [Roman] beast” (this having been reserved for me). “I, however, have not attacked merely the abuses but even the doctrine, and have bitten off the [Pope’s] heart. I don’t think the Pope will grow again.... The article of Justification has practically taken the shine out of the Pope’s thunderbolts.”[1546]

“Our Church by the grace of God comes quite near to that of the Apostles, because we have the pure doctrine, the catechism, the sacraments and the [right] use of government, both in the State and in the home. If the Word, which alone makes the Church, stands and flourishes, then all is well. The Papists, however, who seek to erect a Church on conciliar decrees and decretals will only arouse dissensions among themselves and ‘wash the tiles’—however much they may pride themselves on their reason and wisdom.”[1547]

“I must for once boast, for it is a long while since I did so last. A Council whereby the Church might be reformed has long been clamoured for. I think I have summoned such a Council as will make the ears of the Papists tingle and their heart burst with malice: for I take it, that, even should the Pope hold a General Council, he will not be able to effect so much by it. First, I have driven the Papists to their books, particularly to Scripture, and deposed the heathen Aristotle and the ‘Summists.’ ... Secondly, I have made them to be more reserved about their indulgences. Thirdly, I have almost put an end to the pilgrimages and field-devilry.” Only look, he says, at the reduction of the monasteries and the many other things which no Council could ever have achieved but which have been brought about by “our people.” Everything had been lost, the “Our Father, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, Penance, Baptism, Prayer [etc., he enumerates twenty-one similar things].” “No institution, no monastery, university or presbytery” taught even one of these articles aright; now, however, “I have set all things in order.”[1548]

I can “write books as well as the Fathers and the Councils,” and this I may say “without pride.”[1549] This is because I have “exercised myself” in the Word of God by “prayer, meditation and temptations” (“oratio, meditatio, tentatio”).[1550] In my “temptation” the devil raged against me in every way, but God in a wonderful manner “kept alight His torch so that it did not go out.”[1551] Persecution overtook me “like the Apostles,” who “fared no better than their Lord and Master.”[1552] But the devil has entered into His foes the Papists, to whom, “in spite of all our good and well-meant admonitions, prayers and entreaties,”[1553] they have surrendered themselves; and rightly so, for the Papists (as I know from my own youthful experience when I did the same myself) refuse even to recognise the Gospel as a mystery.[1554] They simply make an end of all religion.

But, all this notwithstanding, as the Council shall learn “I am really a defender and prop of the Pope. After my death the Pope will suffer a blow which he will be unable to withstand. Then they will say: Would that we now had Luther to give some advice; but if anyone offers advice now they refuse it; when the hour is passed God will no longer be willing.”[1555]

After “God had given me that splendid victory which enabled me to get the better of my monkish vocation, the vows, masses and all the other abominations ... Pope and Emperor were alike unable to stop me.” It is true that I still have temptations to humble me, “but we remain victorious and shall conquer.”[1556]

“These Italians [at Trent they were present in large numbers] are profane men and Epicureans. No Pope or cardinal for the last six hundred years has read the Bible. They understand less of the catechism than does my little daughter. May God preserve us from such blindness and leave us His divine Word.”[1557]

This was the frame of mind in which Luther confronted the Council.

We shall be better able to appreciate the strangeness of his attitude if we imagine Luther, attended by a few theologians of his own circle, journeying to the Council at Trent and there holding converse with the foreign prelates, as he had done at Wittenberg with the Legate Vergerio.

In his wonted fashion he would not have hesitated to express plainly his views concerning his own authority. Some examples of his opinions of himself have already been given.[1558] What impression would the Wittenberger’s novel claims have made on bishops and theologians from distant lands where the Church was still in perfect peace, and where the spiritual supremacy of the hierarchy was unquestioned? With what astonishment would they have listened to those strange replies, which the Saxon had always ready in plenty, to such objections as they might have raised on the score of his disturbance of the peace of both Church and State, of the disorders within his own fold and of his own private life and that of his followers?

A number of other statements taken from his writings and conversations with his intimates may help to make the picture even more vivid.

“I have the Word,” we can hear him saying to the bishops in his usual vein, “that is enough for me! Were even an angel to come to me now I should not believe him.”[1559]

“Whoever obtrudes his doctrine on me and refuses to yield, must inevitably be lost; for I must be right, my cause being not mine, but God’s, Whose Word it also is. Hence those who are against it must go under. Hence my unfailing defiance.... I have risked my life on it and will die for it. Therefore whoever sets himself against me must be ruined if a God exists at all.”[1560]

To friend and foe I can only say: “Take in faith what Christ says to you through me; for I am not deceived, so far as I know. It is not the words of Satan that I speak. Christ speaks through me.”[1561]

“Though there are many who regard my cause as diabolical and condemn it, yet I know that my word and undertaking is not of me but of God, and neither death nor persecution will teach me otherwise.”[1562]

And before anyone can slip in a word of rejoinder he, again, as his way was, appeals to his personal knowledge. “I know that God together with all His angels bears me witness that I have not falsified His Word, baptism or sacrament, but have preached rightly and truthfully.”[1563]

This doctrine I learnt in my “temptations,” during which “I had to ponder ever more and more deeply.” “What is lacking to the fanatics and the mob is that they have not that real foeman who is the devil; he certainly teaches a man thoroughly.”[1564]

The hostility met with, particularly from false brethren, is also “God’s sure seal upon us”; by such “we have become like St. Paul, nay, like the whole Church.”[1565]

The chief thing for me, however, so he continues, is conscience and conviction. “Take heed,” such is my axiom, “not to make mere play of it. If you wish to begin it, then begin it with such a clear conscience that you may defy the devil.... Be a man and do everything that goes against and vexes them [the opponents] and omit everything that might please them.”[1566]

To those who ask whether his conscience did not upbraid him for breaking the peace and for overthrowing all order, he replies: It is quite true “Satan makes my conscience to prick me for having by false doctrine thrown the world into confusion and caused revolts.... But I meet him with this: The doctrine is not mine, but the Son of God’s; whole worlds are nothing to God, even should ten of them be rent by rebellion and go headlong to destruction. It is written in Holy Scripture [Mt. xvii. 5], ‘Hear ye Him’ (Christ), or everything will fall into ruins, and again [Ps. ii. 10], ‘Hearken, ye kings,’ or else ye shall perish. It was thus that Paul too had to console himself, when, in the Acts, he was accused of treason against God and CÆsar. God wills that the article of Justification shall stand, and if men accept it then no State or government will perish, but, if not, then they alone are the cause of their misfortune.”[1567]

With no less confidence is he prepared to counter the other objections. My doctrine breeds evil? “After the proclamation of the Evangel it is true we see in the world great wickedness, ingratitude and profanation; this followed on the overthrow of Antichrist [which I brought about]; but in reality it is only, that, formerly, before the dawn of the Evangel, we did not see so plainly these sins which all were already there, but now that the morning star has risen the whole world awakens, as though from a drunken sleep, and perceives the sins which previously, while all men were asleep and sunk in the gloom of night, they had failed to recognise. But [in view of all the wickedness] I set my hopes on the Last Day being not far distant; things cannot go on for more than a hundred years; for the Word of God will again grow weaker; owing to lack of ministers of the Word darkness will arise. Then the whole world will grow savage and so lull itself into a state of security. After this the voice will resound (Mt. xxv. 6): ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’ Then God will not be able to endure it any longer.”[1568]

Is our own life any objection? It is no question of life but of doctrine, “and, as to the doctrine, it is indubitable that it is the Word of God. ‘The words that I speak,’ saith the Lord [John xiv. 10], ‘are not mine but the Father’s.’” Certainly “I should not like God to judge me by my life.”[1569]—“My doctrine is true and includes the forgiveness of sins, because my doctrine is not mine; Christ also says, ‘My doctrine is not Mine.’ My doctrine stands fast, be my life what it may.”[1570] “True enough, it is hard when Satan comes and upbraids us saying: You have laid violent hands on this marvellous edifice of the Papacy,” you, “a man full of error and sin.” “But Paul also, according to Rom. ix., had at times to endure similar reproaches.” “We answer: We do not attack the Pope on account of his personal errors and trespasses; we must indeed condemn them, but we will overlook them and forgive them as we ourselves wish to be forgiven. Thus it is not a question for us of the Pope’s personal faults and sins, but of his doctrine and of submission to the Word. The Pope and his followers, quite apart from their own sins, offend against the glory and the grace of God, nay, against Christ Himself, of whom the Father says: Hear ye Him. But the Pope would have men’s ears attentive only to what he says!”[1571]

But, because my doctrine is true, so he concludes, this had to come about, “as I had long ago foreseen; in spite of the purity of my theology I [like Paul] was alleged to have preached ‘scandal’ to the holy Jews and ‘foolishness’ to the sapient heathen.”[1572]—Nevertheless, “whoever teaches otherwise than I have taught, or condemns me, condemns God and must remain a child of hell.”[1573]—“For the future I will not do the Papists the honour,” of permitting them, “or even an angel from heaven, to judge of my doctrine, for we have had too much already of foolish humility.”[1574]

With what wonder and perplexity at so unaccountable an attitude would the foreign bishops have listened to words such as these!

4. Notable Movements of the Times accompanied by Luther with “Abuse and Defiance down to the very Grave.” The Caricatures

Brunswick, Cleves, the Schmalkalden Leaguers

Luther followed with great sympathy and perturbation the warlike proceedings instituted by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse against Duke Henry of Brunswick, whom he had himself already attacked with the pen in his “Wider Hans Worst.” They made war on the Duke in the summer of 1542, seized upon his lands and of their own initiative introduced the innovations, their troops at the same time committing unexampled excesses.

Luther acclaimed the victory as a deed of God; such a proceeding could not be described as the work of man; such a success foreboded the approach of the Day of Judgment and retribution.[1575]

The Imperial Chamber of Justice protested against the violent appropriation of the country by the Schmalkalden Leaguers, and, on Sep. 3, summoned the two princes and their confederates to Spires to answer for the breach of the peace committed at the expense of Duke Henry. Thereupon all the members of the League of Schmalkalden repudiated their obedience to the “wicked, dissolute, Popish rascals,” as the Landgrave Philip politely styled the Imperial Court. In this he was at one with Luther, who, in former years, had called the Imperial Chamber “a devil’s whore.”[1576]

A new war of the Leaguers on Henry, who was anxious to recover his lands, was crowned in 1545 by a still more notable success on the part of the rebels, who this time contrived to take the Duke himself prisoner. When, however, Philip of Hesse, out of consideration for the Emperor, seemed inclined to set the captive free, Luther intervened with a circular letter addressed to Philip and his own Elector. He was determined to characterise any idea of setting free the “mischievous, wild tool of the Roman idol” as an open attack not merely on the Evangel, but even on the manifest will of God as displayed in the recent war which had been waged “by His angels.” Here his pseudo-mysticism is again much to the fore. The circular letter was soon printed and spread broadcast.[1577]

Without any deep insight into the real state of affairs, either political or ecclesiastical, unmindful even of diplomacy, Luther seeks to work on the fears of the Protestant princes by an extravagant description of the Divine Judgments which were overtaking blasphemers, and tells them they will be sharers in the sin of others if, now that God had “broken down the bulwark” of the Papacy, they were to set it up anew.

To the Papists he says: “Stop, you mad fools, Pope and Papists, and do not blow the flame that God has kindled. For it will turn against yourselves so that the sparks and cinders will fly into your eyes. Yes, indeed, this is God’s fire, Who calls Himself a consuming fire. You know and are convinced in your own conscience that your cause is wicked and lost and that you are striving against God.”[1578]

He writes confidently: We on this side, without causing either Emperor or Pope “to raise a hair, have unceasingly prayed, implored, besought and clamoured for peace, as they very well know; this, however, we have never been able to obtain from them, but have had daily to endure nothing but insults, attacks and extermination.” The defensive alliance of the Catholic Princes and Estates became in his eyes a robber-league, established under pretext of religion; “what they wanted was not the Christian religion but the lands of the Elector and Landgrave.”[1579] The captive Duke had obtained help from Italy, very likely from the Pope. “In short, we all know that the Pope and the Papists would gladly see us dead, body and soul, whereas we for our part would have them all to be saved body and soul together with us.”[1580] The whole writing, with its combination of rage and mysticism, and likewise much else dating from that period, may well raise grave doubts as to the state of the author’s mind.

The inroad into Brunswick was merely a preliminary to the religious wars soon to break out and ravage Germany. No sooner had Luther closed his eyes in death than they began on a larger scale with the Schmalkalden War, which was to prove so disastrous to the Protestants. His words just quoted to the princes of his party were repeated almost word for word in the Protestant manifestos during the religious wars.

It is possible that he may have been roused to make such attacks on the Catholics by certain disagreeable events which occurred from 1541 onwards. Political steps were being taken which were unfavourable to Lutheranism and not at all adequately balanced by the Protestants’ victory in Brunswick and elsewhere.

Luther was made painfully aware of the unexpected weakening of the League of Schmalkalden which resulted from the bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. By virtue of a secret compact with the Emperor, into which Philip of Hesse had found himself forced (June 13, 1541),[1581] the latter, in his position of head of the German Protestants, had bound himself not to consent that Duke William of Cleves, who inclined to Protestantism, should be admitted into the Schmalkalden League; he had also to refuse any assistance to the Duke when the Emperor Charles V took the field against him on account of the union of Guelders with Cleves. The progress of Protestantism in these districts was checked by the Emperor’s victory in 1543. The formal introduction of the new faith into Metz was frustrated by the Emperor; at Cologne too the Reformers saw all their efforts brought to naught.

The Diet of Spires, in 1544, it is true brought the Protestants an extension of that peace which was so favourable to their interests, but the campaign which Charles V thereupon undertook against FranÇois I—whom Philip of Hesse and the Schmalkaldeners were compelled by the above-mentioned compact to leave on the lurch—led to the humiliation of the Frenchman, who was compelled to make peace at Crespy on Sep. 14, 1544. There the King of France promised the Emperor never again to side with the German Protestants.

Luther was also troubled by the dissensions within the League of Schmalkalden, by the refusal of Joachim II of Brandenburg, of Louis, Elector of the Palatinate, and especially of Duke Maurice of Saxony to join the League; the last sovereign’s intimate relations with the Emperor were also a source of anxiety. At Wittenberg it was clearly seen what danger threatened Lutheranism should the Imperial power gather strength and intervene on behalf of the Roman Church.

The Roman Church, so Luther exclaims fretfully in his “Kurtz Bekentnis” (1545), is made up of “nothing but Epicureans and scoffers at the Christian faith.” The Pope, “the greatest foe of Christ and the real Antichrist, has made himself head of Christendom, nay, the very hind-piece and bottom-hole of the devil through which so many abominations of Masses, monkery and immorality are cacked into the world.”[1582]

The Zwinglian “Sacramentarians”

One controversy which greatly excited Luther at this time was that with the Swiss Sacramentarians. Once more his old feud with Zwinglianism was to break out and embitter his days. When, in 1542, the elevation was abolished in the parish church of Wittenberg (to some extent out of deference to the wishes of the Landgrave of Hesse who objected to this rite), some people too hastily concluded that Luther was renouncing his own doctrine in favour of that of the Swiss; hence he deemed it necessary once more to deny, in language too clear to be mistaken, any intention to make common cause with a company, which, as he puts it, had been “infected and intoxicated with an alien spirit.”

Moreover, Caspar Schwenckfeld, with the object of moving the feelings of Luther’s opponents, made known to them Luther’s rude and so discreditable letter.[1583] The animosity of the Swiss and of their South German sympathisers now assumed serious dimensions. Luther accordingly determined to address the reply which he had been planning for some time to the Sacramentarians as a body, declaring that that “slanderer” Schwenckfeld was not worth a single line.

He was also very desirous of once more before his death giving vigorous and lasting expression to the positive faith which he still shared and to which he was wont eagerly to fly when hard pressed by the devil. The spectre of scepticism of which, as many of his statements show, he dreaded the advent among his followers as soon as he himself had been taken away, was to be exorcised beforehand.

The writing against the Swiss is the work just alluded to, which appeared at the end of Sep., 1544, under the title “Kurtz Bekentnis vom heiligen Sacrament.”[1584]

After briefly disposing of their arguments, with which he had already sufficiently dealt, the work culminates in a most outspoken condemnation of the errors and arbitrary opinions of the Swiss, the most striking sentence of all being the following: “Hence, in a word, either believe everything fully or else nothing at all.”[1585] This was practically what the Catholic Church had said to him at his own apostasy: The principle of faith permits of no picking and choosing between the truths revealed by God and guaranteed by the Church’s teaching authority; one must choose between either accepting the whole body of the Church’s doctrines, or leaving her.[1586]

For the rest the writing was another bad example of the boundless fury and offensiveness of his mode of controversy. In the first lines he declares: “It is quite the same to me ... when the accursed mob of fanatics, Zwinglians and the like praise or abuse me, as when Jews, Turks, Pope or all the devils in unison scold or laud me. For I, who am now about to go down into the grave, am determined to bring this testimony and this boasting with me to the Judgment-seat of my dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that I have with the utmost earnestness condemned and shunned the fanatics and Sacramentarians, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Stinkfield and their disciples, whether at ZÜrich or wherever else they were, according to His command, Titus iii. 10: ‘A man that is a heretic avoid.’”[1587]—He goes on to call the Zwinglian Sacramentarians “devourers and murderers of souls, who have an endevilled, perdevilled, supradevilled and blasphemous heart and a lying jaw.” “Hence no Christian can or ought to pray for the fanatics or to assist them. They are reprobates.... They want to have nothing to do with me, and I want to have nothing to do with them. They boast that they have nothing from me, for which I heartily thank God: I have borrowed even less from them, for which, too, God be praised.”[1588]

In this writing against the Zwinglians Luther also attacks the Papacy with unspeakable coarseness. Was it perhaps that he was seeking to atone in this way for his apparent agreement with the Catholics in their belief in the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament? This agreement with the Papacy was, however, as he boasts, only due to his holding fast to the ancient doctrine, to that doctrine which the “true olden Christian Church has held for fifteen hundred years.”[1589] He did not bethink himself of his treatment of many other doctrines of this “true, olden Church.” Moreover, even his doctrine of the Sacrament was but a shadow of the ancient one. He insisted on denying any change of substance in the Bread and on affirming that the Body of Christ is actually and everywhere in heaven and on earth present as a body. He is also known to have praised Calvin for a writing in which the latter belied the “local presence” of Christ in the Bread,[1590] and that he declared his readiness to “learn something from so able a mind.” Thus what he retained was but a distorted fragment of the ancient doctrine of the Sacrament, salved from the shattered treasure of his former Catholic convictions.

Calvin

Very different from that which he displayed towards Zwingli and his co-religionists was Luther’s attitude towards Calvin, the head of the theocracy of Geneva, whose power in the “Swiss Rome” had developed so amazingly since 1541, when he had returned after six years’ exile at Strasburg in the companionship of Bucer.

Thanks to Bucer, Calvin’s opinions, which in the main had always been Lutheran, had been directed more towards that form of Lutheranism represented by Bucer and Melanchthon, his earlier humanistic education making this all the easier. On account of his views some have, not so wrongly, dubbed him the “South-German Lutheran,”[1591] though his stiffness and harshness were not at all in keeping with the South-German character. Being in close touch with Lutheranism he had frequently visited Germany during his theological wanderings, and as the representative of the Strasburg Protestants. He had taken a part in the negotiations at the Frankfurt Convention and at the religious conferences at Hagenau, Worms and Ratisbon.

Calvin esteemed Luther far higher than Zwingli. “If we compare them,” he wrote to his friend Guillaume Farel, “Luther towers far above him, as you yourself are well aware.”[1592]

It was with unmixed joy that Luther saw “so able a mind” coming forward as a champion of the new theology against the Roman errors.

This explains how Melanchthon could announce to Bucer at Strasburg, in a note evidently intended for Calvin himself, that, though certain persons had tried to incite Luther against Calvin on account of a statement [on the Supper] which was at variance with Luther’s views, “Calvin stands in high favour [with Luther]” (“magnam gratiam iniit”). Calvin himself with great satisfaction quoted this passage in a letter to Farel.[1596] As for Luther, writing to Bucer on Oct. 14, 1539, he sent his “respectful greetings” to Calvin and mentioned that he had perused “with peculiar pleasure”[1597] his writing (the “Responsio” against Jacopo Sadoleto in which was the incriminated statement).

When, in April, 1545, Luther glanced through a newly published Latin translation of Calvin’s principal work on the Supper, “Petit traictÉ de la sainte cene” (1541), he observed, that the author was a learned and pious man; had Œcolampadius and Zwingli expressed themselves in this way from the beginning, then no such quarrel would have arisen. Thus Luther accepted the Genevese theologian’s essay “in a friendly way and without misgiving”—though “in it, Calvin recognised a bodily presence in Luther’s sense as little as before.”[1598] On the contrary, Calvin agrees in the main with Zwingli’s denial of the Real Presence, though he insists very strongly on the spiritual working of the Body of Christ enthroned in heaven on the recipients of the Supper, so strongly indeed as to speak of the “real substance of His Body and Blood” which Christ communicates.[1599] As Loofs puts it: “He had come nearer to Luther’s view, at least so far as terminology went.” Later on, however, so Loofs adds, “the delusive terminological approximation to Luther disappeared”; in support of this Loofs quotes from the 1559 edition of the “Institutio”: “Christ breathes life into our souls from the substance of His Flesh ... though the flesh of Christ does not enter us.”[1600]

It was fortunate for the relations between the leaders at Wittenberg and Geneva that Luther was no longer amongst the living when Calvin expressed such a view of the Supper.

The amenities and courtesies between the two heads would have ceased and Luther’s wrath would have once again asserted itself. As a matter of fact the ambiguity of which Calvin had learnt the use in Bucer’s school came to an end very shortly after Luther’s death, when Calvin and Farel reached an agreement with Bullinger of ZÜrich (The “Consensus Tigurinus”); here the Genevese without any reservation put forward the theses: “Any idea of a local presence of Christ [in the Sacrament] must be set aside ... it is a wrong and godless superstition to circumscribe Christ as man under elements of this world.”[1601] The words “This is My Body” are, on the contrary, to be understood by metonymy, the name of the thing represented being transferred to the “sign.”—Now it was just the fact that Zwingli and the sacramentarians made of the Eucharist nothing more than a “sign” that had kept alive Luther’s indignation against them even till his last hour.

“On the Jews and their Lies.” “On Shem Hammephorash,” 1543

Amongst the prominent events of the day in Central Germany the Jewish movement deserves a place; on the one hand there was an increase in the influence and power of the Jews, and, on the other, repressive measures secured their banishment from several territories. In this movement Luther took a leading part.

In the Saxon Electorate the expulsion of the Jews had taken place in 1536 by virtue of an edict of Johann Frederick’s. They were even refused the usual safe conduct through the country and threatened with the severest penalties should they be caught within the borders. In the matter of this regulation Luther sided with the sovereign. When the Jew, Josel Rosheim, a zealous advocate of his race, besought Luther repeatedly in the most urgent manner by letter to procure him an audience with the Elector, Luther not only refused to do anything for him, on the grounds that the Jews were hostile to Christianity, but even declared his intention to attack their obstinacy in print as soon as God granted him time and opportunity.[1602]

It was the accounts he received towards the close of 1542 of the intrigues and the spread of the so-called Sabbatarians, a sect of Christians settled in Moravia who had been led astray by the Jews to introduce circumcision, the observance of the Saturday-Sabbath and other Mosaic ceremonies, which prompted him to undertake a slashing work against the Jews.

This gave the necessary stimulus “to the fanatical campaign against the Jews which the Reformer started in the winter of 1542.”[1608]

At the end of 1542 he published his “Von den JÜden und jren LÜgen,” and in March, 1543, his “Vom Schem Hamphoras.”[1609]

In the first he begins by proving against the Jews the Messianic character of Christ, answers their objections and lays bare their falsehoods, after which he considers how the Jews should be dealt with. In the second he discusses the Jewish legend concerning Christ’s miracles, and in particular scourges the superstitions connected with the use of the “Shem Hammephorash”; he then examines the genealogies of Christ in the Gospels in order to refute the objections of the Jews in this connection, and again discusses the proofs that Christ was the Messias, at the same time defending in detail His birth of a Virgin. Both writings he addresses to the Christians in order to strengthen them in the faith in view of the dangers which threatened from Judaism.

Full of zeal for the defence of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the coming and the benefits bestowed by the Messias, he refutes at great length the supposed learned proofs of his Jewish opponents. On the other hand, he thunders furiously against the blasphemies, the unseemly behaviour and the usury of the Jews who stood in high favour at several of the Courts; he even demands with “great earnestness” that their synagogues and private houses, the scene of their blasphemies, be set on fire and levelled to the ground (“Let whoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them”[1610]), that their books be taken away from them and “not one page left,” that their Rabbis be forbidden on pain of death to teach henceforth, and that all be hindered from “praising God publicly, thanking Him, praying or teaching”;[1611] further, that the streets and highways be closed against them, that they be forbidden to practise usury, and be expelled from the land unless indeed willing to earn their bread at the sweat of their brow with axe and spade, spindle and distaff. All these counsels were, of course, addressed primarily to the authorities, but, such was their nature, that they might easily have provoked the people to an unchristian persecution of their Jewish fellow-citizens. These writings, with their unmeasured vituperation and their obscenity, also bear painful witness to the deterioration of his language with advancing years.

In this way Luther unloads himself of his fury against both devil and Jews; two things are characteristic of his hatred of the Jews; first, that the devil is made to bear the greater share,[1616] though the latter promptly shifts the burden back on to the shoulders of the Jews; secondly, that the presumption of the Jews in seeking to be first everywhere is castigated with all Luther’s native coarseness.

In exoneration of Luther it has been said that, in this case, in making use of such “shocking comparisons,” he was not merely following his natural bent, on the contrary, “in his angry zeal he deliberately sought for them.” It is perfectly true that neither his angry zeal nor his deliberate intention can be denied any more than his desire to “stir up the world against what was in itself shameful and disgusting,” and his longing to do something towards its removal. But surely there was another kind of language and a different tone with the help of which he might have effected more, such, for instance, as had been used by great and pious men in the past whose inspired and glowing words contrast glaringly with Luther’s hideous obscenities.

The results achieved by Luther with these two writings were but of trifling importance.

We hear practically nothing of any conversions of Jews or apostate Christians being due to them. Luther had been wise himself to declare that he did not expect any conversions to result from them. In the Saxon Electorate, however, the unjust enactment of 1536 was, on May 6, 1543, revived against the Jews by a public mandate abrogating that mitigation of it which Josel Rosheim had been successful in obtaining. “Official reports go to prove that the cruel persecution of the Jews [in the Saxon Electorate] was no mere paper measure; only after Luther’s death did things settle down.”[1621] In Hesse a severe decree against the Jews, issued in 1543, seems to have owed its origin “to the writings of the Reformer. This being so the rebuff with which Luther met in the Electorate of Brandenburg must have been all the more annoying.”[1622]

One of the lasting effects of these two screeds was, that, in the subsequent anti-Jewish risings the charges there contained, and couched in language so fervid and eloquent, were constantly appealed to in vindication of the measures used. No distinction was made between what was true and what was false, or between the horrible exaggerations and the actual fact, though the unreliability of many of the statements is often quite palpable.

Josel von Rosheim, the zealous spokesman of the Jews, achieved a brilliant success with the Emperor Charles V. Certain extensive privileges were guaranteed him on April 3, 1544, and were made public in 1546, whereby all the rights and liberties of the Jews were confirmed.

Nor was there any lack of condemnation of these two writings of Luther at the hands of the Protestants themselves.

The Shem Hammephorash or “peculiar name” was, according to Luther, a cabalistic formula of the Jews, supposed to be endowed with the most marvellous magic power; it was made up of seventy-two three-lettered names of angels, themselves formed from a rearrangement of the letters of the Scripture text, Ex. xiv. 19-21, concerning the pillar of cloud that went before the Jews on their departure from Egypt. To each of these angelic names was appended a verse from the Psalter with the “great name of God, Jehovah, also called the Tetragrammaton.” So great was the power of this magic formula that it could strike blind or dumb all Christians everywhere in the world, could drive them mad, nay, kill them outright, if only the words were rightly uttered and in a mood pious enough. Even the superstitious use of the Tetragrammaton alone, was, according to Luther, responsible, in the case “of the devil and the Jews,” for “much sorcery and all kinds of abuse and idolatry.”[1629] They call it the Tetragrammaton because they are chary of pronouncing the four consonants of the all-too-sacred name of Jehovah, but, “in their heart they abuse and blaspheme God.” They do not see that they are “using the Holy Name in the shameful abuse they practise with their ‘Scham Hamperes.’”[1630]

The cause of the mad aberrations of the Jews is, however, in Luther’s eyes, due to the “Word of God not enlightening them and showing them the way.” Now, however, God’s Word has risen and shines brightly; it even casts its beam into those parts where the Papacy reigns ... for there “thick darkness, lies and abominations were worshipped with Masses, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, monkery and one’s own works.”[1631] It was a great and godly work that he had undertaken in unmasking not only these but also the many Jewish abominations.

As to the sources whence Luther derived his information, he uncritically took his material mainly from anti-Jewish writings. The book “Victoria adversus impios Hebroeos” of the Carthusian, Porchetus de Salvaticis, dating from the beginning of the 14th century, provided him with the Jewish blasphemies against Christ, and in particular with the supposed mysteries of the Shem Hammephorash; Antonius Margaritha supplied him with more recent material in his work “Der gantz jÜdisch Glaub” of 1530. It is probable that he also made use of the “Dialogus” against the Jews by Paul of Burgos (1350-1435), which he quotes in his lectures on Genesis. He also mentions incidentally as his authorities Jerome, Eusebius, and Sebastian MÜnster.[1632]

Comparison with an earlier Jewish writing of Luther’s

A more accurate insight into the psychological and historical significance of the two screeds against Judaism is obtained by comparing them with an earlier writing of Luther’s, dating from 1523, which is perfectly fair to the Jews. The comparison will lead the reader to ask what was the real reason for his extraordinary change of attitude.

Filled as yet with great and unrealisable hopes of that conversion of the whole Jewish race which he fancied he saw coming, Luther had, in 1523, published a booklet entitled “Das Jhesus Christus eyn geborner Jude sey.”[1633]

It is perfectly true that, had the optimistic expectations of Luther and his friends been realised, it would have been of incalculable advantage to their cause, for they would have succeeded where the ancient Church had failed. “The conversion of the Jews,” says Lewin, “an idea which can be read between Luther’s lines without any danger of forcing them—is to be the coping-stone of the grand edifice he had erected; the Papacy [in Luther’s view] had failed, not merely because it had recourse to wrong methods but above all because its foundations rested on forgery and falsehood.”[1637]

The fact is, however, that no increase in the number of conversions took place. This disappointing experience, the sight of the growing insolence of the Jews, their pride and usury, not to speak of personal motives, such as certain attempts he suspected them to have made on his life at the instigation of the Papists, brought about a complete change in Luther’s opinions in the course of a few years. As early as 1531 or 1532, when a Hebrew baptised at Wittenberg had brought discredit upon him by relapsing into Judaism, he gave vent to the angry threat, that, should he find another pious Jew to baptise he would take him to the bridge over the Elbe, hang a stone round his neck and push him over with the words: I baptise thee in the name of Abraham; for “those scoundrels,” so he adds, “scoff at us all and at our religion.”[1638]

From that time he begins to put the Jews in the same category with the Turks and the Papists.

The more he studies the text of the Old Testament, and the Old Jewish commentators, the more indignant he grows at the misrepresentations and trivialities to be met with in the works of the Rabbis. According to him, they are oxen and donkeys; they are as bad as the monks; with their droppings they make of Holy Scripture, as it were, a sink into which to empty their obscenity and stupid imaginings.[1639] He is also aghast to discover that they led astray even great churchmen like St. Jerome, and Nicholas of Lyra of whom he was particularly fond.[1640] What was even worse, they were ensnaring learned contemporaries who were familiar with Hebrew, particularly those who fancied they could improve upon Luther’s translation of the Old Testament thanks to their closer acquaintance with the original text, men, for instance, of the type of Sebastian MÜnster of Basle (the pupil of the Jewish grammarian Elia Levita). MÜnster, according to Luther, was a regular “Judaiser,” seeing that he paid heed neither to the faith, nor to the words, nor to their setting; albeit hostile to the Jews, he, too, was undermining the New Testament. Much of Luther’s anger in his writings against the Jews was intended for their Judaising pupils. Hence on the publication of the work “Von den JÜden und jren LÜgen” we hear him declaring: “We have been at great pains with the Bible and been careful that the sense should agree with the grammar. This has not pleased MÜnster. Oh, those Hebrews—including even our own—are great Judaisers; hence I had them also in mind when I wrote my booklet against the Jews.”[1641]

Some special motives for his Polemics against the Jews

The real cause of Luther’s deadly hostility, voiced in his later writings against the Jews, was the blasphemous infidelity displayed in their treatment of Scripture and in their life as a whole.

“The Jews with their exegesis,” he says, “are like swine that break into the Scripture”; the end and object of their life and intercourse with us, is, as the movement started in Moravia proves, to make us all Jews; “they never cease trying to entice Christians over.”[1642] They are quite at liberty to prefer, as indeed they do, the law of Moses to the Papal decretals and their mad articles,[1643] but they have no right to prefer it to the pure Evangel. Sooner than this let us have a struggle to the death!—Such were the thoughts uppermost in his mind when he sat down to pen those two writings which constitute a phenomenon in the history of literature.

On the other hand, Luther’s most recent biographer is wrong when he explains the whole controversy by saying: “There can be no doubt that the radical change in his attitude on the Jewish question was an outcome of his increasing depression.”[1644] That, on the contrary, it was Luther’s religious excitement which was the prime psychological mover is plain from many of the effusions contained in both these writings. That, however, his state of depression had some share in it is perfectly true.

“The wrath of God has come upon them,” he writes in one such passage, “of which I do not like to think, nor has this book been a cheerful one for me to write, for I have been forced to avert my eyes from the terrible picture, sometimes in anger, sometimes in scorn; and it is painful to me to have to speak of their horrible blasphemies against our Lord and His dear Mother, to which we Christians are loath indeed to listen; I can well understand what St. Paul means in Romans x. 1, when he says that his heart was sore when he thought of them; such is the case with every Christian who earnestly dwells, not on the temporal misery and misfortune of which the Jews complain, but on their addiction to blasphemy, to cursing, to spitting at God Himself and all that is God’s, even to their eternal damnation, and who yet refuse to listen or lend an ear but will have it that all they do is done out of zeal for God. O God, our Heavenly Father, turn aside Thy wrath and let there be an end of it for the sake of Thy dear Son. Amen.”[1645]

“O my God,” he groans elsewhere, “my beloved Creator and Father, do Thou graciously take into account my unwillingness to have to speak so shamefully of Thine accursed enemies, the devil and the Jews. Thou knowest I do so out of the ardour of my faith and to the glory of Thy Divine Majesty, for it pierces me to the very quick.”[1646]

If, however, we look more closely into the matter we shall see that the “ardour of his faith” was also fed from other sources. There was, for instance, the reaction of his own protracted struggle in defence of the new doctrines and against the Papacy, a struggle which left deep marks on all his labours and on all his writings.

Towards the end of a career which had worked such untold disaster to the Christianity of the past he feels keenly the need of vindicating the dignity of Christ if only to soothe his own conscience; he was resolved to hammer it in with the utmost defiance, just as formerly he had clung to the idea that, by his doctrine, he was defending the rights of Christ against the Pope. He is now resolved again to take his stand on this, his efforts becoming the more violent the more the sight of the ruin wrought by his own work affrights him. Hence his eagerness to take advantage of Jewish attacks on the pillars of the faith in order, while triumphing over them, to enjoy the sense of his comradeship with Christ, the Son of God now so soon to come in Judgment. Here again he allows his vanity to mislead him and to paint his intervention on behalf of the great truth of Christianity as far more successful than that of any of the Popes; this helps him to close his eyes to the wounds which the inner voice tells him he had inflicted on the Christian truths and on the public life of Christendom. For was he not doing for Christ what the Pope was quite unable to do? Indeed, “the world, the Turk, the Jew and the Pope are all raging blasphemously against the name of the Lord, laying waste His Kingdom and deriding His Will; but ‘greater is He that is with us than he that is with the world’; He triumphs,” so he wrote at that time to some foreign sympathisers, “and will triumph in you to all eternity; may He console you by His Holy Spirit in which He has called you to oneness with His Body.”[1647]

Nevertheless everything else—even his yeoman service in the cause of the Bible, and his shaming of the Papacy, which had so ineffectively struggled against the Jews—recedes into the background before his determination to crown his whole life-work by snatching from the Jewish devil the honour of Christ our one Salvation.

This was admittedly his motive for taking up his pen yet a third time.

The Third Work against the Jews, 1543

As early as June, 1543, Luther was engaged on a new polemical work against the Jews entitled “On the last words of David.”[1651] It is a lengthy essay on 2 Kings xxiii. 1-7, and certain other striking passages, with the object of proving that the Messias was to be a God-man and of vindicating the mystery of the Trinity.

In this writing the Jews are not attacked in such unmeasured language as in the two others just considered; the tone of the whole is much calmer, indeed comparatively kind. It may be that the representations made to him concerning his violence had not been without some effect.

The end, like the beginning, expresses the wish that, without suffering ourselves to be led astray by the false readings of the Jews, we should “plainly and clearly find and recognise our dear Lord and Saviour in Holy Writ.”[1655] This is what leads Melanchthon to praise the work as enjoyable reading, because there is nothing sweeter to the pious than to deepen their knowledge of the God-man and to learn the art of real prayer so different from that of the heathen, the Jew and the Turk.[1656]

Against the Turks

The honour of Christianity and of its Divine Founder was also what Luther had at heart in the two books which in his later years he was instrumental in publishing against the Turks, viz. his “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den TÜrcken” (1541) and his new edition (1542) of an old work against the Koran, the “Verlegung des Alcoran Bruder Richardi.”

In one passage of the Vermanunge he even couches this thought in the form of a prayer:

In this writing he strongly reprobates both the public disorders on the side of the new Evangel and the Papists’ obstinate resistance to the Word of God; both would be terribly punished by means of the Turks unless people set about amending their lives and giving themselves up to earnest prayer. Now, after the Evangel had been preached for so many years, “everyone knew, thank God, what each class and individual man should do or leave undone, which, alas, formerly we did not know, though we would gladly have done it.”[1659] Should our prayer fail to achieve the desired object, “then let us say a longer and a better one.” “How happy should we be were our prayers against the Turk again to prove of no avail, but, instead, the Last Day came—which indeed cannot any longer be far off—spelling the end of both Turk and Pope as I do not for a moment doubt.”[1660]

At any rate Luther might have used better weapons against the Turks than he actually did in this so-called admonition.

About the time he wrote it we hear Luther occasionally expressing a hope that the Turks may be converted to the Evangel, now shining so brightly and convincingly.

“I should like to see the Evangel make its way amongst the Turks, which may indeed very well happen.” “It is quite in God’s power to work a miracle and make them listen to the Evangel.... If a ‘Wascha’ [Pasha] were to accept the Gospel we should soon see what effect it would have on the Grand Turk; and as he has many sons it is quite likely one of them might reach it.”—He despaired of the overthrow of the Turkish empire, but was fond of dreaming of the coming of a “good man who should withstand the dogma of Mohamed.”[1661]

“The Turk rules more mightily by his religion than by arms”; such was Luther’s opinion. He had to be confronted with the belief in Christ, that belief which Luther had learnt “amidst the bitter pangs of death,” viz. “that Christ is God”; in great temptations nothing could help us but this faith, “the most powerful consolation that is bestowed on us”; this same article of faith God was vindicating, even by miracles, against Turk and Pope. To this he too would cleave in spite of any objections of reason.[1662]

He did not, however, patiently wait till the “good man” came who was to oppose the dogma of the Turks; he himself set about this undertaking in March, 1542.[1663] After having, shortly before, become acquainted with the Koran in a poor translation, he proceeded himself to translate into German a work against the Koran, written in 1300, by the Dominican Richardus (Ricoldus). To it he appended a preface of his own and a “Treue Warnung.”[1664]

He had undertaken, so he says, to disclose and answer the devil-inspired “infamies” contained in the Alcoran, “the better to strengthen us in our Christian faith.”[1665]—This out-of-date book of a mediÆval theologian was, however, hardly the work to furnish an insight into the Koran, particularly as it built far too much on badly read texts and doubtful stories uncritically taken for granted; from such defects the refutation was bound to suffer.

Words such as these were certainly as little calculated to further the common cause of the Christians against the Turks as had been the somewhat similar thoughts which, at an earlier date, he had been wont to weave into his exhortations to resist the Turks.[1670]

As a last straw Luther in the “Treue Warnung” goes on to declare, that, unless Christians mend their life, are converted to the Evangel and live up to it, it is to be hoped that the Turkish arms will prove victorious.

The public danger which threatened owing to the advance of the Turks caused Luther, however, about this time to promote the sale of the Latin translation and confutation of the Koran brought out under Melanchthon’s auspices by Bibliander (Buchmann) of ZÜrich. In a popular hymn which he composed he also took care to couple the Turkish danger with that to be apprehended from the Papists. This short hymn, “which became a favourite with the German Evangelicals” (KÖstlin), begins:

“In Thy Word preserve us, Lord,
Ward off Pope and Turkish sword.”

The picture which Luther incidentally paints of himself in his effusions against the Jews and the Turks, receives its final touch in his last great and solemn pronouncement against Popery which the lines just quoted may serve to introduce.

The Hideous Caricatures of “Popery Pictured”

One cannot contemplate without sadness Luther’s last efforts against the Papacy.

Fortunately for literature the projected continuation of the frightful book “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft” never saw the light; Luther’s intention had been to make it even worse than the first part.

His final labours, aimed directly at the Pope and the Council of Trent, consisted in suggesting the subjects and drafting the versified letterpress for a number of woodcuts, designed expressly to ridicule and defame the Papal office in the eyes of the lower classes. Even apart from the verses the caricatures were vulgar enough in all conscience. Nudities in the grossest postures alternate with comicalities the better to ensure success with the populace.

An attempt has been made to exonerate him of direct responsibility for the pictures, and to set them down to the account of the draughtsman who, according to a passage in a letter of Luther’s, was believed to be his friend, the famous painter Lucas Cranach.

That the whole was really a child of Luther’s own mind is proved, however, by the very title-page “Popery Pictured by Dr. M. Luther,” Wittenberg, 1545, as well as by his clear and outspoken statement shortly before his death to Pastor Matthias Wanckel of Halle. “I still have much that ought to be told the world concerning the Pope and his kingdom, and for this reason I have published these images and figures, each of which stands for a separate book to be written against the Pope and his kingdom. I wanted to witness before the whole world what I thought of the Pope and his devil’s kingdom; let them be my last Will and Testament.” “I have greatly vexed the Pope with these nasty pictures,” “Oh, how the sow will lift her tail! But, even should they kill me, they must gorge on the filth that the Pope holds in his hand. I have placed a golden thing in the Pope’s hands [i.e. in the picture to be described immediately] that he may pledge them in it.”[1672]—Again, in a letter to Amsdorf, he alludes to a scene in which the Furies figure, saying that he had designed them (“appingerem”), and describing in detail what he meant the figures to stand for.[1673]

Hence it is impossible to contest Luther’s real authorship.

It is true that, on one occasion, he speaks of Cranach the painter as the draughtsman of one of the pictures; he may, however, have simply meant that it originated in his studio. According to expert opinion the technique of the woodcuts differs so much from the master’s that they cannot be attributed to him; they may, however, have been executed by one of his pupils under his direction.[1674]

We may now glance at the nine pictures which make up the “Abbildung des Bapstum,” commencing with that just referred to.[1675]

The woodcuts pleased Luther so well that he himself wrote autograph inscriptions above and below a proof set, and hung them up in his room.[1684]

“The devil knows well, that, when the foolish people hear high-sounding words of abuse, they are taken in and blindly believe them without asking for any further grounds or reasons.” The words are Luther’s own, though written at an earlier date.[1685] That they applied even more to caricatures Luther was well aware, nor was this the first time that he had flung such pictures amongst the masses the better to excite them. As early as 1521, at Luther’s instigation, with the help of Cranach’s pencil, Melanchthon and Schwertfeger had done something of the sort in the “Passional Christi und Antichristi.”[1686] In a booklet of 1526, “Das Bapstum mit seinen Gliedern,” containing sixty-five caricatures and scurrilous doggerel verses composed by Luther, everything religious, from the Pope down to the monks and nuns, was held up to ridicule.[1687]

The use of caricature was, it is true, not unusual in those days of violent controversy, nor were Catholics slow to have recourse to it against Luther; CochlÆus, for instance, in his “Lutherus Septiceps” has a crude illustration of a figure with seven heads. But everything of this nature, his own earlier productions included, was put into the shade by Luther’s final pictures of the Papacy.

Such attempts at vindication only prove that Luther was not alone in allowing himself to be dominated, and his mind darkened by such morbid fancies.

The psychology reflected in these much-debated woodcuts deserves more careful scrutiny.

Those undoubtedly take too superficial a view of the matter, who, in their desire to exonerate Luther, refuse to see in these caricatures anything more than the exuberant effusions of ridicule gone mad. On the other hand, some of Luther’s enemies are no less wrong in failing to see that the indignation which speaks from these drawings is meant in bitter earnest.

If, as is only right, we view this frivolous imagery in the light of Luther’s mental state at the time and of his whole attitude then, it will stand out as a sort of confession of faith on the part of the author, appalling indeed, but absolutely truthful, a picture of his deepest thoughts and feelings, steeped as they were in his sombre pseudo-mysticism and devil-craze. The same holds good likewise of the “Wider das Bapstum” of which this set of illustrations is a sort of supplement.

The revolting images which rise before his mind like bubbles to the surface of the fermenting tan, seem to him so true to fact that he protests that the cuts are in no sense defamatory; “should anyone feel offended or hurt in his feelings by them I am ready to answer for their publication before the whole Empire.”[1693]

Such, judging by the letters he wrote in that period, was the soil which produced both the caricatures and the “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft.”

So deeply seated in Luther’s devil-lore, not to say devil-mania, was the tendency that inspired the woodcuts, that, when once his conscience pricked him on account of the excessive coarseness of one of the scenes, he could not be moved to admit any more than that the drawing might be improved on the score of decency and be made to look ... “more diabolical.” The picture in question was that of the “Birth of the Pope-Antichrist.” Evidently some friends had protested against the cynical boldness of the birth-scene. Luther writes to Amsdorf: “Your nephew George has shown me the picture of the Pope, but Master Lucas is a coarse painter. He might have spared the female sex as the creature of God and for the sake of our own mothers. He could well design other figures more worthy of the Pope, i.e. more diabolical; but do you be judge.”[1701] Later on, when Amsdorf still betrayed some scruple, Luther promised him: “I shall take diligent steps should I survive to see that Lucas the painter substitutes for this obscene picture a more seemly one.”[1702] So far as is known, however, no such substitution took place, and still less was the caricature withdrawn from circulation; nor, again, would it have been at all easy even for the cleverest painter to produce something “more diabolical.”

For the coarseness of the drawings there exists no shred of excuse.

Luther had indeed never disdained to be coarse and vulgar when this served his purpose; as time went on, however, his love for the language of the gutter became much more noticeable, at least in his controversial writings. To some extent this was the reaction of the impression he saw produced on the masses by his words, his growing sense of the power of his tongue being in part responsible for the ever more frequent recourse he had to this “original” mode of speech; to some extent too his obscene language and imagery were simply an outcome of his devil-craze, with which, indeed, they were in perfect keeping.

Certain admirers have sought to excuse Luther by pointing out that, after all, none of his obscenities was of a nature to excite concupiscence; this we must indeed allow, but the admission affords but a small crumb of comfort. Without finding anything actually lascivious, either in the draughtsmanship of these pictures or in the filthy language to which Luther was generally addicted, one can still regret his “peculiarity” in this respect.

That, in those days, people were more inured than our refined contemporaries to the controversial use of such revolting coarseness has been stated and is indeed perfectly true. The fact is, however, that what contributed to harden the people was the frequency with which the Protestants in their polemics had recourse to the weapon of obscenity. Who had more responsibility in the decline in the sense of modesty and propriety among German folk than the Wittenberg writer whose works enjoyed so wide a circulation? It has been pointed out elsewhere that though certain Catholic writers of that age, and even of earlier times, were not entirely innocent of a tendency to indelicacy, Luther outdid them all in this respect.[1703] Nevertheless, however great the lack of refinement may have been, though the lowest classes then may have been even more prone than now to speak with alarming frankness of certain functions of the body, and though even the better classes and the writers may have followed suit, yet so far did Luther venture to go, that the humanist Willibald Pirkheimer was expressing the feeling of very many when he said, in 1529: “Such is the audacity of his unwashed tongue that Luther cannot hide what is in his heart; he seems either to have completely gone off his head or to be egged on by some evil demon.”[1704]

As day is to night so is the contrast between such strictures and the praise bestowed on Luther by his own side, not indeed so much for the works last mentioned as for his literary labours in general. The unprejudiced historian must admit that there is some ground for such praise (cp. xxxiv., 2). That Luther’s popular writings must contain much that is really instructive and edifying amidst a deal of dross is surely clear from the favourable reception they met even in quarters not at all blinded by prejudice. In what has gone before we ourselves have repeatedly dwelt on the better elements often to be found in the non-polemical portion of Luther’s literary legacy.