Chapter XXX (2)

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

To his former pupil, Anton Lauterbach, preacher at Pirna, he sent the following not over-confident instructions: “Hesse’s example of the use of excommunication pleases me. If you can establish the same thing, well and good. But the centaurs and harpies of the Court will look at it askance. May the Lord be our help! Everywhere licence and lawlessness continue to spread amongst the people, but it is the fault of the secular authorities.”[678]

The example of Hesse to which Luther referred was the Hessian “Regulations for church discipline,” enacted in 1539 at the instance of Bucer, in which, amongst other things, provision was made for excommunication. So-called “elders,” appointed conjointly by the town authorities and the congregation, were to watch over the faith and morals of all, preachers inclusive; to them, together with the preacher, it fell, after seeking advice of the Superintendent, to pronounce the ban over the obdurate sinner. In the Saxon Electorate, however, so Luther hints, this would hardly be feasible on account of the attitude of the authorities and the utter lawlessness of the people.

In 1538 the Elector himself had well put the difficulty which would face any such disciplinary measure: “If only people could be found who would let themselves be excommunicated!” He had, as Jonas related at Luther’s table, listened devoutly to the sermon at Zerbst and then expressed himself strongly on the universal decline in morals, the “outrageous wickedness, gluttony and drunkenness,” etc.; he had also said that excommunication was necessary, but had then uttered the despairing words just quoted.[679]

Yet in spite of all Luther still continued at times to hold up the ban and its consequences as a threat: “I shall denounce him from the pulpit as having been placed under the ban”—this of a burgher who had absented himself from the Sacrament for fifteen years—“and will give notice that he is to be looked upon as a dog; if, after this, anyone holds intercourse or has anything to do with him, he will do so at his own risk; if he dies he is to be buried on the rubbish-heap like a dog; we formally make him over to the authorities for their justice and their laws to do their worst on him.”[680]—“As for our usurers, drunkards, libertines, whoremongers, blasphemers and scoffers,” he says, “they do not require to be put under the ban, as they have done so themselves; they are in it already up to their ears.... When they are about to die, no pastor or curate may attend them, and when they are dead let the hangman drag them out of the town to the carrion heap.... Since they wish to be heathen, we shall look upon them as such.”[681]

Such self-imposed excommunication was so frequent that the other, viz. that to be imposed by the preacher, was but rarely needed.—“This is the true and chief reason why the ban has everywhere fallen into disuse,” Luther declares, echoing the Elector, “because real Christians are everywhere so few, so small a body and so insignificant in number.”[682] He too could exclaim with a sigh: “If only there were people who would let themselves be banned.”

But even had such people been forthcoming, those who would have to pronounce the ban were too often anything but perfect. What was needed was prudent, energetic and disinterested preachers, for, in order “to make use of the ban, we have need of good, courageous, spiritual-minded ministers; we have too many who are immersed in worldly business.” “I fear our pastors will be over-bold and grasp at temporalities and at property.”[683]

_The want of a Hierarchy. Ordinations_

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

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

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

“The Papists boast of their bishops,” said Luther, “and of their spiritual authority though it is contrary to God’s ordinances.”[685] “They are all set on retaining the bishops, and simply want to reform them.”[686] “In Germany the bishops are wealthy and powerful, they have a position and authority and they rule of their own power.”[687] “If only we had one or two bishops on our side, or could induce them to come over to us!”[688]

On Ascension Day, May 15, 1539, we are told that “Luther dined with his Elector and assisted at a council. It was there resolved to maintain the bishops in their authority, if only they would renounce the Pope and were pious persons devoted to the Gospel, like Speratus. In that case,” said Luther, “we shall grant them the right and the power to ordain ministers.” When Melanchthon attempted to dissuade him, pointing out that it would be difficult to make sure of them by examination, he replied: “They are to be tested by our people and then consecrated by the laying on of hands, just as I am now a bishop.”[689] Instead of the words “as I am now a bishop” a more likely rendering is, “as we have already done as bishops here at Wittenberg.”[690] The resolution indicated would seem to have been merely provisional and non-committal, possibly a mere project. Nor is it likely that Melanchthon can have been very averse to it.

As a matter of fact, Luther had, like a bishop, already ordained or inducted into office such men as had been “called” to the ministry, viz. by the congregations or the authorities; this he did for the first time in 1525 in the case of George Rörer, who had been called to the archdiaconate of Wittenberg. The ordination took place with imposition of hands and prayer. Since 1535 there existed a Wittenberg oath of ordination to be taken by the preachers and pastors who should be appointed, by which they bound themselves to preserve and to teach the “Catholic” faith as taught at Wittenberg.[691]

Luther did not think that any consecration at the hands of the existing episcopate was necessary for a new bishop;[692] such necessity was incompatible with his conception of the Church, the hierarchy and the common priesthood; as for the Sacrament of Orders in the usual sense of the word, it no longer existed.

A welcome opportunity for setting up a Protestant “bishop” was presented to the Elector of Saxony and to Luther when the bishopric of Naumburg-Zeitz fell vacant (above, p. 165 f.).

Johann Frederick, the Elector, not satisfied with his rights as protector, laid claim also to actual sovereignty, and as the innovations had, as stated above, already secured a footing in Naumburg, he determined to introduce a Lutheran preacher as bishop and to seize upon the rights and lands in spite of the Chapter and larger part of the nobility still being true to the Catholic faith. He appealed to the fact that the kings of England, Denmark and Sweden, and likewise the Duke of Prussia, had set their bishops in “order.”[693] The noble and scholarly Julius Pflug, whom wisely the Chapter at once elected to the vacant see, was, as related above, never to be allowed to ascend the episcopal throne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

_The Ceremony at Naumburg_

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Luther’s booklet on the Consecration of Bishops_

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

The title itself shows that the pamphlet was no mere attempt to justify himself and those who had taken part in the act but aims at something more; Luther’s apologia becomes a violent attack; a breach was to be made in the wall which so far had hindered Protestants from appropriating the Catholic bishoprics of Germany. “Our intention,” says Luther quite plainly, “is to establish an example to show how the bishoprics may be reformed and governed in a Christian manner.”[702]

The opening lines show that the book was intended to inflame and excite the masses. The jocular tone blatantly contrasts with the august subject of the episcopate and supplies a good “example” of the author’s mode of controversy. The work begins: “Martin Luther, Doctor. We poor heretics have once more committed a great sin against the hellish, unchristian Church of our most fiendish Father the Pope by ordaining and consecrating a bishop for the see of Naumburg without any chrism, without even any butter, lard, fat, grease, incense, charcoal or any such-like holy things.” Cheerfully indeed did he own, acknowledge and confess this sin against those, who “have shed our blood, murdered, hanged, drowned, beheaded, burnt, robbed and driven us into exile, and inflicted on us every manner of martyrdom, and now, with Meinz and Heinz, have taken to sacking the land.”

With a couple of Bible passages he bowls over the legal difficulties arising out of the expulsion of the bishop-elect and the oath of the Estates: “Thou shalt have none other Gods before me”; “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves,” etc. We must sweep away the “wolf-bishops whom the devil ordains and thrusts in.” “Oath and obedience stand untouched,” for they “could take no [valid] oath to the wolf.”[703] The further question, “whether it was right to accept consecration or ordination from such damnable heretics [i.e. as he], was disposed of by saying, that the Evangel was no heresy, and that though he understood Holy Scripture but little, yet at any rate he understood it far better—and also knew better how to consecrate a Christian bishop—than the Pope and all his men, who one and all were foes of Holy Writ and of the Word of God.”[704]

This screed stands undoubtedly far below many of Luther’s other productions. It tends to be diffuse and to harp tediously on the same ideas. Luther had already overwritten himself, and when engaged on it was struggling with bad health, the forerunner of his fatal sickness three years later. His disgust with life spoiled his work.

The “Popes, cardinals, bishops, abbots, canons and parsons” he implores to look rather to the beam in their own eye, to the “simony, favouritism, sharp practices, agreements, conventions and other horrible vices” which prevailed at their own consecrations, than at the mote in the eye of the Lutherans. “You strainers at gnats and swallowers of camels, wipe yourselves first—you know where I mean—before coming and telling us to wipe our noses. It is not fitting that a sow should teach a dove not to eat any unclean grain of corn while itself it loves nothing better than to feed on the excreta which the peasants leave behind the hedge. As for the rest you understand it well enough.”[705] “Let us stop our ears and not listen to their shouting, barking, bellowing, their complaints and their abuse,” with which I have “put up for many a year from Dr. Sow [Dr. Eck], from Witzel, Tölpel, Schmid, from Dr. Dirtyspoon [Cochlaeus], Tellerlecker, ‘Brünzscherben,’ Heinz and Meinz and whatever else they may be.... The [Last] Day is approaching for which we hope and which they must needs fear, however obstinately they may affect to despise it. Against their defiance we pit ours; at least we may look forward to The Day with a happy, cheerful conscience. On that day we shall be their judges, unless indeed there is really no God in heaven or on earth as the Pope and his followers believe.”[706]

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

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

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

_Excerpts from Luther’s Letters to the New “Bishop”_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_End of the Bishopric of Meissen_

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

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

Luther it is true admitted to Brück, the electoral chancellor, that certain people at Wittenberg did not consider the Elector’s claims at all well-founded.[719] At the Landgrave’s instigation he also addressed a friendly request to the Elector, “not to be too hard and stiff”; of the temporal rights of the case he was ignorant; seeing, however, that there was a dispute the question could not be clear; at any rate Duke Maurice was acting wrongfully in “pressing his rights by so bloodthirsty an undertaking. At times there may be a good reason for pulling one’s foot out of the tracks of a mad dog or for burning a couple of tapers at the devil’s altar.”[720] But on the whole he took the part of his Elector against Maurice, who, even before this, had appeared to him lax and wavering in his support of the new faith. In his history of Maurice of Saxony, G. Voigt gives as his opinion that: “In this matter Luther neither showed himself unbiased nor did he act uprightly and honourably.”[721]

To Amsdorf, who had helped to fan the flame of mutual hate, Luther speaks of Duke Maurice as “a proud and furious young fellow, in whom we undoubtedly see the direct work of Satan”; it is not he (Luther) or Amsdorf who have to reproach themselves with the conflagration; he is to be quite at rest on this score. Rather, it is Christ Who—by His Word—has given rise to the mischief and to all the hatred of the demons against us. His Word alone is to blame, not we, that so many confessors of our faith have been slain, drowned and burnt. “In vain do they impute to us the bloody deeds which have taken place owing to Münzer, Carlstadt, Zwingli and the [Anabaptist] King of Münster.”

“At first Maurice was not regarded by Luther, Melanchthon and most of their contemporaries as of such importance, whether for good or for evil, as he soon after showed himself to be; they fancied him far more dependent on his nobles and councillors than he really was.”[722] Luther thought he detected the evil influence of the councillors in the twin businesses of Wurzen and Meissen. In his reply to the Landgrave concerning the attempt to bring the matter to a peaceful issue, without having as yet examined the cause, he speaks of Duke Maurice as a “stupid bloodhound.”[723] To his own Court he wrote, on April 12, as though the Duke were without question in the wrong: “May God strengthen, console and preserve my most Gracious Lord and you all in His Grace and in a good conscience, and bring down on the heads of the hypocritical bloodhound of Meissen what Cain and Absalom, Judas and Herodes deserved. Amen and again Amen, to the glory of His name Whom Duke Maurice is outraging to the utmost by this abominable scandal, and singing meanwhile so blasphemous a hymn of praise to the devil and all the foes of God.”[724]

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

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

_Destruction of Church Property_

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

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

The list contains the following entries among others: “One gold cross valued by Duke George at 1300 florins; in it there is a diamond valued at 16,000 florins, besides other precious stones and pearls with which the cross is covered.” “A second gold cross, worth 6000 florins. A third is worth 1000 florins, besides the precious stones and pearls of which the cross is full. I value the gold table and the credence table, without the precious stones, at 1000 florins in gold. The large bust of St. Benno weighs 36-1/2 lbs.; it is set with valuable stones; it was made by order of the church and all the congregation contributed towards it. The small cross with the medallions of the Virgin Mary and St. John weighs about 50 lbs.”

The number of these treasures of art which fell a prey to the plunderer amounted to fifty-one.[726]

Two years later Luther wrote to Duke Ernest of Saxony to seek help on behalf of two fallen monks then studying theology at Wittenberg: in order to support men who “may eventually prove very useful” “the chalices and monstrances might well be melted down.”[727]

The ruthless handling of the Black Monastery at Wittenberg, which had been bestowed on Luther after the dissolution of the Augustinian community, was to set a bad example. The fittings of the church there were scattered and the mediæval images and vestments which, though perhaps only of small material value, would yet be carefully treasured by any museum to-day, were calmly devoted by Luther to destruction.

“Now at last,” he says, “I have sold the best of the pictures that still remained, but did not get much for them, fifty florins at the most, and with this I have clothed, fed and provided for the nuns and the monks—the thieves and rascals.” He had already remarked that the best of the “church ornaments and vessels” had gone; at the “beginning of the Evangel everything had been laid waste” and “even to this very day they do not cease from carrying off ... each man whatever he can lay hands on.”[728]

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Luther and the Images_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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