Chapter XXII: The Friar of Wittenberg Ordains

It was a real home-coming which I had to the Regenstein. There seemed to be affection as well as loyalty in the welcome all gave me, from Adolf down to Wache, the great boar hound. Graf Moritz rode over from Blankenburg with a brotherly greeting. By painful economy and management he was putting his estates in tolerable order, and paying off his father’s debts to the Frankfort Jews, and I was glad to see his face growing less care-worn.

A few days, however, after my return, an incident occurred which jarred me painfully. One afternoon as I sat writing in my cabinet a deputation of four of my chief dependants came scraping and bowing,--two petty nobles, and two well-to-do peasants, who rejoiced in the title of “Schöffe.” On my granting permission, the spokesman, a lean, long-winded rascal, entered upon a lengthy eulogium upon my gracious governance, but then added that my loving subjects had been much grieved by my repeated absences from the lordship, “the more especially as I had no direct heir for the Regenstein, and in event of any accident or foul hap, which God and the saints forefend!--the whole country would pass to my very distant kinsfolk in Brandenburg.”

“And therefore?” I demanded.

“That your most noble Grace will in benignity condescend to the loyal representations of your devoted liegemen, and speedily take to yourself a noble wife, who will be mother to a worthy posterity. The Graf von Wernigerode has two marriageable and comely daughters, and we do most humbly represent--”

My Christian virtues had not been so cultivated at Wittenberg as to prevent my gorge from rising.

“Hear you, sirrah!” I thundered. “Loyal subjects never masque as busybodies! I suffer you to pick your own wives--be as good to your Graf and master. When I would marry it will be time enough to have you in as my august councillors.”

Four very sheepish “notables” shuffled out of my apartment. But the incident cut me to the quick, the more as I knew all the countryside was saying behind my back what these oafs had ventured to my face. In fact, Moritz on his second visit again blurted it out.

“_Donnerwetter_, Walter. Don’t you see how you will never be happy here in the North till you have somewhat to hold you? You know what I wished for Ilsa? Well--the cat has lapped up that cream long since, but there is more elsewhere. What with your wealth and breeding, you might look for a great prince’s daughter; but Gräfin Elisabeth of Wernigerode--”

“Good heavens, Moritz,” cried I, suffering him no further;--“are you also in the conspiracy against me?”

“Conspiracy, no! Friendly truth. She is of the best of our Harz nobility, piously bred, tall as a pine, and as lovely. Her father announces a very ample dowry. There could be nothing more fortunate.”

Here, however, he stopped, halted by the pain that surely flashed from my eyes. I put my hand on his knee.

“Good comrade,” said I, “you mean your words for the best, and I will strive hard not to be angry. In the very spirit you name--friendly advantage--I said that I sought your sister’s hand. It is everywhere the same. ‘Passion for a sweetheart, cold calculation in picking a wife.’ In Italy, Germany, in France or Spain, that is the kind of a union the Church blesses. But your sister, Ilsa von Blankenburg, thought otherwise, and she was right. Rather than take me, as I made my chilly proffer, she sought the convent. And now how may I do this wrong to Elisabeth von Wernigerode or any woman else?”

“Romance--worthy of a minnesinger!” he laughed in my face. “Awake, man! Dwell not in minstrel’s dreams, but in realities.”

“Yes,” I tossed back bitterly; “in desperate realities I live, right truly. And now I say somewhat that may startle you.”

“Discharge your culverin,” he ordered, watching me intently.

“_I will wed your sister Ilsa, or I will wed no woman._”

“Holy God!” he exclaimed, crossing himself; “are you proclaiming a vow of celibacy, or are you mad? Whatsoever may befall Luther, nuns have been nuns since Christians have been Christians. On what do you base your hope?”

“I cannot tell,” I answered, with a fierce gesture, rising and pacing feverishly. “In that Book which Luther teaches me to read is written ‘Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.’ We stand on the threshold of changes beyond human imaginings. Since quitting Italy, night after night I have seen some one in my dreams--your sister. We are always together. We are holding each other’s hands, we are looking into one another’s faces, we are growing old joyously together as husband and wife. There is enough Southern blood in me still to believe in signs and presages. I cannot tell how it will all come to pass. I will do the task that comes to hand--and hope.”

“Alas! poor Walter,” said he, shaking his head; “you might dream better of the pot of gold beyond the moon than that Quedlinburg convent will ever give you an honorable bride.”

“I am doing nothing rashly,” said I, reassuring him: “my deeds shall be deeds of reason, but my thoughts are not to be ruled by schoolman’s logic.”

So we dropped the sore topic, and talked of the new Emperor and whether he could long maintain the peace with France. Nevertheless, that night I sent my quondam outlaw Gunter away on a private mission. He was to steal back to Quedlinburg and ascertain from his daughter Trude what was the gossip among the nuns touching the abbess’s niece.

* * * * *

But now for me began a period of intense activity. Not lightly had I taken that strange pledge with the other three that summer’s day, beside the rushing Elbe. If Luther and the Cause were to be saved, they were not to be saved by letters from learned doctors, nor by the plaudits of students and worthy peasants. One thing I knew in last resort would halt the vengeance of the now roused Vatican,--the “thou shalt not” of the German princes and free cities, backed by the armed hand. In Italy I had failed. In Germany I did not fail. During the following months I was but little at the Regenstein. My mission carried me to almost every princely court in North Germany. Sometimes I was turned away with scant courtesies, but not always. If Elector Frederick of Saxony sent word to Luther to remain in Wittenberg, at a moment the hard-pressed friar was preparing to flee the land, I had my modest part in winning the favor of His Electoral Grace. I was in constant correspondence with Spalatin, the Elector’s confessor. Not a few influential Grafs and Freiherrs were changed from wavering friends to hearty supporters by my poor efforts. Perhaps it was thanks to me that young Philip, Markgraf of Hesse, so early gave his support to the Cause and its leader. I had like fortune at the ducal courts of Brunswick, Lüneburg and Mecklenburg. I argued the case of Luther before the lordly Burgomasters and Councillors of mighty Lübeck, the queen city by the Baltic--and not in vain.

My travels even carried me to distant Prussia, to the confines of the German land; and there in his glorious Marienburg, true Kaiser among castles, I met Prince Albrecht, Grand-Master of the Teutonic Knights, and talked till the candles were deep in their sockets, pleading the cause of Germany against Italy, of the Wittenberg prophet against the black gowns of Rome. And here too I think my seed was destined to bear a harvest. Then as I labored, and imagined I saw my labors crowned with a fair success, I felt my soul rise buoyantly within me. I knew that the forsaking of Italy had been no rash mistake, that I could mock at my old companions when they wrote to me from the South “thou fool.”

As I went to and fro, I knew that Luther’s pen had never been more active. In October the presses had begun to clang with the great _Babylonish Captivity_ pamphlet,--a true trumpet call to battle. Almost simultaneously came _The Freedom of a Christian Man_, wherein was set forth the peace, joy, liberty, possessed by him who had cast off the old Church and its bondage. Then pealed another clarion,--the last _Letter to the Pope_, wherein the peasant’s son spoke to the Holy Father in tones never heard by Pope before. Clearly he told Leo de’ Medici that it was not he in person, but the Vatican and the evils it perpetuated, against which he aimed.

“The Church of Rome, one time most holy of all churches, has become the lawless den of thieves, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell, so that not even Anti-Christ could devise addition to its wickedness. Meantime you, O Leo, are sitting as a lamb amid wolves,--what resistance can you alone make to these monstrous woes!”

Violent? Most surely. But let those who would have had Luther speak softly and sweetly, tell whether the Monsignori have ever yielded jot or tittle for all the fair arguments in the world? When a battle is joined, strong men do not let blood with needles.

Presently, after due rumors, the Papal Bull was published in Germany. Eck had brought it North with a kind of triumph. He had caused to be inserted in the Bull the names of several controversialists, who were his personal foes, some of whom were no intimate friends of Luther. To intrust the publication of the Bull to Eck, the most unpopular man in Germany, was simply another of those blunders whereby the Vatican spun its own skein of troubles. Where a prince-bishop or the Dominicans were influential it was published amid sullen silence, and in a few such towns Luther’s books, blazed in little bonfires lit by the common hangman (which bonfires added to the sale and reading of the heretical books exceedingly). But in North Germany many a duke or burghermaster let the mob pluck the offensive paper from the church door and rend it to pieces amid shrill curses. So it was actually treated by the students even in monk-ridden Leipzig. Yet everywhere men asked me, “How will the friar answer?” For answer was expected, and rightly. Early in December I received this letter, while passing through Dresden.

_Martin Luther to his dear friend in Christ, the noble Graf
Walter von Regenstein_:--

Come to Wittenberg by the 10th, without fail. I have a song to
sing, and a deed to perform which you must hear and see.

Farewell.

I guessed the purpose of the summons. Little was the need again to urge my coming. I entered Wittenberg on the evening of the ninth, and almost as my horse went under the gate, a friendly student thrust in my hand a printed bill. I give it word for word.

All Friends of Evangelical Truth

_are summoned about nine o’clock to the Church of the Holy
Cross beyond the city wall_.

At that place, according to ancient apostolic usage, the godless
books of the Papal constitutions and the Scholastic Theology will
be burned; inasmuch as the presumption of the enemies of the
Gospel has gone so far that they have cast the godly, evangelical
books of Luther into the fire.

Let all earnest students attend this sight, for now is the time
when Anti-Christ must stand revealed.

The air of the small city seemed charged as before a thunderstorm. Men stood in little knots upon the street talking in low whispers. Now at last the dullest and feeblest who had said “peace, peace,” knew that peace was not to be, that Christendom was to be rent into two hostile camps, a schism that might endure far beyond children’s children.

Freiherr von Steinitz greeted me with his usual cordiality at his stately home, but he and his good lady were alike touched by the common sentiment. We sat silent and pensive by his well-piled table. At last he gave a forced laugh.

“Do you remember that evening of your first coming more than three years ago, and how I asked who would bell the cat, meaning Tetzel?”

“Certainly.”

“Saints and angels! Who would have imagined that after belling the cat, it must needs prove necessary to bell Leo, the lion! God grant we do not all make the beast a fine meal ere it is over; but it is Heaven’s way, not ours. Luther is a prophet of God, if ever Moses or Elijah were such. Live or die, we are with him.”

And I think Von Steinitz spoke the mind of all Wittenberg that night. At the Augustinian convent later I found Luther and Melanchthon with a few friends. Their tongues were going briskly. Dr. Martin even ventured the catch of a song.

“I was certain of your coming, Walter,” was his greeting when I entered. “The devil will try very hard to-morrow to make us sad and down-hearted. So we will prove our trust in God by abundance of good talk and music, for I am sure the angels are better pleased by seeing men happy, than by fasting or lying all night in the shape of a cross.”

I sat down with the company. My gloomy mood fled. I told of my adventures and successes in Mechlenburg and Prussia. Melanchthon was charming, with his classic wit and apt quotations; even the serious Amsdorf was merry.

“What a pleasant evening was this,” said Dr. Martin when I left him. “Why cannot the fine cardinals at Rome and the Dominicans leave a poor rascal like myself alone; then I could always sit with Philip by the stove, with a little beer and the good word going? But we must have very hard and strait words to-morrow.”

* * * * *

The morning of the short winter day dawned gray and tolerably warm. A damp mist was driving across the Elbe marshlands, and above it the towers of the two Wittenberg churches and the tops of the tall poplars by the river loomed like great dim cones floating upon clouds. Long before the time set, the crowds were in motion, from Von Steinitz in his fur-lined cloak, and the pompous city “Honorability” to the begging itinerant students, ragged at knee and elbow. All lectures had ceased in the University. Down Collegien-strasse we streamed, a silent, thoughtful multitude. The mist had lifted a little by the time we passed the eastern Elster-gate, outside of which stood the little Chapel of the Holy Cross. Hard by was a small pest-house used in days of the plague, and before it an open space where infected clothing had been burned. On this appropriate spot the zealous students had heaped dry wood, well soaked with pitch--a goodly pyre.

We stood in a wide circle, drawing our cloaks about us, while waiting the little procession from the Augustinian Convent. There was no long delay. About a dozen of Luther’s theological friends, capped and gowned according to their masterships and doctorates, accompanied their friend and leader. He carried his head high, and his body a trifle rigid. Never had I seen a deeper light in his eyes. No elaborate ceremonies delayed him. Perhaps by the mere simplicity of his act he desired to mark the antithesis to the ponderous ceremonial and procedure of the Church whereon he was declaring war. The crowd opened to let him pass. His arms were full of books,--I could guess their titles, “Gratian’s Decretals of the Canon Law,” “Thomas Aquinas,” “Albertus Magnus,” and the other great schoolmen whose teachings had been to Rome a front and rear ward. Silent stood we all, while he advanced and laid them on the pyre, then stepped back. A man in a master’s robe appeared with a firebrand, and cast it far into the pyre. The flames caught instantly. They mounted crackling toward the winter heavens. Soon they roared in a mighty blaze. Then we saw Dr. Luther approach again. From under his cloak he drew a scroll and held it aloft that all might witness--those near enough could behold the Papal arms, and the seal of Leo de’ Medici. It was the Bull of Excommunication. Out into the flames he flung it, as one would fling a snake, while his great voice sounded to the confines of the breathless crowd:--

“_Because thou has troubled the Holy One of God, may the eternal fire consume thee!_”

The Pope had excommunicated Martin Luther. Martin Luther had excommunicated the Pope.

He stood a little while in a kind of revery, watching the dancing fire until books and scroll had glowed away to ashes; then amid a tense silence of the people he wrapped his black cassock about him, and followed by his friends went quietly back to the convent.

After his going, much of the multitude dispersed; but the students long kept up the sport, feeding the fire, casting on the flame numerous pamphlets of Luther’s enemies, and singing mock funeral hymns over the dying embers. The next day Dr. Martin reproved the students for their levity, after what had been a solemn and sacred act, adding intently: “If, with your whole heart, you do not separate from the dominion of the Pope, you cannot be saved. In this wicked world I would rather endure all perils, than, by silence, burden my conscience with the account which I must render unto God.”

Such was that 10th of December, and the more I meditate on the thing then done the more I marvel at the manner whereby Heaven allowed that weak friar to bring great deeds to pass. Other Papal Bulls had been burned before--by mighty monarchs. Henry IV, in his imperial pride, had thundered against Roman domination, and Henry IV had knelt in the snows at Canossa, seeking abjectly the pardon of the stern Vicar of Christ. Luther, the peasant’s son, went to no Canossa. He fared to Worms, and God fared with him.