Lucas Cranach the Younger, The Contrast between Christ's True Religion and the False Idolatry of the Antichrist, ca. 1544. Colored woodcut. Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (West). Photoatelier Jorg P. Anders.
Luther's ninety-five theses. Staatliche Lutherhalle, Wittenberg Bauernhaus und Bauernschmaus (Farm and Feast), woodcut by Daniel Hopfer; reproduced from A. Waas, Die Bauern
A medieval mine, Annaberger Altar; reproduced from Peter Manns and Helmuth Nils Loose, Martin Luther, Freiburg i.B., Portraits of Luther's parents, Hans and Margaret (Hanna), by Lucas Cranach the Elder; reproduced from H. Junghans,
Wittenberg als Lutherstadt (Gottingen, 1979) Christ, Judge of the World, woodcut from Der Antichrist, Strasbourg, ca. 1480; reproduced from Der Antichrist, ed.
Teacher chastising a pupil, illustration by Hans Holbein the Younger; reproduced from Laus Stultitiae (In Praise of Folly) by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Offentliche Kunstsammlung,
Kupferstichkabinett, Basel (Switzerland).
Eisenach, copperplate after Merian. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
Urs Graf, The Witches' Sabbath, 1514; reproduced from Ch. Anderson, Dirnen—Krieger—Narren, selected drawings by Urs Graf (Basel, 1978)
Hans Baldung Grien, The Conversion of St. Paul; reproduced from M. Mende, Hans Baldung Grien (Unterschneidheim, 1978) Johann von Staupitz, by an unknown master, ca. 1520.
Benediktiner-Erzabtei St. Peter, Salzburg. Photograph copyright The Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg. Staatliche Lutherhalle,
Wittenberg (East Germany).
Wittenberg at the time of Luther's death, after a woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder; reproduced from P. Schreckenbach and P. Neubert, Martin Luther
View of the Roman Forum through the Titus Arch. Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
(West). Photoatelier Jorg P. Anders.
The "birth" of the Pope and his curia, woodcut from the series Wider das Papsttum zu Rom, vom Teufel gestiftet (Against the Roman
Papacy, An Institution of the Devil), published by Martin Luther, Wittenberg, 1545; reproduced from M. Luther, Werke, vol. 54
Luther's commentary to psalms 16.12—17.3a (Vulg.); reproduced from the manuscript of his first lectures on the Book of Psalms
(1513-15). Wolfenbiittel: Herzog August Bibliothek.
Jacob's dream (Gen. 28.10ff.), woodcut from Luther's translation of the Old Testament, 1523; reproduced from A. Schramm and W. Gerber, Luther und die Bibel (Leipzig, 1923)
Luther's opponents ridiculed. Anonymous woodcut, ca. 1520.
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
Letter of indulgence. Wolfenbiittel: Herzog August Bibliothek.
Albrecht Diirer, Kaspar Sturm; reproduced from P. Schreckenbach and P. Neubert, Martin Luther Bernhard Strigel, Emperor Charles V. Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin (West).
Letter to Emperor Charles V in Luther's own hand; reproduced from P. Schreckenbach and P. Neubert, Martin Luther The Edict of Worms; reproduced from P. Schreckenbach and P. Neubert, Martin Luther
Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Offentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland).
The Geneva reformer, John Calvin, by René Boyvin. Bibliothéque publique et universitaire Genéve (Switzerland).
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther as Junker Jorg, 1521.
Museum der bildenden Kiinste, Leipzig.
The Zurich reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, 1531, by Hans Asper.
Kunstmuseum Winterthur (Switzerland).
Luther and Hus administering Holy Communion. Contemporary woodcut. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
The signatures of the leaders of the Reformation in Germany to the "Fifteen Articles"; reproduced from O. Thulin, Martin Luther
The coronation of the Pope in Hell; reproduced from M. Luther, Clement IV, the diabolical Pope, and the pious Emperor Conradin. Woodcut from Wider das Papsttum .
. ; reproduced from M. Luther, Werke, vol. 54.
Luther's friend and disciple Georg Spalatin, woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (West). Photoatelier Jorg P. Anders.
The Whore of Babylon in Rome, woodcut from Wider das . ., based on a pre-Reformation woodcut; reproduced from M. Luther, Werke, vol. 54
The final days before the Last Judgment, woodcut from Martin Luther, September Testament, 1522; reproduced from A. Schramm and W. Gerber, Luther und die Bibel
Lucas Cranach the Younger, The True Church and the False Church.
Kupferstich-Kabinett Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Hans Holbein, King Henry VIII of England. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano (Switzerland).
Women driving away monks and bishops. Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1526. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
Portrait of Lenchen Luther, by Lucas Cranach the Elder(?); reproduced from P. Schreckenbach and P. Neubert, Martin Luther
Portraits of Martin Luther at the age of forty-three and Katharina Luther at the age of twenty-seven, by Lucas Cranach the Elder; reproduced from P. Schreckenbach and P. Neubert, Martin Luther
Hans Guldenmund, portrait of Landgrave Philip of Hesse.
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich.
The Pope and cardinals on the gallows, woodcut from Wider das . ; reproduced from M. Luther, Werke, vol. 54
A peasant army at the gates of a monastery, pen-and-ink drawing from the Weissenau Chronicle by Abbot Jakob Murer, 1525.
Firstlich Waldburg-Zeil'sches Gesamtarchiv Schloss Zeil, Leutkirch (West Germany).
Title page of the Complete Bible from the Wittenberg 1541 edition; reproduced from A. Schramm and W. Gerber, Luther und die Bibel
The last portrayal of Luther; reproduced from O. Thulin, Martin Luther (Munich, 1958) PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION Amidst the conflicting claims about what makes a good historian, one area of common ground is uncontested: the primary task is to become bilingual, gaining control of the languages of the past and of the present—not merely languages frozen in dictionaries, but also those gleaned from the historical record and perceived in contemporary experience. Both kinds are hard to master, yet for very different reasons; distance and proximity provide for equally formidable "sound barriers."
The translation enterprise is as hazardous as it is necessary; nuances are easily lost, especially when once vitally important existential expressions are rendered as antiquated parts of an obsolete "belief-system." In the case of Martin Luther this problem is all the more acute, as his interpreters, intent on mining his riches, have been given to present him as "relevant" and hence "modern." Thus they have been inclined to bypass or remove medieval "remnants"—first among these, the Devil Himself.
This book has been written with the double assumption that, first, the Reformer can only be understood as a late medieval man for whom Satan is as real as God and mammon; and, second, that the relevancy so sought after is not found by purging the record and hence submitting to postEnlightenment standards of modernity, but rather by challenging our condescending sense of having outgrown the dark myths of the past.
What has been said about the risky venture of the historian applies also to this translation from German into English. Over the course of more than two years, I reworked large sections of the original translation, but would not have dared to let this version see the light of day if my truly bilingual cultural mentors in the New World, Kathy and Tom Brady, had not been prepared to normalize names and expressions. I must extend my gratitude as well to Elsie Vezey and Robert Bast for preparing respectively the name and subject indices, and to Cynthia Wells of Yale University Press, who with great diligence saw this work through to its completion. With these heartfelt thanks, of course, I do not transfer the responsibility for the final form in which this book is laid in the hands of the reader. Fortunately, since Luther's voice has proved powerful enough to be heard five hundred years later, crossing the waters should not be too much of an obstacle for this Luther.
April 1, 1989 University of Arizona Centers of the Reformation Sites of the Imperial Diets Capital Cities of the Electors
Important Sites in Luther's Life Sites of Church Councils =o ? @ Torgau ae rw Eisenach Reutlingen v os wAaERy pes PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
Discovering Luther the man demands more than scholarship can ever expect to offer. We must be prepared to leave behind our own view of life and the world: to cross centuries of confessional and intellectual conflict in order to become his contemporary. When the Church was still equated with Heaven, and the Emperor represented the might of the world, a monk named
Luther rose up against these powers of Heaven and Earth: he stood alone with only God and his omnipresent adversary, the Devil.
Surprisingly, the discoveries and experiences of a life marked by battle raging within and without make him a contemporary of our time, which has learned to sublimate the Devil and marginalize God.
It is not the "Catholic," "Protestant," or even "modern" Luther we are looking for. We will encounter them as well, but our objective is Martin
Luther between God and the Devil. Precisely this "narrow" perspective will, in fact, open to us the total vista of the Reformation and the part it played in Luther's time and life; how unexpected it was when it became reality; how imperiled it remained after Luther's death. We will be turning our attention to his personality and its complexities, discovering where he came from and where he was going, where he got in his own way and where he robbed himself of the fruits of his labors.
Getting to know Martin Luther requires more than just following him to the various scenes of the Reformation and more than just compiling theological highlights, though all this is part of our pursuit. The crucial point is to grasp the man in his totality—with head and heart, in and out of tune with the temper of his time.
Although our presentation comes with all the claims of scholarship, it is by no means academic, because it has to be true to a man who believed his cause far too important to limit it to the confines of the university. He knew not only how to draw boundaries but how to bridge them, thus leaving a lasting mark on contemporaries of all estates.
The notes at the end of the book are not intended solely as factual documentation; they are there to give the reader an opportunity to get a sense of the excitement of the author-at-work. The bibliography will have done its job if the reader is enticed to turn to Luther's own works.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION A particular word of thanks must be spoken here. The Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem generously provided me with the space and time to write this book. But they offered me even more than hospitality. Israel highlights the alien, alienating, sometimes horrifying Reformer to his heirs: it is the ideal place to prevent one's respect for Luther from lapsing into that kind of blind love which he himself would have rejected as fanaticism.
Jerusalem, in the summer of 1982 one The Longed-for Reformation esl sat, Meese ar earn ga oe oe a aa ea a Se ye ; ae vel ie pa rm afoa fi wit tiles
Me pein? ' aaa a wt alles gael eae he ries oe niet:
Controversy Beyond the Grave "The Charioteer of Israel has fallen"'
" everend father, will you die steadfast in Christ and the doctrines you have preached?" "Yes," replied the clear voice for the last time. On February 18, 1546, even as he lay dying in Eisleben, far from home, Martin
Luther was not to be spared a final public test, not to be granted privacy even in this last, most personal hour. His longtime confidant Justus Jonas, now pastor in Halle, having hurriedly summoned witnesses to the bedside, shook the dying man by the arm to rouse his spirit for the final exertion. Luther had always prayed for a "peaceful hour": resisting Satan—the ultimate, bitterest enemy—through that trust in the Lord over life and death which is God's gift of liberation from the tyranny of sin. It transforms agony into no more than a brief blow.
But now there was far more at stake than his own fate, than being able to leave the world in peace, and trust in God. For in the late Middle Ages, ever since the first struggle for survival during the persecutions of ancient Rome, going to one's death with fearless fortitude was the outward sign of a true child of God, of the confessors and martyrs. The deathbed in the Eisleben inn had become a stage; and straining their ears to catch Luther's last words were enemies as well as friends.
As early as 1529, Johannes Cochlaeus, Luther's first "biographer," had denounced Luther in Latin and German as the seven-headed dragon, the Devil's spawn. Slanderous reports that he had died a God-forsaken death, miserable and despairing, had circulated time and again. But now the end his friends had dreaded and his enemies had longed for was becoming reality. Who now would lay claim to Luther and fetch him, God or the Devil?
While simple believers imagined the Devil literally seizing his prey, the enlightened academic world was convinced that a descent into Hell could be diagnosed medically—as apoplexy and sudden cardiac arrest. Abruptly and without warning, the Devil would snip the thread of a life that had fallen to him, leaving the Church unable to render its last assistance. Thus, in their
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION The seven-headed Luther as "agitator": doctor, Martinus, Lutherus, preacher, fanatic, visitant, and Barrabas. Frontispiece (woodcut) from Johannes Cochlaeus, Lutherus septiceps (Leipzig, 1529).
Damned and dragged into the jaws of Hell by Satan's demons. Drawing from Der Antichrist (Constance, 1476). first reports, Luther's friends, especially Melanchthon, stressed that the cause of death had not been sudden, surprising apoplexy but a gradual flagging of strength: Luther had taken leave of the world and commended his spirit into God's hands.
For friend and foe alike his death meant far more than the end of a life.
PROLOGUE: CONTROVERSY BEYOND THE GRAVE Shortly after Doctor Martinus died at about 3:00 A.M. on February 18, Justus Jonas carefully recorded Luther's last twenty-four hours, addressing his report not to Luther's widow, as one might expect, but to his sovereign, Elector John Frederick, with a copy for his university colleagues in Wittenberg. Had Luther—born on November 10, 1483, as a simple miner's son—died young, history would have passed over his parents' grief unmoved. But now his death was an affair of state. The day after his birth—the feast of St. Martin—he had been baptized and received into the life of the Church as a simple matter of course, but now there was open dispute over whether, having been excommunicated by the pope, he had departed from this world a son of the Church.
IN THE last days before his death Luther had been the cheerful man his friends knew and loved. He had successfully completed a difficult mission: a trip from Wittenberg to Eisleben to mediate in a protracted quarrel between the two counts of Mansfeld, the brothers Gebhard and Albert. Hours had been spent sitting between the parties, listening to the clever reasoning of administrative lawyers—a breed he had despised ever since his early days as a law student in Erfurt. After two tough weeks of negotiation, the parties had narrowed their differences and a reconciliation had finally—though only temporarily—been achieved. So there was reason to be cheerful. Luther had suspected that he would die in Eisleben, the place of his birth. But this did not worry him, although he was quite sure he had little time left: "When I get home to Wittenberg again, I will lie down in my coffin and give the worms a fat doctor to feast on." By highlighting the skeleton within the human body, late medieval art had urgently reminded everyone that health, beauty, and wealth were only a few breaths away from the Dance of Death.
The "fat doctor" was well aware of this, not as a moralistic horror story, but as a reality of life poised on the brink of eternity.
On the eve of his death, as so often before, there was jocular theologizing at the table in Wittenberg: will we see our loved ones again in Heaven, Doctor? he was asked. It is very likely, he replied, that we shall be so renewed by the Spirit that, like Adam, who woke up and recognized the newly created
Eve as his wife, we shall know one another. Nor will body and spirit be separated in the darkness of Hell. Luther told the story of a man so badly plagued by hunger that he sold his soul to the Devil so that he could for once eat his fill. When he had feasted to his heart's delight, the Devil came to collect his debt. Satan was curtly reminded that he had to wait until the debtor died, since the man had, after all, sold only his soul. The Devil had his answer
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION Whether master or servant, rich or poor, all the living are alike: a framework of bones, threatened by Hell, Death, and the Devil. Woodcut from Ulm. ready: If you buy a horse, don't you also get the reins? Yes, the man had to admit. Well, said the Devil, the soul is the horse and the body the reins. And he grabbed the man—body and soul.
Luther's premonitions of death came true one day later. He was never to return alive to Wittenberg, the site of his greatest achievements. On the morning of February 18, an artist was called in to execute a painting of the PROLOGUE: CONTROVERSY BEYOND THE GRAVE fh
Portrait of the dead Luther. Lucas Fortnagel (Furttnagel) executed this brush-drawing at the Reformer's deathbed, February 18/19, 1549. dead man, depicting the peaceful look on Luther's face in his final hour.
The portrait was intended to display not only to family and friends but above all to posterity the countenance of a blessed death.
Luther's body was accompanied from town to town by an honor guard, and after two days of traveling the funeral procession reached Wittenberg, the cultural capital of the Electorate of Saxony. Hordes streamed by wherever Luther lay in state. The first memorial addresses were full of stunned grief, untainted as yet by the later mixture of scholarly pedantry and Protestant hagiolatry.
A messenger sent by Justus Jonas to announce Luther's death arrived in THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION ae Wittenberg on February 19, three days before the funeral procession. The town and university were totally unprepared for the news. It was early morning and, as usual during the semester Philipp Melanchthon, Luther's longtime colleague and comrade-in-arms, stood in the lecture hall explicating St.
Paul's Epistle to the Romans for his students. In the middle of the lecture the messenger burst in with the news of Luther's death. Melanchthon struggled for control, unable to speak, but finally—his voice faltering—told his students what had happened, breaking out in anguish with Elisha's horrified cry as he saw the prophet Elijah ascending to Heaven in the chariot of fire:
"The charioteer of Israel has fallen'—"Alas, obiit auriga et currus Israel"
History in the Shadow of the Last Days Elisha, by taking up the prophet's mantle, had also taken up Elijah's post and task, but no successor stood ready to fill the monumental gap left by the Reformer's death. Luther's charismatic greatness had given the Reformation dynamism and momentum; now it cast a dark shadow on the future of the Evangelical movement. It was not carelessness or self-complacency that had kept Luther from planning for a future without him; instead he was convinced that the power of the rediscovered Gospel would be strong enough to make its own way, even in the turmoil he often predicted would follow his death. His fears that the tumults preceding God's final victory would deeply unsettle an unruly Germany through dissension and civil war were wellgrounded.
After Luther's death there was no indication that the Reformation had any chance of survival. The papacy, startled out of its passion for the Italian Renaissance, was finally mobilizing all its forces to face the ecclesiastical crisis.
Pope Paul III made a momentous decision when he approved Ignatius of Loyola's plan to use the Jesuit order to regain the educational edge that had been lost to Protestantism. Then, for the first time in centuries—since Pope
Innocent III had called the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)—a multinational papal council was convened at Trent in 1545. As time went on bishops assembled from all over Europe, and the council successfully impressed its reforms on Catholic Christendom. Three weeks after Luther's death a premier—and still surviving—cornerstone of Roman Catholic doctrine was laid in Trent, which was then just inside German territory. The council decided to accept both Scripture and ecclesiastic tradition with "equal reverPROLOGUE: CONTROVERSY BEYOND THE GRAVE ence" and declared that "the Holy Mother Church"—the Roman mother church that had condemned Luther's reformational discovery—had the sole right to interpret the Bible.
The pope's most powerful ally in opposing the Reformation—Emperor Charles V—was also on the verge of a decisive victory. In July 1546, not many months after Luther's death, civil war broke out in the German empire between the politico-military alliance of the Protestant estates and the emperor and his allies. The devastating blow Charles dealt the commander and leader of the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, Elector John Frederick of Saxony, was made possible by the "Judas of Meissen," the Protestant Duke
Maurice of Saxony. The "traitor" crossed over to the emperor's side, betraying his cousin the elector. At Meissen the Catholic cathedral chapter celebrated the imperial victory at Miihlberg with a Te Deum. When on that very day the steeples of the cathedral were struck by lightning and burned down, the townsfolk interpreted it as God's judgment.
The emperor was at the height of his power. At the Diet of Augsburg (1548) he was able to force the defeated Protestants to accept the Interim, a religious dictate aimed at stifling the Reformation that was supposed to remain in force until a church council made a binding decision on reform.
This was a crippling blow to the flourishing Reformation in the cities. Resistance was quickly eliminated, first of all in the imperial towns of southern
Germany, and obstinate Protestants were driven out. The Protestant imperial city of Constance dared to reject the Interim; the emperor responded by stripping it of its status as a free city and reirnposing Catholicism. On May 19, 1547, fifteen months after Luther's death, Wittenberg capitulated.
Its protector John Frederick lost his electoral office and most of his territories; he was left with only the Thuringian regiors around Weimar, Eisenach, and Gotha.
The road to reformation via internal ecclesiastical politics had already been cut off. Cologne played the central role in an attempt to win the bishops over to the cause of the Reformation—which would have resulted in the founding of a German national church. All eyes were on the elector and archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied, who had become Evangelical.
One year and one week after Luther died, he had to yield to the emperor's superior strength and renounce his bishopric and electorate: his successor reinstated the old faith in Cologne. Ducal treason, imperial dictate, papal decree—what future could remain for a reformation in Germany?
On February 22, 1546, Melanchthon held a Latin funeral oration in the name of the university. The words of farewell were forthright: Luther had
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION nnn nnn EEEE=aEEEEEEE EERE been a "strict healer," "God's instrument for renewing the Church." There was no trace of the mendacity to which even the most honest may succumb when standing over an open grave, anticipating the Last Judgment, judging the harvest of a life. Melanchthon did not neglect to mention Luther's sharp tongue and heated temper, even though it was a time when profound sorrow called for the comfort of unadulterated praise.
Nevertheless, Melanchthon, one of the outstanding scholars (and men) of his period, evoked an image of Luther that has survived into our day.
Whether acclaimed or decried, this image has impeded access to the Reformer as he experienced and understood himself. "Strict'"—indeed. This was a trait Melanchthon had experienced firsthand. But "healer," no. "God's instrument"—that is how Luther saw himself. But "renewal of the Church" was something he did not envisage. Only a year after Melanchthon's tribute the retrospective view had turned out to be false: it was evident to everyone that the power of the "instrument" had waned. Though the doctor's crucial operation had been a success, his patient the Church was in agony and closer to death than ever before.
Finally in 1555, owing to a further act of duplicity on the part of Duke Maurice, an end to the misery of the war seemed to be in sight: a treaty was concluded at the Diet of Augsburg. His pact with the emperor had resulted in his becoming Elector of Saxony after the Schmalkaldic War; but in 1552 he turned against the emperor, wresting victory from him and forcing him to flee Innsbruck. Whether farsighted or crafty, wise or wicked, Maurice practiced a double deception which, apart from any moral judgment, had an enduring effect: having first destroyed the Protestant estates' tempting prospects for establishing themselves as the earthly executors of God's Reformation, he went on to ensure the survival of the Reformation in the empire.
The peace achieved in Augsburg was not a Protestant victory, nor was it a religious peace; it was primarily a compromise among princes.
The protective rights over the Church in the German empire, for which territorial rulers had been striving for over a century, were now established by law. The compromise between the quarreling parties consisted in allowing each sovereign to decide the religion of his subjects: "Cuius regio, eius religio." But outside the empire, and not only in Hapsburg territories, Protestants remained exposed to persecutions that ali too often ended in the galleys or at the stake. When Justus Jonas, Luther's lifelong friend and witness to his death, himself died on October 9, 1555, two weeks after this "religious peace," the "renewal of the Church" had been reduced to—and ensnared in—the reform of regional and territorial churches. Jonas was forced to watch Luther's Reformation evolve into Lutheranism.
PROLOGUE: CONTROVERSY BEYOND THE GRAVE Albrecht Diirer, Philipp Melanchthon Not until 1648, when the Thirty Years' War finally ended, could a broader religious settlement be extracted from pope and emperor, at least for Europe north of the Alps and Pyrenees. Not only Lutherans and Roman Catholics but Calvinists, too, were included in the princely compromise. Though the peace was negotiated in Minster and Osnabriick, it ensued from the politiI2
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION cal strength of Scandinavian Lutheranism in the north and militant Calvinism in the south and southwest—both unplanned offspring of Luther's
Later generations have differed sharply on 1648. Some label the Reformation "schismatic" and mourn the resultant weakening of Christianity, while persistently ignoring the far earlier schism between Greek Orthodoxy in the East and Roman Catholicism in the West (1054). The opposing view asserts that the settlements of 1555 and 1648 were milestones along the way to religious emancipation. And they did in fact allow Luther's voice to remain alive and the man to be rediscovered in his works, which survived intact despite papal and imperial wishes. Friend and foe alike can, however, agree on one thing: the Thirty Years' War was a scourge that swept over *
Germany, paralyzing, if not totally destroying, the widely held hopes for a revival of faith and culture, piety and education. And perhaps far worse, this war decisively delayed the spread of the Enlightenment to Germany—with consequences that can still be felt today.
The means employed both to persecute and defend the Reformation have left deep, indelible scars. But joy for the renewal and grief over the schism obstruct access to Luther as he saw himself and his task. He never set himself up as healer of the Church and never regarded the renewal of the Church as his task. Effective resistance to the Reformation would neither have surprised nor dissuaded him. But disappointed he would have been had he suspected that the final return of God, Christ's Second Coming, would be so long in arriving that his own five-hundredth birthday would have to be celebrated on earth.
Luther's measure of time was calibrated with yardsticks other than those of modernity and enlightenment, progress and tolerance. Knowing that the renewal of the Church could be expected to come only from God and only at the end of time, he would have had no trouble enduring curbs on the Evangelical movement. According to Luther's prediction, the Devil would not "tolerate" the rediscovery of the Gospel; he would rebel with all his might, and muster all his forces against it. God's Reformation would be preceded by a counterreformation, and the Devil's progress would mark the Last
Days. For where God is at work—in man and in human history—the Devil, the spirit of negation, is never far away.
To understand Luther, we must read the history of his life from an unconventional perspective. It is history "sub specie aeternitatis," in the light of eternity; not in the mild glow of constant progress toward Heaven, but in the shadow of the chaos of the Last Days and the imminence of eternity.
The Enigmatic Elector Frederick he Venetian ambassador is exasperated by the halting progress of the Diet of Augsburg in the summer of 1518:
"Incredible, these Germans!" Here, he reported to his superiors in Venice, are princes and diplomats with the public good at stake, struggling to achieve a settlement between emperor and sovereign princes, while in the corridors the rumormill confounds their best efforts, and the seeds of mistrust are sown. And all because of trivialities—a theologians' dispute over indulgences. The ambassador did not even have to rely on vague hearsay: he could name the adversaries—a monk called Luther and a certain professor from Ingolstadt, Johannes Eck. Ridiculous, to let. indulgences distract one from reality! Quickly, he steered his account back to political matters.
Vital interests were at stake for the proud Republic of Venice, a financial, commercial, and maritime power that lived from free access to all parts of the Mediterranean. The crusade penny, a general imperial tax for the Holy
War, was on the diet's agenda; it had to be paid by the German lands and above all by the flourishing cities if the West were to defend itself properly and effectively counteract the threat from the East.
Constantinople, once the leading power in the struggle against the Turks, had fallen half a century earlier, in 1453. Now Greece and the Levant, Venice's traditional trading partners, were inadequately protected against the Ottoman onslaught. Moreover, Venice was a neighbor of the aggressively expanding Papal State, and was thus passionately interested in seeing the pope diverted from Italy and tied down by a war in the East. An emperor and a pope occupied by a crusade against the Turks were the best guarantee of an independent republic.
On AUGUST 28, 1518, Emperor Maximilian I signed a truce in Augsburg that was intended to put an end to his bitter conflict with Venice and free him for a crusade against the sultan. But the decisive point was whether the THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION i estates of the empire would grant the taxes necessary to wage war, for Maximilian was at the limits of indebtedness, almost to the point of state bankruptcy. But he could count on Rome's complete support in the question of the "Turkish penny."
Pope Leo X had dispatched to the diet as legates two high-ranking members of the college of cardinals: one was Matthaus Lang, son of an Augsburg burgher family and intimate of the house of Hapsburg; the other, called
Cajetan after his birthplace, Gaeta, had traveled up from Italy with instructions to help overcome the emerging resistance to the crusade tax. The Italian did not come to Augsburg empty-handed. On August 1, 1518, he solemnly—and gratis—bestowed the insignia of cardinalship on young
Albrecht, elector of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz. Nor was Matthaus Lang forgotten. On behalf of the pope, Cajetan confirmed Lang's candidacy for Salzburg, one of the most important German archbishoprics. Finally, on the evening of this ceremonial day, the emperor, too, was honored—and put under obligation—when Cajetan presented him with the consecrated hat and sword, symbols of the Christian crusader.
But on August 5, when the cardinal finally came to the point in his Latin speech before the diet and tried to enlist support for the Turkish crusade, these papal honors remained without effect. The representatives of the empire did not feign politeness; they vehemently poured forth long-felt grievances, voicing the complaints of the German nation, above all against the.
Church's taxation policy, Rome's encroachment on the sovereignty of the estates, and the curia's endless tampering with the positions and revenues of the German church: all career roads led to Rome!
Frederick the Wise, sovereign of Saxony, was at the forefront when it came to throwing off the yoke of ecclesiastical power. This meant more than a battle against continual curial infringements on the sovereign rights of princes; it also included curbing the local bishops, who were vying with the sovereigns for power. Princes were still compelled to fight for what many free imperial cities already had: independence from the temporal supremacy of the Church. In 1518 the Luther issue, which had thus far attracted little attention outside Germany, was only one of the many ecclesiastical conflicts to arise in Augsburg. At stake was the status of the Church in German territories.
It fell to the Roman legate, Cardinal Cajetan, to find a solution to the Luther problem that would safeguard the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome without provoking the Saxon elector. And so between October 12 and 15,
1518—after the diet had ended—Martin Luther underwent the first and only interrogation to which he was ever subjected. Cajetan had promised the _ Pope Leo X (1513-21) excommunicated Luther in 1521.
Attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo.
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION elector to proceed as a "father" and not like a "judge," but all his efforts were in vain: reasoning with Luther was as ineffective as harsh commands.
In the end the legate could only conclude that the monk must be regarded as a heretic unwilling to recant and bow to the Church.
For Cajetan that was the end of the matter. Despite the monk's intractability, the legate, as promised, had not had the man arrested, but as ordered by the pope, he did pronounce judgment. He emphatically urged
Frederick: "I exhort and beg Your Highness to consider Your honor and Your conscience and either to have the monk Martin sent to Rome or to chase him from Your lands. Your Highness should not let one little friar
(unum fraterculum) bring such ignominy over You and Your house." !
The Venetian ambassador and the papal legate were equally astonished that a German diet could allow itself to be influenced by such trivialities, or that an elector could let himself become so distracted by a monk's ludicrous chatter that the necessities of politics were forgotten. Typically German— inconceivable anywhere else!
"Typically Roman"—thus the response from the German side, venting its irritation: here come those wily Latins, trying again to take advantage of us naive Germans for their own purposes. Like every individual elector, the diet as a whole bore responsibility for the political interests of Germany, not those of Rome. As the imperial estates saw it, emancipation from the curia was among the essential national grievances that had to be met.
The reigning princes, especially Frederick, understood politics in a wider sense than we do today. Politics was not restricted to temporal welfare; it was also concerned with the prerequisites and conditions for the eternal salvation of the citizenry in town and country. That is why Luther's Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (August 1520) could become his most effective political treatise. Here the worldly authorities could find the biblical justification for their long-practiced commitment to the well-being of the region and the regional Church. He who submissively left the welfare of the Church to the "courtiers" of the Roman curia was violating his obligations as a Christian prince.
It was not especially prudent of Cajetan to appeal to Frederick's ancestors, for the ruling house of Wettin had already taken action against the legal claims of the ecclesiastical hierarchy before the division of Saxony in 1485.
Long before October 1517, when Luther in his ninety-five theses questioned the rights of the pope in such a seemingly revolutionary way, Frederick II, an Elector of Saxony, had seriously restricted the pope's right to sell indulgences within his domains. When Pope Calixtus III offered a Turkish indulgence in 1458, Frederick II intervened forthwith. The Roman legate had to agree to surrender half the proceeds to the electoral treasury. The measures taken to ensure that the earnings were divided fairly between pope and state show how little the sovereign trusted the legate: The money was kept in a large "confession box" equipped with two locks, and the keys were entrusted to town councilors. To guarantee that all funds really reached the indulgence boxes, the prince assigned the papal legate an inspector, whose reports fully confirmed the prince's suspicions."
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Saxony had been divided for seventeen years, the sovereigns, Elector Frederick the Wise and Duke
George the Bearded, had repeatedly succeeded in protecting their interests when indulgences were at issue. When a Turkish indulgence had again been offered in 1502, the two princes had ordered the funds confiscated as soon
The electors of Saxony, Frederick the Wise and his brother John the Steadfast im THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION ————e as it became clear that once again the crusade against the Turks would fail to materialize. Such occurrences help to explain why "the little friar" did not simply vanish from the German scene. Yet why did Frederick—known as "the Wise"—support Luther's cause to the extent he did? His "no" to Cajetan linked Electoral Saxony so closely with the Reformation in the following years that ultimately his nephew John Frederick lost his electoral dignity when, on May 19, 1547, he signed the Capitulation of Wittenberg—the result of his crushing defeat in the religious war against the emperor.
The simple but crucial answer is that Frederick was acting as a Christian sovereign. Religious conviction did not allow him to compromise, and proved itself to be a mighty political factor. And the very factor that originally made the Reformation possible in Electoral Saxony was also the major cause of the ensuing military catastrophe. Because John Frederick had given Sunday worship priority over military service, on April 24, 1547, the emperor's troops were able to surprise the elector at Miihlberg. With all the elector's sentries withdrawn and in prayer, they had managed to advance to the bank of the Elbe unobserved. This pious picture of a praying prince, who trusts himself and his army to the protection of God, finds its exact parallel in the attitude of Frederick the Wise during the Peasants' War: On April 14, 1525, barely a month before his death on May 5, the aged elector informed his impatient brother Duke John: "If it is God's will that the common man shall rule, then so be it. But if it is not His divine will and [the revolt] has not been
_ undertaken to glorify Him, things will soon be taken care of." ?
Such passive submission to Providence runs counter to Luther's beliefs.
His harsh tracts concerning the peasants not only condemned the bloodshed caused by the peasant hordes; they also censured the princes for acting casually and irresponsibly. Trusting in God's control over the course of history and in His judgment is, after all, a matter of faith; it does not relieve sovereigns of their obligation to fulfil their duties and to render loyal service to the world to the very end, short as their time on earth may be.
Wherever Frederick's religious beliefs come to the surface, their divergence from the Reformation is apparent, and Luther openly assailed them.
Not long after the indulgence controversy broke out, he stood up against a false, and to his mind egotistical, veneration of saints,' directing some of his sharpest barbs against Frederick's most valued possession, the relic collection in the castle church of Wittenberg. In 1523 Luther went on publicly to embarrass and upbraid his sovereign when, at the end of his draft for a new liturgy, the Formula Missae, he spoke of the accursed financial interests of the prince, who, with his collection of relics, debased the castle church—called by Luther "All Saints, or rather All Devils" °—by exploiting it as a source of KRY RL ON ee x PQQOOVS Jy YY
The Castle Church of Wittenberg. Here Luther posted his theses on October 31, 1517. Title page of Wittenberger Heiligtumsbuch (Wittenberg, 1509), illustrated by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the catalogue of relics that Frederick and Fohn had collected in the Castle Church of Wittenberg out of concern for salvation. It provided detailed information on each of the indulgences available there.
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION income. No doubt Luther did Frederick an injustice—and blocked the future appreciation of the Elector as a "Christian sovereign."
It is astonishing that though repeatedly and severely attacked by Luther, and despite the commotion provoked by the controversial professor and the indignation aroused by many a radical defender of the Reformation, Frederick continued to uphold and guarantee Luther's freedom of action. On his deathbed Frederick publicly testified to his departure from the old faith when, contrary to papal doctrine, he had the Sacrament administered with bread and wine, in keeping with Christ's institution—and Luther's teachings. It cannot have been a violation of Frederick's last wish when the outlawed heretic was asked to rewrite the funeral liturgy in accordance with the principles of his reformed rite, and to preach the funeral sermon. Thus
Frederick the Wise was laid to rest on May 11, 1525, with more innovations than he had been willing to approve during his lifetime.
The generations that followed found the Elector as enigmatic as had his own contemporaries. Reserved and shy, dilatory to the point of indecision, unwilling to commit himself, let alone permit himself to be committed, as he lay dying he made a gesture that heralded an irreversible change. Who was this man? His personality is not easy to grasp, as it recedes behind his political posture. Historians must rely on the image that the prince carefully cultivated as an instrument in political conflict. Here we meet a late medieval
German prince who was by no means an absolute ruler. Yet he had such a sure and strong sense of duty that neither the Roman curia nor the imperial court nor even a Doctor Luther could shake his understanding of the temporal welfare and eternal salvation of his subjects. Again and again he stressed that as a layman he could not stand in judgment over Luther's theology, while at the same time making it quite clear that excommunication by the pope did not constitute proof of the doctor's guilt. In the battle between the factions, Frederick was the complete Christian prince, acting in the interests of his subjects' welfare and salvation. The supreme ecclesiastical authority of the German prince was not a result of the Reformation, as often claimed: it preceded the Reformation and provided the cradle for its early emergence and ultimate survival.
The State of the Nation Luther described Frederick as the great hesitator—though admittedly in retrospect, and always in comparison with the outspoken support he received from Frederick's successors, John the Constant and especially John
John Frederick the Magnanimous, Elector of Saxony, Luther's protector.
He was to lose his electorate in 1547 for the sake of the Reformation.
Woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1533.
Frederick the Magnanimous. But it was this very hesitation that enabled Electoral Saxony to bridge the difficult years of threatening isolation within' the empire and the Reformation to survive without the support of the German imperial estates.
Without Frederick and his councilors, Cardinal Cajetan's interrogation of Luther would have taken place in Rome and not on German soil. Without the Elector's perseverance, the evangelical movement would have come to an end in 1518, to remain at best a dimly remembered chapter in church history. Luther the reformer and charismatic genius would never have existed, only Luther the heretic, who for a time enjoyed a certain degree of notoriety when, like the Bohemian Jan Hus and the Florentine Girolamo Savonarola, he protested against the secularization of the Church. Luther would ultimately have become so inconsequential as to allow an unperturbed Roman curia to magnanimously reconsider his case today.
But this is not how it was to be. From the beginning the court of Electoral Saxony did not believe in an impartial investigation of Luther by the Roman
"courtiers" and mendicant friars; Frederick was not at all convinced that the theology professor from the Saxon University of Wittenberg had taught heretical doctrines. Besides, any attempt to "settle" the Luther question in Rome, outside Germany, was considered an infringement of the sovereignty .. :
SATS ETT ETL Ne «Bin naan ee THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION i of electoral judicial authority. Luther, recognizing the risk this policy entailed for Saxony, made the elector a politically attractive proposal: to leave
Saxony so as not to compromise the prince and thus to restore the sovereign's freedom of political action. So close had the hour of Luther's exile' come that on December 1, 1518, his Wittenberg friends were assembled to bid him farewell. Luther and his guests were "in good spirits" when a message arrived: "If the Doctor is still there, he should under no circumstances leave the land; the Elector has important things to discuss with him."*®
Luther had become a factor in national politics.
The electoral chancery was able to retreat to a position of neutrality without any elaborate declarations of principle. The doctoral oath of the University of Wittenberg, which Martin Luther had sworn on October 19, 1512, not only prohibited the dissemination of heretical doctrine; it also granted full academic freedoms and privileges, which expressly included the right of a doctor of theology to discuss freely and unhindered questions of scriptural interpretation. In their declaration of December 1518 the University of Wittenberg had confirmed that this applied to Luther's ninety-five theses.'
When the delicate problem of pontifical authority was to be debated in Leipzig, Luther and his opponent Johannes Eck, his first and lifelong German adversary, were in total agreement over this basic principle of academic freedom. With the support of both parties the ruler, Duke George (Leipzig belonged to Ducal Saxony after the division in 1485), was able to push through this debate, overriding both the veto of the responsible bishop and the timidity of Leipzig's theological faculty.
From the start Elector Frederick treated the Luther affair as a legal case, avoiding anything that might have been interpreted as partiality. He never met Luther personally and never expressed an opinion on the contents of the new theology. Up to the Edict of Worms (May 26, 1521), which placed
Luther under imperial ban, Frederick was able to maintain his impartial stance. Public support could not have provided more efficient protection for the professor from Wittenberg.
Just as effectively, Frederick the "hesitator" acted by his inaction after Luther was condemned by the pope. On June 15, 1520, Pope Leo issued
Exsurge Domine, the bull announcing conditional excommunication. It listed forty-one statements from Luther's works and condemned them as "heretical, offensive, and false." Luther had sixty days to submit. As this period passed without recantation, he was officially excommunicated on January 3,
1521. By signing the bull of excommunication, Decet Romanum Pontificem, the pope had finally settled the Luther question—or so it appeared. After the conclusion of the ecclesiastical trial, only the administrative sequel remained: Luther was to be turned over to the secular authorities and subsequently executed.
Why, then, were the demands of imperial and ecclesiastical law not met?
After all, since the Augsburg diet of 1518, a great deal had happened to undermine the success of Luther's cause. In his report on his "fatherly exhortation," Cardinal Cajetan had set aside the crucial argument of the right of free debate with a single sentence: "Although Brother Martin has put his opinions in the form of theses for academic disputation, he has nonetheless put them forward as firm results in sermons, and even, as I have been told, in the German language" *—within earshot of everyone, even the common
"stupid people"! He had abused his academic privilege of free disputation and thus forfeited it; henceforth only the assessment of the doctrinal contents of Luther's theses should decide.
But Cajetan had been too hasty in rendering his verdict. A curious redundancy was to weaken his case: Luther's theses "are partly in violation of the teachings of the Holy See and are partly heretical." ° Not only from the modern vantage point of the present-day Holy Office is this double justification peculiar. Clearly Cajetan had accepted Electoral Saxony's insistence on scriptural evidence: Luther's theology was contrary to Scripture, and thus to be condemned as heretical—a second and altogether independent point was the matter of papal authority. Precisely this biblical line of argumentation might well have ended fatally for Luther.
The Elector's reply to the cardinal was that there were many erudite scholars in Saxony who would not join in a condemnation of Luther. Without outside pressure, he, the ruling prince, would with God's help know what to do, in accordance with his honor and his conscience, were Luther actually found guilty of heresy.'°
But what would happen if Luther really were convicted of heresy and then no longer could depend on anti-Roman sentiments in Germany? What the Elector wrote was anything but the declaration of a cautious diplomat who promises nothing and leaves all possibilities open. From our modern perspective the Reformation was still in its early stages in 1518, and a commitment of the sort the Elector showed vis-a-vis Cajetan thus seems astonishing.
But the Elector's contemporaries saw the same events differently: for them the investigation and interrogation of Luther was merely the most recent chapter in one hundred years of reform effort which had been keeping the Church in suspense and Germany seething ever since the Council of Constance (1414-18).
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION ae Decisions cannot be put off forever; the reply to Cajetan was that of a confident sovereign who was well aware that a crucial moment in the struggle over Church reform had come, and who was thus acting within his authority as a Christian prince: if Martin Luther were convicted as a heretic, he should be condemned; but if the curia only wanted to get rid of an irksome reformer, he should retain his position as university professor and teacher of the Church.
Luther grasped the significance of the Elector's answer as soon as his friend and pupil, Georg Spalatin, privy councilor to the Elector, showed him a copy: "Ultimately even Cajetan will have to learn that secular power also comes from God. .
. 1am happy that the Elector has shown his patient and wise impatience in this matter." "
Election Victory for Charles If the elector's influence had not grown substantially overnight, Luther's cause would never have become a German event; it would have remained a local Saxon affair and easily been brought to an undramatic end in the summer of 1520, at the very latest. But the death of Emperor Maximilian I on January 12, 1519, drastically changed the political situation in the empire. At the Diet of Augsburg—his last—Maximilian, already seriously ill, had championed his grandson Charles as Roman (German) king. The emperor's death and the intrigues that followed hard upon it, the diplomatic and not so diplomatic wrangling over Maximilian's succession, which had not been conclusively established in Augsburg, aborted the "normal" run of the Luther affair. Only now, in the wake of the ensuing electoral campaign, did the Roman heresy case become a German issue.
Frederick's shrewd, self-confident, but by no means disrespectful answer, which Cajetan immediately dispatched to Rome, was his final opportunity to defer the matter. After a condemnation by the pope the Elector would no longer have been able to protect the monk and, in keeping with his own stated principles, would no longer have wanted to, once the highest ecclesiastical authority had made its decision.
But with the emperor's death, the situation changed for Rome, as well as for the empire. The interregnum resulted in a power gap which allowed the German electors to gain importance far beyond the borders of their own territories. The imperial law of the Golden Bull of 1356 had decreed that the German king was to be elected by seven princes, who in consequence of this right were called electors: they included the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne,
Emperor Maximilian I]. Drawn by Albrecht Diirer at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518. and Trier, and the secular sovereigns of Bohemia, the Palatinate, Brandenburg, and Saxony. On August 27, 1518, toward the end of the Diet of Augsburg, Maximilian had succeeded in winning over the majority of the electoral college for his grandson. Only Trier and Saxony had not yet been prepared to commit themselves: the archbishop of Trier's unwillingness was probably due to his very close French ties; the Saxon, on the other hand, had cited the electoral regulations of the Golden Bull, and this may well have been his true motive: no advance commitment should restrict his free vote.
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION Portrait of the dead Emperor Maximilian I. The emperor had left instructions for his body to be scourged, his hair shorn, and his teeth broken out.
He wanted to appear before God as penitent.
This is as far as historical reconstruction can go. As a matter of course, little of the maneuvering that went on behind the scenes after the emperor's death ever reached the records. There is solid evidence that gifts, that is, bribes, were handed out by the candidates competing for the throne, but new discoveries suggest that we do not know even half the story with regard to these financial machinations. What is certain is that after a passing involvement by King Henry VIII of England, and then a Saxon interlude when the pope wanted to induce Elector Frederick to become a candidate, there were only two serious competitors left: King Francis I of France and Charles I, duke of Burgundy, king of Spain and Naples-Sicily, and, together with his brother Ferdinand, heir to the lands of Austria. Charles' election would mean a new powerful emperor with a hitherto unknown compass of power. Under these circumstances his candidacy would inevitably challenge both pope and French king, and make them allies for a long time to come, when the election would be but a distant memory.
The amount of money invested to elect one or the other candidate exceeded anything before. The house of Hapsburg spent almost one million gulden, most of which was financed by the Fugger bank. The exact French figures are not known, but the French expenditures appear to have been considerable. Maximilian had already shown in Augsburg his consternation at the sizable investments the French were making to bribe the electors. The pope, too, was distributing money liberally and making generous offers of ecclesiastical privileges and promises of cardinals' caps and bishoprics.
In the spring of 1519, when the electoral struggle was threatening to lead to a stalemate, the government of the Hapsburg Netherlands proposed a compromise that stood a real chance of smoothing Germany's way into the modern era, because it took into account the incipient development of a Europe divided into nations: not the many-titled Charles but his younger brother Archduke Ferdinand, who would in fact have been acceptable to all parties as German king, should become Maximilian's successor. But Charles indignantly rejected this solution—the "defense of Christendom" demanded a strong, universal empire.
Indeed, it was not a mere craving for power that impelled Charles to seek the crown of the Holy Roman Empire; after all, he kept his promise to share the regency with Ferdinand at his earliest convenience. Twelve years later, in 1531, long before his abdication (1555), Charles saw to it that his brother,
Archduke Ferdinand, was elected king of the Romans—over the protest of the Saxon elector, who stayed away from the election. It was exactly these twelve years that led up to Ferdinand's elevation which proved to be decisive for both Germany and the Reformation.
IN JANUARY 1524 a German solution to the quest for reform of the Church seemed imminent. The third Diet of Nuremberg decided to convene a national council, a "general assembly of the German nation," in Speyer on St. Martin's Day, November 11, 1524, in order to resolve the Luther problem. It is easy to understand why the Roman curia opposed the diet's decision, since a council of this sort increased the danger that the Germans might transform their church into a national church independent of Rome. In France the pope had just barely managed to prevent this late medieval independence movement through a generous concordat with King
Francis I. When King Henry VIII succeeded in establishing the Church of England in 1534, ten years after the resolution of the Diet of Nuremberg, the curia was no longer in a position to counter this secession successfully.
Had it not been for the emperor, the solution of a national church would have stood as good a chance in Germany as it had in England.
The decision to convoke a national council was in everyone's interest and was advocated by all the imperial estates, even by Archduke Ferdinand.
It united supporters and opponents of the new doctrine, including the