Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  14 Alveld’s German treatise described itself in the title as a “fruitful, useful little book.”

  15 Alveld’s Latin treatise especially abounds in these appellations.

  16 Alveld belonged to the branch of the Franciscan Order known as the “Observants” (fratres reglaris observatiae), from their strict observance of the Franciscan Rule. See the title of the Latin treatise in Weimar Ed., VI, 277.

  17 Christenheit.

  18 Gemeinde — the German equivalent for the Latin communio, communitas, or congregatio. In Luther’s use of the term it means sometimes “community,” sometimes “congregation,” sometimes even “the Church” (Gemeinde der Heiligen). In this case it translates Alveld’s civilitas (Weimar Ed., VI, 278).

  19 Christenheit.

  20 Luther quotes, in German, the reading of the Latin Vulgate.

  21 Christenheit.

  22 Gemeinde. A play on the word. On the second use of the term, compare the similar employment of the English word “parish.”

  23 Christenheit.

  24 From Veni Sancte Spiritus, an antiphon for Whitsuntide dating from the eleventh century.

  25 Christenheit.

  26 Es ist erlogen und erstunken.

  27 Gemeinde.

  28 Christenheit.

  29 Versammlung.

  30 Gemeinde.

  31 Versammlung.

  32 Einigkeit oder Gemeinde.

  33 A quaint interpretation of the passage: “The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”

  34 Christenheit.

  35 Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist, a popular pre-Reformation hymn, of one stanza, for Whitsuntide, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century; quoted in a sermon by Berthold, the Franciscan, a celebrated German preacher in the Middle Ages, who died in Regesburg in 1272. Published by Luther, with three stanzas of his own added, in his hymn-book of 1524. Vid. Wackernage, Kirchenlied, ii, 44; Koca, Geachicte des Kirchenlieds, i, 185; Julian, Dict. of Hymnology, 821. Also Miss Winkworth’s Christian Singers, 38.

  36 Christenheit.

  37 Gemeinde.

  38 Christenheit.

  39 Christenheit.

  40 All sources from which the Church or the clergy derived an income were called in the broader sense, “spiritual” possessions. A further distinction was drawn between two kinds of ecclesiastical income — the spiritualia in this sense being the fees, tithes, etc., and the temporalia the income from endowments of land and the like.

  41 The followers of John Huss.

  42 Zwölfbote, a popular appellation for the apostles, meaning one of the twelve messengers.

  43 See page 351.

  44 Christenheit.

  45 Literally, “Rastrume better than malvoisie.” “Rastrum” was a Leipzig beer reported to be extraordinarily bad; “malvoisie,” a highly prized, imported wine, known in England as “malmsey.”

  46 In the German treatise Alveld says: “It is not enough to have Christ for a shepherd or a head; if that were sufficient, all the heathen, all the Jews, all the errorists, all the heretics would be true Christians. Christ is a lord, a guardian, a shepherd, a head of the whole world, whether we want him or not.” (Weimar Ed., VI, 301) In the Latin he says: “No community or assembly (civilitars seu pluralitas) of men can be rightly administered except in the unity of the head, under the Head Jesus Christ.” This proposition he develops in detail, saying that “No brothel (contubernium meretricum), no band of thieves, plunderers and robbers, no company of soldiers can be ruled or held together, or long exist without a governor, chief and lord, that is to say, without one head.” (Weimar Ed., VI, 278).

  47 See above, p. 358.

  48 Jerome Emser, De disputatione Lipsicense and A venatione Luteriana aegocerotia assertio.

  49 Augustine, In Joannia Ev., 12, 3, 11. (Migne Ed., 35 149 ff.)

  50 Cf. Augustine, De unitate ecclesiae, 5, 8. (Migne Ed., 43, 396 f.)

  51 In his Sermon von Sacrament des Leichnams Christi of 1519 (Weimar Ed., II, 742 ff.) Luther had made a plea for the restoration of the cup to the laity. At the request of Duke George of Saxony, the bishop of Meissen (Jan. 20th, 1520) forbade the circulation of this tract in his diocese (Weimar Ed., VI, 76; Hauerbath, Luther, I, 316). The controversy, to which Luther contributed is Verklärung etlicher Artikel, etc. (Weimar Ed., VI, 78 ff.), was bitterest in the Leipzig circle to which Alved belonged.

  52 See pp. 373 and 380.

  53 A reference to Emser’s De disputatione Lipsicense, and A ventione Luteriana aegocerotis assertio, see above, p. 363.

  54 Luther’s greeting to a forthcoming and much heralded work of Eck’s, which appeared under the title De primatu Petri.

  55 This statement cannot be substantiated. But see commentaries on Acts 26:10 f.

  56 The memory of the warlike and avaricious pope Julius II. was still fresh in the mind of Luther and his contemporaries.

  57 Alveld so announced himself in the title of his Latin treatise. In order go gain the necessary leisure for its composition he had obtained a dispensation from all the capel services of his monastery. See Weimar Ed., VI, 277.

  58 In a similar vein of satire Shakespeare uses this very phrase in “Merry Wives of Windsor,” III, 5.

  59 Gemeinde.

  60 Alveld had stated that the attempt had been made “more than 23 times”; and again, “The assembly has existed more than 1486 under the chair of St. Peter which Christ has established.” See Weimar Ed., VI.

  61 Gemeinde.

  62 Still the old terminology.

  63 Equivalent to father-confessor. The pope’s own confessor is so called.

  64 Alveld makes this distinction in both of his treatises.

  65 Gemeinde.

  66 See page 373.

  67 See especially the Resolutiones super Propositione XIII.

  68 i. e., The Russians, who were in ecclesiastical fellowship with the Orthodox Greek Church. The metropolitan see of Moscow represented the opposition to union with Rome, which had been proposed in 1439; the second metropolitan see of Russia, that of Kief, was until 1519 favorable to the union. See A. Palmieri and W. J. Shipman, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, X, 594 ff; XIII, 255 f., and Adeney, Greek and Eastern Churches, 385 ff.

  69 Gemeinde.

  70 Annates (annatae, annalia), originally the income which a bishop received from the vacant benefices in his diocese, usually amounting to a year’s income of the benefice. By a decree of John XXII, 1317 (Extrav. Jn. XXII, Lib. I, C. 2), the annates are fixed at one-half of one year’s income of the benefice reckoned on the basis of the tithes, and payable on accession of the new incumbent. Two years later (1319) the same Pope set an important precedent by claiming for himself the annates from all benefices falling vacant in the next two years (Extrav. Comm. 3, 2, C. II). The right to receive annates subsequently became a regular claim of the popes. The term was extended after 1418 to include, beside the annates proper, the so-called servitia, payments made to the curia by bishops and abbots at the time of their accession. Luther discusses the subject at greater length in the Address to the Christian Nobility. (See Vol. II)

  71 See above, p. 362.

  72 Römische Einigkeit.

  73 This is Alveld’s explanation in his German treatise.

  74 Comment, equivalent to “lie” or “invention.”

  75 Rastrum, see above, note on p. 362.

  76 The sheeps’ clothing in which they come.

  77 A reference to the sale of dispensations, more fully discussed in the Address to the Christian Nobility.

  78 At the well-known disputation in the previous year.

  79 John Lonicer in Contra romanistam fratrem, etc., and John Bernhardi in Confutatio inepti et impii libelli, etc.; both replies to Alveld’s Latin treatise which appeared shortly before this treatise of Luther’s.

  80 Gemeinde.

  81 A promise fulfilled in his Address to the Christian Nobility.

  82 In the title to his Latin treatise.

  83 Of the German treatise.


  A Treatise Concerning the Ban (1520)

  Translated by J. J. Schindel

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  ENDNOTES.

  A TREATISE CONCERNING THE BAN

  ENDNOTES.

  INTRODUCTION

  THE BAN, OR excommunication, is the correlative of communion. Our conception of excommunication depends then, of course, upon our view of what constitutes communion. Luther gives us his view of communion in the preceding Treatise concerning the Blessed Sacrament. From the premise there laid down it follows that excommunication, or the ban, excludes only from external membership in the Church, but cannot really separate a man from the Church if he is in personal fellowship with his Lord1. Sin and unbelief cause this separation from Him, and the real ban, therefore, is put into effect not by the Church, but by the man himself when he sins against God. The ban of the Church cannot even deprive one of the Sacrament, but only of the outward use of it, for it can still be partaken of spiritually. This whole position, of course, is fatal to the Roman Catholic conception of the Church, and we do not wonder that it was vigorously opposed by the hierarchy.

  Of like significance is Luther’s advocacy of the separation of the temporal and spiritual powers, practically of Church and State, — the position which he develops later in the Open Letter to the Nobility. But in this treatise, again, Luther shows himself to be anything but the immoral monster his vilifiers have tried to make of him. He is again the man of conscience — will his critics say, “of oversensitive conscience”? Thank God that there were some sensitive consciences in an almost conscienceless age! Luther fears sin more than the ban, and sin has for him more than an ecclesiastical meaning. Sin is not primarily an act against the Church, but an offence against God. This the ban is to teach; it is to be the symbol of God’s wrath against sin and it is to be used by the Church only remedially and in love. When so used it becomes the chastening rod of the dear Mother Church, provided it be accepted and borne in this spirit.

  Why, then, did not Luther bear his own ban in this way? The justification for his subsequent conduct is to be found in two brief but important conditional clauses in this treatise. “God,” he says, “cannot and will not permit authority to be wantonly and impudently resisted, when it does not force us to do what is against God or His commandments.”2 Again he says, “When unjustly put under the ban we should be very careful not to do, omit, say or withhold that on account of which we are under the ban, unless we cannot do so without sin and without injury to our neighbor.”3 God and his neighbor were for Luther the actors which made it necessary for him to speak and act, when for selfish reasons he would often rather have remained passive.

  The inception of our treatise is to be found in a sermon preached in Wittenberg in the spring of 1518. Luther’s pastoral concern for his people made it necessary for him to speak on this subject in order to quiet the consciences both embittered and distressed by the wanton and unjust use of the power of excommunication. Added to this must have been his own personal interest in the ban certain to fall on him. In a letter to Link4, dated July 10, 1518, he speaks of having preached a sermon on the power of the ban which produced general consternation and fear that the ire enkindled by the XCV Theses would start afresh. He had desired a public disputation on the subject, but the Bishop of Brandenburg persuaded him to defer the matter. Under date of September 1st, Luther writes Staupitz5 that because his sermon had been misrepresented and spread by unfriendly spies it became necessary for him to publish it. It appeared in August after Luther’s summons to Rome, under the title De Virtute Excommunicationis. Our treatise is an elaboration in popular form of this Latin treatise of 1515.

  The Grünberg text given in Clemen, Vol. I, which we have followed in most cases, is dated 1520, and must have appeared in its original edition at the end of 1519 or the beginning of 1520.

  The text of the treatise is found in the following editions: Weimar Ed., vol. vi, 63; Erlangen Ed., vol. xxvii, 51; Walch Ed., vol. xix, 1089; St. Louis Ed., vol. .xix, 884; Clemen, vol. i, 213; Berlin Ed., vol. iii, 291.

  J. J. SCHINDEL.

  Allentown, PA.

  ENDNOTES.

  1 See below, p. 37.

  2 See below, p. 50.

  3 See below, p. 51.

  4 See Enders, I, No. 84. Smith. Luther’s Correspondence, I, No. 69.

  5 See Enders, I, No. 90. Smith, Luther’s Correspondence, I, No. 77.

  A TREATISE CONCERNING THE BAN

  1520

  JESUS

  1. We have seen1 that the sacrament of the holy body of Christ is a sign of the communion of all saints, therefore it becomes necessary to know also what the ban is which is employed in the Church by the power of the spiritual estate. For its chief and peculiar function and power is to deprive guilty Christians of the holy sacrament and forbid it to them. Therefore the one cannot be understood apart from the other, because the one is the opposite of the other; for the Latin word communio means fellowship, and thus do the learned designate the Holy Sacrament. Its opposite is the word excommunicatio, which means exclusion from this fellowship, and so the learned term the ban.

  2. There is a twofold fellowship, corresponding to the two things in the sacrament, the sign and the thing signified, as was said in the treatise2. The first is an inner, spiritual and invisible fellowship of the heart, by which one is incorporated by true faith, hope and love in the fellowship of Christ and of all the saints, signified and bestowed in the sacrament; and this is the effect and virtue of the sacrament. This fellowship can neither be given nor taken away by any one, be he bishop, pope, or angel or any creature. God alone through His Holy Spirit must pour it into the heart of the one who believes in the sacrament, as was said in the treatise3. This fellowship no ban can touch or affect, but only the unbelief or sin of the person himself; by these he can excommunicate himself, and thus separate himself from the grace, the and salvation of the fellowship. This St. Paul proves in Romans viii: “Who shall separate us from the God? Can anguish or need, or hunger or poverty, or danger or persecution, or shedding of blood? Nay, I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities nor angelic hosts, neither things present nor things to come, naught that is mighty on the earth, neither height nor depth nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [Rom. 8:35, 38] And St. Peter says: “And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?” [1 Peter 3:13]

  3. The second kind of fellowship is an outward, bodily and visible fellowship, by which one is admitted to the Holy Sacrament and receives and partakes of it together with others. From this fellowship or communion bishop and pope can exclude one, and forbid it to him on account of his sin, and that is called putting him under the ban. This ban was much in vogue of old, and is now known as the lesser ban. For the ban goes beyond this and forbids even burial, selling, trading, all association and fellowship with men, finally, as they say, even fire and water4, and this is known as the greater ban.

  Not satisfied with this, there are some who go still farther and use the temporal powers against those under the ban, to coerce them with sword, fire, and war5. These, however, are new inventions, rather than the real meaning of Scripture. To wield the temporal sword belongs to the emperor, to kings, to princes, and to the rulers of this world, and by no means to the spiritual estate6, whose sword is not to be of iron, but the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word and commandment of God, as St. Paul says. [Eph. 6:17]

  4. This external ban, both the lesser and the greater, was instituted by Christ when He said in Matthew xviii: “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. If he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word or transaction may be established. If he will not hear them, then tell it unto the whole congregation, the Church. If he neglect to he
ar the Church, let him be unto thee a heathen man and a publican.” [Matt. 18:15 ff.]

  Likewise St. Paul says in I Corinthians v: “If any man among you be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one keep not company, neither eat with him.” [1. Cor. 5:11] Again he says in II Thessalonians iii: “If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.” [2 Thess. 3:14] Again, John says in his second Epistle: “If any one come unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed, and he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” [2 John 10]

  From all these sayings we learn how the ban is to be used. First, we should seek neither vengeance nor our own profit, as is at present the disgraceful practice everywhere, but only the correction of our neighbor. Second, the penalty should stop short of his death or destruction; or St. Paul limits the purpose of the ban to the correction of our neighbor, that he be put to shame when no one associates with him, and he adds in 11 Thessalonians iii: “Count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.” [2 Thess. 3:15] But now the ruthless tyrants deal with men as though they would cast them down to hell, and do not in any wise seek their correction.

  5. It may often happen that a person under the ban is deprived of the holy sacrament, and also of burial, and is nevertheless inwardly7 secure and blessed in the fellowship of Christ and of all saints, signified in the sacrament. On the other hand, there are many who are not under the outward ban and who freely partake of the sacrament, but are nevertheless inwardly quite estranged and excommunicated from the fellowship of Christ; even though they be buried under the high altar in a golden pall with much pomp and singing and tolling of bells. Therefore, no one is to be judged, even if he be under the ban, especially if he has not been put under the ban for heresy or sin, but for the purpose of correction. For to put men under the ban for the sake of money or other temporal considerations is a new invention, of which the apostles and Christ knew nothing.