Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  On April 27, 1525, on the occasion of the taking over of the treasure, with the co-operation of persons “distinguished for their strong Lutheran views,” a strict search was made in both the venerable churches for anything of any value that might have been left. Not the least consideration was paid to the private property of the individual clergy, objects were seized in the most violent manner, locked chests and cupboards were simply forced open, or, if this took too long, broken with axes. Every hasp of silver on copes and elsewhere was torn off. “Unclean fists,” says a contemporary narrator, “seized the chalices and sacred vessels, which they had no right to touch, and carried them with loud jeers in buckets and baskets to places where they were dishonoured.” As in other churches and convents, the books and papers on which any claims of the clergy against the council might be based were selected with special care. While precious works of art were thus being consigned to destruction, members of the town-council were consoling the Canons by renewed assurances, that the council “would protect both their life and their property.” Finally, the two churches were closely watched for some while after, “lest something might still be preserved in them, and to prevent such being taken possession of by the clergy.”

  When, in 1525, on the news of the Peasant Rising in Swabia and Franconia, meetings were held by the peasants in the Erfurt district, the adherents of the movement determined to enforce by violence their demands even at Erfurt. Those in the town who sympathised with Luther made common cause with the rebels. The magistrates were undecided. They were not as yet exclusively Lutheran, but were anxious to make the town independent of the Archbishop of Mayence, and to secure for themselves the property and rights of the clergy. For the most part the lower orders were unfavourable to the magistrates, and therefore sided with the peasantry.

  The peasants from the numerous villages which were politically regarded as belonging to the Erfurt district demanded that they should be emancipated from the burdens which they had to bear, and placed on a footing of social equality with the lower class of Erfurt burghers. With this they joined, as had been done elsewhere, religious demands in the sense of Luther’s innovations. The movement was publicly inaugurated by fourteen villages at a meeting held in a beerhouse on April 25 or 26, 1525, at which the peasants bound themselves by an oath taken with “uplifted right hand,” at the risk of their lives “to support the Word of God and to combine to abolish the old obsolete imposts.” When warned not to go to Erfurt, one of the leaders replied: “God has enlightened us, we shall not remain, but go forward.” As soon as they had come to an agreement as to their demands concerning the taxes “and other heavy burdens which the Evangel was to assist them to get rid of,” they collected in arms around the walls of Erfurt. The magistrates then took counsel how to divert the threatening storm and direct it against the clergy and the hated authorities of Mayence. The remembrance of the “Pfaffensturm” which, in 1521, had served as a means to allay the social grievances, was an encouragement to adopt a similar course. As intermediary between council and peasants, Hermann von Hoff, who has been mentioned above as an opponent of the Catholic clergy and the rights of Mayence, took a leading part; one of his principles was that “it is necessary to make use of every means, sweet as well as bitter, if we are to allay so great a commotion and to avert further mischief.”

  In their perplexity the magistrates, through the agency of Hoff, admitted the horde of peasants, only stipulating that they should spare the property of the burghers, though they were to be free to plunder the Palace of the Archbishop of Mayence, the “hereditary lord” of the city, and also the toll-house. The peasants made their entry on April 28 with that captain of the town whom Lang had invited to draw the sword in the cause of the Evangel. Not only was the Palace despoiled and the toll-house utterly destroyed, but the salt warehouses and almost all the parsonages were attacked and looted. In the name of “evangelical freedom” the plunderers vented all their fury on the sacred vessels, pictures and relics they were still able to find.

  “In the Archbishop’s Palace Lutheran preachers, for instance, Eberlin of Günzburg, Mechler and Lang, mixed with the rabble of the town and country and preached to them.” The preachers made no secret of being “in league with the peasantry and the proletariate of the town.” The clergy and religious were, however, to be made “to feel still more severely” the effects of the alliance between the three parties.

  At the first coming of the peasants, that quarters might be found for them, “all the convents of monks and nuns were confiscated and their inhabitants driven out into the street.” “Alas, how wretched did the poor nuns look passing up and down the alleys of the town,” says an eye-witness in an Erfurt chronicle. All those connected with the Collegiate churches of St. Mary and St. Severus had peasants billeted on them in numbers out of all proportion to their means. On the morning of April 28, the service in the church of St. Mary’s was violently interrupted. On the following Sunday, Eberlin, the apostate Franciscan, commenced a course of sermons, which he continued for several days with his customary vehemence and abuse. Exactly a week after the coming of the peasants they passed a resolution in the Mainzer Hof that the number of parishes should be reduced to ten, including the Collegiate church of St. Mary’s, and that in all these parish churches “the pure Word of God should be preached without any additions, man-made laws, decrees or doctrines.” As for the pastors, they were to be appointed and removed by the congregation. This was equivalent to sentencing the old worship to death. On the same day an order was issued to all the parish churches and monasteries to abstain in future from reciting or singing Matins, Vespers or Mass. The only man who was successful in evading the prohibition was Dr. Conrad Klinge, the courageous guardian of the Franciscans, who at the hospital continued to preach in the old way to crowded audiences.

  Most of the beneficed clergy now quitted the town, as the council refused to undertake any responsibility on their behalf; and as they were forbidden to resume Divine Worship or even to celebrate Mass in private, at the gate of the town they were subjected to a thorough search lest they should have any priestly property concealed about them. The magistrates sought to extort from the clergy who remained, admissions which might serve as some justification for their conduct. The post of preacher at the Dom, after it had been refused by Eberlin, who had at length taken fright at the demagogic spirit now abroad, was bestowed upon one of Luther’s immediate followers; the new preacher was Dr. Johann Lang, an “apostate, renegade, uxorious monk,” as a contemporary chronicler calls him.

  All tokens of any authority of the Archbishop of Mayence in the town were obliterated, and the archiepiscopal jurisdiction was declared to be at an end. Eobanus Hessus wrote gleefully of the ruin of the “popish” foe. “We have driven away the Bishop of Mayence, for ever. All the monks have been expelled, the nuns turned out, the canons sent away, all the temples and even the money-boxes in the churches plundered; the commonwealth is now established and taxes and customs houses have been done away with. Again we are now free.” Here the statement that the clergy of Mayence had been expelled “for ever” proved incorrect, for the rights of the over-lord were soon to be re-established.

  The magistrates were the first to fall; they were deposed, and the lower-class burghers and the peasants replaced them by two committees, one to represent the town, the other the country. In the latter committee the excited ringleaders of the peasantry gave vent to threatening speeches against the former municipal government, and such wild words as “Kill these spectres, blow out their brains” were heard.

  The actual wording of the resolutions passed by both the committees was principally the work of preachers of the new faith. Eberlin, too, was consulted as to how best to draw up “the articles in accordance with the Bible,” but he cautiously declined to have anything to do with this, and declared that their demands seemed to him to be exorbitant and that, “the Evangel would not help them.” The Lutheran preachers also exerted themselves to bring about the re
instatement of the magistrates. It is said that on April 30, in every quarter of the town, a minister of the new doctrine preached to the citizens and country people to the following effect: “You have now by your good and Christian acts and deeds emancipated yourselves altogether from the Court at Mayence and its jurisdiction, which, according to Divine justice and Holy Scripture, should have no temporal authority whatever. But in order that this freedom may not lead you astray, there must be some authorities over you, and therefore you must for the future recognise the worthy magistrates of Erfurt as your rulers,” etc.

  The words of the preachers prevailed, and the newly elected councillors became the head of a sort of republic. The burdens of the town increased to an oppressive extent, however, and the peasants who had returned to their villages groaned more than ever under the weight of the taxes. Financial difficulties continued to increase.

  Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, the councillors gave their sanction on May 9, 1525, “under the new seal,” to the amended articles, twenty-eight in number, which had been drafted by the town and peasant committees during the days of storm and stress. The very first article made obligatory the preaching of “the pure Word of God,” and gave to each congregation the right to choose its own pastors. “The gist of the remaining articles was the appointment of a permanent administrative council to give a yearly account, and to impose no new taxes without the knowledge and sanction of both burghers and country subjects.”

  In accepting the articles it was agreed that Luther’s opinion on them should be ascertained, a decision which seems to show that the peasants and burghers, though probably not the councillors themselves, reckoned upon the weighty sanction of Wittenberg. Yet about May 4 Luther had finished his booklet “Against the murderous Peasants” (above ), which was far from favourable to seditious movements such as that of Erfurt. The council invited him by letter, on May 10, to come to Erfurt with Melanchthon “and establish the government of the town,” as Melanchthon puts it (“ad constituendum urbis statum”). Luther, however, did not accept the invitation, and a month later the council sent him a copy of the articles, requesting a written opinion. It is difficult to believe that the Erfurt magistrates were not aware of Luther’s growing bitterness against the peasants, which is attested by the pamphlets he wrote at the time, or that they were incapable of drawing the obvious conclusion as to his reply. “If the council in taking this step,” says Eitner, “was relying on Luther’s known attitude towards all revolutionary movements, and hoped to make an end of the inconvenient demands of the people by means of the Reformer’s powerful words, then their expectation was fully realised. Both Luther’s letter (i.e. his answer to the council) and his written notes on the copy of the articles sent him, are full of irony expressing the displeasure of one whose advice was so much in request, but whose interference in the peasant movement, in spite of his good intentions, had thus far met with so little success.... The very articles which the authors had most at heart were submitted by Luther to a relentless and somewhat pointless criticism.... Thus we see in a comparatively trivial case what has long been acknowledged of his action generally, viz. that Luther’s interference in the Peasant-War cannot be altogether justified.... His conduct shattered his reputation, both in the empire and in his second native town [Erfurt], and paved the way for the inevitable reaction.”

  Luther, in his reply to the “Honourable, prudent and beloved” members of the Erfurt council, declares in the very first sentences that the Twenty-eight Articles were so “ill-advised” that “little good could come of them” even were he present himself at Erfurt; he is of opinion that certain people, who “are better off than they deserve,” are putting on airs at the expense of the council, constitute a danger to the common weal, and, with “unheard-of audacity and wickedness,” wish to “turn things upside down.” Things must never be permitted to come to such a pass that the councillors fear the common people and become their servants; the common people must be quiet and entrust all to the honourable magistrates to be set right, “lest the Princes have occasion to take up arms against Erfurt on account of such unwarrantable conduct.” Luther’s new sovereign, the Elector Johann, had just been assisting in the suppression of the peasant rising. He was in entire sympathy with the Wittenberg Professor, whom he so openly protected and favoured, and doubtless they had discussed together the state of affairs at Erfurt. In his written reply Luther asks whether it is not “seditious” to refuse to pay the Elector the sum due to him for acting as protector of the city. “Did they, then, esteem so lightly the Prince and the security of the town, which, as a matter of fact, was something not to be paid for in money?” Their demand really signified either that “no one was to protect the town of Erfurt, or that the Princes were to relinquish their claim to payment and yet continue to protect the town.”

  The demand that the congregations of the parishes should appoint their own pastors Luther considered particularly inadmissible; it was “seditious that the parishes should wish to appoint and dismiss their own pastors without reference to the councillors, as though the councillors, in whom authority was vested, were not concerned in what the town might do.” He insists that “the councillors have the right to know what sort of persons are holding office in the town.”

  Concerning some of the articles which dealt with taxes and imposts, he points out that the business is not his concern, since these are temporal matters. Of the proposal to re-establish the decayed University of Erfurt he says: “This article is the best of all.” Of two of the articles he notes: “Both these will do,” one being that, for the future, openly immoral persons and prostitutes of all classes were not to be tolerated, nor the common houses of public women, and the other, that every debtor, whether to the council or the community, should be “faithfully admonished no matter who he might be.” Concerning the former of these two articles, however, we may remark, that a house of correction for the punishment of light women had existed at Erfurt under the Archbishop’s rule, but had been razed to the ground by the very framers of the articles as soon as the peasants entered the town.

  The principal thing, in Luther’s opinion, was to place the reins in the hands of the magistrates, so that they may not sit there like an “idol,” “bound hand and foot,” “while the horses saddle and bridle their driver”; on the contrary, the aim of the articles seemed to him to be, to reduce the councillors to be mere figureheads, and to let “the rabble manage everything.” The “rabble” was just then Luther’s bugbear.

  The clergy who had quitted the city addressed, on May 30, a written complaint to the Cardinal of Mayence, with an account of the proceedings. On June 8 they also appealed to Johann, the Saxon Elector, and to Duke George of Saxony, asking for their mediation, since they were the “protectors and liege lords” of their Church. They also did all they could with the council to recover their rights. The councillors were, however, merely rude, and replied that the proud priests might ask as much as they pleased but would get no redress. This was what caused them to complain to their secular protectors that they were being treated worse than the meanest peasant. Duke George advised them to await the result of the negotiations which, as he knew, were proceeding between the town of Erfurt and the Cardinal.

  The Lutheran Elector, on the other hand, entered into closer relations with the town-council of Erfurt, accepting with good grace their appeal for help, their protestation of submission and obedience to his rule, and the explicit assurance of the councillors at the Weimar conference, on June 22, “that they would stand by the true and unfeigned Word of God as pious and faithful Christians, and, in support of the same, stake life and limb, with the help of God’s grace.” Thereupon the Elector promised them, on June 23, that, “should they suffer any inconvenience or attack because of the Word of God,” he, as their “liege lord, ruler and protector,” would “stand by them and afford them protection to the best of his ability,” since “the Word of God and the Holy Evangel were likewise dear to him.” In
point of fact he did espouse the cause of the inhabitants of Erfurt, though, like Duke George, it was his wish to see a peaceful settlement arrived at between the town and its rightful over-lord.

  The crafty councillors were actually negotiating with the representatives of the Cardinal of Mayence at the very time when they were seeking the protection of Saxony. The over-lord whose rights they had outraged, through his vicar, had made known his peremptory demands to the council on May 26, viz. entire restitution, damages, expulsion of the Lutheran sect, re-establishment of the old worship and payment of an indemnity. In the event of refusal he threatened them with the armed interference of the Swabian League. The threat took effect, for the Swabian League at that time was feared, and disturbers of the peace had had occasion to feel its strength. The hint of armed interference proved all the more effective when Duke George advised the inhabitants of Erfurt to come to terms with the Mayence vicar and abolish Lutheranism, as otherwise they would have to expect “something further.”