Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Blaurer was openly accused of deception and hypocrisy in the matter of his profession of faith. Though he had formerly sided with Zwingli in the denial of the Sacrament, he vindicated his Lutheran orthodoxy to his patron, the Duke, by means of a formulary tallying with Luther’s doctrine on the Supper. Subsequently, however, he issued an “Apology,” in which he declared he had not in the least altered his views. “Who does not see the deception?” wrote Luther’s friend, Veit Dietrich; “formerly he made a profession of faith in our own words, and now he attacks everybody who says he has retracted his previous opinion.” Luther had been a prey to the greatest anxiety on learning that Blaurer had become the Duke’s favourite. “If this be true,” he wrote, “what hope is left for the whole of Upper Germany?” Much as he had rejoiced at Blaurer’s apparent retractation in the matter of the Sacrament, he was very mistrustful of his bewildering “Apology.” “I only hope it be meant seriously,” he declared; “it scandalises many that Blaurer should be so anxious to make out that he never thought differently. People find this hard to believe.” “For the sake of unity I shall, however, put a favourable interpretation on everything. I am ready to forgive anyone who in his heart thinks aright, even though he may have been in error or hostile to me.” Thus he practically pledged himself to silence regarding the work.

  Of “Blaurer’s” doings in Würtemberg, now won over to the new Evangel, the Bavarian agent, Hans Werner, a violent opponent of Duke Ulrich’s, wrote: “He preaches every day; yet none save the low classes and common people, etc., attend his sermons, for these readily accept the Evangel of mine being thine and thine mine. Item, Blaurer has full powers, writes hither and thither in the land, turns out here a provost, there a canon, vicar, rector or priest and banishes them from the country by order of Duke Ulrich; he appoints foreigners, Zwinglians or Lutheran scamps, of whom no one knows anything; all must have wife and child, and if there be still a priest found in the land, he is forced to take a wife.”

  In the Würtemberg lowlands, north of Stuttgart, a zealous Lutheran, Erhard Schnepf, laboured for the destruction of the old Church system; Duke Ulrich also summoned Johann Brenz, the Schwäbisch-Hall preacher, to his land for two years.

  At Christmas, 1535, Ulrich gave orders to all the prelates in his realm to dismiss the Catholic clergy in their districts and appoint men of the new faith, as the former “did nothing but blaspheme and abuse the Divine truth.” Even the assisting at Mass in neighbouring districts was prohibited by the regulation issued in the summer of 1536, which at the same time prescribed the attendance of Catholics at least once every Sunday and Holiday at the preaching of the new ministers of the Word; under this intolerable system of compulsion Catholics were reduced to performing all their religious exercises in their own homes. The violent suppression of the monasteries and the sequestration of monastic property went hand in hand with the above. In the convents of women, which still existed, the nuns were forced against their will to listen to the sermons of the preachers. Church property was everywhere confiscated so far as the ancient Austrian law did not prevent it. The public needs and the scarcity of money were alleged as pretexts for this robbery. The Mass vestments and church vessels were allotted to the so-called poor-boxes. At Stuttgart, for instance, the costly church vestments were sold for the benefit of the poor. In the troubles many noble works of art perished, for “all precious metal was melted down and minted, nor were cases of embezzlement altogether unknown.” “The Prince, with the approach of old age, manifested pitiable miserliness and cupidity.” Unfortunately he was left a free hand in the use of the great wealth that poured into his coffers. But, not even in the interests of the new worship, would he expend what was necessary, so that the vicarages fell into a deplorable state. In other matters, too, the new Church of the country suffered in consequence of the way in which Church property was handled. The inevitable consequence was the rise of many quarrels, complaints were heard on all sides and even the Schmalkalden League was moved to remonstrate with Ulrich.

  Terrible details concerning the alienation of church and monastic property are reported from Würtemberg by contemporaries. The preacher Erhard Schnepf, the Duke’s chief tool, was also his right hand in the seizure of property. Loud complaints concerning Schnepf’s doings, and demands that he should be made to render an account, were raised even by such Protestants as Bucer and Myconius, and by the speakers at the religious conference at Worms. He found means, however, to evade this duty. One of those voices of the past bewails the treatment meted out to the unfortunate religious: “Even were the Würtemberg monks and nuns all devils incarnate and no men, still Duke Ulrich ought not to proceed against them in so un-Christian, inhuman and tyrannical a fashion.”

  The relentless work of religious subversion bore everywhere a political stamp. The leaders were simply tools of the Court. Frequently they were at variance amongst themselves in matters of theology, and their people, too, were dragged into the controversy. To the magistrates it was left to decide such differences unless indeed some dictatorial official forestalled them, as was the case when the Vogt of Herrenberg took it into his own hands to settle a matter of faith. In the struggles between Lutherans and Zwinglians, the highest court of appeal above the town-Councillors and the officials was the Ducal Chancery.

  Ulrich himself did not explicitly side either with the Confession of Augsburg or with the “Confessio Tetrapolitana,” viz. with the more Zwinglian form of faith agreed upon at the Diet of Augsburg by the four South-German townships of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau.

  The preachers who assembled in 1537 at the so-called Idols-meeting of Urach, to discuss the question of the veneration of images which had given rise to serious dissensions amongst them, appealed to Ulrich. Blaurer inveighed against the use of images as idolatrous. Brenz declared that their removal in Würtemberg would be tantamount to a condemnation of the Lutheran Church in Saxony and elsewhere where they were permitted. The Court, to which the majority of the theologians appealed, ordered the removal of all images on Jan. 20, 1540. Distressing scenes were witnessed in many places when the images and pictures in the churches, which were not only prized by the people, but were also, many of them, of great artistic value, were broken and torn to pieces in spite of the warning issued by the authorities against their violent destruction. The “Tetrapolitana” had already forcibly denounced the use of images.

  At Ulm, which so far had refused to accept the “Tetrapolitana,” the magistrates in 1544 decided to adhere to the Confession of Augsburg and the “Apologia.” Blaurer, some years before (1541), had justifiably complained of the arbitrary action of the civic authorities and said that every town acted according to its own ideas. But the preachers were frequently so exorbitant in the material demands they made on behalf of themselves and their families that the Town Council of Ulm declared, they behaved as though “each one had the right to receive a full saucepan every day.”

  In place of any amendment of the many moral disorders already prevailing, still greater moral corruption became the rule among the people of Würtemberg, as is attested by Myconius the Zwinglian in 1539, and thirty years later by the Chancellor of the University of Tübingen, Jacob Andreæ.

  The former declared that the “people are full of impudence and godlessness; of blasphemy, drunkenness, sins of the flesh and wild licentiousness there is no end.” Andreæ directly connects with the new faith this growing demoralisation: “A dissolute, Epicurean, bestial life, feeding, swilling, avarice, pride and blasphemy.” “We have learnt,” so the people said, according to him, “that only through faith in Jesus Christ are we saved, Who by His death has atoned for all our sins; ... that all the world may see they are not Papists and rely not at all on good works, they perform none. Instead of fasting they gorge and swill day and night, instead of giving alms, they flay the poor.” “Everyone admits this cannot go on longer, for things have come to a crisis. Amongst the people there is little fear of God and little or no veracity or faith; all
forms of injustice have increased and we have reached the limit.”

  A General Rescript had to be issued on May 22, 1542, for the whole of Würtemberg, to check “the drunkenness, blasphemy, swearing, gluttony, coarseness and quarrelsomeness rampant in the parishes.”

  Few bright spots are to be seen in the accounts of the early days of the Reformation in Würtemberg, if we except the lives of one or two blameless ministers. It is no fault of the historian’s that there is nothing better to chronicle. Even the Protestant historians of Würtemberg, albeit predisposed to paint the change of religion in bright colours, have to admit this. They seek to explain the facts on the score that the period was one of restless and seething transition, and to throw the blame on earlier times and on the questionable elements among the Catholic clergy from whose ranks most of the preachers were recruited. But though grave responsibility may rest on earlier times, not only here but in the other districts which fell away from the Church, and though those of the clergy who forgot their duty and the honour of their calling may have contributed even more than usual to damage the fair reputation of Protestantism, yet the increase of immorality which has been proved to have endured for a long course of years, brings the historian face to face with a question not lightly to be dismissed: Why did the preaching of the new Evangel, with its supposedly higher standard of religion and morality, especially at the springtide of its existence and in its full vigour, not bring about an improvement, but rather the reverse?

  This question applies, however, equally to other countries which were then torn from the Church, and to the persons principally instrumental in the work.

  In Hesse the religious upheaval, as even Protestant contemporaries conceded, also promoted a great decline of morals.

  The bad example given by Landgrave Philip tended to increase the evil. A harmful influence was exercised not only by the Landgrave’s Court but also by certain preachers, such as Johann Lening, who enjoyed Philip’s favour. Elisabeth, Duchess of Rochlitz, the Landgrave’s sister, and a zealous patron of the Evangel, like the Prince himself, cherished rather lax views on morality. At first she was indignant at the bigamy, though not on purely moral grounds. The sovereign met her anger with a threat of telling the world what she herself had done during her widowhood. The result was that the Duchess said no more. The Landgrave’s Court-preacher, Dionysius Melander, who performed the marriage ceremony with the second wife, had, five years before, laid down his office as preacher and leader of the innovations at Frankfort on the Maine, “having fallen out with his fellows and personally compromised himself by carrying on with his housekeeper.” He was a “violent, despotic and, at times, coarse and obscene, popular orator whose personal record was not unblemished.”

  A Hessian church ordinance of 1539 complains of the moral retrogression: Satan has estranged men from the communion of Christ “not only by means of factions and sects, but also by carnal wantonness and dissolute living.” The old Hessian historian Wigand Lauze writes, in his “Life and deeds of Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse,” that, the people have become very savage and uncouth, “as though God had given us His precious Word, and thereby delivered us from the innumerable abominations of Popery and its palpable idolatry, simply that each one might be free to do or leave undone whatever he pleased”; “many evil deeds were beginning to be looked upon by many as no longer sinful or vicious.” He accuses “the magistrates, ministers and governors” of corrupting the people by themselves transgressing the “good, Christian regulations” which had been set up, and charges both preachers and hearers with serving Mammon, and with “barefaced extortion,” “not to mention other sins and vices.”

  The Hessian theologians and preachers transferred the responsibility for the abolition of “law and order,” for the increase of the “freedom of the flesh within the Evangel” and for the falling away into a “state like that of Sodom and Gomorrha” to the shoulders of the “magistrates and officials.” The latter, on the other hand, boldly asserted that the preachers themselves were the cause of the evil, since they led a “wicked, scandalous life, drinking, gambling, practising usury and so forth, and were, some of them, guilty of still worse things, brawling, fighting and wrangling with the people in the taverns and behaving improperly with the women.” Bucer himself, Philip’s adviser in ecclesiastical matters, wrote sadly to the Landgrave, in 1539, from Marburg: “The people are becoming demoralised and immorality is gaining the upper hand.” “Where such contempt prevails for God and the authorities there the devil is omnipotent.”

  2. At the Centre of the New Faith

  If we glance at the Saxon Electorate we shall find the deep despondency frequently displayed by Luther concerning the deplorable moral decadence prevailing there only too well justified.

  The downward trend appeared to have set in in earnest and all hope of remedying affairs seemed lost.

  The Court and those in authority not only did little to check the evil but, by their example, even tended to promote many disorders. The Elector, Johann Frederick “the Magnanimous” (1532-1547), was addicted to drink. The banquets which he gave to his friends — in which wine was indulged in to an extent unusual even in those days when men were accustomed to heavy drinking — became a byword. Luther himself came to speak strongly on his excessive drinking. “His only faults,” he laments in the Table-Talk, “are his drinking and routing too much with his companions.” “He has all the virtues — but just fancy him swilling like that!” Yet Luther has an excuse ready: “He is a stout man and can stand a deep draught; what he must needs drink would make another man dead drunk.” “Unfortunately not only our Court here but the whole of Germany is plagued with this vice of drunkenness. It is a bad old custom in the German lands which has gone on growing and will continue to grow. Henry, Duke of [Brunswick] Wolfenbüttel calls our Elector a drunkard and very Nabal with whom Abigail could not speak until he had slept off his carouse.” We have the Elector’s own comment on this in a letter to Chancellor Brück: “If the Brunswick fellow writes that we are a drunken Nabal and Benadad, we cannot entirely deny that we sometimes follow the German custom”; at any rate the Brunswicker was not the man to find fault, for he was an even harder drinker.

  Johann Frederick was accused by Philip of Hesse of the grossest immorality. This happened when the former refused to defend Philip’s bigamy and when his Superintendent, Justus Menius, who was given to lauding the Elector’s virtues, showed an inclination to protest publicly against the Landgrave’s bigamy. This led Philip to write this warning to his theologian Bucer: “If those saintly folk, Justus Menius and his crew, amuse themselves by writing against us, they shall have their answer. And we shall not leave hidden under a bushel how this most august and quite sinless Elector, once, under our roof at Cassel, and again, at the time of the first Diet of Spires, committed the crime of sodomy.”

  A. Hausrath remarks concerning this in his “Luthers Leben”: That Philip was lying “can hardly be taken for granted”; G. Mentz, likewise, in his recent work, “Joh. Friedrich der Grossmütige,” says: “It is difficult simply to ignore the Landgrave’s statement, but we do not know whether the allusion may not be to some sin committed in youth.” Here belongs also the passage in Philip of Hesse’s letter to Luther of July 27, 1540 (above, ), where he calls the Elector to bear witness that he (the Landgrave) had done “the worst.” The Biblical expression “peccatum pessimum” stood for sodomy. Further charges of a similar nature were even more explicitly laid at the door of Johann Frederick. A Catholic, relating the proceedings in Brunswick at the close of the conquest of that country by the Protestant troops in 1542, speaks of “vices and outrages against nature then indulged in by the Elector at the Castle as is commonly reported and concerning which there is much talk among the Court people.” Duke Henry of Brunswick in a tract of 1544 referred not only to the Elector’s sanction of the Landgrave’s bigamy, in return for which he was spared by the latter, but also to the “many other pranks which might be circumstanti
ally proved against them and which deserved more severe punishment” than that of the sword. The “more severe punishment” means burning at the stake, which was the penalty decreed by the laws of the Empire for sodomy, whereas polygamy and adultery were simply punished by decapitation. Both sovereigns in their reply flatly denied the charge, but, evidently, they clearly understood its nature; they had never been guilty, they said, of “shameful, dishonourable pranks deserving of death by fire.”

  Whatever the truth may be concerning this particular charge which involves them both, both Landgrave and Elector certainly left behind them so bad a record that Adolf Hausrath could say: The pair (but the Landgrave even more than the Elector) did their best “to make mockery of the claim of the Evangelicals that their Evangel would revive the morality of the German nation.” He instances in particular the bigamy, “which put any belief in the reality of their piety to a severe test and prepared the way for a great moral defeat of Luther’s cause.”

  In the matter of the bigamy attempts were made to exculpate the Elector Johann Frederick by alleging, that he regarded the Landgrave’s step not as a real new marriage but as mere concubinage. The fact is, however, he was sufficiently well informed by Bucer in Dec. 1539, i.e. from the very beginning, learnt further details two months later from the Landgrave’s own lips, and declared himself “satisfied with everything.” When, later, the Elector began to take an unfavourable view of the business, Philip wrote to Bucer (July 24, 1540), pointing out that he had nevertheless sent his representative to the wedding. It is, however, true that the Elector had all along been against any making public of so compromising an affair and had backed up his theologians when they urged the Landgrave to deny it.

  There is no more ground for crediting Johann Frederick with “strictness of morals” than for saying that the Elector Frederick the Wise (1486-1525), under whose reign Lutheranism took root in the land, was upright and truthful in his dealings with the Pope and the Empire.