Luther registered a formal protest against the ancient right of proceeding against heretics by means of temporal penalties, particularly that of death. “To burn heretics is against the will of the Holy Ghost,” so he declared in 1518 and again in 1520. In 1520 he said: “Heretics must be overcome by argument, not by fire.”
Most of what he was to say subsequently on the question of public toleration refers to the bearing of the authorities, especially towards the Anabaptists and Zwinglians. That he himself, however, and every follower of his Evangel, were bound to regard all opinions which diverged from his own as godless heresies and brand them as such, that he had never doubted from the moment he had discovered his new Evangel. In accordance with this he proceeds to demand more and more strongly of the “heretics” within the pale unconditional acceptance of all the articles of faith.
What were the authorities to do faced by teachings so divergent? In 1523, in a writing indeed intended mainly for the Catholic rulers and opponents of his doctrine, Luther is decidedly quite against any interference on the part of the authorities: “To resist heretics, that is the bishops’ duty to whom this office is committed, not the princes’; for heresy can never be overborne by a strong hand.… Here God’s Word must fight.” In April, 1525, in the midst of the Peasant War, in his “Ermanunge,” he enunciates, not without some thought of his personal ends, this general principle— “Yes, the authorities must not oppose what each one chooses to believe and teach, whether it be Gospel or lie; it is enough that they hinder the preaching of feud and lawlessness.”
Boehmer justly points out, that Luther’s standpoint and doctrine as a whole, essentially spelt not only “unfettered freedom of teaching, but also entire freedom of worship.”
Meanwhile, however, Luther had already repeatedly urged those in power, especially his own sovereign, to do their supposed duty, and back up the new Evangel by their authority and by forbidding Catholic worship, the Mass and Catholic sermons.
In what follows we shall deal with Luther’s behaviour towards the Catholics, as distinguished from his attitude towards sectarians within his own camp.
Intolerance Towards Catholics in Theory and Practice
We should be making a serious mistake were we to judge of Luther’s tolerance towards the olden religion from his statements above on behalf of freedom. In Protestant literature, even to the present day, such a one-sided view has found a place, though it has long since been rejected by clear-sighted historians of that faith. In the course of the above narrative instances have been met with repeatedly of Luther’s intolerance in theory and practice with regard to those who thought differently. Here we shall refer concisely to various details already set on record and then draw some new facts and utterances from the abundant store bearing on the matter in hand.
It was “his duty to oppose false teachers,” Luther had written to his Elector on May 8, 1522, of the Canons of Altenburg. In the same way, with much storming, he had insisted that the secular power should make an end of Catholic worship in the collegiate church of Wittenberg.
From the standpoint of his principles it is rather remarkable that, when the persecuted Canons of Wittenberg appealed to the Elector’s authority, Luther retorted: “What has the Elector to do with us in such things?” and that, later, in one of his sermons, he boldly replied to their objections in law: “What care we about the Elector? He commands only in worldly matters.” In making a stand against the celebration of Mass at Wittenberg he had frankly declared: “It is the duty of the authorities to resist and to punish such public blasphemy,” just as they are bound to punish the blasphemies uttered in the streets by godless men. The Elector and his Councillors were quite aware of the contradictions involved in Luther’s teaching. Hence, at the Prince’s instance, the Court pointed out to him on Nov. 24, 1524, that “he himself preached that the Word should be left to fight its own way, and that this it would do in its own good time, so God willed”; he ought himself to be the first “to practise what he taught and preached.” In spite of this Luther, soon after, was successful in violently making a clean sweep of the Catholic Mass at Wittenberg.
The theory that the Evangelical ruler must use force to root out Catholic worship was proclaimed by the Court chaplain Spalatin, a man “standing altogether under Luther’s influence, and who, as a rule, merely voiced his views”; this he did in a letter of May 1, 1525, where he cites the prescriptions of the Mosaic law (Deut. vii.). According to this the secular authorities are bound “by the Law of God to abrogate idolatrous and blasphemous worship”; any further toleration on the part of the Elector of “idolatry” in his lands would be a great sin; on the other hand it would be a “great, consoling and Christian work” were he “to put the Christian bit in the mouth of all the clergy.” “Ah, that would indeed be a noble work!” To the successor of the then Elector who died shortly after this, Spalatin wrote on Oct. 1, 1525: “Dr. Martin also says, that Your Electoral Highness ought in no way to suffer anyone to proceed any longer with the unchristian ceremonies, or to set them up again”; on Jan. 10, 1526, he, together with two Altenburg preachers, backed up the petition to the Elector for the extirpation of “idolatry” by pointing to the example of the pious kings of the Jews. At Altenburg and elsewhere such exhortations were crowned all too speedily with success.
“A secular ruler,” Luther himself wrote to the Elector Johann on Feb. 9, 1526, “must not permit his underlings to be led into strife and discord by contumacious preachers, for this may issue in uproar and sedition, but in each locality there must be but one kind of preaching.”
On such grounds, however, Protestantism itself might just as well have been denied a hearing, seeing that it had come to disturb the peace, the “one kind of preaching” and the one faith. The princes, however, spurred on by their theologians, seized only too eagerly on this principle, using it in favour of the innovations. The Elector Johann declared as early as Feb. 31, 1526, that he had “graciously taken note of the Memorandum” and would, “for the future, conduct himself in such matters as beseemed a Christian”; and he kept his word.
The intolerance shown to Catholics and their systematic oppression in Saxony stands in blatant contrast with the claim made, that Luther by his preaching had won religious freedom for the German lands. Banishment was the punishment incurred by those who chose to remain steadfast in their attachment to the Catholic faith. Thus, in 1527, it was expressly laid down in the regulations for the Saxon Visitation, that: “Whoever is suspected in the matter of the Sacraments, or of any other error in the faith” is to “be summoned and questioned, and, if necessary, witnesses against him are also to be called.” “Such an ‘inquisition’ is also to be instituted by the Visitors in the case of the laity.” If they refuse to abjure their “errors” they are to be given a certain time to sell their possessions and to quit the land, with a “warning of the severe penalties” with which any ecclesiastic or layman will be visited who is again found in the country. Bearing in mind the difficulty emigration presented at that time, particularly in the case of the people on the land, one can appreciate the injustice of the measure.
Luther and his followers frequently enough appealed to theological grounds in support of such measures, above all to the Old Testament enactments against blasphemers and contemners of religion. One-sidedly they simply applied to their own day and to their own controversial purposes, the exceptional regulations of the Mosaic dispensation which sought to preserve the religion of the chosen people in the midst of a heathen world. In this connection Luther appeals to Moses without the slightest hesitation though, as a rule, armed with the New Testament, he is ready enough to assail the Mosaic Law; he also set up the pious “Kings of Juda and Israel” as patterns. Wenceslaus Link did much the same when he summoned the Altenburg Town-Council to make a stand against Catholicism and abrogate the “lies and fond inventions of the idolaters”; nor did Spalatin hesitate to point out to the Saxon Elector the commendation the pious rulers of the Jews had earned f
rom God for their bloody repression of idolatry.
Another ground for compulsion, to which Spalatin gives expression in a letter to the Elector, was, that: They must not forget how “many a poor man would more readily come to the Evangel, were that wretched system [of Popery and its idolatry] no longer in existence.” In other words, were Catholic worship rooted out, Catholics would more easily be won over to the Evangel. It was on such a standpoint as this that the Augsburg declaration of 1530 made by the theologians of the Saxon Electorate was based. The Emperor had demanded from the Protesting Princes toleration of the Catholic worship for those of their subjects who chose to remain Catholic. The theologians thereupon expressed themselves against such an arrangement, and urged that, in this case, Lutheran proselytism would be hampered: “Were it to be said that the rulers were not to hinder it, though the preachers were to preach against it, it is clear of what [small] good would be all the teaching and preaching of the ministers.”
In the Duchy of Saxony, as everybody knows, the introduction of Lutheranism was opposed by Duke George. His severity he justified by appealing to the thousand-year-old law of the one great world-wide Church, the Church of the Apostles, of the Fathers and martyrs and Œcumenical Councils and great missioners of all ages, a law, moreover, sanctioned by the Empire. When, in 1533, a number of Lutherans were banished from the Duchy Luther seized upon this as a pretext for controversy. Roundly scolding the “Ducal tyrant,” he declared this sentence of banishment to be “a devilish and criminal thing.” The authority of the sovereign, so he now wrote, again contradicting himself, “only extends over life and property in secular matters.” But, after George’s death in 1539 and the accession of his brother Henry, Luther’s tone changed, for Henry held Lutheran views. In a letter he sent about that time to the Elector Johann Frederick, he is angry because more than 500 of the Saxon clergy, all of them “venomous Papists,” had not yet been driven out. “For the sake of the poor souls, many thousands of whom live neglected under such parsons,” he urges the Elector to do his best “to help and promote a Visitation.” He demands that Duke Henry, as the sovereign and protector of the bishopric of Meissen, should “put a damper on the blasphemous idolatry” as best he could, for “the Princes who are able to do so should at once abolish Baal and all idolatry.” He also wished that the bishop of Meissen, though a Prince of the Empire, should “at once bow his head to the Evangel”; in this matter there is no need for “much disputing.”
It was but natural that such intolerance often led to scenes of brutality; such was the case in the cathedral of Meissen, where the splendid tomb of Benno, the saintly bishop of Meissen, was hewn in pieces, and the statue of the patron, which was an object of veneration to all the people, was set up headless at the church door as a laughing-stock for the Lutherans.
Hand in hand with such legal coercion, which he both approved and furthered, went Luther’s declaration — which, though seeming to promote freedom, really constituted a new encroachment on the rights of conscience — viz. that: No one was to be forced to believe in his heart, but that “the people were to be driven to the sermons for the sake of the Ten Commandments, so that they might at least learn the outward works of obedience.” “It would be grand,” so he told Margrave George of Brandenburg, “if your Serene Highness on the strength of your secular authority enjoined on both parsons and parishioners under pain of penalties the teaching and learning of the Catechism, in order, that, as they are Christians and wish to be called such, they may, please God, be compelled to learn and to know what a Christian ought to know, whether he believes it or not.” At his instance attendance at the sermons was imposed on all people in the Saxon Electorate under pain of penalty, whatever they might think of the preaching.
God Himself has abrogated “all authority and power where it is opposed to the Evangel,” so, as early as 1522, ran one of the principles he used for the violent suppression of Catholic worship. Of the Catholic foundations he says in the same year: “If the preacher does not make men pious (i.e. does not preach according to Luther’s doctrine), the goods are no longer his.” Violent interference with the Mass was, according to him, no revolt when it came from the established authorities. “It is the duty of the sovereign, as ruler and brother Christian, to drive away the wolves,” and those who do not preach the Evangel are “wolves”; it is “an urgent duty to drive away the wolf from the sheepfold.” The Pope himself, however, deserves the worst fate, for he is the “werwolf who devours everything. Just as all seek to kill the werwolf, and very rightly, so is it a duty to suppress the Pope by force.”
“Not only the spiritual but also the secular power must yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise.”
Hence it follows that the salvation of his soul requires of a Christian prince the prohibition of the Popish worship. If it is his duty to resist the Turk far more must he oppose the Pope: “What harm does the Turk do?” It is clear that, “as regards both body and soul the government of the Pope is ten times worse than that of the Turk.”
“Whoever wishes to live amongst the burghers must keep the laws of the borough and not dishonour or abuse them, else he must pack and go.” The authorities are not to “allow themselves and their people to be forced into idolatry and falsehood.” Hence “let the authorities step in and try the case and whichever party does not agree with Scripture, let him be ordered to hold his tongue.” The Prince must behave like David, and hold that, as regards “God and the service of His Sovereignty everything must be equal and made to intermingle, whether it be termed spiritual or secular,” being “kneaded together into one cake.” How many false teachers had David, his model, not been forced “to expel or in other ways stop their mouths.”
It is not, however, enough to impose silence on them. They must — so Luther began to teach about 1530 — be treated as public blasphemers and punished accordingly: They “must not be suffered but must be banished as open blasphemers.” Thus must we act with those who “teach that Christ did not die for our sins but that each one must atone for them on his own; for this also is a public blasphemy against the Gospel.” Hundreds of times does he charge the Catholics with thus robbing the saving death of Christ of all significance by their doctrine of good works.
These intolerant principles, which could not but lead to persecution, were made even worse by the abuse and invective which Luther publicly showered on the representatives of Catholicism. He taught the mob to call them “blasphemous ministers of the Babylonian whore,” knaves, bloodhounds, hypocrites and murderers. In the Articles of Schmalkalden which found a place among the Symbolic Books, he introduces the Pope as the “dragon” who leads astray the whole world, as the “real Antichrist” and as the “devil himself” whom it was impossible to “worship as Master or as God,” for which reason he would not suffer the Pope as “Head or Lord”; they must say to him: “May God rebuke thee, Satan!” (Zach. iii. 2). Among his monstrous caricatures of the Pope he also included one depicting the “well-deserved reward of the Most Satanic Pope and his Cardinals,” as the inscription runs below. Here the Pope is seen on the gallows with three Cardinals; their tongues which have been torn out by the root are nailed to the gibbet and devils are scurrying off with their souls. The picture is embellished with the following doggerel:
“Did Pope and Card’nal here below
Their due reward receive,
Then would their tongues to gibbets cleave,
As our draughtsman’s lines do show.”
Threats of Bloody Reprisals against Papists, Priestlings and Monks
At the right moment let us fall upon the Turks “and the priests and smite them dead!” Only then shall we be successful against the Turks! So runs one of Luther’s sayings in the Table-Talk.
“Oh, that our Right Reverend Cardinals, Popes and Roman Legates had more kings of England to put them to death!” This he wrote in 1535, after the execution of Thomas More and John Fisher by Henry VIII.
As early as 1520 he had exclaim
ed against Prierias: If thieves are punished by the rope, murderers by the sword and heretics by fire, why not proceed against “these noxious teachers of destruction — these Cardinals, Popes and the whole swarm of the Roman Sodom, who are ever ceaselessly destroying the Church of God — with every kind of weapon, and wash our hands in their blood?”
Towards the end of his life, in 1545, he showed that he was still faithful to such views in spite of all the changes which had come over some of his other leading ideas. Let “the Pope, the Cardinals and the whole scoundrelly train of his idolatrous, Popish Holiness be seized,” so he declares in “Das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” and put to the death they deserve, either on the gallows to which their tongues may be nailed, or by drowning the “blasphemous knaves” in the Sea at Ostia.
“It pleases me,” he wrote on Dec. 2, 1536, to King Christian of Denmark, “that Your Majesty has extirpated the bishops who never cease to persecute God’s Word and to worry the secular power; I shall do my best to explain and vindicate your action.” At Wittenberg, as we see from a letter of a Wittenberg theologian, the report was current that the Danish king had “struck off the heads of six bishops.” This false account “seems to have been credited by Luther.” If this be so, then it seems that he was perfectly ready to justify so cruel a deed. The truth is, that, King Christian, after having had the bishops arrested (Aug. 20, 1536), released them as soon as they had promised to resign their bishoprics.
In the summer of 1540 Luther had it that the Pope and the monks were to blame for the many fires in Northern and Central Germany. “If this turns out true, then there will be nothing left for us but to take up arms in common against all the monks and shavelings; I too shall join in, for it is right to slay the miscreants like mad dogs.” The worst of the lot, according to him, were the Franciscans. “If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house,” he said a few days later, “I would set fire to it, for, in the monks the good seed is gone, and only the chaff is left. To the fire with them!”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 871
