No one, in the least familiar with Luther’s writings, will be so foolish as to believe that it was really his intention to kill the Catholic clergy and monks. His bloodthirsty demands were but the violent outbursts of his own deep inward intolerance. They were called forth occasionally by other alleged misdeeds of Popery, of its advocates and friends, for instance, by the burdensome taxes imposed by the Church, by her use of excommunication, and by the action taken against the Lutherans, particularly by the resolutions of the Diets for the suppression of Protestantism. Nor must we forget that the religious dissensions grew into a sort of permanent warfare and that war tends to produce effusions such as would be unthinkable in times of peace; nor was the warlike feeling a monopoly of the Lutheran side.
But who was it who was responsible for having provoked the war?
Occasional counsels to patience and endurance, to self-restraint and consideration were indeed given by Luther from time to time (they have been diligently collected by his modern supporters), but, generally speaking, they are drowned in the din of his controversial invective.
What was to be expected when the people, who were already profoundly excited by the social conditions, were told: “Better were it that all bishops were put to death, and all foundations and convents rooted out than that one soul should be seduced” by Popish error. “What better do they deserve than to be stamped out by a great revolt?” If his reforms were rejected then it was to be wished that monasteries and foundations “were all reduced to one great heap of ashes.” “A grand destruction of all the monasteries, etc., would be the best reformation!” What wonder “were the Princes, the nobles and the laity to hit Pope, bishop, priest and monk on the head and drive them out of the land?” The “Rhine would hardly suffice to drown” the many “bull-mongers,” Cardinals and “knaves.”
The Death-Penalty Sectarians within the New Fold
In the above we have dealt with Luther’s intolerance in theory and practice towards the Catholic Church. It remains for us to look at his attitude towards the sects within his own camp.
The question, how far they were to be tolerated, or whether it would be better forcibly to suppress them was first brought home to Luther by the Anabaptist movement under Thomas Münzer. Sure of the upper hand, Luther decided, as we know, at the end of July, 1524, to advise the Saxon Princes to leave the Anabaptists in peace so far as their doctrines were concerned. “Let them preach as they please,” was his advice, for “there ‘must needs be heresies’” (1 Cor. xi. 19). He explained to Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg on Feb. 4, 1525, that the Anabaptists were not to be punished, particularly with “bodily penalties,” because, in his opinion, they were no real blasphemers, but merely “like the Turks or straying Christians.” In May of the same year he showed himself disposed to universal toleration. “The authorities are not to hinder anyone from teaching and believing what he pleases”; a principle which, as we have shown above (), he himself had contravened in practice as early as 1522, and was finally to set aside altogether.
As for the Anabaptists, in 1527 Luther was not yet in favour of the “putting to death” and bloody “rooting out” of these sectarians. In 1528 he even taught in his exposition of the Parable of the Good Seed and the Tares that “we are not to fight the fanatics with the sword.” What made him hesitate to advise the putting to death of these heretics was, as he told his friend Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg in 1528, the apprehension that this might lead to abuses; he feared lest, in the time to come, we might turn the sword against the best “among us.” But without a doubt he approved of the Edict of the Elector Johann (Jan. 17, 1528) which proscribed the writings of the Anabaptists, Sacramentarians and fanatics throughout the land — if indeed the Edict itself may not be traced directly to Luther, as Zwingli suspected. In 1528 it also seemed to him right to decree the penalty of banishment in the case of the Anabaptists.
When, however, the danger had become more evident, which the Anabaptist heresy spelt both to the land-frith and the foundations of Christianity, not to speak of the Lutheran teaching, Luther adopted a sterner line of action.
His views altered in 1530. After a Mandate had been issued in the Saxon Electorate against the “secret preachers and conventicles, Anabaptists and other baneful novel teaching,” six Anabaptists were executed early in the year at Reinhardsbrunn in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The discussion which took place on this event gave Melanchthon occasion to declare in Feb., 1530, that, “even though the Anabaptists do not advocate anything seditious or openly blasphemous” it was, “in his opinion, the duty of the authorities to put them to death.” In the spring of 1530, with the Anabaptists in his mind, Luther, in his commentary on Ps. lxxxii. dealt with the question whether the authorities “ought to forbid strange teachings or heresies and punish them, seeing that no one should or can force men into the Faith.”
His detailed reply to the question which it was then impossible any longer to blink, centres round the distinction he makes of two kinds of heretics, viz. those who were seditious, and those who merely “teach the opposite of some clear article of faith.” Of the latter, i.e. the non-revolutionary, he says expressly: “These also must not be allowed but must be punished like public blasphemers.” Of those, who, though holding no office, force themselves in as preachers, and thus imperil the faith and lead to risings, he writes, that their oath of allegiance obliged the burghers not to listen to them but rather to report them either to their parson or to the authorities. If such a one will not desist “then let the authorities hand over knaves of that ilk to their proper master, to wit Master Hans” (i.e. the hangman). As for those Anabaptists who preached open revolt, they had, in his opinion, by that very fact incurred the penalties of the law. At any rate it was not merely on account of their sedition that Luther wished to see the Anabaptists punished.
Another statement of his has come down to us from an outside source. Luther’s friend, Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg, had a little before this, on March 17, 1530, sought to secure from Luther, through Veit Dietrich, some directions on how to deal with heretics. Dietrich verbally obtained from his master the desired instructions and promptly sent them to Spengler by letter. They were to the effect that not merely the heretics who offend against public order were to be punished, but also those who merely do harm to religion, such as the Sacramentarians (Zwinglians) and Papists; as they are to be looked upon as blasphemers, they cannot be suffered. It is noteworthy, that, in Luther’s correspondence in 1530, in a letter from the Coburg to Justus Jonas, we find him congratulating himself on the report (a false one) of the execution of a certain heretic. On receiving the announcement that Johannes Campanus, the anti-Trinitarian, had suffered death as a heretic at Liége, Luther wrote: “I learnt this with joy” (“lætus audivi”).
Early in October, 1531, agreeably with the Saxon Elector’s Mandate, a number of persons suspected of holding Anabaptist views were taken to Eisenach for punishment and were there put to the torture; it was now judged advisable to obtain a fresh memorandum from the Wittenberg theologians.
Accordingly, at the end of 1530, Melanchthon at the instance of the Electoral Court once more took the matter in hand. He drafted a memorandum on the duty of the secular authorities in the matter of religious differences, with particular reference to the Anabaptists. In it he set forth at length the grounds for a regular system of coercion by the sword. Luther, too, set his name to the document with the words: “It pleases me, Martin Luther.” In it the sectarians were reprobated as blasphemers because they reject “the public preaching office [the ministry] and teach that men can become holy without any preaching and ecclesiastical worship.” They ought to be visited with death by the public authorities whose duty it is to “befriend and uphold ecclesiastical order”; and in like manner should their adherents and those whom they have led astray be dealt with, who insist, “that our baptism and preaching is not Christian and therefore that ours is not the Church of Christ.” Nevertheless, we can see from the words Luther adds af
ter his signature that the decision, or at least its severity, aroused some misgivings in him. He says: “Though it may appear cruel to punish them by the sword, yet it is even more cruel of them to condemn the preaching office and not to teach any certain doctrine, to persecute the true doctrine, and, over and above all this, to seek to destroy the kingdoms of this world.”
It is quite true that Luther and Melanchthon had an eye on the seditious character of these sects, yet present-day Protestant theologians are not justified when they try to explain and excuse their severity on this ground. On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, the texts plainly show that they were chiefly concerned with the punishment of the sectarians’ offences against the faith. This was made the principal point, as we see in Melanchthon’s memorandum just referred to. He says, for instance: “Though many Anabaptists do not openly teach any seditious doctrines,” yet “it was both sedition and blasphemy for them to condemn the public ministry.” It was therefore the duty of the authorities, above all “on account of the second commandment of the Decalogue, to uphold the public ministry” and to take steps against them. If, to boot, they also taught seditious doctrines then it was “all the easier to judge them,” as we read in another memorandum of the Wittenberg theologians (1536) of which Melanchthon was also the draughtsman.
To N. Paulus belongs the credit of having thrown light on the true state of affairs, for, even previous to the publication of his “Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16 Jahrhundert” (1911) he had discussed Luther’s attitude both in his shorter writing, “Luther und die Gewissensfreiheit” (1905) and in various articles in reviews. After him, the Protestant historian P. Wappler took up the same views, particularly in his “Die Stellung Kursachsens … zur Täuferbewegung” (1910). In the “Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte” (1911) O. A. Hecker also quite agrees in rejecting the opinion of certain recent Protestant theologians, who, as he says, “all try to exonerate Luther from any hand in the executions for heresy, though they can only do so by dint of forced interpretations, as Paulus pointed out.”
Between 1530 and 1532 Luther’s intolerance comes yet more to the fore; it was indeed his way, when once he had made any view his own, to urge it in the strongest terms. Thus, at the end of 1531, he again alludes to Master Hans: “Those who force themselves in without any office or commission are not worthy of being called false prophets but are vagrants and knaves, who ought to be handed over to the tender mercies of Master Hans.” “It is not allowed that each one should proceed according to his own ideas and set up his own doctrine and fancy himself a sage, and dictate to, and find fault with, others.” “This I call judging of doctrine, which is one of the greatest and most scatheful vices on earth, whence indeed all the fanatics have sprung.” The two last sentences occur in his sermons on St. Matthew’s Gospel.
Still more striking is the demand he makes of Duke Albert of Prussia concerning the Zwinglians; here his zeal against these heretics seems to blind him, for his arguments recoil against himself, though apparently he does not notice it. Every Prince, he says in a psychologically remarkable passage, who does not wish “most gruesomely to burden his conscience” must cast out the Zwinglians from his land, because, by their denial of the presence of Christ in the Supper, they set up a doctrine “contrary to the traditional belief held everywhere and to the unanimous testimony of all.”
But how many doctrines had not Luther himself set up contrary to the ancient faith and to the unanimous testimony of all? It was, so he goes on, “both dangerous and terrible” to “believe anything contrary to the unanimous testimony, belief and teaching of the whole of the Holy Christian Church, which, from the beginning and for more than 1500 years, had been universally received throughout the world.” This was tantamount to “not believing in the Christian Church at all, and not merely to condemn the whole of the Holy Christian Church as a damned heretic, but also Christ Himself together with all the Apostles and Prophets, who had formulated the Article which we now recite, ‘I believe one Holy Christian Church,’ and borne such powerful witness to it.”
“The worldly authorities bear the sword,” so Luther said in his Home-Postils, “with orders to prevent all scandal, so that it may not intrude and do harm. But the most dangerous and horrible scandal is where false doctrine and worship finds its way in.… For this reason the Christian authorities must be on the look-out for such scandal.… They must resist it stoutly and realise that nothing else will do save they make use of the sword and of the full extent of their power in order to preserve the doctrine pure and the worship clean and undefiled.”
“Then everything will go well.”
We have also his exposition of Ps. ci. (1534), where there occurs the eulogy of David, the “scourge of heretics.”
How he was in the habit of dealing with the Sacramentarians at a later date the following instance may serve to show, which at the same time reveals his coarseness and his reliance on the secular authorities. To Luther’s doctrine that Christ was bodily present, not only in the Host, but throughout the world, the Sacramentarians had rejoined: Good, then we shall partake of Him everywhere, in “spoon, plate and beer-can!” To this Luther’s reply ran: See “what graceless swine we abandoned Germans for the most part are, lacking both manners and reason, who, when we hear of God, esteem it a fairy tale.… All seek to do their business into it and to wipe their back parts on it. The temporal authorities ought to punish such blasphemers.… God knows I write of such high things most unwillingly because they must needs be set before such dogs and swine.… Hearken you, you pig, dog, or fanatic, or whatever brainless donkey you may be: Though Christ’s body is everywhere, yet you will not be able to lay hold of it so easily.… Begone to your pigsty and wallow in your own muck! … there is a distinction between His Presence and your laying hold of Him; He is free and nowhere bound,” etc. — Luther himself was, however, very far from making clear what the distinction was. After much else not to the point he concludes: “Oh, how few there are, even among the highly learned, who have ever meditated so profoundly on this article concerning Christ!”
The treatment of the sectarians in the Saxon Electorate was in keeping with the theories and counsels of Luther and his theologians.
Relentless measures were taken against them on account of their deviation from the faith even when no charge of sedition was forthcoming. On Jan. 15, 1532, the Elector Johann admitted the following as his guiding principle for interfering: “It is the duty of the authorities to punish such teachers and seducers, with God and with a good conscience.… For were heretics and contemners of the Word of God not punished we should be acting against the prescribed laws which we are in every way bound to observe.”
As early as 1527 twelve men and one woman, who had received baptism at each other’s hands, were beheaded. Similar executions took place in 1530, 1532 and 1538.
In 1539 the members of the Wittenberg High Court wrote concerning three Anabaptists then in prison at Eisenach: “If they do not recant or allow themselves to be reduced to obedience, it will be right and proper that they be put to death by the sword, on account of such blasphemy and because they have allowed themselves to be baptised elsewhere.” Of any seditious teaching there was no question in these proceedings.
One Anabaptist, Fritz Erbe, who had only gone astray in matters of faith, was kept in jail from 1530 to 1541, when death set him free. Hans Sturm and Peter Pestel, both of Zwickau, were harmless sectarians without any seditious leanings; the first was put in prison in 1529 and died there; the latter was beheaded on June 16, 1536. Hans Steinsdorf and Hans Hamster, were condemned to death in 1538 as “stubborn blasphemers.” In the ‘forties Duke Henry of Saxony caused an Anabaptist to be burnt as a heretic at Dresden.
The Saxon lawyer, Matthias Coler (†1587), taught in his “Decisiones Germaniæ,” that, according to the laws of Saxony those were to be punished by death at the stake (“de iure saxonico cremandi veniunt”) who openly denied either the Divinity of Christ, or other impo
rtant truths of faith; before being burnt they were, however, to be questioned under torture concerning their confederates in order that the land might be purged of such wicked men.
In thus interfering the sovereigns were well aware that they had the warm official approval of Luther and his fellows. To this, for instance, the Elector Johann Frederick appealed in 1533 when milder measures were suggested. He referred to the memorandum which his father had obtained from the Wittenberg theologians and lawyers concerning the execution of the Anabaptists; their decision had been, “that His Highness might with a good conscience cause those charged with Anabaptism to be punished by death,” and, soon after, several of them were executed. The person who had thought otherwise, and to whom this vindication was accordingly addressed, was no less a man than Landgrave Philip of Hesse.
Luther himself, too, had been obliged on various occasions to justify the severity of his opinions.
Luther’s Self-justification and Excuses
Philip of Hesse, though he treated Catholics with the utmost intolerance, refused to hear of punishing the Anabaptists with death unless indeed they were the cause of public disturbances. “We cannot find it in our conscience to put anyone to death by the sword on account of religion unless we have sufficient proof of other crimes as well.” Such was the declaration he made in 1532 to Elector Johann of Saxony, and which he emphasised in 1545 to the latter’s successor: “Were all those to be executed who are not of our faith what then should we do to the Papists, to say nothing of the Jews, who err even more greatly than the Anabaptists?”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 872
