Under Luther’s prodding, the princes finally summoned Müntzer and several Allstedt officials to Weimar for questioning. Müntzer denied that he had preached anything contrary to Scripture or that he had exhorted the people to overthrow the godless. He also denounced Luther’s letter as shameful and dishonest. The Saxon authorities allowed him to return to Allstedt, but he soon received a message from them ordering him to close his printing press, disband the Christian league, and refrain from seditious preaching. Furious, Müntzer appealed to Frederick to reconsider. As the days passed and no answer came, Müntzer became convinced that he was going to be arrested, and so on the night of August 7, 1524, he slipped over the town wall and disappeared into the countryside.
Karlstadt remained active, however, and with the growing disorder in the Saale valley, Prince John Frederick (Duke John’s son and Elector Frederick’s nephew) sent Luther a message urging him to go there in person. Just as Paul had ministered to his far-flung congregations, the prince wrote, he hoped that Luther could find a way to calm the Schwärmer, the buzzing activists. Luther agreed, and in mid-August 1524 he set off into the aroused countryside. On August 21, he arrived in Jena, fifteen miles north of Orlamünde. Preaching for an hour and a half to a packed house, he inveighed against the spirit of Allstedt and other sword-wielding radicals who destroyed images, discarded baptism, and besmirched the Eucharist. Such a spirit could only produce rebellion and murder. Luther mentioned no one by name, but the references to Müntzer and Karlstadt were unmistakable.
Sitting in the back of the church was Karlstadt himself, trying without success to hide under a broad-brimmed hat. Furious at being linked to Müntzer, whose violent appeals he had emphatically rejected, he sent a sharp note to Luther, requesting a meeting. That afternoon the two met at the Black Bear Inn—the same hostel at which Luther had stopped on his return from the Wartburg two years earlier. Crowding in were Saxon officials and vigilant farmers eager to witness the historic encounter. A firsthand account captured the intense animosity between the two men as they sat across from each other at a table. Karlstadt objected to Luther’s associating him with “the spirit of Allstedt.” “I protest publicly before all these brethren assembled together that I have nothing to do with the spirit in the rebellion!” Karlstadt went on to accuse Luther of having written, printed, and preached against him while trying to prevent him from preaching and publishing in return. From the start, he added, Luther had always criticized him harshly rather than try to instruct him in a brotherly fashion. When Luther referred to his smashing of images in Wittenberg, Karlstadt said that he had not engaged in such actions alone but been helped by some of Luther’s close associates.
“I know well,” Luther said, growing impatient, “that you always go about in a grandiose fashion, boast grandly, and want only yourself to be exalted and noticed.” “If I did that,” Karlstadt replied, “you should instruct me. But I see clearly who boasts most highly and seeks the greatest honor.” Remarkably, the two began wrangling over the Leipzig disputation. Luther complained that Karlstadt in his pride had insisted on going before him at the debate. “Finally, I granted you the honor and allowed it to happen.” “Oh, Mr. Doctor, how can you say that?” Karlstadt protested, taken aback. When the dispute began, he (accurately) observed, Luther had not yet been cleared to participate.
If Karlstadt had something to say against him, Luther said, he should put it in writing, “publicly and not secretly.” Accusing Karlstadt of standing “among the new prophets,” he took a gulden from his pocket and said he would give it to Karlstadt if he would agree to write against him. “Give it to me,” Karlstadt said, “for I certainly accept the challenge.” “Take it and attack me boldly now,” Luther said, handing him the coin. “Attack me sharply!”
“Dear brothers,” Karlstadt declared, taking the coin and putting it in his purse, “this is a pledge, a sign, that I have authority to write against Dr. Luther.” The two men shook hands and drank a toast to the challenge. “The bolder you attack me, the better I will like it,” Luther said. A great division among the reformers was opening up.
While in Jena, Luther received a letter from the citizens of Orlamünde requesting a meeting. It accused him of calling them heretical without foundation and of being unduly lenient on the subject of images. He agreed to meet. On the way there he stopped in the town of Kahla to preach. The pastor there was a supporter of Karlstadt, and Luther, while mounting the pulpit, had to climb over the pieces of a broken crucifix. Though disturbed by the sight, he did not mention it in his sermon, offering instead a more general appeal for patience in the matter of images.
In Orlamünde, Karlstadt tried to join the conversation, but Luther barred him. Taking to heart Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers, the Orlamünders had become confident exegetes, and a fierce argument broke out over images. “Where in Scripture can you prove that images should be abolished?” Luther asked. When they offered the obvious answer—the Ten Commandments—Luther maintained that the only thing they proscribed was the worshipping of images, not the images themselves. “How can a crucifix on the wall harm me when I do not venerate it?” he asked. The townsmen rejected this as hairsplitting. Growing hostile, they said that the soul needs to be emancipated from all external influences, for it becomes distracted “when it allows itself, bedecked and entwined, to be entertained by forbidden images.” Luther slumped into his chair and buried his face in his hands. When accused by another townsman of probably being among the damned, Luther broke off the exchange.
As he prepared to leave town, Luther was warned to “get out in the name of a thousand devils” lest he find his neck broken. Stones were thrown at him, and bells were rung in good riddance. “We who have heard the living voice of God beside the river Saale,” Karlstadt told his congregation, “do not need to be taught by any monkish scribe.” The encounter left Luther deeply shaken; he was losing control of the forces on the ground.
On his way back to Wittenberg, he stopped in Weimar to brief the princes. Alarmed at his report, the electoral court on September 18 ordered Karlstadt to leave Electoral Saxony. Karlstadt was incensed at being driven out by Luther “unheard and unconvicted,” as he later put it. Leaving Orlamünde (and his pregnant wife), he took with him a collection of manuscripts that he had been writing in response to Luther’s challenge and headed for the German southwest, where an even bigger storm was brewing.
Meanwhile, Müntzer had resurfaced in Mühlhausen, an imperial free city fifty miles west of Allstedt. With a population of around 8,500, it was not only much larger than Allstedt but also far more volatile, owing to the presence of many craftsmen and weavers frustrated with the strict rule of the town’s oligarchs. Already, the townsmen were being roused by a former monk turned activist named Heinrich Pfeiffer, and Müntzer now joined him in stirring them up. In late September, Mühlhausen was swept by a religious storm. For a full week marchers filled the streets, attacking clerical properties and destroying altarpieces; in the suburbs, a village went up in flames. A revolutionary program was drawn up, centered on the demand for a new council to govern in line with God’s Word.
In between preaching and agitating, Müntzer prepared several bitter broadsides, including a tirade against Luther titled A Highly Provoked Defense and Answer to the Spiritless, Soft-Living Flesh at Wittenberg, Who Has Most Lamentably Befouled Pitiable Christianity in a Perverted Way by His Theft of Holy Scripture. Müntzer called Luther “Doctor Lügner” (“liar”), a “malicious black raven,” and a “shameless monk” who claimed to be persecuted while enjoying “his good Malvasian wine” and “whores’ banquets.” Deriding Luther for his cozy relations with the princes and for ignoring the needs of the poor, Müntzer ended with a gruesome taunt: “Sleep softly, dear flesh! I would rather smell you roasted in your own stubbornness by the wrath of God in a pot over the fire. There, cooked in your own juice, the devil should devour you. Your flesh is like that of an ass. It will be a long time cooking and will make a tough d
ish for your mealymouthed friends.”
The apocalypse sought by Müntzer would be delayed, however. The Mühlhausen town council, somehow managing to regain control of the city, voted to expel both him and Pfeiffer. By the end of September 1524, both were gone. Taking his manuscripts with him, Müntzer, like Karlstadt, headed for the seething southwest.
For the past half century, the Upper Rhine valley had been shaken by popular uprisings. This was the land of the Bundschuh—the peasants’ crude leather shoe that symbolized economic and social protest. But the eruptions had for the most part remained highly localized and so had been easily—and ruthlessly—suppressed. In the early 1520s, however, the discontent had begun to spread. To the west, peasants were stirring in Alsace, especially in the rich agricultural plain between the Rhine and the foothills of the Vosges Mountains. To the east, tensions were rising in the Black Forest, a region of crystalline lakes, wild vales, and rounded summits covered with fir trees; in the rolling countryside along the northern shore of Lake Constance; and in Upper Swabia, a land of heathery hills and undulating terraces. By the fall of 1524, this southwestern corner of Germany was in a state of incipient revolt.
The main cause was capitalism. With the rise of a money economy, the speculation in land had boomed, and more and more of it was falling into fewer and fewer hands. In their lust for profit, landlords usurped many of the traditional rights to which small farmers had been entitled under feudalism. Common lands, on which peasants had for centuries fattened their cattle and pigs, were enclosed. Forests, an important source of firewood, thatch, and nuts, were declared off-limits. Streams and ponds were reserved for the rich, and any commoner caught fishing in them faced severe penalties, including even execution. At any time, a peasant could be pressed into service to build roads, dredge ponds, or repair bridges—all without compensation. To ensure a reliable pool of labor, strict controls were placed on movement, including restrictions on whom peasants could marry (since marriage often resulted in the moving of one spouse to the village of the other). If the game owned by a lord wandered onto a peasant’s plot and trampled his crops, he could not touch it.
Taxes and fees, meanwhile, were being raised to the breaking point. There was a “great” tithe to be paid from the corn crop, a “living” tithe to be paid from among newborn livestock, and the dreaded heriot, claimed by the lord when the head of a household died. The heriot usually required handing over the family’s best cow or horse, and it could mean ruin. Resistance was often fierce, and to ensure compliance with this and other rules, lords gradually took over the administration of justice from village courts. Some landowners formed their own police forces to intimidate and arrest recalcitrant peasants; offenders could disappear into jails or dungeons for years with little chance of appeal. In all, dues could consume up to 40 percent of a peasant’s income, with an additional 10 percent taken by the tithe.
In a word, serfdom, which had faded from most of Western Europe, was making a comeback in this region, with the rural population bound anew to the soil. Peasants—living amid fertile fields, abundant game, and teeming waterways—were unable to partake in the bounty. In addition, a steady increase in population had forced a continual subdivision of the land, leading to the shrinkage of plots and the creation of a landless proletariat. With harvests failing every two or three years, hunger was endemic.
The sense of injustice was driven home by the itinerant preachers who were crisscrossing the region, proclaiming the social gospel. Arriving in a town or village, they would call for establishing the kingdom of God on earth and organizing society along scriptural lines. Their ranks included poor priests, impoverished knights, fugitive monks, wandering scholars, out-of-work mercenaries, and struggling journeymen, who, speaking the simple language of the people, inveighed against ignorant priests and overfed friars and who, quoting from Luther’s German Bible, declared that the poor would inherit the earth, that the last would be first, and that the apostles had held all things in common.
These preachers also cited Luther’s own pronouncements. In To the Christian Nobility, he had called on the ruling class to rise up and throw off the yoke of Rome. In The Babylonian Captivity, he had declared that no pope or bishop has the right to impose a single syllable of the law on laypeople without their consent. In The Freedom of a Christian, he had written that a Christian is a free lord, subject to none. Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers was encouraging the laity to read the Bible on their own, and his assertion of the right of every congregation to choose its own pastor was being invoked by parishioners across Germany.
Luther’s personal example was no less influential. His defiance of the emperor and the pope, his scorn for the bull of excommunication, and his burning of the canon law were all encouraging others to press their own rights. Luther, of course, had strongly insisted on keeping the earthly and heavenly kingdoms distinct and on not using the Bible to justify worldly demands, but in the hothouse environment of the German southwest, it was Luther’s statements that Christ came with a sword and that the gospel causes tumult that were seized upon and echoed.
Luther’s denunciations of clerical excesses had special resonance in this region, for monasteries and abbeys were among the largest and most oppressive landholders. In addition to imposing high rents, tight restrictions on movement, and constant demands for labor, they used canon law to protect and extend their privileges. The notorious abbey at Kempten in Upper Swabia, for instance, had over the past thirty years been aggressively expanding its territory, with more than 1,200 peasants forced into bondage; the prince-abbot in charge was loathed for his brutal and systematic harassment of his tenants. So, when Luther in his On Monastic Vows denounced monks as “locusts, caterpillars, and beetles that consume everyone else’s sustenance,” and when he called on God to treat monasteries “like Sodom and Gomorrah, so that not even their members should be left,” he seemed to many peasants to be addressing their own miserable circumstances.
Further inciting the masses were the pamphlets and broadsheets that were flooding the countryside. For centuries, the peasant had been an object of scorn, cruel jokes, and crude stereotypes. “Peasants and pigs are one and the same,” went one saying. “Don’t grieve for a peasant or a Jew,” went another. Now, however, the tillers of the soil were being hailed as pious, quick-witted defenders of the gospel. Cartoonists celebrated both the “evangelical peasant” and Karsthans—“Hans with a hoe”—who, upright and wise, spoke the truth in a simple and direct manner, in contrast to the forked statements of obfuscating priests and syllogizing theologians. One drawing showed Luther surrounded by peasants as he preached the Word of God; another showed him greasing a Bundschuh.
By far the most popular pamphlet was “The Wittenberg Nightingale,” a long didactic poem by Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg cobbler-poet. Issued in 1523, it put into rhyming couplets the rising expectations in the countryside. “Awake, awake!” went its famous opening. “Day draws near! In the green woods I hear the delightful nightingale singing; its sound resonates through hill and valley.” The poem celebrated the simplicity of Luther’s teachings on faith and Scripture as opposed to the lifeless doctrines and ornate rituals of Rome. In an allegorical attack on the Church, it described how the lion (Leo X) and his helpmates (asses, wolves, snakes) were leading the sheep (ordinary Christians) astray, and it offered a summary of the key events of the Reformation up to the Edict of Worms. As it appeared in the villages and hamlets of the German southwest, “The Wittenberg Nightingale” heightened the sense that a new era of freedom and justice was arriving.
The southwest was also inflamed by events in neighboring Switzerland. Through years of struggle, the Swiss cantons had freed themselves from the control of the Hapsburg dynasty and established a republican confederation. In Zurich, Zwingli was moving ahead with his campaign to build a godly society. In his Sixty-Seven Articles, he stressed the right of the community to recall secular authorities who failed to rule in a Christian fashion—a
republican principle foreign to Luther. In a series of disputations held in Zurich in 1523 and 1524, Zwingli and his followers challenged the legitimacy of both the Mass and images. After months of pressure, the town council, following Zwingli’s recommendations, authorized the removal of images. On June 15, 1524, groups of carpenters, stonemasons, and locksmiths descended on Zurich’s churches and methodically removed all pictures and statues, stripped bare all altars, tore down saintly images, and painted over frescoes. With that, the city confirmed its full acceptance of the Reformation.
Zurich’s example was being closely followed in Waldshut, a town twenty-five miles to the north on the north bank of the Rhine. It was small, with only 1,000 or so residents, but one of them was Balthasar Hubmaier, a forceful preacher and friend of Zwingli (and future leader of the radical Reformation) who rejected the rules on fasting, encouraged the withholding of rents, and railed against images with such force that bands of citizens barged into Waldshut’s churches and destroyed pictures and crucifixes. Such acts infuriated Archduke Ferdinand. The brother of Charles V, Ferdinand ruled the Hapsburgs’ Austrian duchies, in whose territory Waldshut sat, and he worried that if the reform there succeeded, other localities would follow, so his government demanded that its citizens hand over their preacher. They refused, and in mid-May 1524 Waldshut’s streets filled with raucous protesters demonstrating their support for Hubmaier. With so many Austrian troops fighting in northern Italy, Ferdinand was unable to marshal a force large enough to subdue the town, and so, to the astonishment of farmers and laborers throughout southern Germany, tiny Waldshut remained in defiance of the mighty Hapsburgs.
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