Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  According to Luther, it was every father’s duty to question and examine his children and servants at least once a week on the contents of the catechism and to ascertain what they knew, and “if they do not know it, to keep them faithfully at it.” Luther himself would recite parts of the catechism every morning and more if time allowed, and he required the same of his wife and children. Under his influence, the home would become a center of religious study for Protestants in a way it would not for Catholics, for whom the church and clergy remained the main agents of instruction. This stress on study would not, however, encourage independent thinking. Luther’s catechisms provided a fixed set of beliefs, with little room for deviation or questioning, and in his rules for their use, he insisted on rote memorization of the text.

  Martin and Katharina together would create a model for German households for centuries to come, establishing it as a place of learning, industry, and comfort on the one hand, and patriarchy, discipline, and conformity on the other.

  While Luther and Katharina in Wittenberg were helping to mold German domestic life, the shape of the Reformation as a whole was being determined at three historic conclaves held over a span of seventeen months. The first, the 1529 Diet of Speyer, would produce one of history’s most famous religious labels. The Catholic delegates—dismayed at the rapid gains made by the Lutherans since the 1526 diet—set out to reverse them. Henceforth, they declared, Catholic services were to be tolerated in all Lutheran lands while Lutheran services were to be prohibited in all Catholic ones. The Edict of Worms was to be reinstated, priests were to teach the Bible according to standards set by the Church, and the confiscation of ecclesiastical properties was to cease. In effect, the Catholic delegates were trying to freeze the Reformation in place.

  The reformers loudly objected. On April 19, 1529, six princes, including John of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, along with fourteen imperial cities, submitted a protestatio, or protestation, summarizing their beliefs. In it, they objected to all measures they saw as incompatible with the Word of God, with their conscience, and with the guarantees of religious freedom made at the 1526 diet. Reworked and expanded, their protestation was rushed into print. On this basis, they would be called “Protestants.” By a quirk of history, the new faith would become known by this impromptu term. (Luther, however, would continue to refer to his movement as evangelische, or evangelical.)

  Worried that the Catholics would strike back, the Protestant princes in Speyer on April 22 made a secret agreement to defend one another if that happened. This effort was led by Philip of Hesse. Given the great manpower and resources of the Catholics, he believed that the Protestants could survive only by uniting. The main obstacle to that was the bitter division between German and Swiss reformers over the Lord’s Supper. Intent on overcoming it, Philip sent Zwingli a letter inviting him to meet with Luther and other reformers to try to reach an agreement.

  After Zwingli affirmed his willingness to participate, Philip approached Luther. He was adamantly opposed to such a meeting, certain that nothing good would come of it. Only after being subjected to the “shameless insistence” of the “restless and hotheaded” landgrave, as he put it, did he give in. In mid-September 1529, Luther, Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and several other Wittenbergers set off on the two-hundred-mile journey to Marburg, home to Philip’s family castle. Arriving on the morning of September 30, Luther found himself in the same room as colleagues and rivals he had known mostly through tracts, letters, and gossip. Oecolampadius had come from Basel, Bucer from Strasbourg, and Zwingli from Zurich. Zwingli, who wore a black tunic with a short sword at his side and who had a large retinue, held back from the Wittenbergers, with whom he had so furiously clashed. Also present were leading reformers from Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, and Cologne. The Marburg Colloquy would be the only time that all the fathers of the Reformation were gathered in one spot. Many accounts and reconstructions of the meeting have survived, offering a dramatic inside look at this historic encounter.

  The principals stayed at Philip’s castle, an impressive fortress perched on a hill overlooking the town. Luther, though dazzled by the regal trappings and sumptuous meals, was put off by Melanchthon’s ease at making small talk, and he found Bucer a Klappermaul, or chatterbox. On October 1, a series of private discussions was held among the leaders, with Luther pairing off with Oecolampadius and Melanchthon with Zwingli. (It was thought best to keep Luther and Zwingli—the two strongest personalities of the Reformation—apart.)

  When these exchanges failed to produce any progress, a more general discussion was held among the leaders the next day in the landgrave’s large bedchamber (which had the advantage of being heated). Philip and his counselors listened as Luther and Melanchthon (representing the Germans) engaged Zwingli and Oecolampadius (representing the Swiss). Luther had trouble following what he called the “tangled, matted” dialect of the Swiss, and he was annoyed at Zwingli’s flaunting of his Greek. Whereas Oecolampadius seemed kind and gentle, Zwingli seemed boorish and superior. Nonetheless, the two sides were able to reach agreement on fourteen points, including the Trinity, original sin, redemption, baptism, good works, and, finally, justification by faith, which all acknowledged to be the core of their creed.

  A fifteenth—the Lord’s Supper—proved more intractable. Over two days the disputants sparred over Matthew 26 and other key passages in a bid to determine what exactly happens to the bread and wine during Communion. Zwingli argued that because we know Christ to be in heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father, he could not at the same time be present in the bread and wine. Luther replied that since Christ was omnipresent, why could he not be in both places at once? Hours were spent parsing the meaning of “is” and “signifies,” “body” and “blood,” “flesh” and “eating.” While the Swiss argued with cool humanist logic, Luther frequently grew emotional. “If God commanded me to eat dung,” he insisted at one point, “I should eat it.” God, Zwingli stiffly replied, “does not give commands of that type.” “Pray that God will open your eyes!” Luther cried. At one point during the discussion, Luther scribbled something in chalk on the table in front of him and then covered it with a velvet cloth. At a key moment of Swiss resistance, he removed the cloth to reveal what he had written: Hoc est corpus meum—“This is my body.” “Here,” he declared, “is our Scriptural passage.” From this position, he would not budge. Zwingli in his exasperation was moved nearly to tears.

  As the meeting was breaking up, Zwingli and his party asked the Wittenbergers to recognize them as brothers in Christ and to take Holy Communion with them as a goodwill gesture. Luther refused. “They were humble beyond measure in asking for peace,” he reported to his friend Agricola while on his way back to Wittenberg, but they were “clumsy and inexperienced in argument. Even though they perceived that their arguments proved nothing, they were not willing to yield on the point of the presence of the body of Christ.” In the end, “they asked that we at least acknowledge them as brethren, and the prince was very urgent about it, but that could not be granted. Nevertheless we gave them the right hand of peace and charity, agreeing that for the present harsh words and writings should cease, and each teach his own opinion without invective, but not without defense and refutation.”

  Luther’s obduracy reflected the zeal and intolerance of the times, when even small differences over doctrine could produce bitter conflict; even so, his refusal to acknowledge the Swiss reformers as brothers in Christ was an act of extreme intransigence. And the consequences would be profound. With the failure at Marburg, the gulf that Karlstadt had helped open up with his Eucharistic tracts of 1524 would become fixed in place. Largely because of their differences over the interpretation of these four words, the Lutheran and Swiss reformers would remain divided, and the competition between them would prove as debilitating as Philip of Hesse had feared.

  Back in Wittenberg, Luther’s congregants felt the lash of his growing distemper. In the pulpit, he repeatedly scolded them for the
ir brazen misconduct. Couples were sneaking off into the woods to have sex. Prostitution flourished. Drunkenness was such a problem that Luther wanted the taverns closed during Sunday services. People remained unwilling to support pastors or aid the poor. And no amount of sermonic admonition seemed to make any difference.

  His frustration finally boiling over, Luther announced on January 1, 1530, that because of the congregation’s ingratitude and flouting of God’s Word, he was going to stop preaching. In the ensuing uproar, the congregants, promising to do better, begged him to stay. Elector John also implored him, saying that if he followed through, it would have “grievous consequences.” In the end, Luther gave in and resumed preaching. But the moral laxness would persist. Since salvation depended on faith alone, why bother to do good works? That question would vex Luther, and Protestant pastors in general, for many years to come.

  But a much more immediate challenge loomed. In early March 1530, Elector John received from Charles V a summons to attend the next Imperial Diet, due to begin in April in Augsburg. The emperor himself planned to attend, in what would be his first appearance on German soil since the Diet of Worms. In his summons, he explained that he had decided to participate in the hope of overcoming the divisions among Christians and restoring “one single Christian truth.” Because theological matters were to be high on the agenda, John asked Luther, along with Melanchthon, Jonas, and Bugenhagen, to travel to Torgau, where they were to prepare a summary of Lutheran beliefs for submission to the diet. From there they were to accompany the elector to Coburg—the southernmost princely residency in Electoral Saxony—while safe-conducts were arranged for the trip to Augsburg. Quickly finding others to fill in for them, the Wittenbergers on April 3 set off with great anticipation.

  Charles’s presence at the diet ensured that it would be the most important such gathering since Worms. It represented a last-gasp effort to repair the fissure that at that diet had opened up within Western Christendom. In Torgau, Luther, Melanchthon, and Jonas drafted a statement of Lutheran principles that would become known as the Torgau Articles. They then traveled with the elector and his retinue to Coburg. Along the way the group heard that the emperor’s journey was taking longer than expected, causing the diet’s opening to be delayed. After resting for several days in Weimar, the Saxons traveled on to Coburg, arriving on April 15, 1530. While they were there, safe-conducts were arranged for all the Wittenbergers except Luther. Because he remained an outlaw under the Edict of Worms, he would have to stay behind in Coburg. The Saxons promised to send regular reports. (A mounted courier could cover the 150 miles between Augsburg and Coburg in three or four days.) To keep Luther company and to serve as his secretary, Veit Dietrich, a Wittenberg student who had accompanied the group to Coburg, would also remain behind.

  The two men stayed in the Coburg castle, which, sitting on a hill above the town, was one of the largest strongholds in Germany. As at the Wartburg, Luther again found himself in “the wilderness,” as he called it. As then, he needed to remain incognito and so let his beard grow. Though frustrated at not being able to attend the diet, he at first enjoyed the break from the commotion at the Black Cloister. “This place is extremely pleasant and most suited for studying,” he wrote to Melanchthon. Luther was impressed by the large flocks of birds that struck up a chorus beginning at four in the morning and continuing without letup into the late afternoon. In the cawing and maneuvering of the jackdaws (black-plumed members of the crow family), he saw a metaphor for the deliberations at the diet. Among them were “magnanimous kings, dukes, and other noblemen of the kingdom,” who “with untiring voice proclaim their decisions and dogmas through the air.” Luther planned to use his time to write and to continue his translation of the Old Testament. He also hoped to translate some of Aesop’s fables and prepare a commentary on the Psalter.

  In Luther’s absence, it would fall to Melanchthon to represent the Wittenberg theologians in Augsburg, and as he approached the city he was overcome by anxiety. He had to produce a statement of Protestant faith that could serve as a basis for negotiations with the Catholics in an eleventh-hour bid to avert a rupture in the Western Church. On his arrival, he got a sobering look at what lay ahead. To help control the expected crowds, hundreds of mercenaries had been hired, and preparations had been made to close off the streets with chains. Around 1,200 nobles were due to attend, along with 20 prominent Catholic theologians, among them Luther’s old adversary, Johann Eck. In anticipation of the diet, Eck had drafted 404 articles in which he caustically chronicled the record of heretical deviations from Roman doctrine. Luther was called the greatest of blasphemers, the father of lies, the fountain from which the many streams of contemporary heresy flowed. The work was on sale in Augsburg’s bookstores, and Melanchthon, examining a copy, could feel the malice and scorn surging through the Catholic camp.

  He could, though, count on much goodwill as well. Back in 1518, when Luther traveled to Augsburg to be interrogated by Cardinal Cajetan, the Church’s hold on the city seemed unshakable. Now Catholic preachers were outnumbered by Lutherans and Zwinglians, who from their pulpits inveighed loudly against penance and the Mass, papal despotism and clerical overreach.

  Working away in his room, Melanchthon, using the Torgau Articles as his foundation, sought to produce a measured document acceptable to both the radicals in his own camp and the moderates among the Catholics. Like Luther, he was beset by doubts as to whether their defiance of Rome had been justified. Feeling panic over how much rested on his every word, he frequently burst into tears at his desk. Drawing on his mastery of doctrine and command of Scripture, however, he was able to produce a comprehensive statement divided into two sets of articles—those of faith, which expounded the core Lutheran beliefs, and those of abuse, which described the proliferation and superfluity of Roman rites and doctrines.

  By May 11, 1530, Melanchthon had a good working draft of his Apologia, or confession, as he called it. On that same day, Elector John sent a copy to Luther at the Coburg, along with a letter asking him to read it at once and send his comments back with the same courier. Reading it through, Luther was impressed. Melanchthon’s Apologia “pleases me very much,” he wrote; “I know nothing to improve or change in it, nor would this be appropriate, since I cannot step so softly and quietly.” Letter in hand, the messenger returned at once to Augsburg.

  Soon, however, the letters dried up. Days and then weeks passed without any word from Augsburg. As the silence grew, Luther’s mood darkened. The chatter of the jackdaws lost its charm. He began to suffer from a terrible ringing in his head. He developed a toothache and a sore throat, and an abscess on his shin opened. An eagerly awaited pair of eyeglasses sent by a Wittenberg goldsmith was so poorly made that he could barely see a thing through it. Though he was supposed to be in hiding, word of his whereabouts spread, and so many visitors began showing up that the castle became “a place for pilgrimage,” as he joked. The most frequent visitor, unfortunately, was the Devil, who at night preyed on his fears and doubts. To cope, Luther drank heavily, and Katharina in her letters warned him about it.

  By May 10, he was near collapse, and for several days he could not work. Pining for his family, he pinned on the wall a drawing of his daughter Magdalena, and to his son Hans he wrote a touching letter about a beautiful garden where children pick fine apples and pears and sing and jump and ride nice ponies with golden reins and silver saddles. He urged Hans “to pray and study diligently” so that he might be able to enter the garden and get whistles and drums and dance and shoot with little crossbows.

  On June 5, 1530, word arrived that his father had died. Though Martin had seen Hans only sporadically since his entry into the monastery, his father had remained a dominant presence in his life. Their bitter falling-out over his decision to become a friar had gradually given way to mutual respect, and Martin had belatedly come to feel his father’s love. The news of his death left him crushed, and he withdrew into his room with a Psalter and wept for two whole d
ays. The storm then passed. While at the Coburg, Veit Dietrich later observed, he frequently overhead Luther praying. Not a day went by without Luther’s “devoting at least three hours, and sometimes more, to prayer, hours which would otherwise be most suitable for work.” Dietrich was struck by the intimate tone Luther used in addressing God—how he beseeched God to intervene on behalf of not only him but also his colleagues in Augsburg.

  The long stretches of solitude made the silence from Augsburg all the more galling. Working himself into a rage, Luther dashed off angry letters to the Saxon delegation, complaining in one to Melanchthon that he had crucified him by his silence. He began to fear that something terrible had happened. In fact, the Saxons had been sending him letters, but for some reason they had not gotten through.

  It was also true that there was not much to report, for the opening of the diet continued to be delayed by Charles’s tardiness. Before traveling to Germany, the emperor had decided to go to see his newly conquered lands in Italy. Though he refused to accept responsibility for the Sack of Rome, pinning the blame instead on mutinous troops, the event had unnerved the pope, and on June 29, 1529, Charles and Clement VII signed an “eternal alliance” confirming Spanish dominance of Italy. After sailing from Barcelona to Genoa, the emperor set off on a long, triumphal tour of his new dominions before arriving in Bologna. There, in November, he met Clement for the first time. Over the next four months, the two men, staying in adjoining houses connected by a door, held a series of private conversations in which they drew close. On February 24, 1530—Charles’s thirtieth birthday—Clement, in a pomp-filled ceremony in the Bologna cathedral, placed Charlemagne’s crown on his head, finally confirming his position as Holy Roman Emperor. (He would be the last emperor so crowned.)