Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  Erasmus, in seeking to restore the text of the New Testament, had hoped to provide a purified version around which Christians could rally and unite. In calling for the Scriptures to be translated into all the languages, he had similarly hoped to forge a common Christian culture. Instead, the Bible was appearing in vernacular editions tailored to national customs and expectations. As the Scriptures became more accessible, they were growing more particular and insular and in the process feeding the polarization and fragmentation of Europe.

  In Freiburg, Erasmus was putting the finishing touches on the fifth and final edition of his own New Testament. The work that had been inspired by Colet’s lectures at Oxford and the discovery of Valla’s annotations in the monastery outside Louvain had swelled into a 783-page folio. The annotations, with their layers of corrections, emendations, and elaborations, offered a sort of palimpsest of Erasmus’s theological views as they had evolved over two decades of controversy and dispute.

  Erasmus was also rushing to complete the tenth and final edition of the Adages. The 818 entries that had appeared in the first slender volume published in Paris had ballooned into a thick compendium of 4,151. No other work had done more to revive and popularize classical culture. From “Pandora’s box” to “make haste slowly” to “leave no stone unturned,” the Adages would leave an imprint on Western language long after the Latin in which it was so lovingly written had died out.

  While preparing these and other texts (including a bulky tract on the art of preaching), Erasmus had grown increasingly disenchanted with Freiburg. It was expensive and dirty, and its small-town charm had long since faded. Even here, the friars had started up against him. In a wrenching personal misfortune, many of his valuables were stolen. With his body battered by gout and the stone, his doctors recommended a change of scenery, and Erasmus at once thought of Basel. Since the death of Oecolampadius, the storms there had subsided. The manuscripts he had in hand were to be published by the house of Froben, and while in Basel he could see them through the presses. So, despite his frailty, Erasmus decided to move one last time. In mid-May 1535, his old friend Bonifacius Amerbach came to get him. He was so feeble that he had to be carried on a litter.

  Basel was now under the spiritual direction of Oswald Myconius, a former Zurich schoolteacher of Zwinglian views. The walls of its churches remained bare, and its pulpits still rang with proclamations on the primacy of faith and grace, but the university had reopened, and Erasmus was warmly greeted by a delegation of professors. “I still have ill-wishers here,” he wrote, “but at my age, and with my experience, I am in no more danger at Basel than elsewhere.” Because of his ailments, Erasmus was confined to his bed much of the time, but every day he rose for three hours around lunchtime and another three after dinner. He also received many visitors, though not always happily. One kept him sitting by the fire for three hours, arguing about dogmas and creeds, and he would have gone on all night if Erasmus had not cut him off and shooed him away. His correspondence was as extensive as ever, but now he could keep up with it only by dictating to his famulus.

  One of Erasmus’s last letters was to Christoph Eschenfelder, the customs inspector he had met in 1518 in the tiny town of Boppard while returning to Louvain from Basel after preparing the second edition of his New Testament. The memory of that moment, when Luther was still barely known and the glow of the New Learning seemed about to light up the world, was no doubt bittersweet. “Christ called Matthew from the customs-house to the Gospel, but you, Christoph, have taken Christ and the Gospel inside the customs-house,” he wrote. Some think that Christ “is to be found nowhere but in monasteries, but in fact he is present wherever there is a pious soul, be it in the courts of princes, the camps of soldiers, or the triremes of sailors.” This was another way of saying Monachatus non est pietas—“Monasticism is not piety”—the remark that, more than thirty years earlier, Erasmus had innocuously included in the Enchiridion and which had kicked up such a storm.

  By now, most of his close friends—Colet, Reuchlin, Mountjoy, Warham, More, Fisher, Gilles, Froben, Pirckheimer—were gone. By the start of the summer of 1536, Erasmus felt his own life draining away. Lonely and listless, he came down with a sudden bout of dysentery, and three weeks later, on the night of July 11–12, 1536, his body finally gave out. He was buried in the Münster, the stately (and now Protestant) church that overlooked the Rhine—the grand waterway at whose mouth Erasmus had been born nearly seventy years earlier and whose course through many different countries and cultures paralleled Erasmus’s own search for a united and peaceful Christendom.

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  Enemies of Christ

  “He lived and died as Epicurus, without minister and consolation,” Luther remarked on hearing of Erasmus’s death. “He went to hell.” One day at supper, Luther trenchantly summed up his differences with Erasmus without actually naming him. “Doctrine and life must be distinguished,” he said, adding, “I don’t scold myself into becoming good, but I fight over the Word and whether our adversaries teach it in its purity.” This was his calling. “Others have censured only life, but to treat doctrine is to strike at the most sensitive point.” Erasmus wanted to improve lives; Luther, to purify doctrine.

  Purifying doctrine would consume Luther over the remaining fifteen years of his life. Many biographers pass quickly over this period, preferring to focus on Luther’s dynamic early years. As he aged, his less attractive qualities—his obstinacy and petulance, crudeness and intolerance—came increasingly to the fore, and even his friends began to avoid him to escape a public scouring.

  Luther’s growing grumpiness was in part a by-product of his ongoing physical decline. He was almost always ill. In 1537, for instance, he suffered a near-fatal bout of kidney stones. An enema administered by a physician not only failed to provide relief but caused severe diarrhea that further weakened him, and for eight days he was unable to urinate. Luther was given broth made from almonds, and a concoction of garlic and raw manure was applied. But his condition worsened, resulting in indigestion, vomiting, and insomnia. Finally, Luther passed six stones, one as large as a bean. His physicians urged him to follow a strict diet, but he continued to prefer fatty pork to dry venison and stringy game. Eventually, the pain in his legs brought on by gout forced him to walk with a cane. He also continued to drink heavily, causing his body to bloat, and he was assailed by constant headaches.

  Such bodily ailments were only the start of his difficulties, though. A ceaseless stream of visitors came to Wittenberg demanding his time. Unhappy couples continued to seek him out to help resolve their differences. Congregations petitioned him for pastors and pastors pestered him for pulpits. His wife was the subject of endless vilification, and ugly rumors spread about his own private life. Luther was held responsible for the schism that had opened up in Christendom and blamed for the rivers of blood that had been spilled. He continued to be terrified of being alone and to suffer incapacitating bouts of doubt and angst.

  Most debilitating of all, though, were the bitter divisions opening up among his closest colleagues. In 1532, the Diet of Nuremberg agreed to allow Protestants to continue the innovations they had introduced and to suspend all proceedings against them until the religious question could be settled in a great council. This “Nuremberg truce” would allow Luther to live in relative peace to the end of his days. With the external pressure from Catholics thus abating, however, the need for Protestant unity diminished as well, and as it did, internal conflicts grew. These disputes would take on critical importance as Luther prepared to pass from the scene.

  One controversy centered on Melanchthon. Over the years, no one had worked harder to clarify Luther’s ideas and promote his gospel. Melanchthon’s reward had been constant criticism and belittlement. Such treatment added to his unhappiness at having to live in provincial Wittenberg. In 1536, Elector John had a new house built to replace his run-down cabin, but Melanchthon continued to pine for the more cosmopolitan Rhineland. He also retained his hum
anist leanings, and certain features of Luther’s theology continued to trouble him. The doctrine of predestination, for instance, seemed both to absolve man of responsibility for his actions and to imply that God was the author of evil in the world. In both his lectures and his writings, Melanchthon was placing so much stress on free will and good works as to sound positively Erasmian.

  Among those who noticed was Conrad Cordatus, a pastor in the nearby town of Niemegk. In the summer of 1536, Cordatus, while attending a class in Wittenberg, was surprised to hear the instructor—working from notes by Melanchthon—emphasize the importance of repentance in becoming justified before God. Since repentance is a human work, this seemed to diminish the place of faith. Concerned that students might be infected with Erasmian ideas, Cordatus asked the instructor to explain himself. When he refused, Cordatus demanded a public correction of this “papistic” teaching. He also proposed that the second edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes (published in 1535) be recalled because its views too strongly echoed those of Erasmus.

  Taken aback, Melanchthon declared that he had no intention of diverging from Luther’s teachings; he would rather leave Wittenberg than face such accusations. Unyielding, Cordatus demanded that Melanchthon acknowledge that faith offers the only true path to salvation. Eventually both Justus Jonas (the rector of the university) and Elector John were drawn in, and Luther felt compelled to state publicly that “the article of justification is the master and sovereign, lord, leader, and judge” of all doctrine. The dispute grew so heated that people began identifying themselves as either “genuine Lutherans” or “Melanchthonians,” and relations between the two men grew even more strained.

  While Melanchthon was accused of placing too much stress on works, Johann Agricola wanted to do away with them altogether. One of Luther’s oldest associates, Agricola had for several years been in Eisleben, preaching and heading a grammar school. He was not popular, however, owing to his heavy drinking and proclivity for fights. Longing to return to Wittenberg, he finally did so, in late 1536. Because he had neglected to arrange housing, he and his family took up temporary residence in the Black Cloister. Not long afterward, Luther had to attend a meeting in Schmalkalden, and he asked Agricola to look after his house and preach in his place. While he was gone, some anonymous theses appeared that attacked both Melanchthon and Luther for abandoning the core teachings about faith and allowing too great a place for works. On his return, Luther at once saw that Agricola was behind them.

  When confronted, Agricola showed no contrition. On the contrary, he stepped up his campaign to make clear that the law has no part to play in salvation. The matter held great peril for Luther. For years, he had been accused of encouraging people to believe that, since salvation depends on faith alone, their conduct does not matter—an outlook known as antinomianism. Agricola, by arguing that true Lutheranism does not in fact require works, was providing fodder for Luther’s critics. In his defense, Luther in January 1539 issued Against the Antinomians, attacking Agricola with such force that, he hoped, no one would ever pin that label on him again. Denouncing the book as libelous, Agricola filed a formal complaint against Luther with both the university and the town church, demanding a public hearing. An investigation into Agricola’s conduct was launched. Before it could get too far, Agricola left Wittenberg, accepting a position as court preacher to Joachim II in Berlin, and the great antinomian controversy subsided.

  Among the residents of Wittenberg, however, good works seemed in short supply. Drunkenness was rife and greed rampant. Routine hoarding drove up the price of bread. Weddings and baptisms were celebrated with unseemly extravagance. Prostitutes brazenly plied their trade, leading Luther to declare that those who infected the youth should be executed. Annoyed by the constant coughing in the town church, he told those suffering from colds to stay home. “I have been preaching this gospel for nearly twenty-five years,” he complained in a 1537 sermon, “and we see how we have improved. The older we get, the stingier; the longer we live, the more wicked.” Germany, he declared in another, “is a land of pigs and filthy people who are destroying their body and life.”

  Luther’s frustration with his congregation was no doubt reciprocated. In the pulpit and at the lectern, he harped incessantly on a few well-worn themes. In June 1535, he began a series of lectures on Genesis, and he would keep at it for more than ten years (with some interruptions), moving at a glacial pace as he sought to wring every drop of meaning from each word and phrase. (When preparing to lecture on Noah’s drunkenness, he felt that he should get inebriated the night before so that he could discuss the matter with authority.) One can imagine the waves of weariness that washed over both students and parishioners as Luther declaimed yet again on the saving power of faith and the central place of grace, offering expositions and admonitions that they had heard a hundred times before.

  Whatever the level of popular disaffection, however, the Reformation remained unshakable in Electoral Saxony, thanks in part to Luther’s close relationship with its sovereign. John, who died in August 1532, was succeeded by his son, John Frederick. A man of prodigious girth and a bottomless capacity for alcohol, he was known as “the Magnanimous,” and he was certainly that toward Luther. On matters ranging from military preparedness to pastoral compensation, the two regularly collaborated, helping create a tight bond between the state and the church.

  The cost of such cooperation was high, however. With the sovereign so heavily involved in religious affairs, the church in Electoral Saxony became an increasingly top-down and regimented institution, with limited input from pastors or parishioners. And the problem was not unique to that territory. In the late 1530s, the Reformation was about to enter a period of rapid growth, especially in northern and central Germany, but the expansion was due less to demands made from below than to decisions made from on high.

  The most dramatic case occurred in Ducal Saxony. On April 17, 1539, Duke George, Luther’s longtime adversary, died. As strenuously as George had opposed the Reformation, his brother Henry, who succeeded him, embraced it. On May 22, Luther and Melanchthon led a team to Leipzig. Luther preached in the same hall where, in 1519, he had debated Eck and made his fateful remark about Jan Hus. Now, in meetings with theologians, professors, and town officials, he and his colleagues helped prepare a new order of worship for the duchy. In a single stroke, a territory that had been steadfastly Catholic turned Lutheran, and its inhabitants had no choice but to go along. Similar changes were taking place in many other northern territories, including the duchy of Holstein, the electorate of Brandenburg (which included Berlin), the principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and the region of Pomerania on the Baltic Sea. (Catholic rulers were no less insistent on imposing their faith on their subjects.)

  Scandinavia was turning Protestant as well. In Denmark, King Christian III, needing resources to rebuild his country after a devastating civil war, hungrily eyed the property of the Church, which included 30 to 40 percent of all land. He began expropriating it. After officially declaring for the Reformation, in 1537, Christian brought Bugenhagen from Wittenberg to help oversee the transformation. Over the next two years, the “Reformer of the North” would lay the foundation for a Lutheran-style church in Denmark. Norway and Iceland, which were united with Denmark, followed suit. In Sweden, King Gustavus Vasa—the founder of modern Sweden—gradually seized ecclesiastical power and property, culminating in a 1538 directive that placed the church under direct royal control. From that point on, Lutheranism would be the dominant religion of Scandinavia.

  As the Scandinavian experience shows, princes enlisting in the Reformation often acted less out of belief or conviction than from a desire to confiscate property, consolidate power, and create a national identity. With princes rather than theologians directing the movement, political considerations often took priority over religious ones. With little space for innovation or experimentation, spirituality grew cold. The angry disputes over doctrine in Wittenberg added to the disaffectio
n.

  On top of it all, Luther in 1539 made one of his most serious missteps. Landgrave Philip of Hesse—syphilitic, trapped in a loveless marriage, and conscience-ridden over his many affairs—became taken with a seventeen-year-old Saxon noblewoman and wanted to marry her. As a Lutheran, he had no recourse to the Catholic expedient of an annulment, and because his wife had been faithful to him, divorce was not an option. He solicited Luther’s and Melanchthon’s opinion. Influenced by the example of the Old Testament patriarchs, who practiced polygamy, they advised him to secretly marry the young woman. The ceremony took place on March 4, 1540, and in his delight Philip sent Luther a cartload of wine. But word of the union—and of Luther’s part in it—quickly leaked out, and when the full facts came to light, he was widely denounced as unscrupulous.

  Disillusionment with the reformer grew. With great longing, people recalled the young Luther—the defiant firebrand who had roused Europe with his bold denunciations of Roman tyranny and soaring appeals to Christian freedom. Without a new source of vigor, it was feared, the Reformation would founder.

  In October 1539, the name of such a source appeared in Luther’s correspondence. Writing to Martin Bucer in Strasbourg to explain why he had not written more often (too much work, advancing age), Luther asked him to “please greet reverently Mr. John Sturm [a leading Protestant educator] and John Calvin; I have read their books with special pleasure.” Then living in Strasbourg, Calvin had recently come out with a vigorous defense of Protestant principles—the book to which Luther referred. It is not clear if Luther had read another volume by Calvin—the Institutes of the Christian Religion—which had appeared three years earlier. The Institutes would prove the single most influential work of the Reformation, and Calvin was to become the leader of a new generation of reformers (excluding Lutherans) who would shape Protestantism for centuries to come.