Part 9 (1/2)

Four centuries ago began the great struggle for freedom of thought which has made our modern civilization possible. I wish here to give something of the story of a man who in his day was not the least in this conflict--a man who dared to think and act for himself when thought and act were costly--Ulrich von Hutten.

Near Frankfort-on-the-Main, on a sharp pinnacle of rock above the little railway station of Vollmerz, may still be found the scanty ruins of an old castle which played a brave part in German history before it was destroyed in the Thirty Years War.

In this castle of Steckelberg, in the year 1488, was born Ulrich von Hutten. He was the last of a long line of Huttens of Steckelberg, strong men who knew not fear, who had fought for the Emperor in all lands whither the imperial eagle had flown, and who, when the empire was at peace, had fought right merrily with their neighbors on all sides. Robber-knights they were, no doubt, some or all of them; but in those days all was fair in love and in war. And this line of warriors centered in Ulrich von Hutten, and with him it ended. ”The wild kindred has gone out with this its greatest.”

Ulrich was the eldest son, and bore his father's name. But he was not the son his father had dreamed of. Slender of figure, short of stature, and weak of limb, Ulrich seemed unworthy of his burly ancestry. The horse, the sword, and the lute were not for him. He tried hard to master them and to succeed in all things worthy of a knight. But he was strong only with his books. At last to his books his father consigned him, and, sorely disappointed, he sent Ulrich to the monastery of Fulda to be made a priest.

A wise man, Eitelwolf von Stein, became his friend, and pointed out to him a life braver than that of a priest, more n.o.ble than that of a knight, the life of a scholar. To Hutten's father Eitelwolf wrote: ”Would you bury a genius like that in the cloister? He must be a man of letters.” But the father had decided once for all. Ulrich must never return to Steckelberg unless he came back as a priest. And the son took his fate in his own hands, and fled from Fulda, to make his way as a scholar in a world in which scholars.h.i.+p received scanty recognition.

At the same time another young man whose history was to be interwoven with his own, Martin Luther, fled from the wickedness and deceit of this same world to the solitude of the monastery of Erfurth. By very different paths they came at last to work in the same cause, and their modes of action were not less different.

To the University of Cologne Hutten went, and with the students of that day he was trained in the mysteries of scholasticism, and in the Latin of the schoolmen and the priests. Wonderful problems they pondered over, and they used to write long arguments in Latin for or against propositions which came nowhere within the domain of fact. That scholars.h.i.+p stood related to reality, and that it must find its end and justification in action was no part of the philosophy of those times.

But Hutten and his friends cared little for scholastic puzzles and they gave themselves to the study of the beauties of Latin poetry and to the newly opened mine of the literature of Greece. They delighted in Virgil and Lucian, and still more in Homer and Aeschylus.

The Turks had conquered Constantinople, and the fall of the Greek Empire had driven many learned Greeks to the West of Europe. There some of the scholars received them with open arms, and eagerly learned from them to read Homer and Aristotle in the original tongue, and the New Testament also. Those who followed these studies came to be known as Humanists. But most of the universities and the monasteries in Germany looked upon this revival of Greek culture as pernicious and antichristian. Poetry they despised. The Latin Vulgate met their religious needs, and Greek was only another name for Paganism. The party name of Obscurantists (”Dunkelmanner”) was given to these, and this name has remained with them on the records of history.

In the letters of one of Hutten's comrades we find this confession of faith, which is interesting as expressing the feelings of young men of that time: ”There is but one G.o.d, but he has many forms, and many names--Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpine, Tellus, Mary. But be careful how you say that. One must disclose these things in secret, like Eleusinian mysteries. In matters of religion, you must use the cover of fables and riddles. You, with Jupiter's grace (that is, the grace of the best and greatest G.o.d), can despise the lesser G.o.ds in silence. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christ and the true G.o.d. The coat and the beard and the bones of Christ I wors.h.i.+p not. I wors.h.i.+p the living G.o.d, who wears no coat nor beard, and left no bones upon the earth.”

Hutten wished to know the world, not from books only, but to see all cities and lands; to measure himself with other men; to rise above those less worthy. The danger of such a course seemed to him only the greater attraction. Content to him was laziness; love of home but a dog's delight in a warm fire. ”I live,” he said, ”in no place rather than another; my home is everywhere.”

So he tramped through Germany to the northward, and had but a sorry time. In his own mind he was a scholar, a poet, a knight of the n.o.blest blood of Germany; to others he was a little sickly and forlorn vagrant. Never strong of body, he was stricken by a miserable disease which filled his life with a succession of attacks of fever. He was s.h.i.+p-wrecked on the Baltic Sea, sick and forlorn in Pomerania, and at last he was received in charity in the house of Henning Lotz, professor of law at Greifeswald.

This action has given Lotz's name immortality, for it is a.s.sociated with the first of those fiery poems of Hutten which, in their way, are unique in literature. For Hutten was restless and proud, and was not to be content with bread and b.u.t.ter and a new suit of clothes. This independence was displeasing to the professor, who finally, in utter disgust, turned Hutten out of doors in midwinter. When the boy had tramped a while in storm and slush, two servants of Lotz overtook him on the road and robbed him of his money and clothing. In a wretched plight he reached a little inn in Rostock, in Mecklenberg. Here the professors in the university received him kindly, and made provision for his needs. Then he let loose the fury of his youthful anger on Lotz. As ever, his poetic genius rose with his wrath, and the more angry he became the greater was he as a poet.

Two volumes he published, ringing the changes of his contempt and hatred of Lotz, at the same time praising the virtues of those who had found in him a kindred spirit. A ”knight of the order of poets,” he styles himself, and to all Humanists, to the ”fellow-feeling among free spirits” (”_Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern_”) he appeals for sympathy in his struggle with Lotz.

He had, indeed, not found a foeman worthy of his steel, but he had shown what a finely tempered blade he bore. Foemen enough he found in later times, and his steel had need of all its sharpness and temper.

And it never failed him to the last.

Meanwhile he wandered to Vienna, giving lectures there on the art of poetry. But poetry was abhorred by the schoolmen everywhere, and the students of the university were forbidden to attend his lectures. He then went to Italy. When he reached Pavia, he found the city in the midst of a siege, surrounded by a hostile French army. He fell ill of a fever, and giving himself up for dead, he composed the famous epitaph for himself, of which I give a rough translation:

Here, also be it said, a life of ill-fortune is ended; By evil pursued on the water; beset by wrong upon land.

Here lie Hutten's bones; he, who had done nothing wrongful, Was wickedly robbed of his life by the sword in a Frenchman's hand.

By Fate, decided that he should see unlucky days only; Decided that even these days could never be many or long; Hemmed in by danger and death, he forsook not serving the muses, And as well as he could, he rendered this service in song.

The Frenchman's sword did not rob him of his life. The Frenchman's hand took only his money, which was not much, and again sent him adrift. He now set his pen to writing epigrams on the Emperor, wherein Maximilian was compared to the eagle which should devour the frogs in the swamps of Venice. Meanwhile he enlisted as a common soldier in Maximilian's army.

In Italy, the abuses of the Papacy attracted his attention. Officials of the Church were then engaged in extending the demand for indulgences. The sale of pardons ”straight from Rome, all hot,” was becoming a scandal in Christendom. All this roused the wrath of Hutten, who attacked the Pope himself in his songs:

”Heaven now stands for a price to be peddled and sold, But what new folly is this, as though the fiat of Heaven Needed an earthly witness, an earthly warrant and seal!”

More prosperous times followed, and we find Hutten honored as a poet, living in the court of the Archbishop of Mainz. At this time a cousin, Hans Hutten, a young man of great courage and promise, was a knight in the service of Ulrich, Duke of Wurtemberg. He was a favorite of the Duke, and he and his young wife were the life of the Wurtemburg court.

And Duke Ulrich once came to Hans and threw himself at his feet, begging that this wife, whom he loved, should be given over wholly to him. Hans Hutten answered the Duke like a man, and the Duke arose with murder in his heart. Afterward, when they were hunting in a wood, he stabbed Hans Hutten in the back with his sword.

All this came to the ear of Ulrich Hutten in Mainz. Love for his cousin, love for his name and family, love for freedom and truth, all urged him to avenge the murdered Hans. The wrongs the boy had suffered from the coa.r.s.e-hearted Professor Lotz became as nothing beside this great crime against the Huttens and against manhood.

In all the history of invective, I know of nothing so fierce as Hutten's appeal against Duke Ulrich In five different pamphlets his crime was described to the German people, and all good men, from the Emperor down, were called on to help him in his struggle against the Duke of Wurtemberg.