Part 9 (1/2)

Those hopes which Luther had placed in the young students at Erfurt were shortly fulfilled by the so-called 'poets' beginning now to read and expound the New Testament. The theology, which, in its Scholastic and monastic form, they regarded with contempt, attracted them as knowledge of the Divine Word. Justus Jonas, Luther's junior by ten years, a friend of Eoban Hess, and one of the most talented of the circle of young 'poets,' now exchanged for theology the study of the law, which he had already begun to teach. To his respect for Erasmus was now added an enthusiastic admiration for Luther, the courageous Erfurt champion of this new evangelical doctrine. A close intimacy sprang up between Jonas and Luther, as also between Jonas and Luther's friend Lange. Erasmus had persuaded him to take up theology; Luther, on hearing of it in 1520, congratulated him on taking refuge from the stormy sea of law in the asylum of the Scriptures.

None of the old Erfurt students, however, had cultivated Luther's friends.h.i.+p more zealously than Crotus, his former companion at that university; and this even from Italy, where his sympathies with Luther had been stirred by the news from Germany, and where he had learned to realise, from the evidence of his eyes, the full extent of the scandals and evils against which Luther was waging war. He, who in the 'Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum,' had failed to exhibit in his satire the solemn earnestness which recommended itself to Luther's taste and judgment, now openly declared his concurrence with Luther's fundamental ideas of religion and theology, and his high appreciation of Scripture and of the Scriptural doctrine of salvation. He wrote repeatedly to him, reminding him of their days together at Erfurt, telling him about the 'Plague-chair' at Rome, and the intrigues carried on there by Eck, and encouraging him to persevere in his work. Expressions common to the 'poets' of his university days were curiously mingled in his letters with others of a religious kind. He would like to glorify, as a father of their fatherland, worthy of a golden statue and an annual festival, his friend Martin, who had been the first to venture to liberate the people of G.o.d, and show them the way to true piety. Not only from Italy, but also after his return, he employed his characteristic literary activity, by means of anonymous pamphlets, in the service of Luther. It was he who, towards the end of 1519, sent from Italy to Luther and Melancthon at Wittenberg, the Humanist theologian, John Hess, afterwards the reformer of the Church at Breslau. Crotus himself returned in the spring of 1520 to Germany.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 20.--ULRICH VON HUTTEN. (From an old woodcut.)]

Here these Humanist friends of the Lutheran movement had already been joined by Crotus' personal friend, Ulrich von Hutten, who not only could wield his pen with more vigour and acuteness than almost all his a.s.sociates, but who declared himself ready to take up the sword for the cause he defended, and to call in powerful allies of his own cla.s.s to the fight. He sprang from an old Franconian family, the heirs, not indeed of much wealth or property, but of an old knightly spirit of independence. Hatred of monasticism and all that belonged to it, must have been nursed by him from youth; for having been placed, when a boy, in a convent, he ran away with the aid of Crotus, when only sixteen. Sharing the literary tastes of his friend, he learned to write with proficiency the poetical and rhetorical Latin of the Humanists of that time. In spite of all his irregularities, adventures, and unsettlement of habits, he had preserved an elastic and elevated turn of mind, desirous of serving the interests of a 'free and n.o.ble learning,' and a knightly courage, which urged him to the fight with a frankness and straightforwardness not often found among his fellow-Humanists.

Whilst laughing at Luther's controversy as a petty monkish quarrel, he himself dealt a heavy blow to the traditional pretensions of the Papacy by the republication of a work by the famous Italian Humanist Laurentius Valla, long since dead, on the pretended donation of Constantine, in which the writer exposed the forgery of the edict purporting to grant the possession of Rome, Italy, and indeed the entire Western world to the Roman see. This work Hutten actually dedicated to Pope Leo himself. But what distinguished this knight and Humanist above all the others who were contending on behalf of learning and against the oppressions and usurpations of the Church and monasticism, were his thoroughly German sympathies, and his zeal for the honour and independence of his nation. He saw her enslaved in ecclesiastical bondage to the Papal see, and at the mercy of the avarice and caprice of Rome. He heard with indignation how scornfully the 'rough and simple Germans' were spoken of in Italy, how even on German soil the Roman emissaries openly paraded their arrogance, how some Germans, unworthy of the name, pandered to such scorn and contempt by a cringing servility which made them crouch before the Papal chair and sue for favour and office. He warned them to prepare for a mighty outburst of German liberty, already well-nigh strangled by Rome. At the same time he denounced the vices of his own countrymen, particularly that of drunkenness, and the p.r.o.neness to luxury and usurious dealing in trade and commerce, all of which, as we have seen, had been complained of by Luther. Nor less than of the honour of Germany herself, was he jealous of the honour and power of the Empire. In all that he did he was guided, perhaps involuntarily, but in a special degree, by the principles and interests of knighthood.

His order was indebted to the Empire for its chief support, although the imperial authority no less than that of his own cla.s.s, had sunk in a great measure through the increasing power of the different princes. In the prosperous middle cla.s.s of Germany he saw the spirit of trade prevailing to an excess, with its attendant evils. In the firmly-settled regulations of law and order, which had been established in Germany with great trouble at the end of the middle ages, he felt most out of his element: he longed rather to resort to the old method of force whenever he saw justice trampled on. And in this respect also Hutten proved true to the traditions of knighthood.

But in the material power required to give effect to his ideas of reform in the kindred spheres of politics and of the Church in her external aspect, Hutten was entirely wanting. More than this, we fail to find in him any clear and positive plans or projects of reform, nor any such calm and searching insight into the relations and problems before him as was indispensable for that object. His call, however rousing and stirring it was, died away in the distance of time and the dimness of uncertainty.

Hutten found, however, an active and powerful friend, and one versed in war and politics, in Francis von Sickingen, the 'knight of manly, n.o.ble, and courageous spirit,' as an old chronicler describes him.

He was the owner of fine estates, among them the strong castles of Landstuhl near Kaiserslautern, and Ebernburg near Kreuznach, and had already, in a number of battles conducted on his own account and to redress the wrongs of others, given ample proof of his energy and skill in raising hosts of rustic soldiery, and leading them with reckless valour, in pursuit of his objects, to the fray. Hutten won him over to support the cause of Reuchlin, still entangled in a prosecution by his old accusers of heresy, Hoogstraten and the Dominicans at Cologne. A sentence of the Bishop of Spires, rejecting the charges of his opponents, and mulcting them in the costs of the suit, had been annulled, at their instance, by the Pope. Against them and against the Dominican Order in particular, Sickingen now declared his open enmity, and his sympathy with the 'good old doctor Reuchlin.' In spite of delay and resistance, they were forced to pay the sum demanded. Meanwhile, no doubt under the influence of his friend Crotus, Hutten's eyes were opened about the monk Luther.

During a visit in January 1520 to Sickingen at his castle of Landstuhl, he consulted with him as to the help to be given to the man now threatened with excommunication, and Sickingen offered him his protection. Hutten at the same time proceeded to launch the most violent controversial diatribes and satires against Rome; one in particular, called 'The Roman Trinity,' wherein he detailed in striking triplets the long series of Romish pretensions, trickeries, and vexatious abuses. At Easter he held a personal interview at Bamberg with Crotus, on his return from Italy.

For the furtherance of their objects and desires, in respect to the affairs of Germany and the Church these two knights placed high hopes in the new young Emperor, who had left Spain, and on the 1st of July landed on the coast of the Netherlands. Sickingen had earned merit in his election. He had hoped to find in him a truly German Emperor, in contrast to King Francis of France, who was a compet.i.tor for the imperial crown. The Pope, as we have seen, had opposed his election; his chief advocate, on the contrary, was Luther's friend, the Elector Frederick. Support was also looked for from Charles'

brother Ferdinand, as being a friend of arts and letters. Hutten even hoped to obtain a place at his court.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2l.--FRANCIS VON SICKINGEN. (From an old engraving.)]

On this side, therefore, and from these quarters, Luther was offered a friendly hand.

We hear Hutten first mentioned by Luther in February 1520, in connection with his edition of the work of Valla. This work, though published two years before, had been made known to Luther then, for the first time, by a friend. It had awakened his keenest interest; the falsehoods exposed in its pages confirmed him in his opinion that the Pope was the real Antichrist.

Shortly after, a letter from Hutten reached Melancthon, containing Sickingen's offer of a.s.sistance; a similar communication forwarded to him some weeks before, had never reached its destination.

Sickingen had charged Hutten to write to Luther, but Hutten was cautious enough to make Melancthon the medium, in order not to let his dealings with Luther be known. Sickingen, he wrote, invited Luther, if menaced with danger, to stay with him, and was willing to do what he could for him. Hutten added that Sickingen might be able to do as much for Luther as he had done for Reuchlin; but Melancthon would see for himself what Sickingen had then written to the monks.

He spoke, with an air of mystery, of negotiations of the highest importance between Sickingen and himself; he hoped it would fare badly with the Barbarians, that is, the enemies of learning,--and all those who sought to bring them under the Romish yoke. With such objects in view, he had hopes even of Ferdinand's support. Crotus, meanwhile, after his interview with Hutten at Bamberg, advised Luther not to despise the kindness of Sickingen, the great leader of the German n.o.bility. It was rumoured that Luther, if driven from Wittenberg, would take refuge among the Bohemians. Crotus earnestly warned him against doing so. His enemies, he said, might force him to do so, knowing, as they did, how hateful the name of Bohemian was in Germany. Hutten himself wrote also to Luther, encouraging him, in pious Scriptural language, to stand firm and persevere in working with him for the liberation of their fatherland. He repeated to him the invitation of N., (he did not mention his name,) and a.s.sured him that the latter would defend him with vigour against his enemies of every kind.

Another invitation, at the same time, and of the same purport, came to Luther from the knight Silvester von Schauenburg. He too had heard that Luther was going to the Bohemians. He was willing, however, to protect him from his enemies, as were also a hundred other n.o.bles whom with G.o.d's help he would bring with him, until his cause was decided in a right and Christian manner.

Whether Luther really entertained the thought of flying to Bohemia, we cannot determine with certainty. But we know with what seriousness, as early as the autumn of 1518, after he had refused to retract to the Papal legate, he antic.i.p.ated the duty and necessity of leaving Wittenberg. How much more forcibly must the thoughts have recurred to him, when the news arrived of the impending decision at Rome, of the warning received from there by the Elector, and of the protest uttered even in Germany, and by such a prince as Duke George of Saxony, against any further toleration of his proceedings. The refuge which Luther had previously looked for at Paris was no longer to be hoped for. Since the Leipzig disputation he had advanced in his doctrines, and especially in his avowed support of Huss, far beyond what the university of Paris either liked or would endure.

Such then was Luther's position when he received these invitations.

They must have stirred him as distinct messages from above. The letters in which he replied to them have not been preserved to us.

We hear, however, that he wrote to Hutten, saying that he placed greater hopes in Sickingen than in any prince under heaven.

Schauenburg and Sickingen, he says, had freed him from the fear of man; he would now have to withstand the rage of demons. He wished that even the Pope would note the fact that he could now find protection from all his thunderbolts, not indeed in Bohemia, but in the very heart of Germany; and that, under this protection, he could break loose against the Romanists in a very different fas.h.i.+on to what he could now do in his official position.

As he reviewed, in the course of the contest, the proceedings of his enemies, and was further informed of the conduct of the Papal see, the picture of corruption and utter worthlessness, nay the antichristian character of the Church system at Rome, unfolded itself more and more painfully and fully before his eyes. The richest materials for this conclusion he found in the pamphlets of the writers already referred to, and in the descriptions sent from Italy by men like Hess and others, who shared his own convictions.

All this time, moreover, Luther's feelings as a German were more and more stirred within him, while thinking of what German Christianity in particular was compelled to suffer at the hands of Rome. A lively consciousness of this had been awakened in his mind since the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, with its protest against the claims of the Papacy, its statement of the grievances of the German nation, and the vigorous writings on that subject which were circulated at that time. He referred in 1519 to that Diet, as having drawn a distinction between the Romish Church and the Romish Curia, and repudiated the latter with its demands. As for the Romanists, who made the two identical, they looked on a German as a simple fool, a lubberhead, a dolt, a barbarian, a beast, and yet they laughed at him for letting himself be fleeced and pulled by the nose. Luther's words were now re-echoed in louder tones by Hutten, whose own wish, moreover, was to incite his fellow-countrymen, as such, to rise and betake themselves to battle.

There were certain of the laity who had already brought these German grievances in Church matters before the Diets, and who now gave vent in pamphlets to their denunciations of the corruption and tyranny of the Romish Church. As for Luther, he valued the judgment of a Christian layman, who had the Bible on his side, as highly, and higher, than that of a priest and prince of the Church, and ascribed the true character of a priest to all Christians alike: these Estates of the Augsburg Diet he speaks of as 'lay theologians.'

Leading laymen of the n.o.bility now came forward and offered to a.s.sist him in his labours on behalf of the German Church. Both he and Melancthon placed their confidence also gladly in the new German Emperor.

Several letters of Luther at this time, closely following on each other, express at once the keenest enthusiasm for the contest, and the idea of a Reformation proceeding from the laity, represented, as he understood them, by their established authorities and Estates.

We find in these letters powerful effusions of holy zeal and language full of Christian instruction, mingled with the most vehement outbursts of the natural pa.s.sion which was boiling in Luther's breast. Compared with them, the cleverest controversial writings of the Humanists, and even the fiercest satires of Hutten, sound only like rhetoric and elaborate displays of wit.