Part 17 (1/2)
Great as was the surprise which Luther occasioned by his speedy marriage, it was no greater than the talk and sensation that immediately ensued.
Among even his adherents and friends--especially the 'wiseacres' of whom he had spoken--there was much astonishment and shaking of heads. It was considered that the great man had lowered himself, and gossip was busy in asking what reasons could have induced him to take the step. Melancthon, his devoted friend, lost for the moment, as is shown by his letter of June 16 to the philologist Camerarius, his accustomed self-possession. He admitted that married life was a holy state, and one well-pleasing to G.o.d, and that its results might be beneficial to Luther's nature and character; but he was of opinion that Luther's lowering himself to this condition was a lamentable act of weakness, and injurious to his reputation--and that, too, at a time when Germany was more than ever in need of all his spirit and his energy. Luther had not invited him to be present on the 13th, from a suspicion that Melancthon would scarcely approve of what he was doing. A few days afterwards, however, he warmly besought Link, their common friend, to be sure and attend their nuptial feast on the 27th. That Luther, in this respect also, had acted as a man of strong character and determination, would soon be evident to them all.
His enemies seized the occasion of his marriage to spread vulgar falsehoods about him, which soon were further exaggerated, and have been raked up shamelessly again, even in our own time, or at least repeated in veiled and scandalous inuendoes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 29.--LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1525.) At Wittenberg.]
As for Luther himself, he at first felt strange in the new mode of life which he had entered at the age of forty-one, so suddenly, and in the midst of his arduous labours, and the stirring public events and struggles of the time. At the same time he could not but be aware of the unfavourable reception which his step would encounter, even with his friends at Wittenberg. Melancthon found him, during the early days of his married life, in a restless and uncertain mood. But he remained firm in his conviction that G.o.d had called him to the married state. The same day that Melancthon wrote so anxiously to Camerarius about his marriage, Luther himself wrote to Spalatin, saying, 'I have made myself so vile and contemptible forsooth, that all the angels, I hope, will laugh, and all the devils weep.' In his letter of invitation to his friends for June 27, friendly humour is mingled with words of deep earnestness; nay, even with thoughts of death, and a longing for release from this infatuated world. Later on Luther preached, on the ground of his own experiences, about the blessings, the joys, and the purifying burdens of the state ordained and sanctified by G.o.d, and never without an expression of grat.i.tude to G.o.d for having brought him to enter into it. Seventeen years after his marriage he bore testimony to Catharine in his will, that she had been to him a 'pious, faithful, and devoted wife, always loving, worthy, and beautiful.'
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 30.--CATHARINE VON BORA, LUTHER'S WIFE. (From a Portrait by Cranach about 1525.) At Berlin.]
Of the wedding feast of June 27 we have no further details. It was, so far as concerns the repast, a very simple one, as compared with the elaborate nuptial entertainments then in fas.h.i.+on. The university presented Luther with a beautifully chased goblet of silver, bearing round its base the words: 'The honourable University of the Electoral town of Wittenberg presents this wedding gift to Doctor Martin Luther and his wife Kethe von Bora. [Footnote: The goblet is now in the possession of the University of Greifswald.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3l.--LUTHER'S RING FROM CATHARINE.]
Apartments in the convent, which Brisger also quitted shortly after to become a minister, were appointed by the Elector as the dwelling-place of Luther. Here, therefore, Catharine had to manage her household.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 82.--LUTHER'S DOUBLE RING.]
Protestant posterity has been anxious to retain a memorial of this marriage in the wedding rings of the newly-married couple. These, however, were probably not used at the marriage itself, since Luther wished to have it solemnised so quickly and without the knowledge of others. But a ring has been preserved, which Luther, to judge from the inscription (D. Martino Luthero Catharina v. Boren 13 Jun.
1525), received at any rate from his Kate as a supplementary reminiscence of the day. In recent times--about 1817--it has been multiplied by several copies. It bears the figure of the crucified Saviour and the instruments of His death; in perfect keeping with the spirit of the Reformer, whose marriage, like the other acts of his life, was concluded in the name of Christ crucified. There exists also, in the Ducal Museum at Brunswick, a double ring, consisting of two interfastened in the middle, of which one bears a diamond with his initials M. L. D., and the other a ruby with the initials of his wife, C. v. B. The inner surface of the first ring is engraved with the words: 'WAS. GOT. ZUSAMEN. FIEGT,' (Those whom G.o.d hath joined together), and the second, 'SOL. KEIN. MENSCH.
SCHEIDEN,' (Shall no man put asunder). This double ring was probably given by some friend to Luther, or, as others suppose, to his wife.
PART V.
_LUTHER AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH, TO THE FIRST RELIGIOUS PEACE_. 1525-1532.
CHAPTER I.
SURVEY.
The year 1525 marks in the life of Luther and the history of the Reformation an epoch and a departure of general importance.
Luther's preaching had originally forced its way among the German people and its various cla.s.ses, with an energy and strength never counted on by its opponents. It seemed impossible to calculate how far the ferment would extend, and what would be its ultimate results. It was the idea of the Elector Frederick the Wise, now dead, that by simply letting the word of the gospel unfold itself quietly and work its way without hindrance, the truth could not fail eventually to penetrate all Christendom, or at least the Christian world of Germany, and thus accomplish a peaceful victory. This hope had guided him during his lifetime in his relations with Luther, and no one appreciated and responded to it more loyally than Luther himself. But now, as we have seen, those German princes who adhered to the old Church system had begun to form a close alliance, and were meditating means of remedying, albeit in their own fas.h.i.+on, certain evils in the Church. Erasmus, still the representative of a powerful modern movement of the intellect, had at length broken finally with Luther, and renewed his former allegiance to the Romish Church. From the German n.o.bility, whose sympathy and co-operation Luther had once so boldly and hopefully invoked in his contest with the Papacy, it was vain, since the fatal enterprise of Sickingen, which Luther himself had been forced to condemn, to expect any material a.s.sistance in furtherance of the Evangelical cause. True, there was the extensive rising of another cla.s.s, the peasantry, who likewise appealed to the gospel. But genuine disciples of the gospel could not fail to see in this movement, with terror, how a perverse conception of the sacred text led to errors and crimes which even Luther wished to see suppressed in blood. And the Catholic n.o.bles took advantage of this rising to persecute with the greater rigour all evangelical preaching, and to extend, without further inquiry, their denunciation of the insurgents to those of evangelical sympathies who held entirely aloof from the insurrection. Luther, in his dealings with the n.o.bles and peasants, failed to preserve that boldness and confidence of mind and language which he had previously displayed towards his fellow-countrymen. That his cause, indeed, was the cause of G.o.d, he remained unshakenly convinced; but in a sadder spirit than he had ever shown before, he left G.o.d's will to determine what amount of visible success that cause should attain to in the present evil world, or how far the decision should depend upon His last great Judgment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 33.--The Saxon Electors, FREDERICK THE WISE, JOHN, and JOHN FREDERICK. (From a Picture by Cranach.) At Nuremberg.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 34.--Facsimile of FREDERICK's signature.]
Even before the Peasants' War broke out, the proceedings of the fanatics had begun to hamper and disturb his labours in the field of reformation, and had prepared for him much pain and tribulation. He had to grow distrustful of so many whom he had regarded as brothers, and of their manner of proclaiming the Word of G.o.d, Whom they pretended to serve. He already heard of men among them, who not only rejected infant baptism, and openly attacked his own, no less than the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament, but who impugned the universal belief of Christendom in the Triune G.o.d and the Divinity of the Saviour. Early in 1525 news reached him of such a man at Nuremberg, John Denk, the Rector of the school there, who was expelled on that account by the magistrates. Luther's own doctrine of the presence of Christ's Body in the Lord's Supper, which he had previously to defend against Carlstadt, his former colleague and fellow-combatant, now found a far more formidable opponent in the Zurich Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. The latter, in a letter of November 16, 1524, to Alber, a preacher at Reutlingen, had already disputed the Real Presence, by interpreting the words 'This _is_ my body' to mean 'This _signifies_ my body.' In March 1525 he made known this interpretation to the world by publis.h.i.+ng his letter, together with a pamphlet 'On the True and False Religion.' He was joined at Basle by Oecolampadius, whom Luther had welcomed formerly as a fellow-labourer, and who published his own interpretation of the words of Christ. Butzer and Capito, the evangelical preachers at Strasburg, inclined to the same view, which threatened to spread rapidly over the South of Germany. The opposition now encountered by Luther was far more dangerous for his teaching than the theories and agitations of a Carlstadt, since whatever judgment may be formed about its merits, it proceeded at any rate from men of far more thoughtful minds, more solid theological acquirements, and more honest reverence for the Word of G.o.d. Herewith then began that division of opinion among the ranks of the Evangelical Reformers, which served more than anything else to r.e.t.a.r.d the fresh and vigorous progress of the Reformation, and infected even Luther's spirit with the bitterness of the controversy it entailed.
At the same time, however, Luther had now won firm ground for the Evangelical cause upon a fixed and extensive territory. Within these limits it was possible to construct a new Church system, upon stable foundations and with a new const.i.tution. John, the new Elector of Saxony, did not enjoy, it is true, the same high consideration throughout the Empire as his brother Frederick, Luther's great protector, and he was also his inferior as a statesman. But with Luther himself both he and his son John Frederick had already maintained a friendly personal intercourse, such as his predecessor had carefully avoided. Nor did his disposition lead him, like Frederick, to pay any such regard to the possible preservation of Church unity in the German Empire and Western Christendom; on the contrary, he soon showed his readiness to undertake independently, as sovereign of his country, the establishment of a new Evangelical Church. Prussia had just preceded him in a reform embracing the whole country, under the former Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, their present Duke. The Elector now found a further ally for the work in the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the most active and politically the most important of all. As a young man of only twenty years of age, in the beginning of 1525, he had rendered valuable service by his energy, resolution, and warlike ability, in the defeat of Sickingen, and again when opposed to the seditious peasants. Already before the Peasants' War commenced, he had acquired, mainly through Melancthon, whom he had met when travelling, a knowledge and love of the evangelical doctrines. His father-in-law, Duke George of Saxony, had vainly endeavoured, after their common victory over the insurgents, to alienate him from the cause of the hateful Luther, who he said was the author of so much mischief. But the menaces hurled against that cause by the Catholic States of the Empire served only to attach him more closely and loyally to John and John Frederick, and thence resulted in the following spring the League of Torgau, which was joined also by the princes of Brunswick-Luneburg, Anhalt, and Mecklenburg, and the town of Magdeburg. The co-operation of the territorial princes made it possible to procure for the Reformation and its Church system a firm position in the German Empire against the Emperor and the hostile Catholic States. And, at the same time, it offered means for establis.h.i.+ng on the ground newly occupied by the Reformation itself, firm and generally recognised regulations of Church polity, and defending them from being disturbed by the proceedings of fanatics.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 35.--PHILIP OF HESSE. (From a woodcut of Brosamer.)]