The Reformation, like the Renaissance, was born in the fold
of little states. Indeed, without them, it could not have survived,
nor could it have survived without the rivalry of Spain and France.
Like the humanists, the Reformers were opposed to the cloister
and were thoroughly committed to life in the world. The culture
roughly described as humanist, and the Reformation, arose as papal
vitality ebbed. Both movements were movements of emancipation,
drawing their inspiration and their legitimacy from an earlier
period. In their recasting of values, and their attempt to shape
new views of man, the humanists and Reformers were akin, but their
visions of life and of human capacity and their sources of authority
were quite different.
The Reformers were guided by early Christian authority rather
than pagan classics. They were less Greek and Roman than Hebrew.
While the humanists satirized the abuses of the Church, the Reformers
denounced them; the one group tolerated the papacy and concentrated
its scorn on superstitions and on the medieval religious orders;
the other was alienated by the practice and pretension of the
Renaissance papacy. It was not simply that Renaissance popes had
been derelict in their duty to cure souls, or that they were politically
minded and materialistic, and often guilty of gross nepotism and
flagrant immorality. What mattered was the abuse of the spiritual
office of the Pope. And the abuse rested on claims that became
the focus of the intellectual and theological grievances of the
Reformers. By and large the humanists had assumed that they knew
the way to salvation and devoted themselves to enriching the possibilities
of life, while the Reformers were seeking new avenues of assurance.
Behind this quest lay a deep soul-sickness or, perhaps, sensitivity
that had continued in Northern Europe alongside the Renaissance.
It existed in the country rather than in the gay and elegant court
and it shook the middle and lower orders more than the aristocracy.
A sense of doom had lingered long after the Plague. Even during
the Plague the reaction in the North had been more hysterical
and ghoulish than in the South. Dancing frenzies and flagellations
were less frequent in Italy. And one is tempted to attribute this
to climate. Throughout the 15th century the North was preoccupied
with death, judgment, and hell fire, and an abiding pessimism
about man.s fate runs through its prose and poetry. A peculiarly
macabre dance fashion cropped up, performed by men with skeletons.
The dance was intended to remind watchers of their mortality and
their equality before the relentless swathe of time' Woodcuts
popularized the steps and stages of it. Also, a spate of the early
printed pamphlets dealt with the art of dying. In art, morbid
undertones took on a bizarre realism. Van Eyck's The Last Judgment
portrayed the subterranean horror to which the evil were to be
committed. Bosch's strange sermons in paint are inhabited by wild,
nightmarish creatures. Even Durer, the realist, flanks his righteous
Christian knight on his way to a "city on a hill" with
a figure of death holding an hourglass, and a monstrous devil--half
wolf, half pig. Similarly, Schöngauer's St. Anthony Tormented
by Demons crawls with hobgoblins and foul friends. Luther believed
deeply in the reality and power of Satan and his demons.
As somber as the Northern climate may be, it was also the proximity
to death and the frequency of it that kept morbid pessimism alive.
In France and Burgundy, for instance, the desolation of the Hundred
Years War was followed by decimation between rival factions, not
to mention recurrences of the Plague. So, from the time of the
Plague, through wars, famines, and civil wars, there had been
no respite from the threat of death and no guarantee against the
onset of disaster.
A high level of death-consciousness was fertile soil for the Reformation,
and offers insight into Luther's unusually persistent concern
about salvation. For it was the terror of death that sent him
into an Augustinian monastery. Born the son of a miner and foundry
owner, at Eisleben in Saxony (1483). He did so well in school
that his father urged him to become a jurist. He studied arts
at the University of Erfurt for four years until, in 1505, a flash
of lightning struck him to the ground in a thunderstorm. Without
consulting his father he abandoned his intention to go on to law
for the robe and cowl. A psychologist, interested in history,
has called this Luther's ''identity crisis.'' Then he began to
seek a new ''life style.'' These phrases are ways of describing
the mystery of conversion.
In the monastery the earlier terror of death became a fearfulness
and trembling before God. And his inner torment was not eased
by the fact that his father disapproved of his course' Had he
done wrong? He felt inadequate to meet the demands of the Mosaic
code, let alone Christ's new commandment. The law condemned him.
He was a worm in the dust; how could he stand before the Omnipotent
Judge? He underwent vigorous austerities to make himself holier,
and could not find assurance. An errand to Rome shook him further.
He did not notice the glories of the Renaissance or the reminders
of antiquity: instead, he saw the worldliness and levity of the
clergy, both high and low. He climbed the Scala Sancta, 28 stairs,
with a Pater Noster and a kiss on each in order to release a soul
from purgatory, and at the top he found his faith in the indulgence
clouded by doubt.
His doubt redoubled on his return. Confession of particular sins
seemed inadequate for man's plight. The whole man needed release
from total inner corruption. Piece by piece and doubt by doubt,
Luther came to view the all-pervasiveness of sin and the only
solution that could satisfy his wounded conscience. Since man
was too deeply sunk in sin to do anything for his own salvation,
he had to be saved, or justified, by faith alone. Meanwhile he
was lecturing on Scriptures and was feeling his way toward a new
principle of hermeneutics, a new method of expounding the Word.
Like the medieval friars, he abandoned the allegorical and topological
approaches to the texts. But unlike the friars, who developed
a homiletic style of preaching, Luther concentrated on the inner
meaning and underlying unity of the Scripture. His attention was
fixed on the agony of Christ, forsaken because of the sins of
man that He had taken upon Himself. Man could accept his utter
worthlessness and yet take joy in the faith that was made possible
through Christ's sacrifice' God was a merciful and righteous father,
and not a fierce, irascible judge. The Reformation, one could
say, occurred because a brilliant professor was doing his job-preparing
thoughtful, original lectures.
Luther's thoughts tumbled out of the classroom into the marketplace
in 1517 when plenary indulgences were being hawked by a Dominican,
Tetzel, near Wittenburg. For one-fourth of a florin, buyers were
assured that as soon as the coin the coffer rings The soul from
purgatory springs. Faithful to academic custom, Luther nailed
95 propositions (or theses) in Latin on the door of the castle
church as an open invitation to a debate on their merits. They
began with a popular attack on the venality of Rome, passed through
the doubts as to the Pope's right to remit punishment inflicted
by God, and finished by asserting that nothing but contrition
could remit spiritual guilt and nothing else was necessary.
Luther's doubts about the extent of the Pope's power to indulge
were, indeed, legitimate, for the question had never been definitively
settled. Beyond that, however, he had implied an unorthodox way
to salvation, and had begun the Reformation.
The press quickly turned his traditional appeal for a debate
into an appeal to the people. And, as the debate over indulgences
waxed, Luther grew progressively bolder and his criticisms of
the Church became more and more fundamental. Finally-- after he
had been excommunicated-Luther declared that he could not recognize
the authority of popes and councils because they had often contradicted
each other. He staked his faith and, indeed, his life on Scripture
and reason. ''Here I stand,'' he is said to have said at the Diet
of Worms (1521), "I cannot do otherwise.'' His Latin works,
published at this time, sold out rapidly.
For a year, Frederick the Wise of Saxony hid Luther in his strongest
castle, but meanwhile under the direction of Luther's close friend,
Melanchthon, the Reformation in Wittenberg was proceeding. Luther
directed it with letters while he translated the New Testament
into rich German. Revisions of it and the German Old Testament
followed later.
In 1520 he had published three treatises defining his position
and calling for action. In the Address to the Christian Nobility
of the German Nation he appealed to the German ruling classes
to throw off the yoke of Rome. He maintained that each believer
is his own priest--a doctrine that could yield embarrassing results.
Luther meant that any layman could attain forgiveness independent
of a priest. The priesthood was only a special vocation. With
this stroke, he broke the power of the Church over secular authorities--the
power to give or withhold the meas of salvation--and encouraged
the authorities to reform an erring church. In On the Babylonian
Captivity of the Church he attacked the sacramental system, denied
four of the traditional sacraments, and kept only Baptism, the
Eucharist, and, in a revised sense, Penance. Confession was possible
between laymen. Marriage was a civil affair to which the Church
could give its blessing. Ordination and confirmation were rites
of the Church but were not sacraments. Extreme unction was unscriptural
and, therefore, was wholly renounced.
As for the Eucharist, he wanted both the elements distributed
to the laity, denied that it was a reenactment of the sacrifice
of the Cross, and deviated from the doctrine of transubstantiation,
abandoning the traditional distinction between essence and accident.
Christ was in, with and under the elements.
Finally, The Liberty of a Christian Man set out the doctrine of
justification by faith, making faith primary, and a free gift
of God, and good works of no heavenly merit but simply the fruit
of faith. God, in His mercy, gratuitously declared men just and
sinless, men who were, in fact, riven with sin. He would, like
a merciful judge, declare the guilty criminal to be not guilty
because someone else had made reparation for him. Then the unworthy
man could feel free from the terror of God's justice, free from
the duress of judgment and death, and live in the joy of an eternal
salvation when for no reason of his doing but because Christ's
righteousness had been imputed to his credit. Liberty was conceived
as a spiritual rather than a political attribute--a liberty, or
power, to act righteously--yet, here again, Luther's words were
extended to ends that he did not intend. These early writings
laid the groundwork for the later additions and subtractions of
Reformed theology.
The priesthood of all believers was never meant to make every
man his own prophet. In several areas (Strassburg, Augsburg, Zurich,
and Moravia), separate movements of Christian radicalism developed,
some passive, some active. Under the inspiration of radical Lutherans
who had turned apocalyptic, the latter sort spread their mystic
millenarianism through Germany and the Low Countries, and goaded.ed
Luther for support. Unlike Luther, these wanted to bring society,
not just faith, under the law of the gospel. Some were even prepared
to use force to bring the whole society to purity. Naturally,
they attracted the lower classes in town and country. Theirs was
a Utopian movement and also a vent for class bitterness. Others
were less millenarian, suppressing the need to separate the church
from worldly society, and emphasizing pacifism and the love-ethic.
Luther fulminated against both branches as fiercely as the Catholics,
but neither burnings, drownings, nor massacres seemed to halt
their spread.
Amsterdam caught the enthusiasm around 1530; and in 1534 prophets
of the revolutionary wing penetrated the city of Munster to establish
the Kingdom of God on earth. The city had just rebelled against
its prince-bishop and was in terror of subjection. During a twelve-month
siege the Anabaptists instituted a communistic state. Since supplies
were running low, this was practical as well as Utopian. Similarly,
as the supply of men was depleted by skirmished, polygamy was
instituted for the protection of the womenfolk as well as for
personal and unorthodox ethical reasons. To the respectable this
hew Jerusalem was an enormity to be crushed and scattered without
hint of mercy. Only in this century were the cages containing
the bones of the leaders--John Leyden and Burgomaster Knipperdalling--removed
from a steeple where they had swung in derisive display for centuries.
Munster's inglorious defeat cut the heart out of the aggressive
branch of Anabaptism, but its pacifist, pietistic aspect continued
to conquer the hearts of the downtrodden and dispossessed.
Luther was even more violent in his denunciation of the peasants
who demanded ''liberty'' in social terms on the basis of scriptural
authority' The German peasantry were in an ambivalent position
in the 16th century. Rising prices were in their favor, but the
gap between prices for agricultural produce and industrial equipment
was growing instead of decreasing. Not that peasants needed many
tools. But their returns were not as large or fast as the city
merchant's returns, and the growing disparity was irksome. More
trying than this, though, were the downward pressures foisted
on them by the Knights and magnates. The Knights as a class were
threatened with decline because their rents and services, being
relatively fixed, fell behind climbing prices. They were eager
to reimpose maximum obligations on a peasantry that was eager
to escape them.
The Peasants War was directed against the injustice and oppression
of these landlords. Coming as it did in the early states of the
Reformation, and encouraged as it was in some areas by convinced
Anabaptists, it threatened to drown Luther's work in a torrent
of civil strife. At first Luther was noncommittal; he recognized
that many of the peasants' grievances were genuine, but as the
peasants indulged in indiscriminate pillaging he realized tue
danger to his own cause and turned against them with extraordinary
venom. Prices, he urged, could better merit heaven by smiting,
slaying and stabbing rebellious subjects than by prayer. It was
said that over 100,000 peasants were killed in battle or executed
afterward, and crippling fines were laid upon those who escaped
with their lives. From this time the peasantry ceased to count
in German politics; princes and magnates had vindicated their
power once and for all. Where the revolt had been most vigorous,
in Bohemia and Austria, the savage reprisals alienated the peasantry
from Luther and the decline of Lutheranism in southern Germany
dates from the crushing defeat of the Revolt rather than from
the Counter-Reformation.
Luther must be considered as a consummate theological politician.
His ultimate concerns were inner, yet he had to take political
stands to protect the Reformation he desired. Although not excusing
them' political needs go far to explain his dubious moral stands
on this and other issues. Above all he was fearful for the future,
and his siding with the princes was a frank recognition that it
was only in their support that the Reformation had any chance
of success. Social revolution, chaos, Anabaptism, and even Judaism
were threats to the cause that he was swift to denounce. His anti-Semitism
was religiously rather than racially determined, but here, as
in other matters, he failed to rid himself of the current prejudices
of his place and time.
Happily, the dictates of political realism coincided with the
ethical consequences of his doctrines. Man was such that he needed
the civil sword to contain him in order and tranquility and to
bind him in a tolerable state of social cohesion' His liberty
was a purely spiritual freedom from the duress of death. It was
an inner grace that enabled man to fulfill the law because he
had been made righteous by the free gift of God. So Luther preached
absolute and unconditional obedience. He refused to condone even
passive resistance to the secular arm except by princes. He did
nothing to alter the habit of the authoritarian conscience. Indeed,
he regarded wicked rulers as God-sent scourges. Lutheranism exchanged
obedience to the Pope for abject obedience to the State.
Luther's economic ethics were equally conservative, and in this
shared the resentments of his petty bourgeois background. He did
not visualize money as a productive thing in itself and therefore
forbade all usury. This was to be more medieval than the schoolmen.
Like St. Thomas, he believed that each person had his proper place
in society and should keep it, and he used the word ''calling"
to suggest that God wants a Christian to be dedicated to his vocation.
If this was old-fashioned, his appeal to German nationalism was
radical and modern, foreshadowing the virulent German- consciousness
of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Imperial Knights bad early
rallied to his standard, prepared to do battle for the emancipation
of Germany from the Roman yoke. Although this was one of Luther's
themes, his hopes were for peaceful reformation. But his vigorous
German style and his outcries against the exploitation of Germany
by foreigners were calculated to raise feelings of outraged patriotism.
It was Luther's periodic fury and what seemed to be his reckless
rending of the unity of Christendom that alienated the majority
of humanists from him. Some, like Melanchthon, were convinced,
but most found his convictions hard to stomach because they were
held so passionately. The humanists temper was more urbane. A
vast temperamental gulf separated them from the ''true believer.''
Yet the root of the differences lay in their views of the nature
of man and of human destiny. lt was no less than the difference
between the Renaissance and the Reformation.
Erasmus went to the heart of the problem in a tract On the
Freedom of the Will (1524). Initially he had sympathized with
Luther. Had he not also attacked the barren formalism and legalism
of the Church, its manifest corruptions, its archaic superstitions,
like the veneration of relics? He had also disapproved of the
abuse of indulgences, and may be regarded as a forerunner of the
Reformation. Nevertheless Erasmus accepted the authority of the
Church. He wanted to reform it morally from within, and to trim
off its impurities. He was not pressed by desperate doubts to
reach out for a new way to salvation. Morals were his concern
as salvation was Luther's.
Their debate over free will must be taken in a spiritual sense'
the free will was not the mundane choosing of this or that during
the day. The issue was whether a man could help himself toward
salvation by his own voluntary acts. Erasmus thought so, without
denying the cooperation of grace in bringing about good works.
Luther thought not.
Granted that a heathen could be upright and decent, but ho man,
no matter how pure, was worthy of justification because every
human deed was tainted by selfishness and pride. God alone had
the freedom to justify whom He chose. One believed that man could,
to some extent, make his own destiny, and the other believed that
all man could do was throw himself on the love and mercy of God.
The difference was insoluble.
In an age when such differences mattered more than life, it was
inevitable that the Church should encourage the Emperor to root
out the Reformation with fire and the sword. Many were burned
and executed and, to his dying day, Luther expected to be arrested
at any time for trial as a heretic. When he died (1546) he was
full of foreboding about the future.