Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

class after another bears the whip of the jurist's angry doggerel-

peasant, mechanic, beggar, gambler, miser, usurer, astrologer, lawyer,

pedant, fop, philosopher, priest; the vanity of ambitious men, the

idleness of students, the venality of tradesmen, the dishonesty of

journeymen- all get their share of the blows, and Brant reserves his

respect only for the pious and orthodox Catholic who ordains his

life so as to gain paradise. Beautifully printed, and adorned with

woodcuts that pointed each barb of the tale, the book sailed to

triumph everywhere in Western Europe, through a dozen translations;

next to the Bible it was the most widely read book of the time.

Brant laid his lash tenderly upon the clergy, but Thomas Murner, a

Franciscan friar, attacked monks and priests, bishops and nuns with

satires at once sharper, coarser, and wittier than Brant's. The

priest, said Murner, is interested in money more than in religion;

he coaxes every possible penny from his parishioners, then pays part

of his gleanings to his bishop for permission to keep a concubine.

Nuns make love clandestinely, and the one who has the most children is

chosen abbess. `061581 Murner, however, agreed with Brant in

fidelity to the Church; he denounced Luther as one more fool; and in a

touching poem Von dem Untergang des christlichen Glaubens he mourned

the decline of Christian belief and the deepening chaos of the

religious world.

If the immense popularity of these satires revealed the scorn in

which even loyal Catholics held their clergy, the still more

passionate satires of Ulrich von Hutten abandoned all hope for the

self-reform of the Church, and called for open revolt. Born of a

knightly family in Franconia, Ulrich was sent at eleven to the

monastery of Fulda with the expectation that he would become a monk.

After six years of probation he fled (1505), and led the life of a

wandering student, composing and reciting poetry, begging his way

and often shelterless, but finding means to make love to a lass who

left her signature in his blood. `061582 His small body was almost

consumed with fever; his left leg was often made useless by ulcers and

swellings; his temper took on the irritability of an invalid, but

Eoban Hesse found him "altogether lovable." `061583 A kindly bishop

took him to Vienna, where the humanists welcomed him, but he quarreled

with them and moved on to Italy. He studied at Pavia and Bologna, shot

poisoned epigrams at Pope Julius II, joined an invading German army in

order to eat, and then, always in pain, made his way back to Germany.

At Mainz fortune gave him a passing smile: he wrote a panegyric on

young Archbishop Albrecht, and received 200 guilders ($5,000?) in

acknowledgment. Albrecht's court was now a very hive of humanists,

many of them irreverent freethinkers. `061584 There Hutten began his

contribution to the Epistolae obscurorum virorum; there he met

Erasmus, and was captivated by the great scholar's learning, wit,

and charm. With Albrecht's guilders and aid from his relenting father,

he again sought the sun of Italy, blasting at every stop the

"hypocritical, corrupt race of theologians and monks." `061585 From

the papal capital he sent a warning to Crotus Rubianus:

-

Renounce your desire to see Rome, my friend; what you seek there

is not to be found there any longer.... You may live from plunder,

commit murder and sacrilege... you may revel in lust and deny God in

heaven; but if you do but bring money to Rome you are a most

respectable person. Virtue and heavenly blessings are sold here; you

may even buy the privilege of sinning in future. You would then be

crazy to be good; sensible folk will be wicked. `061586

-

With gay irony he dedicated to Leo X (1517) a new edition of Valla's

devastating treatise on the fictitious "Donation of Constantine,"

and assured the Pope that most of his papal predecessors had been

tyrants, robbers, and extortioners, who had turned the punishments

of the next world into revenue for themselves. `061587 This work

came into Luther's hands, and warmed his ire against the papacy.

Despite the vituperative violence in many of Hutten's poems, they

won him a scattered fame in Germany. Repatriating himself in 1517,

he was entertained at Nuremberg by Konrad Peutinger; and at this

rich scholar's suggestion Maximilian crowned Hutten poet laureate.

Albrecht now took him into his diplomatic service, and sent him on

important missions as far afield as Paris. When Hutten returned to

Mainz (1518) he found Germany agitated by Luther's theses on

indulgences; and he must have smiled to see his own easygoing

Archbishop uncomfortably involved. Luther was being summoned to

Augsburg to face Cardinal Cajetan and a charge of heresy.

Hutten hesitated; he was attached to the Archbishop emotionally

and financially, but he felt in his blood the call to war. He

mounted his horse and rode off to Augsburg.

VIII. THE GERMAN CHURCH

-

What actually was the condition of the German Church in the youth of

Luther? One indication appeared in the readiness of high ecclesiastics

to accept the criticism and critics of the Church. There were some

scattered atheists whose names are lost in the censorship of time; and

Erasmus mentions "men amongst us who think, like Epicurus, that the

soul dies with the body." `061588 There were skeptics among the

humanists. There were mystics who denied the necessity of Church or

priest as intermediaries between man and God, and emphasized inward

religious experience as against ceremonies and sacraments. Here and

there were little pockets of Waldensians who denied the distinction

between priests and laymen; and in eastern Germany were some

Hussites who called the pope Antichrist. In Eger two brothers, John

and Lewin of Augsburg, denounced indulgences as a hoax (1466). `061589

Johan von Wesel, an Erfurt professor, preached predestination and

election by divine grace, rejected indulgences, sacraments, and

prayers to the saints, and declared: "I despise the pope, the

Church, and the councils, and I worship only Christ"; he was condemned

by the Inquisition, recanted, and died in prison (1481). `061590

Wessel Gansfort, wrongly known as Johann Wessel, questioned

confession, absolution, indulgences, and purgatory, made the Bible the

sole rule of faith, and made faith the sole source of salvation;

here was Luther in a sentence. "If I had read his works before,"

said Luther in 1522, "my enemies might have thought that Luther had

borrowed everything from Wessel, so great is the agreement between our

spirits." `061591

Nevertheless, by and large, religion was flourishing in Germany, and

the overwhelming majority of the people were orthodox and- between

their sins and their cups- pious. The German family was almost a

church in itself, where the mother served as catechist and the

father as priest; prayer was frequent, and books of family devotions

were in every home. For those who could not read there were picture

books, Biblia pauperum, illustrating the stories of Christ, Mary,

and the saints. Pictures of the Virgin were as numerous as those of

Jesus; the rosary was recited with hopeful frequency; Jakob

Sprenger, the inquisitor, founded a fraternity for its repetition; and

one German prayer was addressed to the only really popular Trinity:

"Glory be to the Virgin, the Father, and the Son." `061592

Some of the clergy were as religious as the people. There must

have been- though their names were rarely heard above the din made

by wickedness- faithful ministers of the faith to produce or sustain

such widespread piety among the people. The parish priest, as like

as not, had a concubine or a common-law wife; `061593 but the

lion-loined Germans seem to have condoned this as an improvement

upon promiscuity; and had not the popes themselves, in this lusty

period, rebelled against celibacy? As for the "regular" clergy-

those subject to a monastic regula or rule- many of their orders

were now engaged in earnest self-reform. The Benedictines had

settled into a half-conventual, half-worldly ease, and the Teutonic

Knights continued their loose morals, martial cruelties, and

territorial greed; but the Dominican, Franciscan, and Augustinian

friars returned to the observance of their rules, and performed many

works of practical benevolence. `061594 Most zealous in this reform

were the Augustinian Eremites, originally anchorites or hermit

monks, but later gathered into communities. They kept with apparent

fidelity their monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,

and were learned enough to fill many chairs in German universities. It

was this order that Luther chose when he decided to become a monk.

The complaints against the German clergy were chiefly against the

prelates, and on the score of their wealth and worldliness. Some

bishops and abbots had to organize the economy and administration of

great areas that had come into the possession of the Church; they were

mitered or tonsured feudal seigneurs, and not always the most

lenient. `061595 These ecclesiastics behaved like men of the world

rather than men of God; and it was alleged that several of them rode

to provincial or federal diets with their concubines in their

trains. `061596 A learned Catholic prelate and historian, Johannes

Janssen, has summed up perhaps too severely the abuses of the German

Church on the eve of the Reformation:

-

The contrast of pious love and worldly greed, of godly

renunciation and godless self-seeking, made itself apparent in the

ranks of the clergy as well as in other classes of society. By too

many among the ministers of God and religion preaching and the care of

souls were altogether neglected. Avarice, the besetting sin of the

age, showed itself among the clergy of all orders and degrees, in

their anxiety to increase to the utmost extent all clerical rents

and incomes, taxes and perquisites. The German Church was the

richest in Christendom. It was reckoned that nearly a third of the

whole landed property of the country was in the hands of the Church-

which made it all the more reprehensible in the ecclesiastical

authorities to be always seeking to augment their possessions. In many

towns the church buildings and institutions covered the greater part

of the ground.

Within the sacerdotal body itself there were also the most marked

contrasts in respect of income. The lower orders of parochial

clergy, whose merely nominal stipends were derived from the many

precarious tithes, were often compelled by poverty- if not tempted

by avarice- to work at some trade which was quite inconsistent with

their position, and which exposed them to the contempt of their

parishioners. The higher ecclesiastical orders, on the other hand,

enjoyed abundant and superfluous wealth, which many of them had no

scruples in parading in such an offensive manner as to provoke the

indignation of the people, the jealousy of the upper classes, and

the scorn of all serious minds.... In many places complaints were loud

against the mercenary abuse of sacred things... against the large

and frequent sums of money sent to Rome, of annates and hush money.

A bitter feeling of hatred against the Italians... began gradually

to gain ground, even amongst men who, like Archbishop Berthold von

Henneberg, were true sons of the Holy Church. "The Italians," he wrote

on September 9, 1496, "ought to reward the Germans for their services,

and not drain the sacerdotal body with frequent extortions of

gold. `061597

-

Germany might have forgiven the worldliness of its bishops if it

could have been spared the pretensions and exactions of the popes. The

rising spirit of nationalism resented the claims of the papacy to hold

no emperor legitimate till papally confirmed, and to depose emperors

and kings at will. Conflicts between secular and ecclesiastical

authorities persisted in appointments to benefices, in the overlapping

jurisdiction of civil and episcopal courts, in the immunity of the

clergy from nearly all civil legislation. German nobles looked with

fretting concupiscence upon the rich possessions of the Church, and

businessmen grieved that monasteries claiming exemption from

taxation were competing with them in manufacturing and

trade. `061598 The quarrel at this stage was over material concerns

rather than over theological differences. Says another Catholic

historian:

-

It was the general opinion in Germany that in the matter of taxation

the Roman Curia put on the pressure to an unbearable degree....

Again and again was the complaint made that chancery dues,

annates... and consecration fees were unduly raised or unlawfully

extended; that numerous new indulgences were published without the

consent of the bishops of the country, and tithe after tithe raised

for a crusade and diverted to another object. Even men devoted to

the Church and the Holy See... often declared that the German

grievances against Rome were, from a financial point of view, for

the most part only too well founded. `061599

-

In 1457 Martin Meyer, Chancellor to Archbishop Dietrich of Mainz,

addressed to Cardinal Piccolomini an angry recapitulation of the

wrongs that Germany suffered from the Roman Curia:

-

The election of prelates is frequently postponed without cause,

and benefices and dignities of all kinds are reserved for the

cardinals and papal secretaries; Cardinal Piccolomini himself has been

granted a general reservation in an unusual and unheard-of form in

three German provinces. Expectancies *06038 without number are

conferred, annates and other taxes are collected harshly, and no delay

is granted, and it is also known that more has been exacted than the

sums due. Bishoprics have been bestowed not on the most worthy but

on the highest bidder. For the sake of amassing money, new indulgences

have daily been published, and war tithes imposed, without

consulting the German prelates. Lawsuits that ought to have been dealt

with at home have been hastily transferred to the Apostolic

tribunal. The Germans have been treated as if they were rich and

stupid barbarians, and drained of their money by a thousand cunning

devices.... For many years Germany has lain in the dust, bemoaning her

poverty and her sad fate. But now her nobles have awakened as from

sleep; now they have resolved to shake off the yoke, and to win back

their ancient freedom. `0615100

-

When Cardinal Piccolomini became Pius II (1458) he defied this

challenge; from Diether von Isenburg he demanded 20,500 guilders

before confirming him as the next archbishop of Mainz (1459).

Diether refused to pay, charging that the sum exceeded every

precedent; Pius excommunicated him; Diether ignored the ban, and

several German princes supported him. Diether engaged a Nuremberg

jurist, Gregor Heimburg, to arouse public sentiment for giving

councils supremacy over the popes; Heimburg went to France to

arrange concerted action against the papacy; for a time it seemed that

the northern nations would throw off allegiance to Rome. But papal

agents detached from the movement one after another of Diether's

allies, and Pius appointed Adolf of Nassau to replace him. The

armies of the two archbishops fought a bloody war; Diether was

defeated; he addressed to the German leaders a warning that unless

they stood together they would be repeatedly oppressed; and this

manifesto was one of the first documents printed by

Gutenberg. `0615101

German discontent was not quieted by this victory of the popes.

After a large sum of money had gone from Germany to Rome in the

jubilee of 1500, a diet at Augsburg demanded that part of the money

should be returned to Germany. `0615102 The Emperor Maximilian

grumbled that the pope drew a hundred times more revenue from

Germany than he himself could collect. In 1510, being at war with Pope

Julius II, he directed the humanist Wimpheling to draw up a list of

Germany's grievances against the papacy; for a time he thought of

proposing the separation of the German Church from Rome, but

Wimpheling dissuaded him on the ground that he could not expect

persistent support from the princes. Nevertheless all the economic

developments of this age prepared for Luther. A basic diversity of

material interests finally opposed the German Reformation- demanding

an end to the flow of German money into Italy- to an Italian

Renaissance that financed poetry and art with transalpine gold.

Among the people anticlericalism went hand in hand with piety. "A

revolutionary spirit of hatred for the Church and the clergy,"

writes the honest Pastor, "had taken hold of the masses in various

parts of Germany.... The cry of 'Death to the priests!' which had long

been whispered in secret, was now the watchword of the

day." `0615103 So keen was this popular hostility that the

Inquisition, then rising in Spain, hardly dared condemn anyone in

Germany, Violent pamphlets rained assaults not so much upon the German

Church as upon the Roman See. Some monks and priests joined in the

attack, and stirred up their congregations against the luxury of the

higher clergy. Pilgrims returning from the jubilee of 1500 brought

to Germany lurid- often exaggerated- stories of immoral popes, papal

poisonings, cardinals' roisterings, and of a general paganism and

venality. Many Germans vowed that as their ancestors had broken the

power of Rome in 476, they or their children would crush that

tyranny again; others recalled the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV

by Pope Gregory VII at Canossa, and thought the time had come for

revenge. In 1521 the papal nuncio Aleander, warning Leo X of an

imminent uprising against the Church, said that five years earlier

he had heard from many Germans that they were only waiting for "some

fool" to open his mouth against Rome. `0615104

-

A thousand factors and influences- ecclesiastical, intellectual,

emotional, economic, political, moral- were coming together, after

centuries of obstruction and suppression, in a whirlwind that would

throw Europe into the greatest upheaval since the barbarian conquest

of Rome. The weakening of the papacy by the Avignon exile and the

Papal Schism; the breakdown of monastic discipline and clerical

celibacy; the luxury of prelates, the corruption of the Curia, the

worldly activities of the popes; the morals of Alexander VI, the

wars of Julius II, the careless gaiety of Leo X; the relic-mongering

and peddling of indulgences; the triumph of Islam over Christendom

in the Crusades and the Turkish wars; the spreading acquaintance

with non-Christian faiths; the influx of Arabic science and

philosophy; the collapse of Scholasticism in the irrationalism of

Scotus and the skepticism of Ockham; the failure of the conciliar

movement to effect reform; the discovery of pagan antiquity and of

America; the invention of printing; the extension of literacy and

education; the translation and reading of the Bible; the newly

realized contrast between the poverty and simplicity of the Apostles

and the ceremonious opulence of the Church; the rising wealth and

economic independence of Germany and England; the growth of a middle

class resentful of ecclesiastical restrictions and claims; the

protests against the flow of money to Rome; the secularization of

law and government; the intensification of nationalism and the

strengthening of monarchies; the nationalistic influence of vernacular

languages and literatures; the fermenting legacies of the Waldenses,

Wyclif, and Huss; the mystic demand for a less ritualistic, more

personal and inward and direct religion: all these were now uniting in

a torrent of forces that would crack the crust of medieval custom,

loosen all standards and bonds, shatter Europe into nations and sects,

sweep away more and more of the supports and comforts of traditional

beliefs, and perhaps mark the beginning of the end for the dominance

of Christianity in the mental life of European man.

BOOK II: THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION: 1517-64

CHAPTER XVI: Luther: The Reformation in Germany: 1517-24

I. TETZEL

-

ON March 15, 1517, Pope Leo X promulgated the most famous of all

indulgences. It was a pity, yet just, that the Reformation should

strike during a pontificate that gathered into Rome so many of the

fruits, and so much of the spirit, of the Renaissance. Leo, son of

Lorenzo the Magnificent, was now head of the Medici family, which

had nourished the Renaissance in Florence; he was a scholar, a poet,

and a gentleman, kindly and generous, in love with classical

literature and delicate art. His morals were good in an immoral

milieu; his nature inclined to a gaiety pleasant and legitimate, which

set an example of happiness for a city that a century before had

been destitute and desolate. All his faults were superficial except

his superficiality. He made too little distinction between the good of

his family and that of the Church, and wasted the funds of the

papacy on questionable poets and wars. He was normally tolerant,

enjoyed the satire directed against ecclesiastics in Erasmus'

Praise of Folly, and practiced, with occasional lapses, the

unwritten agreement by which the Renaissance Church accorded

considerable freedom to philosophers, poets, and scholars who

addressed themselves- usually in Latin- to the educated minority,

but who left the irreplaceable faith of the masses undisturbed.

The son of a banker, Leo was accustomed to spending money readily,

and chiefly on others. He inherited full papal coffers from Julius II,

and emptied them before he died. Perhaps he did not care much for

the massive basilica that Julius had planned and begun, but the old

St. Peter's was beyond repair, immense sums had been poured into the

new one, and it would be a disgrace to the Church to let that majestic

enterprise abort. Possibly with some reluctance he offered the

indulgence of 1517 to all who would contribute to the cost of

completing the great shrine. The rulers of England, Germany, France,

and Spain protested that their countries were being drained of wealth,

their national economies were being disturbed, by repeated campaigns

for luring money to Rome. Where kings were powerful Leo was

considerate: he agreed that Henry VIII should keep a fourth of the

proceeds in England; he advanced a loan of 175,000 ducats to King

Charles I (the later Emperor Charles V) against expected collections

in Spain; and Francis I was to retain part of the sum raised in

France. Germany received less favored treatment, having no strong

monarchy to bargain with the Pope; however, the Emperor Maximilian was

allotted a modest 3,000 florins from the receipts, and the Fuggers

were to take from the collections the 20,000 florins that they had

loaned to Albrecht of Brandenburg to pay the Pope for his confirmation

as Archbishop of Mainz. Unfortunately that city had lost three

archbishops in ten years (1504-14), and had twice paid heavy

confirmation fees; to spare it from paying a third time Albrecht

borrowed. Now Leo agreed that the young prelate should manage the

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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