Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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From Weimar Luther travelled on to Orlamunde. On August 21 he
arrived at Jena, where a preacher named Reinhard was staying with
Carlstadt. Luther here preached against the 'Spirit of Allstedt,'
which destroyed images, despised the sacrament, and incited to
rebellion. Carlstadt, who was present and heard the sermon, waited
on him afterwards at his lodging, to defend himself against these
charges. Luther insisted, notwithstanding, that Carlstadt was 'an
associate of the new prophets.' He challenged him finally to abandon
his intrigues and confute him openly in writing, and the heated
interview ended by Carlstadt promising to do so, and by Luther
giving him a florin as a pledge and token of the bargain.

From Jena Luther went through Kahla, where also he preached, to
Orlamunde. The people here had been anxious for a personal
discussion with him, but in writing to him for that purpose, had
addressed him in words as follows: 'You despise all those who, by
God's command, destroy dumb idols, against which you trump up feeble
evidence out of your own head, and not grounded on Scripture. Your
venturing thus publicly to slander us, members of Christ, shows that
you are no member of the real Christ.' The discussion he held with
them led to no success, and he gave up any further attempt to
convince them; for, as he said, they burned like a fire, as if they
longed to devour him. On his departure they pursued him with savage
shouts of execration.

Carlstadt, a few weeks later, was deprived of his professorship, and
had to leave the country. Luther put in a word for the people of
Orlamunde as 'good simple folk,' who had been seduced by a stronger
will. But against Carlstadt's whole conduct and teaching he launched
an elaborate attack in a pamphlet, published in two parts, at the
close of 1524 and the beginning of the following year. It was
entitled 'Against the Celestial Prophets, concerning Images and the
Sacrament, &c.,' with the motto 'Their folly shall be manifest unto
all men' (2 Timothy iii. 9). For in Carlstadt he sought to expose
and combat the same spirit that dwelt in the Zwickau prophets and in
Munzer, and that threatened to produce still worse results. If
Carlstadt, like Moses, was right in teaching people to break down
images, and in calling in for this purpose the aid of the disorderly
rabble, instead of the proper authorities, then the mob had the
power and right to execute in like manner all the commands of God.
And the consequence and sequel of this would be, what was soon shown
by Munzer. 'It will come to this length,' says Luther, 'that they
will have to put all ungodly people to death; for so Moses (Deut.
vii.), when he told the people to break down the images, commanded
them also to kill without mercy all those who had made them in the
land of Canaan.'

The great storm, announced and prepared by the 'Spirit of Allstedt,'
broke loose even sooner than could have been expected.

Munzer had really appeared at Muhlhausen. The town-council, however,
were still able to insist on his leaving the place, together with
his friend Pfeifer. He then wandered about for several weeks in the
south-west of Germany, exciting disturbance wherever he went. But on
September 13 he returned with Pfeifer to Muhlhausen, where he
preached in his wonted manner, propounded to the people in the
streets his doctrines and revelations, and attracted the mob to his
side, while respectable citizens and members of the magistracy left
the town from fear of the mischief that was threatening. Towards the
end of February he was offered a regular post as pastor, and soon
after all the old magistrates were turned out and others more
favourable to him elected in their place. The multitude raged
against images and convents. The peasants from the neighbourhood
flocked in, anxious for the general equality which was promised
them. Luther wrote to a friend, 'Munzer is King and Emperor at
Muhlhausen.'

Meanwhile, in Southern Germany peasant insurrections had broken out
in various places since the summer of this year. In itself, there
was nothing novel in this. Repeatedly during the latter part of the
previous century, the poor peasantry had risen and erected their
banner, the 'Shoe of the League' (_Bundschuh_), so called from
the rustic shoes which the insurgents wore. Their grievances were
the intolerable and ever-growing burdens, laid upon them by the lay
and clerical magnates, the taxes of all kinds squeezed from them by
every ingenious device, and the feudal service which they were
forced to perform. The nobles had, in fact, towards the close of the
middle ages, usurped a much larger exercise of their ancient
privileges against them, by means partly of a dexterous manipulation
of the old Roman law, and partly of the ignorance of that law which
prevailed among their vassals. On the other side, complaints were
heard at that time of the insolence shown by the wealthier peasants;
of the luxury, in which they tried to rival their masters; and of
the arrogance and defiant demeanour of the peasantry in general. The
oppression endured by any particular class of the civil community
does not usually lead to violent disturbances and outbreaks, unless
and until that class is awakened to a higher sense of its own
importance and has acquired an increase of power. The peasants
found, moreover, discontented spirits like themselves among the
lower orders in the towns, who were avowed enemies of the upper
classes, and who complained bitterly of the hardships and
oppressions suffered by small people at the hands of the great
merchants and commercial companies,--in a word, from the power of
capital. Furthermore, when once the peasants rose in rebellion
against their masters, the latter also, including the nobility,
showed an inclination here and there to favour a general revolution,
if only to remedy the defects of their own position. And, in truth,
throughout the German Empire at that time there was a general
movement pressing for a readjustment of the relations of the various
classes to each other and to the Imperial power. Ideas of a total
reconstruction of society and the State had penetrated the mass of
the people, to an extent never known before.

Thus the way was paved, and incentives already supplied for a
powerful popular movement, apart altogether from the question of
Church Reform. And indeed this question Luther was anxious, as we
have seen, to restrict to the domain of spiritual, as distinguished
from secular, that is to say, political and civil action. It was
impossible, however, but that the accusations of lying, tyranny, and
hostility to evangelical truth, now freely levelled against the
dominant priesthood and the secular lords who were persecuting the
gospel, should serve to intensify to the utmost the prevailing
bitterness against external oppression. With the same firmness and
decision with which Luther condemned all disorderly and violent
proceedings in support of the gospel, he had also long been warning
its persecutors of the inevitable storm which they would bring upon
themselves. Other evangelical preachers, however, as for instance,
Eberlin and Strauss, mingled with their popular preaching all sorts
of suggestions of social reform. At last men went about among the
people, with open or disguised activity, whose principles were
directly opposed to those of Luther, but who proclaimed themselves,
nevertheless, enthusiasts for the gospel which he had brought again
to light, or which, as they pretended, they had been the first to
reveal, together with true evangelical liberty. They appealed to
God's Word in support of the claims and grievances of the oppressed
classes; they grasped their weapons by virtue of the Divine law.
Hence the peculiar ardour and energy that marked the insurrection,
although the enthusiasm, thus kindled, was united with the utmost
barbarity and licentiousness. Never has Germany been threatened with
a revolution so vast and violent, or so immeasurable in its possible
results. On no single man's word did so much depend as on that of
Luther, the genuine man of the people.

The movement began late in the summer of 1524 in the Black Forest
and Hegau. After the beginning of the next year it continued rapidly
to spread, and the different groups of insurgents who were fighting
here and there, combined in a common plan of action. Like a flood
the movement forced its way eastwards into Austria, westwards into
Alsatia, northwards into Franconia, and even as far as Thuringia. At
Rothenburg on the Tauber, Carlstadt had prepared the way for it by
inciting the people to destroy the images. The demands in which the
peasants were unanimous, were now drawn up in twelve articles. These
still preserved a very moderate aspect. They claimed above all the
right of each parish to choose its own minister. Tithes were only to
be abolished in part. The peasants were determined to be regarded no
longer as the 'property of others,' for Christ had redeemed all
alike with his blood. They demanded for everyone the right to hunt
and fish, because God had given to all men alike power over the
animal creation. They based their demands upon the Word of God;
trusting to His promises they would venture the battle. 'If we are
wrong,' they said, 'let Luther set us right by the Scriptures.' God,
who had freed the children of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, would
now shortly deliver His people. In these articles, and in other
proclamations of the peasantry, there were none of the wild
imaginations of Munzer and his prophets, nor their ideas of a
kingdom and schemes of murder. They burned down, it is true, both
convents and cities, and had done so from the outset. Still in some
places a more peaceable understanding was arrived at with the upper
classes, although neither party placed any real confidence in the
other.

When now the articles arrived at Wittenberg, and Luther heard how
the insurgents appealed to him, he prepared early in April to make a
public declaration, in which he arraigned their proceedings, but at
the same time exhorted the princes to moderation. He was just then
called away by Count Albert of Mansfeld to Eisleben, to assist, as
we have seen, in the establishment of a new school in that town. He
set off thither on Easter Sunday, April 16, after preaching in the
morning. There he wrote his 'Exhortation to peace: On the Twelve
Articles of the Peasantry in Swabia.

In this manifesto he sharply rebukes those princes and nobles,
bishops and priests, who cease not to rage against the gospel, and
in their temporal government 'tax and fleece their subjects, for the
advancement of their own pomp and pride, until the common people can
endure it no longer.' If God for their punishment allowed the devil
to stir up tumult against them, He and his gospel were not to blame;
but he counselled them to try by gentle means to soften, if
possible, God's wrath against them. As for the peasants, he had
never from the first concealed from them his suspicions, that many
of them only pretended to appeal to Scripture, and offered for mere
appearance' sake to be further instructed therein. But he wished to
speak to them affectionately, like a friend and a brother, and he
admitted also that godless lords often laid intolerable burdens upon
the people. But however much in their articles might be just and
reasonable, the gospel, he said, had nothing to do with their
demands, and by their conduct they showed that they had forgotten
the law of Christ. For by the Divine law it was forbidden to extort
anything from the authorities by force: the badness of the latter
was no excuse for violence and rebellion. Respecting the substance
of their demands, their first article, claiming to elect their own
pastor, if the civil authority refused to provide one, was right
enough and Christian; but in that case they must maintain him at
their own expense, and on no account protect him by force against
the civil power. As for the remaining articles, they had nothing
whatever to do with the gospel. He tells the peasants plainly, that
if they persist in their rebellion, they are worse enemies to the
gospel than the Pope and Emperor, for they act against the gospel in
the gospel's own name. He is bound to speak thus to them, although
some among them, poisoned by fanatics, hate him and call him a
hypocrite, and the devil, who was not able to kill him through the
Pope, would now like to destroy and devour him. He is content if
only he can save some at least of the good-hearted among them from
the danger of God's indignation. In conclusion, he gives to both
sides, the nobles and the peasants, his 'faithful counsel and
advice, that a few counts and lords should be chosen from the
nobility, and a few councillors from the towns, and that matters
should be adjusted and composed in an amicable manner--that so the
affair, if it cannot be arranged in a Christian spirit, may at least
be settled according to human laws and agreements.'

Thus spoke Luther, with all his accustomed frankness, fervency,
power, and bluntness, equally indifferent to the favour of the
people or of their rulers. But what fruit, indeed, could be looked
for from his words, uttered evidently with violent inward emotion,
when popular passion was so excited? Was it not rather to be feared
that the peasants would greedily fasten on the first portion of his
pamphlet, which was directed against the nobles, and then shut their
ears all the more closely against the second, which concerned their
own misconduct? The pamphlet could hardly have been written, and
much less published, before new rumours and forebodings crowded upon
Luther, such as made him think its contents and language no longer
applicable to the emergency, but that now it was his duty to sound
aloud the call to battle against the enemies of peace and order. 'In
my former tract,' he said, 'I did not venture to condemn the
peasants, because they offered themselves to reason and better
instruction. But before I could look about me, forth they rush, and
fight and plunder and rage like mad dogs.... The worst is at
Muhlhausen, where the arch-devil himself presides.'

In South Germany, on that very Easter Sunday when Luther set out for
Eisleben, the scene of horror was enacted at Weinsberg, where the
peasants, amid the sound of pipes and merriment, drove the unhappy
Count of Helfenstein upon their spears, before the eyes of his wife
and child. Luther's ignorance of this and similar atrocities, at the
time when he was writing his pamphlet at Eisleben, is easily
intelligible from the slow means of communication then existing.
Soon the news came, however, of bands of rioters in Thuringia, busy
with the work of pillage, incendiarism, and massacre, and of a
rising of the peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood. Towards the
end of April they achieved a crowning triumph by their victorious
entry into Erfurt, where the preacher, Eberlin of Gunzburg, with
true loyalty and courage, but all in vain, had striven, with words
of exhortation and warning, to pacify the armed multitude encamped
outside the town, and their sympathisers and associates inside.

On April 26 Munzer advanced to Muhlhausen, the 'arch-devil, 'as
Luther called him, but as he described himself, the 'champion of the
Lord.' He came with four hundred followers, and was joined by large
masses of the peasants. His 'only fear,' as he said in his summons
to the miners of Mansfeld, 'was that the foolish men would fall into
the snare of a delusive peace.' He promised them a better result.
'Wherever there are only three among you who trust in God and seek
nothing but His honour and glory, you need not fear a hundred
thousand.... Forward now!' he cried; 'to work! to work! It is time
that the villains were chased away like dogs.... To work! relent not
if Esau gives you fair words. Give no heed to the wailings of the
ungodly; they will beg, weep, and entreat you for pity, like
children. Show them no mercy, as God commanded Moses (Deut. vii.)
and has declared the same to us.... To work! while the fire is hot;
let not the blood cool upon your swords.... To work! while it is
day. God is with you; follow Him!' Of Luther he spoke in terms of
peculiar hatred and contempt. In a letter which he addressed to
'Brother Albert of Mansfeld,' with the object of converting the
Count, he alluded to him in expressions of the coarsest possible
abuse.

In Thuringia, in the Harz, and elsewhere, numbers of convents, and
even castles, were reduced to ashes. The princes were everywhere
unprepared with the necessary troops, while the insurgents in
Thuringia and Saxony counted more than 30,000 men. The former,
therefore, endeavoured to strengthen themselves by coalition. Duke
John, at Weimar, prepared himself for the worst: his brother, the
Elector Frederick, was lying seriously ill at his Castle at Lochau
(now Annaburg) in the district of Torgau.

At this crisis Luther, having left Eisleben, appeared in person
among the excited population. He preached at Stolberg, Nordhausen,
and Wallhausen. In his subsequent writings he could bear witness of
himself, how he had been himself among the peasants, and how, more
than once, he had imperilled life and limb. On May 3 we find him at
Weimar; and a few days afterwards in the county of Mansfeld. Here he
wrote to his friend, the councillor Ruhel of Mansfeld, advising him
not to persuade Count Albert to be 'lenient in this affair'--that
is, against the insurgents; for the civil power must assert its
rights and duties, however God might rule the issue. 'Be firm,' he
entreats Ruhel, 'that his Grace may go boldly on his way. Leave the
matter to God, and fulfil His commands to wield the sword as long as
strength endures. Our consciences are clear, even if we are doomed
to be defeated.... It is but a short time, and the righteous Judge
will come.'

Luther now hastened back to his Elector, having received a summons
from him at Lochau. But before he could arrive there, Frederick had
peacefully breathed his last, on May 5. Faithfully and discreetly,
and in the honest conviction that truth would prevail, he had
accorded Luther his favour and protection, whilst purposely
abstaining to employ his power as ruler for infringing or invading
the old-established ordinances of the Church. He allowed full
liberty of action to the bishops, and carefully avoided any personal
intercourse with Luther. But in the face of death, he confessed the
truth of the gospel, as preached by Luther, by partaking of the
communion in both kinds, and refusing the sacrament of extreme
unction.

When his corpse was brought in state to Wittenberg, and buried in
the Convent Church, Luther, who had to preach twice on the occasion,
spoke of the universal grief and lamentation that 'our head is
fallen, a peaceful man and ruler, a calm head.' And he pointed out
as the 'most grievous sorrow of all,' how this loss had happened
just in those difficult and wondrous times when, unless God
interposed His arm, destruction threatened the whole of Germany. He
exhorted his hearers to confess to God their own ingratitude for His
mercy in having given them such a noble vessel of His grace. But of
those who set themselves against authorities, he declared, in the
words of the Apostle (Rom. xiii. 2), that 'they shall receive to
themselves damnation.' 'This text,' he said, 'will do more than all
the guns and spears.'

Quite in the same spirit that dictated his letter sent to Ruhel only
a few days before at Mansfeld, Luther now sent forth a public
summons 'Against the murderous and plundering bands of peasants.' He
began it with the words already quoted, 'Before I could look about
me, forth they rush ... and rage like mad dogs.'

Thus he wrote when he saw the danger was at its highest. He even
suggested the possibility 'that the peasants might get the upper
hand (which God forbid!);' and that 'God perhaps willed that, in
preparation for the Last Day, the devil should be allowed to destroy
all order and authority, and the world turned into a howling
wilderness.' But he called upon the Christian authorities, with all
the more urgency and vehemence, to use the sword against the
devilish villains, as God had given them command. They should leave
the issue to God, acknowledge to Him that they had well deserved His
judgments, and thus with a good conscience and confidence 'fight as
long as they could move a muscle.' Whosoever should fall on their
side would be a true martyr in God's eyes, if he had fought with
such a conscience. Then, thinking of the many better people who had
been forced by the bloodthirsty peasants and murderous prophets to
join the devilish confederacy, he broke out by exclaiming, 'Dear
lords, help them, save them, take pity upon these poor men; but as
to the rest, stab, crush, strangle whom you can.'

These words of Luther were speedily fulfilled by the events. The
Saxon princes, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the Duke of Brunswick,
and the Counts of Mansfeld combined together before the mass of the
peasants in Thuringia and Saxony had collected into a large army. On
May 15 the forces of Munzer, numbering about 8,000 men, were
defeated in the battle of Frankenhausen. Munzer himself was taken
prisoner, and, crushed in mind and spirit, was executed like a
criminal. A few days before, the main army of the Swabian peasants
had been routed, and during the following weeks, one stronghold of
the rebellion after another was reduced, and the horrors perpetrated
by the peasants were repaid with fearful vengeance on their heads.
The Landgrave Philip, and John, the new Elector of Saxony,
distinguished themselves by their clemency in dismissing unpunished
to their homes, after the victory, a number of the insurgent
peasants.

But Luther's violent denunciations now gave offence even to some of
his friends. His Catholic opponents, and those even who saw no harm
in burning heretics wholesale for no other reason than their faith,
reproached him then, and do so even now, with horrible cruelty for
this language. Luther replied to the 'complaints and questions about
his pamphlet,' with a public 'Epistle on the harsh pamphlet against
the peasants.' His excitement and irritation was increased by what
he heard talked about his conduct. He maintained what he had said.
But he also reminded his readers, that he had never, as his
calumniators accused him, spoken of acting against the conquered and
humbled, but solely of smiting those actually engaged in rebellion.
He declared further, at the close of his new and forcible remarks on
the use of the sword, that Christian authorities, at any rate were
bound, if victorious, to 'show mercy not only to the innocent, but
also to the guilty.' As for the 'furious raging and senseless
tyrants, who even after the battle cannot satiate themselves with
blood, and throughout their life never trouble themselves about
Christ'--with these he will have nothing whatever to do. Similarly,
in a small tract on Munzer, containing characteristic extracts from
the writings of this 'bloodthirsty prophet,' as a warning to the
people, Luther entreated the lords and civil authorities 'to be
merciful to the prisoners and those who surrendered, ... so that the
tables should not be turned upon the victors.' If we have now to
lament, as we must, that after the rebellion was put down, nothing
was done to remedy the real evils that caused it; nay, that those
very evils were rather increased as a punishment for the vanquished,
this reproach at least applies just as much to the Catholic lords,
both spiritual and temporal, as to the Evangelical authorities or
Luther.

In addition also to his alleged harshness and severity to the
insurgents, Luther was accused, both then and since, by his
ecclesiastical opponents, of having given rise to the rebellion by
his preaching and writings. When the danger and anxiety were over,
Emser had the effrontery to say of him in some popular doggrel, 'Now
that he has lit the fire, he washes his hands like Pilate, and turns
his cloak to the wind;' and again, 'He himself cannot deny that he
exhorted you to rebellion, and called all of you dear children of
God, who gave up to it your lives and property, and washed your
hands in blood. Thus did he write in public, and thereto has he
striven.'

[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Munzer (his execution in the background.)
From an old woodcut.]

In answer to this charge, Luther referred to his treatise 'On the
Secular Power,' and to other of his writings. 'I know well,' he was
able to say with truth, 'that no teacher before me has written so
strongly about secular authority; my very enemies ought to thank me
for this. Who ever made a stronger stand against the peasants, with
writing and preaching, than myself?' Among the Estates of the
Empire, not even the most violent enemies of evangelical doctrine
could venture now to turn their victorious weapons against their
associates in arms who espoused that doctrine, with whom they had
achieved the common conquest, and from whose midst had sounded the
most vigorous call to battle and to victory. Luther, on the
contrary, was not afraid at this moment to exhort the Archbishop,
Cardinal Albert, of whose friendly disposition to himself, his
friend Ruhel had recently informed him, to follow the example of his
cousin, the Grand Master in Prussia, by converting his bishopric
into a temporal princedom, and entering the state of matrimony, and
to name, as the chief motive for so doing, the 'hateful and horrible
rebellion,' wherewith God's wrath had visited the sins of the
priesthood.