Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Luther allowed his polemics to blunt entirely the effect of his summons. As, however, what he says affords us an insight into the working of his mind, it is of interest to the psychologist.

  In the second of the two writings referred to above, the “Heer-Predigt,” despite the general excellence of its contents, the constant harping on the nearness of the Last Day could not fail to exert an influence the reverse of that desired. At the very commencement he ventilates his views on the prophecies of Daniel; he likewise will have it that the prophecy concerning Gog and Magog in Ezechiel also refers to the Turks, and that we even read of them in the Apocalypse; their victories portended the end of all things. His last warnings run as follows: “In the end it will come about that the devil will attack Christendom with all his might and from every side.... Therefore let us watch and be valiant in a firm faith in Christ, and let each one be obedient to the authorities and see what God will do, leaving things to take their course; for there is nothing good to be hoped for any more.” Such pessimism was scarcely calculated to awaken enthusiasm.

  Nor does he conceal his fears lest a successful campaign against the Turks should lead the Emperor and the Catholic Princes to turn their arms against the Evangelicals, in order to carry out the Edict of Worms. He so frequently betrays this apprehension that we might almost be led to think that he regarded the Turkish peril as a welcome impediment, did we not know on the other hand how greatly he came to dread it as he advanced in years. This anxiety concerning possible intentions of the Catholics he felt so keenly in 1529 as to append to the second of his tracts on the Turkish War a peculiarly inappropriate monition, viz. that Germans “must not allow themselves to be made use of against the Evangel, or fight against or persecute Christians; for thus they would become guilty of innocent blood and be no better than the Turks.... In such a case no subject is in the least bound to obey the authorities, in fact, where this occurs, all authority is abrogated.”

  Injudicious considerations such as these are also to be found in the earlier tract; here, however, what is most astonishing is his obstinacy in re-affirming his earlier doctrine, already condemned by Rome, viz. that it was not becoming in Christians, as such, to resist the Turk by force of arms, seeing that God was using the Turks for the chastisement of Christendom. “As we refuse to learn from Scripture,” he says, speaking in his wonted mystical tone, “the Turk must teach us with the sword, until we learn by sad experience that Christians must not fight or resist evil. Fools’ backs must be dusted with the stick.” He also expresses his misgivings because “Christians and Princes are so greatly urged, driven and incited to attack the Turks and fall upon them, before we have amended our own lives and begun to live as true Christians”; on this account “war was not to be recommended.” Real amendment would have consisted in accepting the Lutheran Evangel. Yet, instead of embracing Lutheranism, “our Princes are negotiating how best to molest Luther and the Evangel; there, surely, is the real Turk.” Because they had ordered fasts, and penitential practices, and Masses of the Holy Ghost, in order to implore God’s protection against the Turk, the Catholic Princes drew down upon themselves the following rebuke: “Shall God be gracious to you, faithless rulers of unfortunate subjects! What devil urges you to make such a fuss about spiritual matters, which are not your business, but concern God and the conscience alone, and to do the work God has committed to you and which does concern you and your poor people, so lazily and slothfully even in this time of the direst need, thus merely hindering those who would fain give you their help?”

  Here again he was promoting dissension, indeed, generally speaking, his exhortations were more a hindrance than a help; again and again he insists on entangling himself anew in his polemics against Popery, and this in spite of the urgent needs of Germany. Led by the Pope, the Catholic Princes have become “our tyrants,” who “imprison us, exercise compulsion, banish and burn us, behead and drown us and treat us worse than do the Turks.”

  “In short, wherever we go, the devil, our real landlord, is at home. If we visit the Turk, we find the devil; if we remain under the rule of the Pope, we fall into hell. There is nothing but devils on either side and everywhere.” Thus it must be with mankind, he says, referring to 2 Timothy iii. 1, when the world reaches its end.

  In “what manner I advise war on the Turk, this my booklet shall be witness.”

  Cochlæus, Luther’s opponent, collected the contradictions contained in the latter’s statements on the Turkish War, and published them in 1529 at Leipzig in the form of an amusing Dialogue. In this work one of the characters, Lutherus, attacks the war in Luther’s own words, the second, Palinodus, defends it, again with Lutheran phrases, whilst an ambassador of King Ferdinand plays the part of the interested enquirer. The work instances fifteen “contradictions.”

  Luther personally acted wisely, for it was of the utmost importance to him to destroy the impression that he stood in the way of united action against the Turks. This the Princes and Estates who protested at the Diet of Spires were far less willing to do. They cast aside all scruple and openly refused to lend their assistance against the Turks unless the enactment against the religious innovations were rescinded. It is true that Vienna was then not yet in any pressing danger, though, on the other hand, news had been received at Spires that the Turkish fleet was cruising off the coasts of Sicily. It was only later on in the year, when the danger of Austria and for the German Princes began to increase, that the Protesters showed signs of relenting. They also saw that, just then, their refusal to co-operate would be of no advantage to the new Church. Landgrave Philip of Hesse nevertheless persisted in his obstinate refusal to take any part in the defence of the Empire.

  Philip made several attempts to induce Brück, the Chancellor of the Saxon Electorate, and Luther, to bring their influence to bear on the Elector Johann Frederick so that he might take a similar line. Brück was sufficiently astute to avoid making any promise. Luther did not venture openly to refuse, though his position as principal theological adviser would have qualified him to explain to the Landgrave the error of his way. In his reply he merely finds fault with the “Priesthood,” who “are so obstinate and defiant and trust in the Emperor and in human aid.” God’s assistance against the Turks may be reckoned on, but if it came to the point, and he were obliged to speak to the Elector, he would “advise for the best,” and, may God’s Will be done.

  When the Turks, in order to avenge the defeat they had suffered before the walls of Vienna, prepared for further attacks upon the West, frightful rumours began to spread throughout Germany, adding greatly to Luther’s trouble of mind. At the Coburg, where he then was, gloomy forebodings of the coming destruction of Germany at the hand of the Turk associated themselves with other disquieting considerations.

  In one of his first letters from the Coburg he says to Melanchthon, Spalatin and Lindemann, who were then at the Diet of Augsburg: “My whole soul begins to revolt against the Turks and Mohammed, for I see the intolerable wrath of Satan who rages so proudly against the souls and bodies of men. I shall pray and weep and never rest until heaven hears my cry. You [at Augsburg] are suffering persecution from our monsters at home, but we have been chosen to witness and to suffer both woes [viz. Catholicism and the Turks] which are raging together and making their final onslaught. The onslaught itself proves and foretells their approaching end and our salvation.”— “All we now await is the coming of Christ,” so he says on another occasion in one of his fits of fear; “verily, I fear the Turk will traverse it [Germany] from end to end.... How often do I think of the plight of our German land, how often do I sweat, because it will not hear me.”

  Lost in his eschatological dream and misled by his morbid apprehension, he wrote his Commentary on Ezechiel xxxviii.-xxxix., which was at once placed in the hands of the printer; here again he finds the mischief to be wrought by the Turks at the end of the world as plainly foretold as in the prophecy of Daniel, the Commentary on which he had published shortly before.
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  Everywhere anxiety reigned supreme, for there were lacking both preparedness and unanimity. The Catholic Princes of the Empire were not much better than the rest. Petty interests and jealousies outweighed in many instances a sense of the common needs. At Spires, for instance, Duke George of Saxony stipulated, as a condition of any promise of assistance, that he should be given precedence over both the Dukes of Bavaria. While the Catholic Estates agreed, at the Diet of Augsburg, to the grants for the war against the Turks, the Protestant Estates were not to be induced to give a favourable decision until the Emperor had sanctioned the so-called religious Peace of Nuremberg in 1532.

  In the summer of that same year Suleiman passed Buda-Pesth with 300,000 men. Thence he continued his march along the Danube with the intention of taking Vienna, this time at any cost. The Emperor Charles V. hurried in person to command the great army which was collecting near Vienna; the Sultan was to be encountered and a decisive battle fought. Throughout the Empire the greatest enthusiasm for the cause prevailed. The Electoral Prince, Joachim of Brandenburg, was nominated by the Emperor to the command of the troops of the Saxon lowlands, since this country had not been unanimous in the choice of a Captain, probably owing to the religious dissensions.

  The Protestant Prince Joachim requested a pious letter from Luther. This Luther sent him, promising him his prayers, and saying that “he would take the field in spirit with his dear Emperor Carol [as he now calls him], and fight under his banner against Satan and his members.” He prayed God to bestow on them all “a glad spirit,” granting them not to trust in their own strength, but to fight with the “fear of God, trusting in His Grace alone,” and to ascribe the honour to heaven only; hitherto there had been too much of the “spirit of defiance on both sides,” and each party had gone into the field “without God,” “which on every occasion had been worse for the people of God than for the enemy.” Luther was evidently quite incapable of writing on the subject without his polemical ideas casting their shadow over his field of vision.

  The Turks did not venture to give battle, but, to the joy of the Christian army, retreated, laying waste Styria on their march. The Imperial troops were disbanded and an armistice was concluded between King Ferdinand and Suleiman. But in 1536 the hostilities were renewed by the Turks; Hungary was as good as lost, and in 1537 Ferdinand’s army suffered in Slavonia the worst reverse, so at least Luther was informed, since the battle of Mohacz in 1526. On the strength of a rumour he attributed the misfortune to the treason of the Christian generals. In his conversations he set down the defeat to the account of Ferdinand, his zealous Catholic opponent; he had permitted “such a great and powerful army to be led miserably into the jaws of the Turks.” Ferdinand, the Emperor’s brother, was, of course, to blame for the unfortunate issue of the affair; “hitherto the Turk has been provoked by Ferdinand and has been victorious; when he comes unprovoked, then he will succumb and be defeated; if the Papists commence the war they will be beaten.” “Luther saw in the misfortune of King Ferdinand a just punishment on him and his friends who angered God and worshipped lies.” He believed the cause of the success of the Turks to be the “great blasphemy of the Papists against God and the abominable sin against one and the other Table of the Commandments of God”; also “the great contempt of God’s Word amongst our own people.”

  While the Protestant Princes and cities again showed a tendency to exploit the Turkish peril to the advantage of the religious innovations, Luther, in view of the needs of the time, pulled himself together and, when consulted, openly advised the Elector Johann Frederick to give his assistance against the Turks should this be asked of him. (May 29, 1538.)

  He writes to the Elector: “‘Necessitas’ knows no ‘legem,’ and where there is necessity everything that is termed law, treaty or agreement ceases.... We must risk both good and evil with our brothers, like good comrades, as man and wife, father and children risk all things together.” “Because many pious and honest people will also have to suffer,” it was meet that the Prince should, “with a good conscience, render assistance in order to help and protect, not the tyrants, but the poor little flock.”

  Yet, immediately after, he deprives his counsel of most of its weight by declaring in fatalistic language, that there was nevertheless little to be hoped for, since God “had fashioned the rod which they will not be able to resist.”

  He tells him concerning King Ferdinand, “that there was nothing to be anticipated from him, but only trouble and inevitable misfortune”; of the Catholics in general he assures him, that their “blasphemy” against the Evangel and their resistance to “their conscience and the known truth” made it impossible for them to escape a “great chastisement,” since “God liveth and reigneth.”

  Again, as though desirous of deterring the Elector on personal grounds, he reminds him that they (the “tyrants” as he calls the Princes of the Catholic party) “had not so far even requested assistance, and had not been willing to agree to peace though the need was so great.” He also thoughtfully alludes to the danger lest the tyrants, after having secured a victory with the help of the Protestants, should make use of their arms to overthrow the Evangel by force: “We must be wary lest, should our adversaries vanquish the Turks — which I cannot believe they will — they then turn their arms against us,” “which they would gladly do”; but, he adds, “it rests in God’s hands not in their desire, what they do to us, or what we are to suffer, as we have experienced so far,” for instance after the retreat of the Turks from Vienna when, “after all, nothing was undertaken against us”; for the people would refuse to follow them in any attack upon the Evangel.

  This letter, which has frequently been appealed to by Protestants as a proof of Luther’s pure, unselfish patriotism, is a strange mixture of contradictory thoughts and emotions, the product of a mind not entirely sure of its ground and influenced by all sorts of political considerations. Of one thing alone was the writer certain, viz. that the Turk at Rome must be fought against relentlessly.

  Luther’s “Table-Talk” and occasional letters supply various traits to complete the above picture of his attitude towards the Turkish War. There we find polemical outbursts interspersed with excellent admonitions to prayer, confutations of the errors of the Turks, and lamentations on the judgment of God as displayed in these wars.

  Luther on Turks and Papists.

  “If Germany had a master,” he says very aptly on one occasion, “it would be easy for us to withstand the Turk”; but, he continues, “the Papists are our worst foes, and would prefer to see Germany laid waste, and this the Turk is desirous of doing.” The Papists are actually trying to establish the domination of the Turk. “The Pope,” so he was informed, “refuses, like the King of France, to grant any assistance to the Emperor against the Turks. See the enormities of our day! And yet this is the money [which the Pope refused to give] that the Popes have been heaping up for so many long ages by means of their Indulgences.” “I greatly fear,” he says to his friends, “the alliance between the Papists and the Turks by which they intend to bring us to ruin. God grant that my prophecy may prove false.... If this enters the heads of the Papists, they will do it, for the malice of the devil is incredible ... they will plot and scheme how to betray us and deliver us over into the hands of the Turk.”

  Meanwhile he believes that God is fighting for his cause by rendering the Turks victorious: “See how often the Papists with their hatred of the Evangel and their trust in the Emperor have been set at nought”; they had reckoned on the destruction of the Lutherans by means of Charles the Fifth’s victory over France, but, lo, “a great French army marches against the Emperor, Italy falls away and the Turk attacks Germany; this mean that God has dispersed the proud. Ah, my good God, it is Thou Who hast done this thing!” — On one occasion he declared: “In order that it might be discerned and felt that God was not with us in the war against the Turks, He has never inspired our Princes with sufficient courage and spirit earnestly to set about the Turk
ish War.... Nowhere is anything determined upon or carried out.... Why is this? In order that my Article, which Pope Leo condemned, may remain ever true and uncondemned.”

  When, in the spring of 1532, Rome itself stood in fear of the Turk and many even took to flight, a letter reached Wittenberg announcing the consternation which prevailed there in the Eternal City. Then probably it was that Luther spoke the words which have been transmitted in both the Latin and German versions of the “Table-Talk”: “Should the Turk advance against Rome, I shall not regret it. For we read in the Prophet Daniel: ‘He shall fix his tabernacle between the seas upon a glorious and holy mountain.’” The two seas he imagined to be the Tyrrhenean and the Adriatic, whilst the holy mountain meant Rome, “for Rome is holy on account of the many Saints who are buried there. This is true, for the abomination which is the Pope, was [according to Daniel ix. 27] to take up its abode in the holy city. If the Turk reaches Rome, then the Last Day is certainly not far off.”

  It would even seem that it was his fervent desire to see Antichrist ousted by the Turk which allured him into the obscure region of biblical prophecy.

  “Accordingly I hope for the end of the world. The Emperor Charles and Solimannus represent the last dregs of worldly domination. Christ will come, for Scripture knows nothing of any other monarchy, and the signs of the end of the world are already visible.” “The rule of the Turk was foretold in Daniel and in the Apocalypse that the pious might not allow themselves to be terrified at his greatness. The prophecy of Daniel gives us a splendid account of what is to happen till the end of the world, and describes clearly the reign of Antichrist and of the Turk.” Finally, Luther is of opinion that at the end of the world both must be united, viz. the Papal Antichrist and the Turk, because both had come into being together. About the time of the Emperor Phocas († 610) Mohammed appeared on the scene of history, and at that very time too the Bishops of Rome arrogated to themselves the primacy over the whole Church.