Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  How little Luther really knew of the cunning policy of his sovereign is plain from his assuring his reader in the same booklet, apparently in the best of faith, that it was no motive of self-interest that had led the Elector to intervene in the Naumburg business; “the lands were to remain the property of the see,” the Elector did not wish “to subjugate it, to deprive it of its liberty, or alienate it from the Empire,” etc. He declares that whatever reports Julius Pflug was spreading to the contrary were a “stinking lie.” Yet the Elector had ousted the rightful occupant of the see, as he had intended to do all along, and those who ventured to oppose his commands he was to punish by sequestration of lands and even by imprisonment.

  The Protestant bishop was assigned a miserable pittance of six hundred Gulden so that Amsdorf, as Luther declared, had been better off at Magdeburg. Practically nothing was done by the sovereign for the ordering of the Church. Luther bewailed to Amsdorf: “The negligence of our government gives me great concern. They so often take rash steps and, then, when we are down in the mire, snore idly and leave us on the lurch. I intend, however, to open the ears of Dr. Pontanus [Chancellor Brück] and of the Prince and give them some plain speaking.”

  “How is this?” Luther wrote about this time to Justus Jonas, who, at Halle, had gone through much the same experience, “We pray against the Turk, we are the teachers of the people and their intercessors with God and yet those who wish to be accounted ‘Evangelicals’ rashly excite the wrath of God by their avarice, their robbing and plundering of the Church. The people let us go on teaching, praying and suffering while they heap sin upon sin!”

  Excerpts from Luther’s Letters to the New “Bishop”

  Luther’s correspondence with his friend Amsdorf affords an instructive psychological insight into the working of his mind. During those last years of his life he took refuge more and more in a certain fanatical mysticism. He sought comfort in the thought of his exalted calling and in a kind of inspiration; yet all he could do availed but little against his inward gloom.

  Amsdorf, the whilom Catholic priest, found little pleasure in his episcopal status and felt bitterly both his isolation and the contrast between a pomp that was irksome to him and the real emptiness of his position; Luther, accordingly, in the letters of consolation he wrote him, appealed to the Divine inspiration, which had led to his appointment as bishop. The consecration was surely undertaken at the express command of God which no man may oppose. “In these Divine matters,” he writes, “it is far safer to allow oneself to be carried away than to take any active part; this is what happened in your case, and yours is a noble and unusual example. We are never in worse case than when we fancy we are acting with discernment and understanding, because then self-complacency slinks in; but the blinder we are, the more God acts through us. He does more than we can think or understand.” We have here the same principle to which he had been so fond of appealing in the early days of his career so as to be able to attribute to God the unforeseen and far-going consequences of his deeds, and to reassure himself and urge himself on.

  “We must never seek to know,” he said to Amsdorf, “what God wills to accomplish through us.” “The most foolish thing is the wisest.” “God rules the world by means of fools and children, He will finish His work [in you] by our means, just as in the Book of Proverbs (xxx. 2), where we are called the greatest fools on earth.”

  “It is the counsel of a fool,” so Luther said in his “Exempel” of his intentions regarding the bishops’ sees, “and I am a fool. But because it is God’s counsel, therefore it is at least the counsel of a wise fool.”

  This pseudo-mystical bent though usual enough in Luther seems to have become very much stronger in him at that time. To this his sad experiences contributed. More than ever convinced, on the one hand, that everything in the world was of the devil and that “Satan and his whole kingdom, full of a terrible wrath, were harassing” the Elector, as he declares in a letter to Amsdorf, he tends, on the other, to fall back with a fanatical enthusiasm on the Evangel “revealed” to him. More than one statement which is no mere empty form, shows that he was really anxious to find consolation in the Divine truths; again and again he strove to rouse himself to a firm confidence. He is also more diligent in his peculiar sort of prayer and strongly urges his friends, notably Amsdorf to whom he frankly imparts his fears and hopes, to seek for help in prayer. His words are really those of one who feels in need of assistance.

  Amidst the trials of increasing bodily ailments and in other temporal hardships he knows how to encourage his life’s partner, Catharine Bora, whose anxiety distressed him: “You want to provide for your God,” he says to her in one of his letters, “just as though He were not all-powerful and able to create ten Dr. Martins should your old one get drowned in the Saale, or smothered in the coal-hole or elsewhere. Do not worry me with your cares; I have a better caretaker than even you or all the angels. He lies in the crib and sucks at a Virgin’s breast, but nevertheless is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Hence be at peace, Amen.” “Do you pray,” he admonishes her not long after, “and leave God to provide, for it is written: ‘Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee,’ Ps. lv.”

  Such ready words of encouragement do not however prevent him, when dealing with other more stout-hearted friends who were aware of the precarious state of the cause, from giving full voice to the depression, nay despair, which overwhelmed him. The following example from his correspondence with the “bishop” of Naumburg is characteristic.

  After an attempt to parry the charge brought against him of being responsible for the public misfortunes which had arisen through the religious revolt, and to reassure Amsdorf, and incidentally himself too, he goes on gloomily to predict the coming chastisement: “Were we the cause of all the evils that have befallen us [and others], how much blood should we have already shed!... It is, however, Christ’s business to see to this, since He Himself by His Word has called forth so much evil and such great hatred on the part of the devil. All this, so they fancy, is a scandal and a disgrace to our teaching! Nevertheless ingratitude for God’s proffered grace is so great, the contempt for the Word goes such lengths, vice, avarice, usury, luxury, hatred, perfidy, envy, pride, godlessness and blasphemy are increasing by such leaps and bounds that it is hard to believe God can much longer deal indulgently and patiently with Germany. Either the Turk will chastise us [‘while we brood full of hate over the wounds of our brethren’] or some inner misfortune [civil war] will break over us. It is true we feel the chastisement, we pay the penalty in grief and tears, but yet we remain sunk in terrible sins whereby we grieve the Holy Ghost and rouse the anger of God against us.”

  What faithful Catholics feared for him owing to his obstinacy, this, in his sad blindness, he now predicts for the foes of his Evangel. “Who can wonder,” he cries, “should God, as Holy Scripture says, laugh at our destruction in spite of the weeping and sighing of the guilty.... The worst end awaits the impenitent.”

  “Let none of us expect the least good of the future. Our sins cry aloud to heaven and on earth and there is no hope of any good. Now, in a time of peace, Germany affords the eye a terrible spectacle, seeing that God’s honour is outraged everywhere by so many wicked men and that the churches and schools are being destroyed.... Meanwhile, we at least [the despised preachers of the truth] will bewail our own sins and those of Germany; we will pray and humble our souls, devote ourselves to our office, teaching, exhorting and consoling. What else can we do? Germany has become blind and deaf and rises up in insolence; we cannot hope against hope.”

  “But do you be brave and give thanks to the Lord for the holy calling He has deigned to bestow upon us; He has willed to sunder us from these reprobates, who are bent on ruining others too, to preserve us clean and blameless in His pure and holy Word, and will continue so to preserve us. Let us, however, weep for the foes of the cross of Christ, even though they mock at our tears. Though we be filled with grief on ac
count of their misery still our grief will be assuaged by the holy joy which will attend the again-rising of the Lord on the day of our salvation, Amen.”

  He concludes this curious letter, written on Easter Sunday, with the following benediction: “May the Lord be with you to support and comfort you together with us. Outside of Christ, in the kingdom of the raging devil, there is nothing but sadness to be seen or heard.” Thus, at the close, he returns to the opening thought suggested by the very object of the letter. Amsdorf had deplored the warlike acts undertaken by Duke Maurice of Saxony against the Elector. Luther, in turn, had informed him, that “here, we are quite certain that what the Duke is doing is the direct work of Satan.”

  5. Some Further Deeds of Violence. Fate of Ecclesiastical Works of Art

  End of the Bishopric of Meissen

  The Elector of Saxony, after having been so successful in seizing the bishopric of Naumburg, sought to obtain control of that of Meissen also.

  Here, however, there was another Protestant claimant in the field in the person of the young Duke Maurice of Saxony, successor of the late Duke Henry. As for the chartered rights, temporal and spiritual, of the bishop of Meissen they were simply ignored. The Elector, by a breach of the peace, sent a military force on March 22, 1542, to occupy the important town of Wurzen, where there was a collegiate Chapter depending on Meissen. The Chapter was “reformed” by compulsion, the prebendaries who were faithful to the Church being threatened with deposition and corporal penalties, and many sacred objects being flung out of their church. When eventually war threatened to break out between the two branches of the house of Saxony, Landgrave Philip of Hesse stepped in as mediator in the interests of the new Evangel. He twice sent express messengers to summon Luther to intervene. But, even before this, the latter, horrified at the prospect of the “dreadful disgrace” which civil war between two Evangelical princes would bring upon the Evangel, had addressed a long and earnest letter of admonition to both combatants: It was the devil who was seeking to kindle a great fire from such a spark; both sides should have recourse to law instead of falling upon each other over so insignificant a matter, like tipsy yokels fighting in a tap-room over a broken glass; if they refused to do this, he would take the part of the one who first suffered acts of violence at the hands of the other and would free all the latter’s followers from their duty and oath of obedience in the war. The writing, which was intended for publication and to be forwarded “to both armies,” was only half-printed when the Landgrave intervened. The author withdrew it in order to be able to take up a different attitude in the struggle and to proceed at once to denounce Maurice.

  Luther it is true admitted to Brück, the electoral chancellor, that certain people at Wittenberg did not consider the Elector’s claims at all well-founded. At the Landgrave’s instigation he also addressed a friendly request to the Elector, “not to be too hard and stiff”; of the temporal rights of the case he was ignorant; seeing, however, that there was a dispute the question could not be clear; at any rate Duke Maurice was acting wrongfully in “pressing his rights by so bloodthirsty an undertaking. At times there may be a good reason for pulling one’s foot out of the tracks of a mad dog or for burning a couple of tapers at the devil’s altar.” But on the whole he took the part of his Elector against Maurice, who, even before this, had appeared to him lax and wavering in his support of the new faith. In his history of Maurice of Saxony, G. Voigt gives as his opinion that: “In this matter Luther neither showed himself unbiased nor did he act uprightly and honourably.”

  To Amsdorf, who had helped to fan the flame of mutual hate, Luther speaks of Duke Maurice as “a proud and furious young fellow, in whom we undoubtedly see the direct work of Satan”; it is not he (Luther) or Amsdorf who have to reproach themselves with the conflagration; he is to be quite at rest on this score. Rather, it is Christ Who — by His Word — has given rise to the mischief and to all the hatred of the demons against us. His Word alone is to blame, not we, that so many confessors of our faith have been slain, drowned and burnt. “In vain do they impute to us the bloody deeds which have taken place owing to Münzer, Carlstadt, Zwingli and the [Anabaptist] King of Münster.”

  “At first Maurice was not regarded by Luther, Melanchthon and most of their contemporaries as of such importance, whether for good or for evil, as he soon after showed himself to be; they fancied him far more dependent on his nobles and councillors than he really was.” Luther thought he detected the evil influence of the councillors in the twin businesses of Wurzen and Meissen. In his reply to the Landgrave concerning the attempt to bring the matter to a peaceful issue, without having as yet examined the cause, he speaks of Duke Maurice as a “stupid bloodhound.” To his own Court he wrote, on April 12, as though the Duke were without question in the wrong: “May God strengthen, console and preserve my most Gracious Lord and you all in His Grace and in a good conscience, and bring down on the heads of the hypocritical bloodhound of Meissen what Cain and Absalom, Judas and Herodes deserved. Amen and again Amen, to the glory of His name Whom Duke Maurice is outraging to the utmost by this abominable scandal, and singing meanwhile so blasphemous a hymn of praise to the devil and all the foes of God.”

  In the meantime, owing to Philip’s exertions, a compromise was effected between the two parties ready for the fray; by this it was agreed that each should have a free hand in one of the two portions of the diocese, the Elector retaining Wurzen; as for the defenceless bishop of Meissen, who was not even informed of this, he had simply to bow to his fate. Maurice, however, was so greatly angered that he soon after abandoned the League of Schmalkalden and began to make advances to the Emperor.

  After the conclusion of peace “the Elector had all the images in the chief church of Wurzen destroyed, except those which were overlaid with gold or which represented ‘serious events,’ and the rest buried in the vaults.” The new teaching was then introduced throughout the diocese. Maurice on his part carried off from the cathedral of Meissen, which had fallen to his share, all the gold and silver vessels richly studded with jewels and precious stones and all the treasures of art. He was taking them, he said, under his protection “because the times were so full of risk and danger.” After he had taken them into his “care” all trace of them disappeared for all time.

  Destruction of Church Property

  The fate of the treasures of Meissen Cathedral resembles that which befell the riches of many churches at that time.

  We are still in possession of the inventory made by Blasius Kneusel of Meissen which gives us a glimpse of the wealth and magnificence of the treasures of mediæval German art and industry which perished in this way.

  The list contains the following entries among others: “One gold cross valued by Duke George at 1300 florins; in it there is a diamond valued at 16,000 florins, besides other precious stones and pearls with which the cross is covered.” “A second gold cross, worth 6000 florins. A third is worth 1000 florins, besides the precious stones and pearls of which the cross is full. I value the gold table and the credence table, without the precious stones, at 1000 florins in gold. The large bust of St. Benno weighs 36-1/2 lbs.; it is set with valuable stones; it was made by order of the church and all the congregation contributed towards it. The small cross with the medallions of the Virgin Mary and St. John weighs about 50 lbs.”

  The number of these treasures of art which fell a prey to the plunderer amounted to fifty-one.

  Two years later Luther wrote to Duke Ernest of Saxony to seek help on behalf of two fallen monks then studying theology at Wittenberg: in order to support men who “may eventually prove very useful” “the chalices and monstrances might well be melted down.”

  The ruthless handling of the Black Monastery at Wittenberg, which had been bestowed on Luther after the dissolution of the Augustinian community, was to set a bad example. The fittings of the church there were scattered and the mediæval images and vestments which, though perhaps only of small material value, would yet be carefully t
reasured by any museum to-day, were calmly devoted by Luther to destruction.

  “Now at last,” he says, “I have sold the best of the pictures that still remained, but did not get much for them, fifty florins at the most, and with this I have clothed, fed and provided for the nuns and the monks — the thieves and rascals.” He had already remarked that the best of the “church ornaments and vessels” had gone; at the “beginning of the Evangel everything had been laid waste” and “even to this very day they do not cease from carrying off ... each man whatever he can lay hands on.”

  No one can adequately describe the material damage which the Catholic parsonages and benefices, convents and bishoprics had to suffer on their suppression. A simple list of the spoliations from the hundreds of cases on record, would give us a shocking picture of the temporal consequences involved in the ecclesiastical upheaval. Apart from the injustice of thus robbing the churches and, incidentally, the numberless poor who looked to the Church for help, it was regrettable that there was no other institution ready to take the place of the olden Church, and assume possession of the properties which fell vacant. The Catholic Church was a firmly knit and well-established community, capable of possessing property. The new Churches on the contrary did not constitute an independent and united body; the universal priesthood, the invisibility of the Church of Christ and its utter want of independence were ideas altogether at variance with the legal conception of ownership upon which, in the topsyturvydom of that age of transition it was more than ever necessary to insist.