Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Hence the latest writer on social politics and the poor law, from whom the above words are taken, openly expresses his wonder at the “utopian, religio-communistic foundation on which the Wittenberg and Leisnig schemes, and those drawn up on similar lines, were based,” at the “utopian efforts” with their “absurd system of expenditure,” which, owing to their “fundamental defects and the mixing of the funds, were doomed sooner or later to fail.” This “travesty of early Christianity” tended neither to promote the moral and charitable sense of the people nor to further benevolent organisation. “Any rational policy of poor law” was, on the contrary, shut out by these early Lutheran institutions; the relief of the poor was thereby placed on an “eminently unstable basis”; the poor-boxes only served “to encourage idleness.” “Not in such a way could the modern poor-law system, based as it is on impersonal, legal principles, be called into being.”

  “No system of poor law has ever had less claim to be placed at the head of a new development than this one [of Leisnig].”

  The years 1525 and 1526 brought the turning point in Luther’s attitude towards the question of poor relief, particularly owing to the effect of the Peasant War on his views of society and the Church.

  The result of the war was to bring the new religious system into much closer touch with the sovereigns and “thus practically to give rise to a theocracy.” In spite of the changes this produced, Luther’s schemes for providing for the poor continued to display some notable defects.

  For all “practical purposes Luther threw over the principle of the universal priesthood which the peasants had embraced as a socio-political maxim, and, by a determined effort, cut his cause adrift from the social efforts of the day.… He worked himself up into a real hatred of the mob, of ‘Master Omnes,’ the ‘many-headed monster,’ and indeed came within an ace of the socio-political ideas of Machiavelli, who advised the rulers to treat the people so harshly that they might look upon those lords as liberal who were not extortionate.” After the abrogation of episcopal authority and canon law, of hierarchy and monasteries “there came an urgent call for the establishment of new associations with practical aims and for the construction of the skeleton of the new Christian community; we now hear no more of that ideal community of true believers which, thanks to its heartfelt faith, was to carry on the social work of preventing and alleviating poverty.”

  The whole of the outward life of the Church being now under the direction of the Protestant sovereign, the system of poor relief began to assume a purely secular character, having nothing but an outward semblance of religion. The new regulations were largely the work of Bugenhagen, who was a better organiser than Luther. The many enactments he was instrumental in drafting for the North German towns embody necessary provisions for the relief of the poor.

  Officials appointed by the sovereign or town-council directed, or at least supervised, the management, while the “deacons,” i.e. the ecclesiastical guardians of the fund, were obliged to find the necessary money and, generally, to bear all the odium for the meagreness and backwardness of the distribution. The members of the congregation had practically no longer any say in the matter. The parish’s share in the relief of the poor was made an end of even before it had lost the other similar rights assigned to it by Luther, such as that of promulgating measures of discipline, appointing clergy, administering the Church’s lands, etc. Just as the organisation of the Church was solely in the hands of the authorities to the complete exclusion of the congregations, so poor relief and the ecclesiastical regulations on which it was based became merely a government concern.

  What Bugenhagen achieved, thanks to the ecclesiastical regulations for poor relief, for which he was directly or indirectly responsible, gave “good hopes, at least at first, of bringing the difficult social problem of those days nearer to a solution.” At any rate they were a “successful attempt to bring some order into the whole system of relief, by means of the authorities and on a scale not hitherto attempted by the Church.” It is true that he, like those who were working on the same lines, e.g. Hedio, Rhegius, Hyperius, Lasco and others, often merely transplanted into a new soil the rules already in vogue in the Catholic Netherlands and the prosperous South German towns. Hedio of Strasburg, for instance, translated into German the entire work of Vives, the opponent of Lutheranism, and exploited it practically and also sought to enter into epistolary communication with Vives. The prohibition of mendicancy, the establishment of an independent poor-box apart from the rest of the Church funds, and many other points were borrowed by Bugenhagen and others from the olden Catholic regulations.

  Such efforts were in many localities supplemented by the kindliness of the population and, thanks to a spirit of Christianity, were not without fruit.

  As, however, everybody, Princes, nobles, townships and peasants, were stretching out greedy hands towards the now defenceless possessions of the olden Church, a certain reaction came, and the State, in the interests of order, saw fit to grant a somewhat larger share to the ecclesiastical authorities in the administration of Church property and relief funds. The Lutheran clergy and the guardians of the poor were thus allowed a certain measure of free action, provided always that what they did was done in the name of the sovereign, i.e. the principal bishop. The new institutions created by such men as Bugenhagen soon lost their public, communal or State character, and sank back to the level of ecclesiastical enterprises. Institutions of this stamp had, however, “been more numerous and better endowed in the Middle Ages and were so later in the Catholic districts.”

  Owing in part to a technical defect in the Protestant regulations, dishonesty and carelessness were not excluded from the management and distribution of the poor fund, the administration falling, as a matter of course, into the hands of the lowest class of officials. Catholics had good reason for branding it as a “usury and parson’s box.” The reason why, in Germany, Protestant efforts for poor relief never issued in a satisfactory socio-political system capable of relieving the poor and thus improving the condition of both Church and State, lay, not merely in the economic difficulties of the time, but, “what is more important, in the social and moral working of the new religion and new piety which Luther had established.”

  Influence of Luther’s Ethics. Robbery of Church Property Proves a Curse

  Not only had the Peasant Rising and the reprisals taken by the rulers and the towns brought misery on the land and hardened the hearts of the princes and magistrates, not only had the means available for the relief of the poor been diminished, first by the founding of new parishes in place of the old ones, which had in many cases been supported by the monasteries and foundations, secondly, by the demands of Protestants for the restitution of many ecclesiastical benefices given by their Catholic forefathers, thirdly, by the drying up of the spring of gifts and donations, but “the common fund, which had been swelled by the shekels of the Church, had now to bear many new burdens and only what remained — which often enough was not much — was employed for charitable purposes.” In the same way, and to an even greater extent, must the Lutheran ethics be taken into account. Luther’s views on justification by faith alone destroyed “that impulse of the Middle Ages towards open-handed charity.” This was “an ethical defect of the Lutheran doctrine”; it was only owing to his “utter ignorance of the world” that Luther persisted in believing that faith would, of itself and without any “law,” beget good works and charity. “It was a cause of wonder and anxiety to him throughout his life that his assumption, that faith would be the best ‘taskmaster and the strongest incentive to good works and kindliness,’ never seemed to be realised.… The most notable result of Luther’s doctrine of grace and denial of all human merit was, at least among the masses, an increase of libertinism and of the spirit of irresponsibility.”

  The dire effects of the new principles were also evident in the large and wealthy towns, the exemplary poor-law regulations of which we have considered above. After the innovations had mad
e their way among them we hear little more of provisions being made against mendicancy, for the promotion of work and for the relief of poverty. Hence, as regards these corporations … the change of religion meant, according to Feuchtwanger, “a decline in the quality of their social philanthropy.” (Cp. above, vol. iv., ff.)

  From some districts, however, we have better reports of the results achieved by the relief funds. In times of worst distress good Christians were always ready to help. Much depended on the spirit of those concerned in the work. In general, however, the complaints of the preachers of the new faith, including Melanchthon, wax louder and louder. They tell us that the patrimony of the poor was being carried off by the rapacity of the great or disappearing under the hands of avaricious and careless administrators, whilst new voluntary contributions were no longer forthcoming. We find no lack of those, who, like Luther’s friend Paul Eber, are given to noting the visible, palpable consequences of the wrong done to the monasteries, brotherhoods and churches.

  A long list of statements from respected Protestant contemporaries is given by Janssen, who concludes: “The whole system of poor relief was grievously affected by the seizure and squandering of Church goods and of innumerable charitable bequests intended not only for parochial and Church use but also for the hospitals, schools and poor-houses.” The testimonies in question, the frankness of which can only be explained by the honourable desire to make an end of the crying evil, come, for instance, from Thomas Rorarius, Andreas Musculus, Johann Winistede, Erasmus Sarcerius, Ambrose Pape and the General Superintendent, Cunemann Flinsbach. They tend to show that the new doctrine of faith alone had dried up the well-spring of self-sacrifice, as indeed Andreas Hyperius, the Marburg theologian, Christopher Fischer, the General Superintendent, Daniel Greser, the Superintendent, Sixtus Vischer and others state in so many words.

  The incredible squandering of Church property is proved by official papers, was pilloried by the professors of the University of Rostock, also is clear from the minutes of the Visitations of Wesenberg in 1568 and of the Palatinate in 1556 which bewail “the sin against the property set aside for God and His Church.” And again, “The present owners have dealt with the Church property a thousand times worse than the Papists,” they make no conscience of “selling it, mortgaging it and giving it away.” Princes belonging to the new faith also raised their voice in protest, for instance, Duke Barnim XI in 1540, Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg in 1540 and Elector Johann George, 1573. But the sovereigns were unable to restrain their rapacious nobles. “The great Lords,” the preacher Erasmus Sarcerius wrote of the Mansfeld district in 1555, “seek to appropriate to themselves the feudal rights and dues of the clergy and allow their officials and justices to take forcible action.… The revenues of the Church are spent in making roads and bridges and giving banquets, and are lent from hand to hand without hypothecary security.” The Calvinist, Anton Prætorius, and many others not to mention Catholic contemporaries, speak in similar terms.

  Of the falling off in the Church funds and poor-boxes in the 16th century in Hesse, in the Saxon Electorate, in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, in Hamburg and elsewhere abundant proof is met with in the official records, and this is the case even with regard to Würtemberg in the enactments of the Dukes from 1552 to 1562, though that country constituted in some respects an exception; at a later date Duke Johann Frederick hazarded the opinion that the regulations regarding the fund “had fallen into oblivion.”

  The growth of the proletariate, to remedy the impoverishment of which no means had as yet been discovered, was in no small measure promoted by Luther’s facilitation of marriage.

  Luther himself had written, that “a boy ought to have recourse to matrimony as soon as he is twenty and a maid when she is from fifteen to eighteen years of age, and leave it to God to provide for their maintenance and that of their children.” Other adherents of the new faith went even further, Eberlin of Günsburg simply declared: “As soon as a girl is fifteen, a boy eighteen, they should be given to each other in marriage.” There were others like the author of a “Predigt über Hunger- und Sterbejahre, von einem Diener am Wort” (1571), who raised strong objections against such a course. Dealing with the causes of the evident increase of “deterioration and ruin” in “lands, towns and villages,” he says, that “a by no means slight cause is the countless number of lightly contracted marriages, when people come together and beget children without knowing where they will get food for them, and so come down themselves in body and soul, and bring up their children to begging from their earliest years.” “And I cannot here approve of this sort of thing that Luther has written: A lad should marry when he is twenty, etc. [see above]. No, people should not think of marrying and the magistrates should not allow them to do so before they are sure of being able at least to provide their families with the necessaries of life, for else, as experience shows, a miserable, degenerate race is produced.”

  What this old writer says is borne out by modern sociologists. One of them, dealing with the 16th and 17th centuries, says: “These demands [of Luther and Eberlin] are obviously not practicable from the economic point of view, but from the ethical standpoint also they seem to us extremely doubtful. To rush into marriage without prospect of sufficient maintenance is not trusting God but tempting Him. Such marriages are extremely immoral actions and they deserve legal punishment on account of their danger to the community.” “Greater evil to the world can scarcely be caused in any way than by such marriages. Even in the most favourable cases such early marriages must have a deteriorating influence on the physical and intellectual culture of posterity.”

  Owing to the neglect of any proper care for the poor the plague of vagabondage continued on the increase. Luther’s zealous contemporary, Cyriacus Spangenberg, sought to counteract it by reprinting the Master’s edition of the “Liber vagatorum.” He says: “False begging and trickery has so gained the upper hand that scarcely anybody is safe from imposture.” The Superintendent, Nicholas Selnecker, again republished the writing with Luther’s preface in 1580, together with some lamentations of his own. He complains that “there are too many tramps and itinerant scholars who give themselves up to nothing but knavery,” etc.

  Adolf Harnack is only re-echoing the complaints of 16th century Protestants when he writes: “We may say briefly that, alas, nothing of importance was achieved, nay, we must go further: the Catholics are quite right when they assert that they, not we, lived to see a revival of charitable work in the 16th century, and, that, where Lutheranism was on the ascendant, social care of the poor was soon reduced to a worse plight than ever before.” The revival in Catholic countries to which Harnack refers showed itself particularly in the 17th century in the activity of the new Orders, whereas at this time the retrograde movement was still in progress in the opposite camp. “For a long time the Protestant relief system produced only insignificant results.” It was not till the rise of Pietism and Rationalism, i.e. until the inauguration of the admirable Home Missions, that things began to improve. But Pietism and Rationalism are both far removed from the original Lutheran orthodoxy.

  Some Recent Excuses

  It has been remarked in excuse of Luther and his want of success, that, “with merit and the hope of any reward, there also vanished the stimulus to strive after the attainment of salvation by means of works,” and that this being so, it was “not surprising” that charity — the selfless fruit of faith — was wanting in many; “for new, albeit higher moral motives, cannot at once come into play with the same facility as the older ones which they displace; there comes a time when the old motives have gone and when the new ones are operative only in the case of a few; the leaven at first only works gradually.” The history of the spread of “the higher motives of morality” not only at the outset of Christianity but at all times, shows, however, as a rule these to be most active under the Inspiration of the Divine Spirit at the time when first accepted. Nor does the comparison with the leaven in the passage quoted apply to a st
ate of decline and decay, where, for a change to be effected, outside and entirely different elements were needed. We are told that the new motives could not at once take effect, but, where the delay extends over quite a century and a half, the blame surely cannot be laid on the shortness of the time of probation.

  Again, when we hear great stress laid on the fact that Luther at least paved the way for State relief of the poor and, thus, far outstrode the mediæval Church, one is justified in asking, whether in reality State relief of the poor, with compulsory taxation, non-intervention of Christian charity, or individual effort, or without any morally elevating influence, is something altogether ideal; whether, on the other hand, voluntary charity, as practised particularly by associations, Orders or ecclesiastics, does not deserve a much higher place and take precedence of, or at least stand side by side with, the forced “charity” of the State. Even to-day Protestantism is seeking to reserve a place for voluntary charitable effort. Considerations as to the value of mere State charity would, however, carry us too far. We must refer this matter to experts.

  That, before Luther’s day, the authorities took a reasonable and even larger share in the relief of the poor than he himself demanded, is evident from what has been said above ( ff.).

  As a matter of fact, judging by what has gone before, the assertion that the system of State relief of the poor was originated by Luther or by Protestantism calls for considerable “revision.” “The reformation,” so the sociological authority we have so frequently quoted says, “created neither the communal nor the governmental system of poor relief.” This he finds borne out by the different schemes for the relief of the poor contained in the old ecclesiastical constitutions. It is true, he says, that, “according to the idea in vogue, the origin of our present Poor Law can be traced back directly” to the Reformation. Nevertheless, the changes that took place in the social care of the poor subsequent to Luther’s day, though certainly “far-reaching enough,” were “exclusively negative”; owing to his exertions the Church property and that set aside for the relief of the poor was secularised, and the previous free-handed method of distribution ceased; all further growth of legislation on the subject in the prosperous and independent townships was effectually hindered; out of the mass of property that passed into alien hands only a few scraps could be spared by the secular rulers and handed over to the ministers for the benefit of the poor.