Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The Statutes of the Theological Faculty, probably drawn up in 1533 by Melanchthon with Luther’s approval, made it strictly incumbent on the teachers to preach the pure doctrine in accordance with the Confession of Augsburg; in the event of any difference of opinion a commission of judges was to decide; “after that the false opinion shall no longer be defended; if anyone obstinately persists in so doing, he is to be punished with such severity as to prevent him any more spreading abroad his wicked views.” “The same Luther,” says Paulsen of this, “who, twelve years before, had declared that his conscience would not allow of his conceding to Christendom assembled in Council the right to determine the formula of faith, now claimed for the Wittenberg faculty — for this is what it amounts to — the unquestionable right to decide on faith. From 1535 to the day of his death Luther was without a break Dean of this Faculty.”

  Again, subsequent to 1535, the preachers and pastors sent out or officially recommended by Wittenberg had to take the so-called “Ordination Oath” which had been suggested by the Elector in order to exclude false preachers. The ministers to be appointed within the Electorate, and likewise those destined to take up appointments elsewhere, had to submit at Wittenberg to a searching examination on doctrine; only after passing it and taking an oath as to the future could they receive their commission. The examination is referred to in the Certificate of Ordination. Thus, in the Certificate of Heinrich Bock (who was sent to Reval in Livonia) which is dated May 17, 1540, and signed by Luther, Bugenhagen, Jonas and Melanchthon, it is set forth that he had undertaken to “preach to the people steadfastly and faithfully the pure doctrine of the Gospel which our Church confesses.” It is also stated that he adheres to the “consensus” of the “Catholic Church of Christ,” and, for this reason, is recommended to the Church of Reval. A similar Certificate for the schoolmaster Johann Fischer, who had received a call to Rudolstadt “to the ministry of the Gospel,” is dated a month earlier. His doctrine, so it declares, had been found on examination to be pure and in accordance with the Catholic doctrine of the Gospel as professed by the Wittenbergers; a promise had also been received from him to teach the same faithfully to the people; for this reason “his call has been confirmed by public ordination.” Fischer had received the “diaconate.”

  As early as 1535 we read of the solemn ordination of a certain Johann (Golhart?), “examined by us and publicly ordained in the presence of our Church with prayers and hymns.” He was “ordained and confirmed by order of our sovereign,” having been called and chosen as “assistant minister” at Gotha by the local congregation headed by their pastor Myconius.

  The doctrine of the punishment of heretics was afterwards incorporated by Melanchthon in 1552, in the Wittenberg instructions composed by him and entitled: “The Examination of Ordinands.”

  Opinions of Protestant Historians

  The above account of Luther’s intolerance is very much at variance with the Protestant view still current to some extent in erudite circles, but more particularly in popular literature. Luther, for all the harshness of his disposition, is yet regarded as having in principle advocated leniency, as having been a champion of personal religious freedom, and having only sanctioned severity towards the Anabaptists because of the danger of revolt. Below we shall, however, quote a series of statements from Protestant writers who have risen superior to such party prejudice.

  Walther Köhler, in his “Reformation und Ketzerprozess” (1901), wrote:

  “In Luther’s case it is impossible to speak of liberty of conscience or religious freedom.” “The death-penalty for heresy rested on the highest Lutheran authority.” According to Köhler there can be no doubt that prosecution for heresy among the Protestants was practically Luther’s doing. “The views of the other reformers on the persecution and bringing to justice of heretics were merely the outgrowth of Luther’s plan, they contributed nothing fresh.” The same writer is of opinion that the question, whether Luther would have approved of the execution of Servetus “must undoubtedly be answered in the affirmative.” “It is certain that Luther would have agreed to the execution of Servetus; heresy as heresy is according to him deserving of death.” One observation made by Köhler is significant enough, viz. “that, when the preaching of the Word proved ineffectual against the heretics,” Luther had recourse to the intervention of the secular authorities.

  The matter has been examined with equal frankness by P. Wappler in various studies in which he utilises new data taken from the archives.

  “That Luther in principle regarded the death penalty in the case of heretics as just, even where there was no harm done to the ‘regna mundi,’” says Wappler, “is plain from the advice given by him on Oct. 20, 1534, to Prince Johann of Anhalt in reply to his inquiry concerning the attitude to be adopted towards the Anabaptists at Zerbst.” “The fact is, that from the commencement of 1530 the reformers cease to make any real distinction between the two classes of heretics [the seditious ones and those who merely taught false doctrines]. Heretics who merely ‘blasphemed’ were always regarded by them, at least where they remained obdurate, as practically guilty of sedition, and, consequently, as deserving the death penalty.” “The principal part in this was played by Luther, Melanchthon being merely the draughtsman of the memoranda in which Luther’s ideas on the question of heretics were reduced to a certain system.” “The many executions, even of Anabaptists who are known to have not been revolutionaries and who were put to death on the strength of the declarations of the Wittenberg theologians, refute only too plainly all attempts to deny the clear fact, viz. that Luther himself approved of the death penalty even in the case of such as were merely heretics.”

  Wappler, after showing how Luther’s wish was, that everyone who preached without orders should be handed over to “Master Hans,” adds: “And what he said, was undoubtedly meant in earnest; shortly before this, on Jan. 18, 1530, as Luther had doubtless learned from Melanchthon, at Reinhardsbrunn near Gotha, six such persons had been handed over to Master Hans, i.e. to the executioner, and duly executed.” Wappler regards it as futile to urge that: “Luther could not prevent executions taking place in the Saxon Electorate”; it is wrong to put the blame on Melanchthon rather than on Luther for the putting to death of heretics.

  Speaking of the execution of Peter Pestel at Zwickau, the same author declares that it was “a sad sign of the unfortunate direction so early taken by the Lutheran reformation that its representatives should allow this man, who had neither disseminated his doctrine in his native land nor rebaptised … to die a felon’s death.” “Even contempt of the outward Word,” he says, “carelessness about going to church and contempt of Scripture — in this instance contempt for the Bible as interpreted by Luther — was now regarded as ‘rank blasphemy,’ which it was the duty of the authorities to punish as such. To such lengths had the vaunted freedom of the Gospel now gone.” The introduction of the Saxon Inquisition (See above, vol. v., 593) leads him to remark: “The principle of evangelical freedom of belief and liberty of conscience, which Luther had championed barely two years earlier, was here most shamefully repudiated, particularly by this lay inquisition, and yet Luther said never a word in protest.”

  In 1874 W. Maurenbrecher expressed it as his opinion that “Luther’s tolerance in theory as well as in practice amounted to this: The Church and her ministers were to denounce such as went astray in the faith, whereupon it became the duty of the secular authorities to chastise them as open heretics.” In 1885 L. Keller declared: “It merely displays ignorance of the actual happenings of that epoch, when many people, even to-day, take it for granted that such executions and the wholesale persecution of the Anabaptists were only on account of sedition, and that the reformers had no hand in these things.” “Luther indeed demands toleration,” says K. Rieker, “but only for the Evangelicals; he demands freedom, but merely for the preaching of the Evangel.” According to Adolf Harnack “one of the Reformer’s most noticeable limitations was his inability either fu
lly to absorb the cultural elements of his time, or to recognise the right and duty of unfettered research.”

  In Saxony, so H. Barge, Carlstadt’s biographer, complains, “the police-force was mobilised for the defence of pure doctrine”; “and Luther played the part of prompter” to the intolerant Saxon government. “Luther’s harsh, violent and impatient ways” and their “unfortunate” outcome are admitted unreservedly by P. Kalkhoff, another Luther researcher. G. Lœsche calls Paulus’s studies on Strasburg a “Warning against the edifying sentimentality of Protestant make-believe.” Luther “demanded freedom for himself alone and for his doctrine,” remarks E. Friedberg, “not for those doctrines, which he regarded as erroneous.” Neander, the Protestant Church-historian, speaking of Luther’s views in general as given by Dietrich, says they “would justify all sorts of oppression on the part of the State, and all kinds of intellectual tyranny, and were in fact the same as those on which the Roman Emperors acted when they persecuted Christianity.”

  Two quotations from Catholic authors may be added. The above passage from Köhler reads curiously like the following statement of C. Ulenburg, an olden Catholic polemic; writing in 1589 he said: “When Luther saw that his disciples were gradually falling away from him and, acting on the principle of freedom of conscience, were treating him as he had previously treated the olden Church, he came to think of having recourse to coercion against such folk.”

  “Historically nothing is more incorrect,” wrote Döllinger in his Catholic days, “than the assertion that the Reformation was a movement in favour of intellectual freedom. The exact contrary is the truth. For themselves it is true, Lutherans and Calvinists claimed liberty of conscience as all men have done in every age, but to grant it to others never occurred to them so long as they were the stronger side. The complete suppression and extirpation of the Catholic Church, and in fact of everything that stood in their way, was regarded by the reformers as something entirely natural.” — Luther’s principles, aided by the arbitrary interference of the secular power in matters of faith, especially where Catholics were concerned, led both in his age and in the following, “to a despotism” “the like of which,” as Döllinger expresses it, “had not hitherto been known; the new system as worked out by the theologians and lawyers was even worse than the Byzantine practice.”

  Luther’s Spirit in his Fellows

  The question concerning Melanchthon raised by Protestant historians, viz. whether it was he who converted Luther to his intolerance, or, whether, on the other hand, he himself was influenced by Luther, cannot, on the strength of the documents, be answered either affirmatively or negatively. In some respects Melanchthon struck out his own paths, in others he merely followed in Luther’s wake. He was by no means loath to making use of coercion in the case of doctrines differing from his own. His able pen had the doubtful merit of expressing in fluent language what Luther thought and said in private, as we see from the Memoranda still extant. His ill-will with the Papacy and the hostile sects within the new fold, was, it is true, as a rule not so blatant as Luther’s; he was fond of displaying in his style that moderation dear to the humanist; yet we have spontaneous outbursts of his which sound a very harsh note and which doubtless were due to his old and intimate spiritual kinship with Luther.

  For instance, we have the wish he expressed, that God would send King Henry VIII a “valiant murderer to make an end of him,” and, again, his warm approval of Calvin’s execution of the heretic Michael Servetus in 1554 (a “pious and memorable example for all posterity”). He himself wrote about that time a special treatise in defence of the use of the sword against those who spread erroneous doctrines.

  With regard to Melanchthon A. Hänel says: To Protestantism “religious freedom was denied at every point.” When Melanchthon wrote to Calvin in praise of the execution of Servetus, his letter, according to Hänel, “was not, as has been imagined, dictated by the mere passion of the moment, but was the harsh consequence of a harsh doctrine.” It must be admitted, remarks the Protestant theologian A. Hunzinger, “that Melanchthon was wont to lose no time in having recourse to fire and sword. This forms a dark blot on his life. Many a man fell a victim to his memorandum, who certainly had no wish to destroy the ‘regna mundi.’”

  In consequence of the precipitate and often brutal intervention of the authorities against real or alleged heretics Melanchthon had afterwards abundant reason to regret his appeal to the secular power. He himself, as early as Aug. 31, 1530, had foretold, “that, later, a far more insufferable tyranny would arise than had ever before been known,” viz. the tyranny due to the interference of the Princes in whose hands the power of persecution had been laid. Hence his exclamation: “If only I could revive the jurisdiction of the bishops! For I see what sort of Church we shall have if the ecclesiastical constitution is destroyed.” As we know, he was anxious gradually to graft the old ecclesiastical constitution on Luther’s congregations.

  Coming from Luther and fostered by Melanchthon, these intolerant ideas profoundly influenced all their friends.

  Not as though there was ever any lack of opponents of the theory of coercion among the Protestants, or even in Luther’s own flock. On the contrary there were some who had the sense of justice and the courage to resist the current of intolerance coming from Wittenberg. Indeed it was the protests which Luther encountered at Nuremberg which led him to emphasise his harsh demands.

  Already in 1530 Luther’s follower Lazarus Spengler wrote from Nuremberg to Veit Dietrich begging him to seek advice of Luther and to request his literary help; in the town there were some who opposed any measures of coercion against the divergent doctrines, “some of ours, who are not fanatics but are regarded as good Christians,” desire that neither the “Sacramentarians nor the Anabaptists” should be prosecuted so long as they do not “stir up revolt,” nor yet the errors prohibited of “the preachers of the godless Mass and other idolatries”; “they appeal on behalf of this to Dr. Luther’s booklet, which he some while ago addressed to Duke Frederick the Elector of Saxony against the fanatic Thomas Münzer, in which he approves this view and admits it to be quite sound.”

  At Augsburg (1533) the Lutheran lawyer, Conrad Hel, siding with his Catholic-minded confrères Conrad Peutinger and Johann Rehlinger openly and courageously denied the Town-Councils any rights in the matter. In 1534 Christoph Ehem, a patrician of Augsburg, who also held Lutheran views, wrote a little work in which he demanded universal and unconditional toleration and invited the Council to place some “bridle and restraint” on the new preachers. At that time (1536) the Lutheran preacher Johann Forster protested very strongly against Bucer, and refused to hear of the forcible suppression of Catholic worship in Cathedral churches outside the jurisdiction of the civic authorities; he appealed in this matter to Luther. Bucer just then was bent on suppressing the Catholic worship with the help of the magistrates. Forster was finally silenced by dint of “ranting, raging and shouting” and was indignantly asked: “Whether he wished to tolerate Popery and submit to such idolatry?”

  At Strasburg in 1528 the Protestant Town-Clerk, Peter Butz, set a brave example by openly and severely condemning in the Council the system of coercion planned by some of the preachers. Against the intolerance towards sectarians advocated by Bucer, preachers and scholars like Anton Engelbrecht, Wolfgang Schultheiss, Johann Sapidus and Jacob Ziegler were not slow to protest, though they had nothing to say against the violent abolition of Catholic worship.

  At Coire the preacher Johann Gantner came into conflict with Bullinger on account of the coercive measures favoured by the latter; he reproached the inhabitants of Zürich and Berne with having fallen away from the freedom of the Evangel into the Mosaic bondage. Gantner and others, in support of their protest, usually appealed against the prevailing tendency to Sebastian Franck’s “Chronica,” published at Strasburg in 1531.

  Sebastian Franck, the witty and learned opponent of Luther, “after Luther himself, the best and most popular German prose wri
ter of the day,” took the line of pushing to its bitter end Luther’s subjectivism. He declared that the new preachers had made of Holy Scripture a paper idol for the benefit of their private views, and that the Lutheran Church was the invisible kingdom of Christ and as such numbered among its members men of every sect; hence he argued that what was termed false doctrine and false worship should not be interfered with. As Kawerau points out, Franck found in the 16th century “not a few readers wherever dissatisfaction prevailed with the Papacy of the theologians”; nevertheless, in 1531, he was expelled from Strasburg on account of his liberal views; later on, when he had taken up his residence at Ulm, Melanchthon wrote thither, in 1535, that he should be “dealt with severely” (“severe coercendum”) no less than Schwenckfeld. Driven from Ulm he went to Basle in 1539, but even there the echo of the verdict of the Wittenbergers reached him; in March, 1540, the theologians assembled at Schmalkalden, condemned him and charged him with “inducing people to seek the spirit while neglecting the ‘Word’”; they themselves, they added, had broken with the Churches of the Pope because of their idolatry, but there was “no reason whatever for throwing over the ministry in our own Churches.”

  As we have already shown, Landgrave Philip of Hesse was likewise disposed to be less intolerant than Luther, at least with regard to the Anabaptists. Relentlessly as he refused any public toleration to the Catholic faith and banished those Catholics who persisted in their religious practices, yet, in a letter of 1532, addressed to Elector Johann of Saxony, he declared himself against the execution of the Anabaptists; the actual words have been quoted above (). In another letter, in 1545, to the Elector Johann Frederick, he also points out, that: “If this sect be punished so severely by us, then we, by our example, give our foes, the Papists, reason to treat us in the same way, for they regard us as no better than the Anabaptists.”