Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  These and similar remonstrances were unavailing to change the views which had taken root at Wittenberg.

  George Major, Professor of theology at Wittenberg University, was a learned and zealous disciple of Luther’s. He, like Melanchthon, on hearing of the execution of Servetus at Geneva, declared that Calvin was to be commended for having put to death the heretic, and, at a Disputation held in 1555, expressly defended the thesis, that it was the duty of the authorities to punish contumacious heretics with death. They must “get rid of blasphemers, perjurers and wizards. Amongst the blasphemers must, however, be reckoned those who persistently defend idolatrous worship, or heresies which clearly disagree with the articles of the faith.”

  Luther’s code of penalties for any deviation from the Wittenberg teaching fitted in well with Bugenhagen’s natural harshness, who showed himself only too ready to make his own the words of Moses concerning the slaying of unbelievers. We may recall how, in conversation, when Luther mentioned the difficulties he had with Carlstadt, Agricola and Schenk, Bugenhagen broke in with the remark: “Sir Doctor, we ought to do what is commanded in Deuteronomy where Moses says they should be put to death.” Bugenhagen, in the many places into which he brought the new faith, was relentlessly severe in enforcing against the Catholics the principles he had carried with him from Wittenberg. Very characteristic is the tone in which he reported to Luther that the Mass had been forbidden in Denmark and the monks driven out of the land as “seditionmongers” and “blasphemers.” Not only had the bishops been imprisoned, but, according to the account of Peter Palladius the superintendent, some of the monks “had been hanged.”

  Justus Jonas began his labours at Halle in 1542 by a written invitation to the Town-Council “completely to purge the town of false doctrine and every kind of idolatrous worship”; Luther and Melanchthon had sufficiently proved in their works that this “was incumbent on Christian magistrates.” He declared that the monks still living in the town were “obstinate and impenitent idolaters,” “adders and snakes” whom he “must reduce to silence with the use of the gag”; already, throughout the whole neighbourhood, “merely at the exhortations of the preachers, the monasteries, with their Masses and idolatrous worship, had crumbled into ruins.” Later, in a memorandum addressed to the Town-Council in 1546, Jonas again inveighed against the remaining handful of well-disposed and zealous monks, and called to mind how “our beloved father, Dr. Martin, in the very last sermon he preached at Halle shortly before his decease, had exhorted the Town-Council and the whole Church with all his burning, stormy earnestness to rid themselves of the crawling things.” Jonas appealed to his own “conscience” and threatened to report matters to the Elector of Saxony and “his Electoral Highness’s scholars at Wittenberg.” With the outbreak of the Schmalkalden war, when the Electoral troops laid waste the monasteries his hopes at last found their fulfilment. He announced on March 3, 1547, that, at Halle, the “Papistic idolatry” had now been swept away; when he wrote this he did not expect the change in the position of the Catholics in the town, for which the defeat of the Elector’s troops in the following month was responsible.

  We are reminded how greatly Spalatin was imbued with Luther’s exclusivism and spirit of intolerance by his words concerning the “Christian bit” which he wished placed in the mouths of all the clergy. He was at great pains to press upon the sovereign that he was not to permit “unchristian ceremonies” and “idolatry.”

  The Elector Johann was merely giving expression to the views with which Spalatin and Luther had inspired him when he declared that, “heretics and contemners of the Word” must in every instance be punished by the authorities. His successor, Johann Frederick, likewise followed obediently the “Wittenberg theologians and lawyers,” as he terms his authorities. He instructed Melanchthon in 1536 to write and have printed a popular “Answer to sundry unchristian articles” against the Anabaptists, which was to be read aloud from the pulpit every third Sunday, and which insisted that the secular authorities were bound to punish “all contempt of Scripture and the outward Word” as “blatant blasphemy.”

  At the Religious Conference at Worms in 1557 quite a number of respected Lutheran theologians (J. Brenz, J. Marbach, M. Diller, J. Pistorius, J. Andreæ, G. Karg, P. Eber and G. Rungius) signed a lengthy statement by Melanchthon aimed at the Anabaptists. As one of the errors of the sect is instanced their teaching that God communicates Himself without the intermediary of the ministry, of preaching or the Sacrament. Those “heads and ringleaders” of the sect who persisted in their doctrines were “to be condemned as guilty of sedition and blasphemy and put to death by the sword”; the death penalty prescribed in Leviticus for blasphemers was asserted to be a “natural law, binding, by virtue of their office, on all in authority,” hence “the judges had done the right thing” when they condemned to death the heretic Servetus at Geneva.

  Johann Brenz, who helped to promote Lutheranism in Würtemberg, had, in 1528, written and published a pamphlet in which he deprecated the Anabaptists’ being put to death “merely on account of heresy” when not guilty of sedition. He was for this reason regarded by Melanchthon as “too mild.” His later writings, however, show that the intolerant spirit of Wittenberg finally seized on him too. In his treatment of Catholics — both previous to 1528, and, even more so when the olden worship had been suppressed at Schwäbisch-Halle and he had been called to Stuttgart — he was in the forefront in advising violent measures against Catholic practices. When he reorganised the Church in Würtemberg, in 1536, after the victory of Duke Ulrich, attendance at the Protestant sermons was made obligatory on the Catholics of Stuttgart under pain of a fine, or of imprisonment in the tower on bread and water. Brenz, though widely extolled as tolerant and broadminded, in his quality of spiritual adviser to Duke Christopher, stooped to the meanest and most petty regulations in order to induce the nuns who still remained faithful to their religion — many of whom were of high birth and advanced in years — to accept the new faith; they were compelled to attend the sermons and religious colloquies, deprived of their books of devotion, their correspondence was supervised, they had to entertain Protestant guests at table and to be served by Lutheran maids, etc.

  The unenviable distinction of having most thoroughly assimilated Luther’s intolerant views was enjoyed by two men in close mental kinship with him, viz. Justus Menius and Johann Spangenberg.

  Johann Spangenberg, an enthusiastic pupil of Luther’s, and, later, Superintendent at Eisleben, when preacher at Nordhausen declared in a tract that “fear of God’s wrath and His extreme displeasure” had rightly led the Town-Council to forbid Catholics to attend Catholic sermons, because, there, souls were “horribly murdered”; even Nabuchodonosor and Darius had set the authorities an example of how “blasphemy against religion” was to be treated.

  Justus Menius, Luther’s friend, who worked as superintendent at Eisenach and Gotha, followed Luther in qualifying the Anabaptists as the emissaries of the devil, as “rebels and murderers,” who had fallen under the ban of the authorities because they did not “profess the true faith according to the Word of God” and live a “godly life.” Of the authorities who were negligent in punishing them he exclaims: “The devil rides such rulers so that they sin and do what is unrighteous.” Luther himself wrote laudatory prefaces to his works on the subject. In 1552 Menius demanded from Duke Albert of Prussia a severe prohibition against the new believers’ teaching or writing anything that was at variance with the Confession of Augsburg. When, however, his opponents secured the ear of the Court he had himself to suffer; the ruler pointed out to him that, in accordance with his own theories of the supremacy of the sovereign, it was the duty of the authorities, by virtue of their princely office, to withstand false doctrine and, consequently, he himself must either submit or go to prison; upon this Menius made his escape to Leipzig (†1558).

  Urban Rhegius, appointed General Superintendent by Duke Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg after the Diet of Augsburg, not only de
fended in his writings a relentless system of compulsion whereby Catholic parents were no longer permitted even in their homes to instruct their children in the Catholic faith, but also allowed “Zwinglians and Papists to be beaten with rods and banished from the town.” The authorities he invited to appropriate the property of the clergy. The inglorious war he waged against the nuns of Lüneburg, who, in spite of every kind of persecution, stood true to their religion, has recently been brought to light, and that, thanks to Protestant research; it forms one of the blackest pages in the history of Lutheran intolerance.

  A memorial of the Strasburg preachers dating from 1535 (printed in 1537) which might be termed the fullest and most complete exposition of the Royal Supremacy in church affairs drafted in that period, is the work of Wolfgang Capito, a preacher often extolled for his moderation and prudence. In it we have the picture of a Government-Church with a “Caliph” (Döllinger’s expression) at its head, who combines in himself the highest secular and spiritual authority.

  Martin Bucer though differing from Luther in much else was yet at one with him in asserting that it was the duty of the secular authority to abolish “false doctrine and perverted ceremonials,” and that, as the sole authority, it was to be obeyed by “all the bishops and clergy.” Though anxious to be regarded as considerate and peaceable, he defended the prohibition against Catholic sermons issued at Augsburg by the City-Council in 1534, and even incited it to still more stringent measures against the Catholics. He advocated quite openly “the power of the authorities over consciences.” “Among us Christians,” he asks, “is injury and slaughter of souls by false worship of less importance than the ravishing of wives and daughters?” He never rested until, in 1537, with the help of such hot-heads as Wolfgang Musculus, he brought about the entire suppression of the Mass at Augsburg. At his instigation “many fine paintings, monuments and ancient works of art in the churches were wantonly torn, broken and smashed.” Whoever refused to submit and attend public worship was obliged within eight days to quit the city-boundaries. Catholic citizens were forbidden under severe penalties to attend Catholic worship elsewhere, and special guards were stationed at the gates to prevent any such attempt.

  In other of the Imperial cities Bucer acted with no less violence and intolerance, for instance, at Ulm, where he supported Œcolampadius and Ambrose Blaurer in 1531, and at Strasburg where he acted in concert with Capito, Caspar Hedio, Matthæus Zell and others. Here, in 1529, after the Town-Council had prohibited Catholic worship, the Councillors were requested by the preachers to help to fill the empty churches by issuing regulations prescribing attendance at the sermons. Bucer adhered till his death (1551), as his work “De Regno Christi” (1550) proves, to the principle of the rights and duties of authorities towards the new religion.

  In the above survey of those who preached religious intolerance only Luther’s own pupils and followers have been considered; the result would be even less cheering were the leaders of the other Protestant sects added to the list.

  At Zürich, Zwingli’s State-Church grew up much as Luther’s did in Germany; Œcolampadius at Basle and Zwingli’s successor, Bullinger, were strong compulsionists. Calvin’s name is even more closely bound up with the idea of religious absolutism, while the task of handing down to posterity his harsh doctrine of religious compulsion was undertaken by Beza in his notorious work “De hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis.” The annals of the Established Church of England were likewise at the outset written in blood.

  The sufferings endured by the Catholics in Germany owing to the wave of intolerance which spread from Wittenberg are reflected in the countless complaints we hear at that time. Many writings still tell to-day of the injustice under which they groaned. In a “Manual of Complaint and Consolation for all oppressed Christians” we read as follows: “Oh, what a mockery it is that these tyrants and abusers of power should exclaim everywhere that their gospel is Christian freedom, that they have no wish to tyrannise over consciences when there could never have been worse tyrants than those men who do not scruple to go on unceasingly tormenting the consciences of the people, robbing them of the consolation of the holy sacraments of the religious ministrations of consecrated priests, of all their prayer-books and devotional works, and, even on their death-beds, in spite of their piteous entreaties refusing them the Holy Viaticum!” This touching complaint is made more particularly in the name of those most defenceless members of society, who were devoid of legal protection and whose very poverty made emigration impossible. “All the iniquities committed in German lands and cities are attested at the Judgment-Seat of God by the souls of thousands of consecrated nuns, who never did wrong to anyone and who asked for nothing more than permission to live and die in their ancient faith, even though their worldly goods should be taken away from them and they shut up within closed walls.”

  2. Luther as Judge

  It must not be overlooked that Luther’s severity towards heretics within his fold is to be set down largely to his nervous irritability arising partly out of his natural temperament, partly out of his unceasing labours, so that, if we are to be just to him, his conviction that his doctrine was the only authorised one must not be held to be entirely responsible for his behaviour. At the same time it is plain how deeply he was affected by belief in his higher mission. Thus he practically made himself a religious dictator, when, in 1542, he demanded that the Meissen nobles who had come over to him should not only ratify their new belief by doing penance, but also should “signify their approval of everything which has hitherto been done by us and shall be done in the future.”

  Another point on which we must also do him justice is the service performed by him in his controversies with rivals, in the field both of theology and Scripture-exegesis, by repressing with such energy and general success the dangerous tendencies apparent in the Anabaptist heresy and the Antinomianism of Johann Agricola. In the attacks of the Antinomians on all law, even on the Decalogue, there undoubtedly lay a great danger for morality and religion. Certain of Luther’s own principles were carried to rash, nay, foolhardy, lengths by the Antinomians. Hence it was not unfortunate that Agricola found pitted against him so redoubtable an opponent as Luther who, as was his wont, interfered and nipped the evil in the bud.

  The Conceit and the Obstinacy of the “Heretics”

  Luther bitterly accuses of boundless presumption all the heretics within the New Faith, but particularly Agricola. The latter might even be classed with those doctors who might most fittingly be compared with Arius and treated in the same way.

  “This man,” he says of Agricola, “is presumption itself. Neither with the flute nor with tears is he to be won.… I see it is my goodness that puffs him up. He says he is a guiltless Abel. He is, forsooth, being made a martyr at my hands.…” But, so Luther continues, he will be such a martyr as was Arius and Satan.

  In 1542, when the conversation at table turned on the teachers of the New Faith whose opinions differed from Luther’s, a good many names were mentioned, “Those at Zürich” (Zwingli’s pupils), Carlstadt, Bucer and Capito, “Grickel and Jeckel” — some of them living and some of them already dead — all of whom were insufferably presumptuous. It was then that Bugenhagen, who was present, could not refrain from quoting the passage in the Old Testament where Moses had commanded in God’s name “That prophet shall be slain because he spoke to draw you away from the Lord your God.… If thy brother would persuade thee (to serve other gods), thou shalt presently put him to death. Let thy hand be the first upon him and afterwards the hands of all the people. With stones shall he be stoned to death: because he would have withdrawn thee from the Lord thy God. If in one of the cities thou hear that some have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, inquire carefully and diligently the truth of the thing by looking well into it, and if thou find that which is said to be certain and that this abomination hath been committed, thou shalt forthwith kill the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, and shalt destroy it a
nd all things that are in it, even to the cattle.”

  Hence it was perhaps rather lucky that the Wittenberg tribunal was presided over by the sovereign of the land, and that the sentences pronounced at Luther’s table or in the learned circles of the Theological Faculty required subsequent ratification by the authorities.

  Luther’s complaints elsewhere about the pride of the heretics throw still further light on the jealousy which was at work in him (above, ).

  “How is it that all the insurgents say ‘I am the man?’ They want all the glory for themselves and hate and are grim with all others, just like the Pope who also wants to stand alone.” Zwingli appears to be one of the foremost among those desirous of robbing him of his due glory. “He was ambitious through and through.” On hearing that Zwingli had said that, in three years, he would have France, Spain and England “on his side and for his share,” Luther became very bitter and several times complained of Zwingli’s intention to seize upon his harvest; such words seemed to him the “boasting of a braggart.” “Œcolampadius, too, fancied himself the doctor of doctors and far above me, even before he had ever heard me.” And in the same way Carlstadt said: “As for you, Sir Doctor, I don’t care a snap! Münzer, too, preached against two Popes, the old one and the new, said I must be a Saul, and that though I had made a good beginning, the Spirit of God had left me.… Hence let all the theologians and preachers look to it and diligently beware lest they seek their glory in Holy Scripture and in God’s Word; otherwise they will have a fall.”— “Mr. Eisleben [Johann Agricola] labours under great pride and presumption; he wants to be the only one, and, with his pride and his puffed-up spirit, to surpass all others.” “They are scamps,” so he abuses them in another passage, “fain would they get at us and surpass us, as though forsooth we were blind and could not see through their tricks.”