Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  When it came to putting the Gospels and Epistles into German, there was first of all the question of which German. Like the German lands as a whole, the German language was highly fragmented. There were two main variants: High German, spoken in the mountainous south, and Low German, spoken in the flat north. Within each group there were so many dialects that, as Luther observed, “people thirty miles apart can hardly understand each other. The Austrians and Bavarians do not understand the Thuringians and Saxons.” This Babel posed a special problem for the chanceries of the various German states, which had to communicate with one another. Over time, their scribes found ways to reconcile the various dialects so that their diplomatic messages could be broadly understood. Because of Saxony’s central location, the language developed by its scribes (known as Kanzleideutsch, or chancellery German) was the most widely used, and so Luther took it as his starting point.

  But this German was dry and bureaucratic, with convoluted syntax and Latinate vocabulary. Luther wanted a Bible that would speak to Germans of all regions and walks of life, from the magistrate at his bench to the carpenter at his lathe, and so he needed to develop a new, more accessible idiom. To that end, he could draw on the rich lexicon he had accumulated on his long treks around Germany and from his encounters with the many layers of German society. As a friar and a theologian, Luther had mastered the most intricate concepts of the faith, and as a pastor and a preacher he had had to find ways to convey them to the laity.

  He took the Vulgate as his starting point. This was not only the official Bible of the Church but also the one that he had grown up with and whose phrasing and rhythms were inscribed on his mind. But the grand style used by Jerome and other Latin translators was far removed from the type of Volksbuch, or people’s book, he had in mind.

  To help create it, Luther had a number of reference works at hand. They included medieval fixtures like the Glossa Ordinaria and the commentaries of Lyra, plus several Greek and Latin lexicons as well as Reuchlin’s Rudiments of Hebrew. Luther probably also had the 1475 Augsburg German Bible. Most important of all, he had the 1519 edition of Erasmus’s New Testament or a reprint of it. Throughout, Luther would rely heavily on the Greek text provided by Erasmus. Even after his many years of studying that language, however, his proficiency in it remained shaky, and so Erasmus’s Latin translation and annotations would prove of even greater benefit. A comparison of his finished product with Erasmus’s translation and notes shows the great guidance they provided as Luther struggled to capture the sense and meaning of the biblical text.

  He quickly developed a procedure. First, he would make a quick literal translation of the Vulgate Latin, using roughly the same word order. Then he would come up with synonyms for each word. Examining each phrase, he would consider the overall sound of the sentence, seeking a cadence that would make the words register and linger.

  At Matthew 5:16, for instance, where Jesus exhorts his flock to let their light shine before the people, Luther came up with the euphonious lasset euer Licht leuchten vor den Leuten. At Mark 14:33, where Christ grows troubled and distressed, Luther offered zu zittern und zu zagen. Among the many idioms he introduced were Perlen vor die Säue werfen (“throwing pearls before swine”) and ein Buch versiegelt mit sieben Siegeln (“a book sealed with seven seals”). Whenever possible, Luther replaced alien Latin terms with familiar German ones. The Greek coin the drachma became the German Groschen; the centurion referred to at Luke 23:47 became a Hauptmann (a German captain). Where the Vulgate referred to dux (“ruler”), Luther offered Herzog (German for “duke”), and for Dominus (“Lord”) he gave Herr (German for “noble” or “master”). In producing a Bible for the German people, Luther was Germanizing the Bible.

  Ultimately, however, he wanted a Bible that was not only rhetorically appealing but also theologically correct. Where, for instance, the Vulgate gave the Greek term ekklesia as ecclesia, or “church,” Luther instead used Gemeinde, meaning “community” or “congregation.” This reflected his view that the Christian community consists not of the institutional Church but of the body of all believers.

  Erasmus’s influence is apparent at Matthew 3:2, where John the Baptist admonishes those gathered at the Jordan River. Had Luther followed the Vulgate, he would have translated Poenitentiam agite—“Do penance”—as tut Busse, as it was given in most German versions. Instead, he offered Bessert euch—“Improve thyself”—a clear reflection of Erasmus’s comments on the Greek metanoia. In this way, the grammatical emendation proposed by Lorenzo Valla and adapted by Erasmus would enter the new Bible being prepared by Luther for the German people, with repentance cast as an internal act rather than a rite administered by a priest.

  Luther similarly followed Erasmus at Luke 1:28. Here, the Vulgate had the Archangel Gabriel greet Mary with Ave gratia plena—“Hail Mary, full of grace.” Erasmus had proposed Ave gratiosa—“Hail Mary, favored one.” Echoing him, Luther gave this as Gegrüsset seist du, Holdselige—“Greetings to you, gracious one.” This reading appealed to Luther both because he disapproved of the cult of the Virgin and because he felt the Vulgate’s phrasing was too remote from the way a German would actually greet a young woman. Later, when he (like Erasmus) was accused of downgrading Mary’s divine status, Luther would reply with characteristic scorn: “When does a German speak like that, ‘You are full of grace’? He would have to think of a keg ‘full of’ beer or a purse ‘full of’ money.” He had instead used “gracious one” “so that a German can at least think his way through to what the angel meant by this greeting.”

  As much as Luther depended on Erasmus, though, his translation in the end was to bear his own unique stamp. He wanted a New Testament that fully conveyed his belief in the supreme place of faith in Christ. This was especially apparent in Romans, which remained for him the centerpiece of the Bible. In the key section 3:19–30, he sharpened the sense in almost every passage. He was especially bold at 3:28. In the Vulgate, this read, “Man is justified by faith, without the works of the law.” When Luther put this in German, however, it seemed to lack the emphasis Paul had intended. To provide it, he added the word allein—“alone”—so that the passage read, “Man is justified by faith alone, without the works of the law.”

  Even allowing for the liberties translators invariably take, this was an audacious leap, giving the verse a finality the original lacked, and Luther would later be loudly denounced for it. He would prepare a defense that captured his approach to Scripture. The “papal asses” and “shameless nincompoops” who made such a “tremendous fuss” over this word, he wrote, knew “even less than the miller’s beast” how much “skill, energy, sense, and brains are required in a good translator.” He knew very well that “alone” appears in neither the Greek nor the Latin text, but its addition conveyed the true sense of the passage and so was needed to make the translation “clear and vigorous.” “We do not have to inquire of the literal Latin how we are to speak German, as these asses do,” he declared in a famous remark:

  Rather we must inquire about this of the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the marketplace. We must be guided by their language, the way they speak, and do our translating accordingly. That way they will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to them.

  Luther nonetheless acknowledged that, by adding allein, he was not simply following the rules of language. In this passage, he wrote, Paul was dealing “with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the law,” and so the passage urgently required and demanded the addition of the word. Why, then, “this raging and raving, this making of heretics and burning at the stake, when the matter itself at its very core is so clear and proves that faith alone lays hold of Christ’s death and resurrection, without any works, and that his death and resurrection are our life and our righteousness?” Therefore, allein “will stay in my New Testament, and though all the papal asses go stark raving mad they shall no
t take it from me.”

  And stay it did. Luther, who wanted to make the Word of God the sole foundation of Christianity, felt no hesitation in adding a word to make it conform more closely to his own theology.

  By early February 1522, Luther had completed about half the New Testament, and he sent the manuscript to Spalatin for forwarding to Melanchthon. Overwhelmed by questions, he longed to consult his younger colleague, whose knowledge of Greek far surpassed his own. His desire to return to Wittenberg was further sharpened by the reports he was receiving of the chaos that had gripped the town since his visit.

  After completing an investigation into the unrest of December 3–4, 1521, the electoral authorities had decided to arrest the instigators, but this had sparked an even louder protest, with a mob gathering at the town offices to demand the release of the detainees. With the growing commotion in Wittenberg, Andreas von Karlstadt moved to take charge. Throwing off his earlier caution, he began inveighing against the traditional Mass at both the Castle Church, where he was authorized to preach, and the town church, where he was not. At both, he attracted large crowds. Encouraged, he announced that on New Year’s Day he would celebrate a simple Mass at the Castle Church, during which Communion would be offered in both kinds. Alarmed, Frederick directed Christian Beyer, his representative in Wittenberg, to make sure that no such act occurred before the matter was officially resolved, but Karlstadt, intent on evading the elector’s wishes, moved the event up to Christmas Day, announcing it at the last possible moment.

  With Wittenberg’s new notoriety, fervent spirits from around Germany were pouring into it, and on Christmas Eve 1521 groups of boisterous students and freelance agitators roamed the streets. Some swept into the parish church while services were in progress. They smashed the lamps, harassed the priests, and sang ribald songs like “My Maid Has Lost Her Shoe.” They then marched to the Castle Church—a bastion of Roman ways—where, as a traditional Mass was being performed, they shouted down the priests while throwing lead balls (probably bullets) at them.

  On Christmas Day, the “whole town” (as one observer put it), packed the Castle Church. In this chilly Gothic sanctuary, Karlstadt, dressed in a plain black robe rather than the usual vestments, mounted the pulpit and told the congregation that they need not have fasted or performed confession to take Communion; all that was required was faith and a heartfelt sense of contrition. As the crowd looked breathlessly on, Karlstadt read the Mass in an abbreviated form, leaving out the passages about sacrifice to which Luther had so objected. At the consecration, Karlstadt—omitting the elevation of the host—passed from Latin into German. For the first time in their lives, those present heard in their own language the words “This is the cup of my blood of the new and eternal testament, spirit and secret of the faith, shed for you to the remission of sins.” Each congregant was then invited to commune in both kinds. A hush descended as Christians high and low proceeded to the altar. Instead of receiving the host on the tongue, as was the custom, each was handed a wafer to place on his or her tongue; each was also given the chalice from which to drink. One communicant, on being handed a wafer, trembled so violently that he dropped it. Karlstadt told him to pick it up, but the man was so terrified at the sight of the Lord’s body lying desecrated on the floor that he refused to touch it.

  This Christmas Day Communion at the Castle Church marked the first time that Luther’s new theology had significantly affected the public worship of ordinary Christians. By drinking from the cup and taking the bread in their own hands, laypeople were committing an act of sacramental defiance. Few were troubled; on the contrary, a wave of jubilation swept through the town as the priesthood of all believers seemed to spring to life.

  Karlstadt decided to follow this daring act with another. On December 26, 1521, he, together with two wagons full of people, including Melanchthon and Jonas, traveled to the village of Segrehna, seven miles from Wittenberg, to celebrate his engagement (at the age of thirty-five) to Anna von Mochau, the fifteen-year-old daughter of an impoverished nobleman. The wedding was scheduled for January 19, 1522, and Karlstadt, eager to publicize his rejection of clerical celibacy, invited university officials, town councilors, and other prominent citizens. By this act, Karlstadt wrote, he hoped “that many poor, miserable, and lost clerics who now lie in the devil’s prison and dungeon might without doubt be counseled and helped by a good model and example.” Shortly afterward, Jonas, too, became engaged.

  The discord in Wittenberg deepened with the arrival on December 27, 1521, of three wild-eyed men from the town of Zwickau, eighty miles to the south. One, Marcus Thomae Stübner, was a former Wittenberg student; the other two, Nicholas Storch and Thomas Drechsel, were uneducated weavers. Brooding and gaunt, they seemed to have stepped out of the pages of Isaiah or Jeremiah. All had a remarkable command of the Bible, but, they said, the text alone was not enough. True understanding of Scripture required revelations by the Holy Spirit, which they claimed to get directly from God through dreams and visions. Claiming powers of clairvoyance, they foretold an imminent invasion by the Turks, to be followed by the destruction of all priests and the swift arrival of the godly kingdom. Appearing at baptisms, feasts, and taverns, the Zwickau Prophets (as they came to be called) transfixed the Wittenbergers with their otherworldly aura. Storch in particular, with his long gray robe, wide-brimmed hat, and spiritual charisma, caused a stir as he moved about town.

  No one was more affected than Melanchthon. Once a teacher of Stübner’s, he now fell under his spell. “Melanchthon continually clings to his side, listens to him, wonders at him, and venerates him,” a Swiss student in Wittenberg wrote. “He is deeply disturbed at not being able to satisfy that man in any way.” Melanchthon was especially troubled by the prophets’ opposition to infant baptism. Only those old enough to affirm their belief in Christ should be allowed to receive this sacrament, they maintained, citing in support Mark 16:16—“he who believes and is baptized will be saved.” Infant baptism had been a fixture of the Church since the third century, and even most reformers highly esteemed it, but try as he might, Melanchthon could not refute them. Feeling helpless, he sent an urgent message to Frederick. “They preach strange things about themselves,” he wrote, “saying that they are sent by the clear voice of God to teach, that they have familiar conversations with God, that they see the future.” It “appears that there are in them certain spirits, concerning which no one save Luther can easily judge.”

  When Luther at the Wartburg heard of Melanchthon’s distress, he became impatient. The Zwickau Prophets seemed to him nothing more than Schwärmer—fanatics who, like buzzing insects, could be easily batted aside. “I do not approve of your timidity,” he wrote to Melanchthon in mid-January 1522, sending along instructions on how to question the men. He did, however, share Melanchthon’s concern about the prophet’s opposition to infant baptism. As much as he valued this sacrament, he knew that it lacked a firm biblical foundation. “I have always expected Satan to touch this sore,” he wrote, noting his concern that the issue could lead to a “grievous schism.”

  In this, Luther would prove prescient. The Zwickau Prophets represented the emergence of a radical and highly combustible current within the reform movement. With Luther having declared Scripture the one true authority and proclaimed every man a priest, people were taking him at his word, feeding a subjectivism that invited sectarianism, fanaticism, and anarchy.

  Zwickau was a cradle of this new spirit. Located near the border with Bohemia, it was a showcase of the disruptive forces being set loose by the rise of capitalism. One of the richest cities in Saxony, Zwickau had eight churches and a well-regarded Latin school that drew students from many miles around. Textiles had long been its main source of wealth, but in the late fifteenth century its economy was transformed by a boom in iron and silver mining in the nearby Erzgebirge Mountains. While greatly enriching the town’s manufacturers and merchants, the flow of new money had caused a rise in prices, a drop in purchasing power, an
d a loss of jobs, especially among the Tuchknappen, or journeymen clothiers. In the Paraclesis, Erasmus had extolled weavers as ideal readers of the Gospels, but in Zwickau as elsewhere they made up a nascent industrial proletariat with militant leanings. Working at looms in large sheds, they traded tales of exploitation and made common cause against their wealthy employers. Because of its proximity to Bohemia, Zwickau was awash in Hussite ideas, which gave the economic discontent a sharp anticlerical edge.

  Among those whipping up the citizenry was a preacher who, in his short, violent life, would exert great influence on both the course of the Reformation and Luther’s own career: Thomas Müntzer. Friedrich Engels, in The Peasant War in Germany, would describe Müntzer as a prototypical communist, and future Marxist historians would hail him as a forerunner of Lenin. Raised in the same mining region as Luther, Müntzer in 1517 had gone to Wittenberg to study, and two years later he had met Luther at the Leipzig disputation. Luther was impressed, and when he was asked to recommend a temporary replacement for an Erasmian preacher at St. Mary’s church in Zwickau who was on leave, he suggested Müntzer. Taking over the pulpit in May 1520, Müntzer immediately began agitating against the local Franciscans, accusing them of living off the alms of the faithful. Church officials tried to silence him but failed as the town council unanimously took his side.

  When in October 1520 the Erasmian preacher reclaimed his pulpit, Müntzer quickly gained another at St. Catherine’s—the church of Zwickau’s weavers. Stirred by the weavers, Müntzer roused them in turn. Demanding the expulsion of Catholic priests, he spoke of slaughter and bloodshed in the name of the divine Word. Around Christmas 1520, a pastor whom Müntzer had violently denounced from the pulpit was almost killed by members of the congregation. Warned by the town council to show restraint, Müntzer instead continued to incite, and on Shrove Tuesday 1521 the windows of his house were shattered. When a local priest was derided in a fly sheet as a drunken libertine who went with harlots, the councillors were convinced that Müntzer was behind it and voted on April 16 to expel him. A crowd of weavers from St. Catherine’s rallied in his support, and the council, fearing trouble, detained more than fifty of them. Seeing the hopelessness of his position, Müntzer under cover of darkness slipped out of Zwickau, heading to Bohemia in search of new Christians to mobilize while awaiting an opportunity to return to Germany.