Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  With Luther fully in charge, Wittenberg remained calm in the face of these changes. Things were different in the countryside. From Wittenberg south to the border with Bohemia and west to Erfurt and Thuringia, monks and nuns were leaving their cloisters, priests and deacons were marrying, and sacred images were being violently destroyed. In Temporal Authority, Luther had insisted on keeping the heavenly and earthly realms distinct, but radical pastors who considered them inseparable were pressing for a sweeping transformation of society from below, based on both the Bible and Luther’s own writings.

  The loudest rumblings were in the Saale valley, about a hundred miles west of Wittenberg. In the small town of Orlamünde, Luther’s colleague and rival Andreas von Karlstadt had resurfaced with a radical program that was stirring Herr Omnes. Karlstadt had formulated it in Wittenberg while under the ban Luther had had imposed on him. While dutifully carrying out his responsibilities as professor at the university and archdeacon at the Castle Church, Karlstadt had fumed at the humiliation he had suffered. Immersing himself in the writings of such late-medieval mystics as Johannes Tauler and Thomas à Kempis, he was captivated by the idea of Gelassenheit—purging all selfish desires and worldly ambitions and abandoning oneself to God. Poring over the Bible, Karlstadt was struck by Jesus’s injunction at Matthew 23 not to be called rabbi or instructor. His whole career, he could now see, had been one long striving after glory. On February 3, 1523, he announced that he would no longer participate in the granting of academic degrees. Acknowledging that he had formerly studied in order to write persuasively and prevail in disputes, he said that it was wrong to read Scripture simply to know it better than others.

  Calling himself “a new layman,” Karlstadt put aside his academic dress and donned the felt hat and gray cloak of the peasants, which seemed more in keeping with Christ’s example than satin, silk, or velvet. He urged his neighbors to call him not “Herr Doktor” or “Herr Pfarrer” (“Mr. Priest”) but “Brother Andreas,” and he sat down with them to drink beer. He confessed guilt for having lived off the labor of poor peasants without giving anything in return. Hearing that Orlamünde was seeking a new pastor, he put himself forward as a candidate. His authority to fill the post was unclear, but the congregation was eager to have him, and Karlstadt (along with his young wife) took up residence there in the summer of 1523.

  Not wanting to burden the congregation, Karlstadt planned to earn a living from his own labor, but the vicarage was in serious decline. The house and fence had deteriorated, the vineyard had withered, the fields had been overfarmed. None of this, though, could diminish his joy at being away from Wittenberg and out from under Luther’s thumb. Whereas Luther was proceeding slowly, Karlstadt was intent on instituting changes all at once, even if they caused people to “become angry, howl, and curse.” Far more of a biblical literalist than Luther, Karlstadt conceived of a parish living in true conformity with the Scriptures, including not just the New Testament but also the Old, and in this out-of-the-way town he would introduce many of the doctrines and practices that would become fixtures of the radical Reformation.

  As in Wittenberg, Karlstadt insisted that all graven images be removed from churches. Music, too, he deemed an unwholesome distraction from true communion with God and so ordered it banned. Since the Israelites celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday, he insisted that his parishioners rest on that day as well. Infant baptism, fasting, and auricular confession were all rejected as unsupported by Scripture. As for the Mass, Karlstadt instituted the changes he had pioneered in Wittenberg, including offering Communion in both kinds and allowing congregants to take the host in their own hands.

  Initially, the outside world took little note of these developments, but in late 1523 Karlstadt got access to a printing press in nearby Jena, and he began turning out a series of provocative pamphlets. One, published in December 1523, sought to explain, as the title put it, Reasons Why Andreas Karlstadt Remained Silent for a Time. (It was not cowardice, as some had alleged, but the fact that he had not heard God’s call.) Karlstadt also explored Whether Anyone Might Be Saved Without the Intercession of Mary (the answer was yes) and described The Abominable and Idolatrous Misuse of the Most Reverend Sacrament of Jesus Christ. This last was one of several tracts that Karlstadt was to produce in the coming months about the true meaning of the Eucharist—a body of work that would open deep and lasting fissures among the reformers.

  When he learned that Karlstadt was again publishing, Luther exploded. “I have read Karlstadt’s monstrosities with grief,” he wrote to Spalatin on March 14, 1524. The man “is consumed with an unconquerable desire for name and fame.” Those who like Karlstadt seek to impose the Law of Moses “are to be despised.” In another letter, Luther complained that Karlstadt was attacking him even more vehemently than he was the papists, and he implored the electoral court to force Karlstadt to either stop publishing or submit his writings in advance to censors selected by the princes.

  Had Karlstadt been the only enthusiast at work in the area, Luther might have felt less apprehension, but some fifty miles to the north of Orlamünde, in the small market town of Allstedt, another zealous reformer had reappeared: Thomas Müntzer. The events that would make Müntzer a revolutionary hero to Friedrich Engels and other German Marxists—and evil incarnate to Luther—now began to unfold. From Zwickau, Müntzer had gone to Bohemia, where he had picked up the apocalyptic fervor of the radical Hussites. In “The Prague Manifesto,” he had luridly prophesized that the “donkey-fart” doctors of theology and other false prophets would soon find themselves in the “fiery lake,” to be tormented for eternity by the Antichrist.

  Such bloodcurdling pronouncements proved too much even for the Bohemians, and Müntzer was forced to leave. He returned to Germany and eventually landed a position at St. John’s church in Allstedt, a town of about 600 people. Seeking to revive the spirit of Zwickau, Müntzer in his sermons railed against both the overfed clergy and the plundering tyrants who would soon be cast down from their seats, and he hailed the oppressed multitudes who in the final days would forcefully inherit what was rightfully theirs.

  To further attract congregants, Müntzer introduced what is believed to have been the first worship service entirely in German. The catchy tunes proved popular, and from one Sunday to the next the crowds at his church grew. (Müntzer also found time to get married, to an unfrocked nun of noble birth, who soon bore him a son.) Eager like Karlstadt to spread his ideas, Müntzer had a printing press set up in Allstedt, and at the start of 1524 he produced two feverish pamphlets that, without naming names, made clear the scorn he felt for Luther and the doctrine of justification by faith, which he considered too soft. Men, he wrote, come to faith not through the “honey-sweet Christ” of resurrection and redemption but through the “bitter Christ” of the cross, who can be found only by long, heartfelt suffering. The Church had been grievously harmed by generations of overeducated biblicists who peddled a false faith oblivious to the despair and madness required to achieve true piety.

  Such ravings, Luther believed, could end only in violence, and he pressed Frederick to silence Müntzer, but the elector held back. As long as Müntzer’s incitements remained verbal, he seemed to feel little need to act. On March 24, 1524, however, an agitated crowd gathered at a chapel outside Allstedt. It housed a picture of the Virgin Mary that was said to work miracles and which made it a popular pilgrimage site. It was thus both a blatant example of medieval superstition and an idolatrous image of the type forbidden by the Ten Commandments. The chapel was set on fire and quickly burned to the ground. Müntzer was present but made no effort to intervene, and he later refused to dissociate himself from the event.

  The incident confirmed Luther’s fears about the incendiary nature of Müntzer’s preaching. The “murderous spirit of Allstedt,” as Luther called him, seemed an agent of Satan, and with one chapel having already gone up in flames, monasteries and churches seemed certain to follow. Luther felt sure that Müntzer’s goal was to ov
erturn the civil government and install himself in its place and that to help bring this about he would approach Karlstadt. Luther remained on the lookout for any sign of collusion between the two men, convinced that if they did join forces, central Germany would erupt.

  It was not just violence that Luther feared. Wherever the new gospel took root, anti-intellectualism seemed to follow. Academic learning, scholarship, and education were all coming in for contempt. Since the evangelical creed was a religion of the heart, it was said, why bother with books and learning? With the priesthood and the monastery fading as career paths, parents preferred to have their children learn a trade rather than attend school. Schools in any case were being closed as the monasteries and cathedrals that traditionally ran them were attacked. In Erfurt, radical former monks were disparaging higher education, and Eoban Hess, a leading humanist at the university, wrote to Luther of his concern that as the new gospel spread, it was making the German people more barbarous. In Wittenberg, enrollment at the university plunged as parents, questioning the value of higher education and worried about the growing disorder, kept their sons at home.

  Luther, who knew how critical the study of languages had been to the formation of the new gospel, set out to reverse the tide. To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools was another manifesto of his that would leave a permanent mark on German society. In all the German lands, he declared, “schools are everywhere being left to go to wrack and ruin.” Such neglect was a “despicable trick of the devil,” for it was of vital concern both to Christ and to the world at large that young people be educated. With such large sums lavished on guns, roads, bridges, and dams to ensure peace and prosperity, why shouldn’t more be devoted to educating the young? A city’s greatest strength lay not in the vast treasures it had amassed or in the magnificent buildings it had erected but in the many able, honorable, and wise citizens it was able to produce. Both boys and girls should attend liberal arts schools for one or two hours a day, spending the rest of their time working at home and learning a trade.

  Luther denounced the growing neglect of languages and of the liberal arts in general. The revival of ancient tongues had brought forth so much light and accomplished such great things that the whole world stood amazed. If languages were again allowed to wither, the gospel itself would perish. Luther especially lamented the neglect of the study of history. Because Germany lacked its own chronicles, other nations knew little of the German people, who as a result had to put up with the reputation of being beasts “who know only how to fight, gorge, and guzzle.” Germany was now enjoying a jubilee—a bounty of learned men, adept in languages and the arts—and it was essential that something be put away for the future. “O my beloved Germans,” Luther proclaimed in a famous passage, “buy while the market is at your door; gather in the harvest while there is sunshine and fair weather; make use of God’s grace and word while it is there!”

  In this tribute to books and languages, Erasmus’s spirit can be felt throughout. Luther seems to have drawn heavily on the Paraclesis, De Ratione Studii, and other texts in which Erasmus promoted the virtues of learning, both pagan and Christian. Where the two diverged was over the place of education in society. With Erasmus, the focus was always on the elite—with establishing schools where able youths could be drilled in the essentials of Latin and Greek. Grammar and rhetoric were the principal subjects, and eloquence was the chief end. Luther, by contrast, wanted schooling for all—in Latin where appropriate, in the vernacular where not. Erasmus wanted to train a literary priesthood that could preserve and promote good letters; Luther wanted to create a priesthood of all believers. In a way, Luther was building on—and popularizing—Erasmus’s ideas about education. With To the Councilmen of All Cities, the first step was taken toward the provision of universal public education in Germany, including education for girls; in the quarter century after its appearance, new schools would be established in most German cities and towns.

  Not long after completing this tract, Luther heard reports that Erasmus was preparing to attack him. Since posting the Ninety-Five Theses more than six years earlier, Luther had faced a formidable array of assailants, from Prierias, Cajetan, and Eck to Leo X, Adrian VI, and Henry VIII, but an attack from Erasmus would be of a different order. With his mastery of Latin, command of Scripture, and still considerable prestige, the Dutch scholar seemed in a position to cause Luther lasting harm. Nearly four years had elapsed since the last direct communication between the two men. Now, in the spring of 1524, Luther decided to put Erasmus on notice.

  “I have now been silent long enough, good friend Erasmus, and though I expected that you as the older and more eminent of us would break the silence first, after waiting in vain for so long, I am I think obliged by charity itself to make the first move,” Luther wrote, in the same arch tone he had used to such devastating effect in his famous letter to Leo X. He did not wish to complain about the great distance Erasmus had kept from him, since it had left him free to attack Luther’s real enemies, the papists. Nor had he taken it amiss when Erasmus, to secure the goodwill of those same papists, had attacked Luther and criticized him with some bitterness, for he could see that the Lord had not given him the courage or even the common sense to join with him in openly confronting such monsters. Moreover, no one could deny that Erasmus, using the special gifts granted him by God, had opened the way to genuine study of the Bible, for which the whole world owed him thanks.

  But, Luther went on, there was one thing that caused him concern—the possibility that Erasmus might decide to attack Luther’s own opinions in writing, in which case he would be compelled to oppose him directly. Thus far, he had restrained others who had wanted to attack Erasmus, and he actually sympathized with him as the target of so much hatred from so many quarters. Luther had curbed his own pen and would continue to do so unless Erasmus came out into the open. Feelings on both sides were running high, and he wished that those of his friends who were now so fiercely assailing Erasmus would cease and allow him in his old age to “peacefully fall asleep in the Lord.” They would certainly do so if they recognized Erasmus’s weakness and saw how the profound issues at stake had long since exceeded his abilities. Since Erasmus lacked both the courage and the capacity to accept the teachings of the new gospel, he should leave them alone and mind his own business.

  In closing, Luther urged Erasmus “to be no more than a spectator of this trouble.” If Erasmus did not publish an attack on him, he would refrain from going after Erasmus. “There has been enough baring of teeth; we must now make sure that we do not destroy each other, a prospect all the more pitiable as it is most certain that neither party seriously wishes to see religion suffer.”

  With Erasmus perhaps having already begun to write against him, Luther needed to get his letter to him quickly. As it happened, Melanchthon had been granted his first leave of absence since arriving in Wittenberg six years earlier and planned to use it to visit his hometown, Bretten, in the Rhineland; Basel was about 135 miles to the south. Melanchthon would be accompanied by Joachim Camerarius, a young graduate of the University of Wittenberg with humanist leanings who, eager to meet Erasmus, agreed to take the letter to him. In mid-April 1524, the two men left on horseback on the long journey across Germany.

  As Luther’s warning was making its way toward him, Erasmus in Basel was feeling the fury of his followers. Since his attack on Hutten, he had been assailed in fly sheets and threatened in letters. “You have dragged in the dirt the reputation of an honorable and distinguished man, Ulrich von Hutten, with a flood of accusations which are false, libelous, and fraudulent,” wrote Otto Brunfels, a pastor in the Rhineland who had once greatly admired Erasmus but who had recently thrown his support to Luther. The Germans, who had first learned to write under Erasmus’s leadership, “should now by squadrons and battalions sharpen their swords against their pestilent instructor.” Erasmus had only one recourse—to repent. If he refused, Brunfels warned, he
and his allies would do their utmost “to cast out of the camp the false prophet who prophesies in Baal.”

  With such libels mounting, Erasmus perceived a conspiracy of evangelicals intent on publishing falsehoods and lies about him. He had a new term for these men: “new gospellers.” They went around proclaiming the Word of God while violating every principle of the Christian spirit. “I no longer judge Christians by the doctrines we profess in words,” he wrote. “I judge them by their lives. Wherever ambition and the love of riches and pride and anger and revenge and passion to hurt others are supreme, there I fear that the faith of the gospel is not to be found.”

  Despite the growing virulence of the Lutherans, Erasmus continued to prepare his attack on Luther. Actually, he did not want to make it seem like an attack. Given Luther’s volcanic temper, Erasmus was reluctant to unduly provoke him. And, having rebuked Luther for using immoderate language, Erasmus wanted to avoid it himself. Seeking the right tone, he was influenced by a project he had recently completed, a new edition of Cicero’s Tusculanae quaestiones (“Tusculan Questions”). Cicero had written it at Tusculum, his country estate outside Rome, while struggling to cope with the death of his daughter Tullia. Framed as a dialogue at his villa, the work impressed Erasmus with its combination of learning and equanimity, and he wanted to make his own book similarly high-minded. With it, he hoped to show how it was possible to debate matters like free will in civil terms, without resorting to the venom and vitriol that seemed so antithetical to Christ’s spirit.