ULRICH VON HUTTEN.
“Jacta est alea.”—Ulrich’s Device.
Ulrich von Hutten was born on the 21st of April, 1488, in the castle of Stackelberg, near Fulda, in Franconia. He was of a noble family—all the men of which were brave, and all the women virtuous. He had three brothers and two sisters. His tender mother loved him the most, because he was the weakest of her offspring. His father loved him the least for the same reason. For a like cause, however, both parents agreed that a spiritual education best accorded with the frame of Ulrich. The latter, at eleven years old, was accordingly sent to learn his humanities in the abbey school at Fulda.
His progress in all knowledge, religious and secular, made him the delight of the stern abbot and of his parents. Every effort possible was resorted to, to induce him to devote himself for ever to the life of the cloister. In his zealous opposition to this he was ably seconded by a strong-handed and high-minded knight, a friend of his father’s named Eitelwolf von Stein. This opposition so far succeeded, that in 1504, when Ulrich was sixteen years of age he fled from the cloister-academy of Fulda, and betook himself to the noted high-school at Erfurt.
Among his dearest fellow Alumni here were Rubianus and Hoff, both of whom subsequently achieved great renown. In the Augustine convent, near the school, there was residing a poor young monk, who also subsequently became somewhat famous. Nobody, however, took much account of him just then, and few even cared to know his name—Martin Luther. The plague breaking out at Erfurt, Rubianus was accompanied by Ulrich to Cologne, there to pursue their studies. The heart and purse of Ulrich’s father were closed against the son, because of his flight from Fulda; but his kinsman Eitelwolf, provided for the necessities of the rather imprudent young scholar.
The sages who trained the young idea at Cologne were of the old high and dry quality—hating progress and laboriously learned in trifles. At the head of them were Hogstraten and Ortuin. Ulrich learned enough of their manner to be able to crush them afterward with ridicule, by imitating their style, and reproducing their gigantic nonsense, in the famous “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.” In the meantime he knit close friendship with Sebastian Brandt, and Œcolampadius—both young men of progress. The latter was expelled from Cologne for being so, but the University of Frankfort on the Oder offered him an asylum. Thither Ulrich repaired also, to be near his friend, and to sharpen his weapons for the coming struggle between light and darkness—Germany against Rome, and the German language against the Latin.
At Frankfort he won golden opinions from all sorts of people. The Elector, Joachim of Brandenburg; his brother, the priestly Margrave Albert; and Bishop Dietrich von Beilow were proud of the youth who did honor to the university. He here first became a poet, and took the brothers Von Osthen for his friends. He labored earnestly, and acquired much glory; but he was a very free liver to boot, though he was by no means particularly so, for the times in which he lived. His excesses, however, brought on a dangerous disease, which, it is sometimes supposed, had not hitherto been known in Europe. Be this as it may, he was never wholly free from the malady as long as he lived, nor ever thought that it much mattered whether he suffered or not.
He was still ill when he took up for a season the life of a wandering scholar. He endured all its miserable vicissitudes, suffered famine and shipwreck, and was glad at last to find a haven, as a poor student, in the Pomeranian University of Griefswalde. The Professor Lötz and his father the Burgomaster, were glad to patronize so renowned a youth, but they did it with such insulting condescension that the spirit of Ulrich revolted; and in 1509, the wayward scholar was again a wanderer, with the world before him where to choose. The Lötzes, who had lent him clothes, despatched men after him to strip him; and the poor, half-frozen wretch, reached Rostock half starved, more than half naked, with wounds gaping for vengeance, and with as little sense about him as could be possessed by a man so ill-conditioned.
He lived by his wits at Rostock. He was unknown and perfectly destitute; but he penned so spirited a metrical narrative of his life and sufferings, addressed to the heads of the university there, that these at once received him under their protection. In a short time he was installed in comparative comfort, teaching the classics to young pupils, and experiencing as much enjoyment as he could, considering that the Lötzes of Griefswalde were continually assuring his patrons that their protégé was a worthless impostor.
He took a poet’s revenge, and scourged them in rhymes, the very ruggedness of which was tantamount to flaying.
Having gained his fill of honor at Rostock, his restless spirit urged him once again into the world. After much wandering, he settled for a season at Wittenburg, where he was the delight of the learned men. By their eleemosynary aid, and that of various friends, save his father, who rejoiced in his renown but would not help him to live, he existed after the fashion of many pauper students of his day. At Wittenburg he wrote his famous “Art of Poetry;” and he had no sooner raised universal admiration by its production, than forth he rushed once more into the world.
He wandered through Bohemia and Moravia, thankfully accepting bread from peasants, and diamond rings from princes. He had not a maravedi in his purse, nor clean linen on his back; but he made himself welcome everywhere. One night he slept, thankfully, on the straw of a barn; and the next sank, well-fed, into the eider-down of a bishop’s bed. He entered Olmutz ragged, shoeless, and exhausted. He left it, after enjoying the rich hospitality he had laughingly extracted from Bishop Turso, on horseback, with a heavy purse in his belt, a mantle on his shoulder, and a golden ring, with a jewel set in it, upon his finger. Such were a student’s vicissitudes, in the days of German wandering, a long time ago.
The boy, for he was not yet twenty years of age, betook himself to Vienna, where he kept a wide circle in continual rapture by the excellence of his poetical productions. These productions were not “all for love,” nor were they all didactic. He poured out war-ballads to encourage the popular feeling in favor of the Emperor Maximilian, against his enemies in Germany and Italy. Ulrich was, for the moment, the Tyrtæus of his native country. Then, suddenly recollecting that his angry sire had said that if his son would not take the monk’s cowl, his father would be content to see him assume the lawyer’s coif, our volatile hero hastened to Pavia, opened the law books on an ominous 1st of April, 1512, and read them steadily, yet wearied of them heartily, during just three months.
At this time Francis the first of France, who had seized on Pavia, was besieged therein by the German and Swiss cavalry. Ulrich was dangerously ill during the siege, but he occupied the weary time by writing sharp epitaphs upon himself. The allies entered the city; and Ulrich straightway departed from it, a charge having been laid against him of too much partiality for the French. The indignant German hurried to Bologna, where he once more addressed himself to the Pandects and the Juris Codices Gentium.
This light reading so worked on his constitution that fever laid him low, and after illness came destitution. He wrote exquisite verses to Cardinal Gurk, the imperial embassador in Bologna, where the pope for the moment resided; but he failed in his object of being raised to some office in the cardinal’s household. Poor Ulrich took the course often followed by men of his impulses and condition; he entered the army as a private soldier, and began the ladder which leads to knighthood at the lowest round.
Unutterable miseries he endured in this character; but he went through the siege of Pavia with honor, and he wrote such sparkling rhymes in celebration of German triumphs and in ridicule of Germany’s foes, that, when a weakness in the ankles compelled him to retire from the army, he collected his songs and dedicated them to the Emperor.
The dedication, however, was so very independent of tone, that Maximilian took no notice of the limping knight who had exchanged the sword for the lyre. Indeed, at this juncture, the man who could wield a sledge-hammer, was in more esteem with the constituted authorities than he who skilfully used his pen. The young poet could scarcely win a smile, even from Albert of Brandenburg, to whom he had dedicated a poem. Sick at heart, his health gave way, and a heavy fever sent him to recover it at the healing springs in the valley of Ems.
A short time previous to his entering the army, the young Duke Ulrich of Wurtemburg had begun to achieve for himself a most unenviable reputation. He had entered on his government; and he governed his people ill, and himself worse. He allowed nothing to stand between his own illustrious purpose and the object aimed at. He had for wife the gentle Bavarian princess, Sabina, and for friend, young Johan von Hutten, a cousin of our hero Ulrich.
Now, Johan von Hutten had recently married a fair-haired girl, with the not very euphonious appellation of Von Thumb. She was, however, of noble birth, and, we must add, of light principles. The duke fell in love with her, and she with the duke, and when his friend Johan remonstrated with him, the ducal sovereign gravely proposed to the outraged husband an exchange of consorts!
Johan resolved to withdraw from the ducal court; and this resolution alarmed both his wife and the duke, for Johan had no intention of leaving his lightsome Von Thumb behind him. Therefore, the duke invited Johan one fine May morning in the year 1515, to take a friendly ride with him through a wood. The invitation was accepted, and as Johan was riding along a narrow path, in front of the duke, the latter passed his sword through the body of his friend, slaying him on the spot.
Having thus murdered his friend, the duke hung him up by the neck in his own girdle to a neighboring tree, and he defended the deed, by giving out that ducal justice had only been inflicted on a traitor who had endeavored to seduce the Duchess of Wurtemburg! The lady, however, immediately fled to her father, denouncing the faithlessness of her unworthy husband, on whose bosom the young widow of the murdered Johan now reclined for consolation.
On this compound deed becoming known, all Germany uttered a unanimous cry of horror. The noblest of the duke’s subjects flung off their allegiance. His very servants quitted him in disgust. His fellow-princes invoked justice against him and Ulrich von Hutten, from his sick couch at Ems, penned eloquent appeals to the German nation, to rise and crush the ruthless wretch who had quenched in blood, the life, the light, the hope, the very flower of Teutonic chivalry.
The “Philippics” of Ulrich were mainly instrumental in raising a terrible Nemesis to take vengeance upon his ducal namesake; and he afterward wrote his “Phalarismus” to show that the tyrant excited horror, even in the infernal regions. The opening sentence—“Jacta est alea!” became his motto; and his family took for its apt device—“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!” From this time forward, Ulrich von Hutten was a public man, and became one of the foremost heroes of his heroic age. He was now scholar, poet, and knight.
His fame would have been a pleasant thing to him, but the pleasure was temporarily diminished by the death of his old benefactor, Eitelwolf von Stein. The latter was the first German statesman who was also a great scholar; and his example first shook the prejudice, that for a knight or nobleman to be book-learned was derogatory to his chivalry and nobility. Into the area of public warfare Ulrich now descended, and the enemies of light trembled before the doughty champion. The collegiate teachers at Cologne, with Hogstraten, the Inquisitor, Pfefierkorn, a converted Jew, and Ortuin—at their head, had directed all the powers of the scholastic prejudices against Reuchlin and his followers, who had declared, that not only Greek, but Hebrew should form a portion of the course of study for those destined to enter the Church. The ancient party pronounced this Heathenism; Reuchlin and his party called it Reason, and Germany, was split in two, upon the question.
At the very height of the contest, a lad with a sling and a stone entered the lists, and so dexterously worked his missiles, that the enemy of learning was soon overcome. The lad was Von Hutten, who, as chief author of those amusing satires, “Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum,” ruined Monkery and paralyzed Rome, by making all the world laugh at the follies, vices, crimes, and selfish ignorance of both.
Leo X. was so enraged, that he excommunicated the authors, and devoted them to damnation. “I care no more,” said Von Hutten, “for the bull of excommunication than I do for a soap-bubble.” The reputation he had acquired, helped him to a reconciliation with his family; but the members thereof had only small respect for a mere learned knight. They urged him to qualify himself for a chancellor, and to repair to Rome, and study the law accordingly.
Something loath, he turned his face toward the Tyber, in 1515. The first news received of the law-student was to the effect, that having been attacked, dagger in hand, at a pic-nic, near Viterbo, by five French noblemen, whom he had reproved for speaking ill of Germany and the Emperor Maximilian, he had slain one and put the other four to flight. From this fray he himself escaped with a slash on the cheek. He recounted his victory in a song of triumph, and when the law-student sat down to his books, every one in Rome acknowledged that his sword and his pen were equally pointed.
His French adversaries threatened vengeance for their humiliating defeat; and he accordingly avoided it, by withdrawing to Bologne, where he again, with hearty disgust, applied himself to the severe study of a law which was never applied for justice sake. He found compensation in penning such stirring poetry as his satirical “Nemo,” and in noting the vices of the priesthood with the intention of turning his observation to subsequent profit. A feud between the German and Italian students at Bologna soon drove our scholar from the latter place. He took himself to Ferrara and Venice; was welcomed everywhere by the learned and liberal, and, as he wrote to Erasmus, was loaded by them with solid pudding as well as empty praise.
From this journey he returned to his native country. He repaired to Augsburg, where Maximilian was holding court, and so well was he commended to the emperor, that on the 15th of June, 1517, that monarch dubbed him Imperial Knight, placed a gold ring, symbolic of chivalrous dignity, on his finger, and crowned him a poet, with a laurel wreath, woven by the fairest flower of Augsburg, Constance Peutinger.
After such honors, his father received him with joy at his hearth; and while Von Hutten went from his native Stackelberg to the library at Fulda, yet hesitating whether to take service under the Emperor or under the Elector of Mayence, he bethought himself of the irrefutable work of Laurentius Valla against the temporal authority and possessions of the Popedom. He studied the work well, published an improved edition, and dedicated it, in a letter of fire and ability, to Leo X.;—a proof of his hope in, or of his defiance of, that accomplished infidel.
Luther and Von Hutten were thus, each unconscious of the other, attacking Popery on two points, about the same moment. Luther employed fearful weapons in his cause, and wielded them manfully. Von Hutten only employed, as yet, a wit which made all wither where it fell; and an irony which consumed where it dropped. In the handling of these appliances, there was no man in Germany who was his equal. Leo could admire and enjoy both the wit and the irony; and he was not disinclined to agree with the arguments of which they were made the supports; but what he relished as a philosopher, he condemned as a Pontiff. The Florentine, Lorenzo de’ Medici, could have kissed the German on either cheek, but the Pope, Leo X., solemnly devoted him to Gehenna.
As a protection against papal wrath, Von Hutten entered the service of Albert, Elector-Archbishop of Mayence. Albert was a liberal Romanist, but nothing in the least of an Ultra-Montanist. He loved learning and learned men, and he recollected that he was a German before he was a Romanist. In the suite of the elector, Von Hutten visited Paris, in 1518. He returned to Mayence only to carry on more vigorously his onslaught against the begging monks. He accounted them as greater enemies to Germany than the Turks. “We fight with the latter, beyond our frontier for power; but the former are the corrupters of science, of religion, of morals—and they are in the very midst of us.” So does he write, in a letter to Graf Nuenar, at Cologne.
The building of St. Peter’s cost Rome what the building of Versailles cost France—a revolution. In each case, an absolute monarchy was overthrown never again to rise. To provide for the expenses of St. Peter’s, the Dominican Tetzel traversed Germany, selling his indulgences. Luther confronted him, and denounced his mission, as well as those who sent him on it. Von Hutten, in his hatred of monks, looked upon this as a mere monkish squabble; and he was glad to see two of the vocation holding one another by the throat.
At this precise moment, Germany was excited at the idea of a projected European expedition against the Turks. The Imperial Knight saw clearly the perils that threatened Christendom from that question, and was ready to rush, sword in hand, to meet them. He declared, however, that Europe groaned under a more insupportable yoke, laid on by Rome, and he deprecated the idea of helping Rome with funds against the Moslem. What a change was here from the Imperial crusading knights of a few centuries earlier. “If Rome,” he said, “be serious on the subject of such a crusade, we are ready to fight, but she must pay us for our services. She shall not have both our money and our blood.” He spoke, wrote, and published boldly against Rome being permitted to levy taxes in Germany, on pretence of going to war with the unbelieving Ottomans. At the same moment, Luther was denouncing the monks who thought to enrich the coffers of Rome by the sale of indulgences. One was the political, the other the religious enemy of the power which sought to rule men and their consciences from under the shadow of the Colosseum.
There was little hope of aid from the emperor, but Von Hutten looked for all the help the cause needed in a union of the citizen classes (whom he had been wont to satirize) with the nobility. To further the end in view, he wrote his masterly dialogue of “The Robbers.” In this piece, the speakers are knights and citizens. Each side blames the other, but each is made acquainted with the other’s virtues, by the interposition of a Deus ex machinâ in the presence of the knight, Franz von Sickingen. The whole partakes of the spirit and raciness of Bunyan and Cobbett. Throughout the dialogue, the vices of no party in the state find mercy, while the necessity of the mutual exercise of virtue and aid is ably expounded.
The knight, Franz von Sickingen, was author of a part of this dialogue. His adjurations to Von Hutten not to be over-hasty and his reason why, are no doubt his own. By the production of such papers, Germany was made eager for the fray. This particular and powerful dialogue was dedicated to John, Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, and Count of Spanheim. This illustrious personage had requested Ulrich that whenever he published any particularly bold book, in support of national liberty, he would dedicate it to him, the duke. The author obeyed, in this instance, on good grounds and with right good will. There is in the dialogue an audible call to war, and this pleased Luther himself, who was now convinced that with the pen alone, the Reformation could not be an established fact.
Ulrich longed for the contact, whereby to make his country and his church free of Romanist tyranny. But he considers the possibility of a failure. He adjured his family to keep aloof from the strife, that they might not bring ruin on their heads, in the event of destruction falling on his own. The parents of Ulrich were now no more; Ulrich as head of his house was possessed of its modest estates. Of his own possessions he got rid, as of an encumbrance to his daring and his gigantic activity. He formally made over nearly all to his next brother, in order that his enemies, should they ultimately triumph, might have no ground for seizing them.
At the same time, he warned his brother to send him neither letters nor money, as either would be considered in the light of aid offered to an enemy, and might be visited with terrible penalties.
Having rid himself of what few would so easily have parted from, he drew his sword joyously and independently for the sake of liberty alone, and with a determination of never sheathing it until he had accomplished that at which he aimed, or that the accomplishment of such end had been placed beyond his power.
“Jacta est alea,” cried he, viewing his bright sword, “the die is thrown, Ulrich has risked it.”
In the meantime Von Hutten remained in the service of the Elector-Archbishop of Mayence. The courtiers laughed at him as a rude knight. The knights ridiculed him as a poor philosopher. Both were mistaken; he was neither poor nor rude, albeit a Ritter and a sage. What he most cared for, was opportunity to be useful in his generation, and leisure enough to cultivate learning during the hours he might call his own. His satirical poems, coarsely enough worded against a courtier’s life, are admirable for strength and coloring. Not less admirable for taste and power are his letters of this period. In them he denounces that nobility which is composed solely of family pride; and he denounces, with equally good foundation, the life of “Robber Knights,” as he calls them, who reside in their castles, amid every sort of discomfort, and a world of dirt, of hideous noises, and unsavory smells; and who only leave them to plunder or to be plundered. He pronounces the true knights of the period to be those alone who love religion and education. With the aid of these, applied wisely and widely, and with the help of great men whom he names, and who share his opinions, he hopes, as he fervently declares, to see intellect gain more victories than force—to be able to bid the old barbarous spirit which still influenced too many “to gird up its loins and be off.” Health came to him with this determination to devote himself to the service and improvement of his fellow-men. It came partly by the use of simple remedies, the chief of which was moderation in all things. Pen and sword were now alike actively employed. He put aside the former, for a moment, only to assume the latter, in order to strike in for vengeance against the aggressive Duke of Wurtemburg.
The crimes of this potentate had at length aroused the emperor against him. Maximilian had intrusted the leadership of his army to the famous knight-errant of his day, Franz von Sickingen. This cavalier had often been in open rebellion against the emperor himself; and Hutten now enrolled himself among the followers of Franz. His patron not only gave him the necessary permission but continued to him his liberal stipend; when the two knights met, and made their armor clash with their boisterous embrace, they swore not to stop short of vengeance on the guilty duke, but to fight to the death for liberty and Christendom. They slept together in the same bed in token of brotherly knighthood, and they rose to carry their banner triumphantly against the duke—ending the campaign by the capture of the metropolis, Stutgardt.
Reuchlin resided in the capital, and the good man was full of fear; for murder and rapine reigned around him. His fear was groundless, for Von Hutten had urged Sickingen to give out that in the sack of Stutgardt, no man should dare to assail the dwelling of Reuchlin. The two knights left the city to proceed to the spot in the wood where still lay buried the body of the murdered John von Hutten. “It had lain four years in the grave,” said Ulrich, “but the features were unchanged. As we touched him, blood flowed afresh from his wounds; recognise in this the witness of his innocence.” The corpse was eventually transported to the family vault at Esslingen.
The cities of the hard-pressed duke fell, one after the other, and the guilty prince was driven from his inheritance. Von Hutten remained with the army, busily plying his pen; his sword on the table before him, his dagger on his hip, and himself encased in armor to the throat. Erasmus laughingly wrote to him to leave Mars and stick to the Muses. He scarcely needed this advice, for his letters from the camp show that fond as he was of the field, he loved far better the quiet joys of the household hearth. Amid the brazen clangor of trumpets, the neighing of steeds, the rolling of the drum, and the boom of battle, he writes to Piscator (Fischer), his longing for home, and his desire for a wife to smile on, and care for him; one who would soothe his griefs and share his labors—“One,” he says, “with whom I might sportively laugh and feel glad in our existence—who would sweeten the bitter of life and alleviate the pressure of care. Let me have a wife, my dear Friederich, and thou knowest how I would love her ... young, fair, shy, gentle, affectionate, and well-educated. She may have some fortune, but not excess of it; and as for position, this is my idea thereon: that she will be noble enough whom Ulrich von Hutten chooses for his mate.” As a wooer, it will be seen that the scholar-knight had as little of the faint heart as the audacious “Findlay” of Burns, and I might almost say of Freiligrath, so spiritedly has the latter poet translated into German the pleasant lines of the Ayrshire ploughman.
Well had it been for Ulrich had he found, in 1519, the wife of his complacent visions. The gentle hand would have saved him from many a cruel hour.
On his return to Mayence he had well-nigh obeyed the universal call addressed to him, to join openly with Luther against Rome. He was withheld by his regard for his liberal patron, the archbishop. He remained, partly looking on and partly aiding, on the outskirts of the field where the fray was raging. He published a superb edition of Livy, and to show that the reforming spirit still burned brightly in the bosom of the scholar, he also published his celebrated “Vadiscus, sive Trias Romana.” This triple-edged weapon still inflicts anguish on Rome. Never had arrow of such power stricken the harlot before. Its point is still in her side; and her adversaries knew well how to use it, by painfully turning it in the wound.
The knight now hung up his sword in his chamber at Stackelberg, and devoted himself to his pen. In the convent library at Fulda he discovered an ancient German work against the supremacy of the Pope over the princes and people of Germany. Of this he made excellent use. His own productions against Rome followed one another with great rapidity. Down to the middle of 1520 he was incessantly charging the Vatican, at the point of a grey goosequill. He had at heart the freeing of Germany from the ecclesiastical domination of Italy, just as the men of Northern Italy have it at heart to rescue her from the cruel domination of Austria.
To accomplish his ends, Von Hutten left no means untried. Knight and scholar, noble and villain, the very Emperor Charles V. himself, Ulrich sought to enlist in the great confederacy, by which he hoped to strike a mortal blow at the temporal power of the “Universal Bishop.” His books converted even some of the diocesans of the Romish Church; but Rome thundered excommunication on the books and their author, and directed a heavy weight of censure against his protector, Albert of Mayence.
The archbishop admonished Von Hutten, and interdicted his works. This step decided Ulrich’s course. He at once addressed his first letter to Luther. It began with the cry of “Freedom for ever!” and it offered heart, head, soul, body, brains, and purse, in furtherance of the great cause. He tendered to Luther, in the name of Sickingen, a secure place of residence; and he established his first unassailable battery against Rome, by erecting a printing-press in his own room in the castle of Stackelberg, whence he directed many a raking fire against all his assailants. “Jacta est alea!” was his cry; “Let the enemies of light look to it!”
From Fulda he started to the court of the Emperor Charles V. at Brussels. But his enemies stood between him and the foot of the throne, and he was not allowed to approach it. His life, too, was being constantly threatened. He withdrew before these threats, once more into Germany, taking compensation by the way, for his disappointment, by a characteristic bit of spirit. He happened to fall in with Hogstraten, the heretic-finder, and the arch-enemy of Reuchlin. Ulrich belabored him with a sheathed sword till every bone in the body of Hogstraten was sore. In return, the knight was outlawed, and Leo X. haughtily commanded that hands should be laid upon him wherever he might be found, and that he should be delivered, gagged, and bound, to the Roman tribunals.
Franz von Sickingen immediately received him within the safe shelter of his strong fortress of Ebernberg, where already a score of renowned theological refugees had found an asylum. The colloquies of the illustrious fugitives made the old walls ring again. Von Hutten reduced these colloquies to writing, and I may name, as one of their conclusions, that the service of the mass in German was determined on, as the first step toward an established reformation.
The attempt of the Pope to have Ulrich seized and sacrificed, was eagerly applied by the latter to the benefit of the cause he loved. To the emperor, to the elector, to the nobles, knights, and states of Germany, he addressed papers full of patriotism, eloquence, and wisdom, against the aggression on German liberty. Throughout Germany this scholar-knight called into life the spirit of civil and religious freedom, and Luther, looking upon what Ulrich was doing, exclaimed: “Surely the last day is at hand!”
These two men, united, lit up a flame which can never be trodden out. One took his Bible and his pen, and with these pricked Rome into a fury, from which she has never recovered. The other, ungirding his sword, and transferring his printing-press to Ebernberg, sent therefrom glowing manifestoes which made a patriot of every reader.
The lyre and learning were both now employed by Von Hutten, in furtherance of his project. His popular poetry was now read or sung at every hearth. Not a village was without a copy, often to be read by stealth, of his “Complaint and Admonition.” His dialogues, especially that called the “Warner,” in which the colloquists are a Roman alarmist and Franz von Sickingen himself, achieved a similar triumph. It was to give heart to the wavering that Von Hutten wrote, and sent abroad from his press at Ebernberg, those remarkable dialogues.
Franz von Sickingen, his great protector, was for a season apprehensive that Ulrich’s outcry against Rome was louder than necessary, and his declared resolution to resent oppression by means of the sword, somewhat profane. Ulrich reasoned with and read to the gallant knight. His own good sense, and the arguments of Luther and Ulrich, at length convinced him that it was folly and sin to maintain outward respect for Rome as long as the latter aspired to be lord in Germany, above the kaiser himself. Franz soon agreed with Hutten that they ought not to heed even the Emperor, if he commanded them to spare the Pope, when such mercy might be productive of injury to the empire. In such cases, not to obey was the best obedience. They would not now look back. “It is better,” so runs it in Von Hutten’s “Warner,” “to consider what God’s will is, than what may enter the heads of individuals, capricious men, more especially in the case wherein the truth of the Gospel is concerned. If it be proved that nothing satisfactory, by way of encouragement, can come to us from the Emperor, they who love the Church and civil liberty must be bold at their own peril, let the issue be what it may.”
The dialogue of the “Warner” was, doubtless, not only read to Sickingen during the progress of its composition, but was unquestionably a transcript of much that was talked about, weighed, and considered between the two friends, as they sat surrounded by a circle of great scholars and soldiers, for whose blood Rome was thirsting. It ends with an assurance of the full adhesion of Franz to the views of Ulrich. “In this matter,” says the “Warner” to the knight of Ebernberg, “I see you have a passionate and zealous instigator, a fellow named Von Hutten, who can brook delay with patience, and who has heaped piles upon piles of stones, ready to fling them at the first adversary who presents himself.” “Ay, in good sooth,” is the ready answer of Franz, “and his service is a joy to me, for he has the true spirit requisite to insure triumph in such a struggle as ours.”
Thus at Ebernburg the battery was played against the defences of Rome, while Luther, from his known abodes, or from his concealment in friendly fortresses, thundered his artillery against the doctrines and superstitions of Rome. The movement had a double aspect. The Germans were determined to be free both as Christians and as citizens. The conducting of such determination to its successful issue could not be intrusted to worthier or more capable hands than those of Luther, aided by the Saxon Frederick the Wise, and Ulrich von Hutten, with such a squire at his side as hearty Franz von Sickingen.
In 1521 the young emperor, Charles V., delivered a speech at Worms, which seemed to have been framed expressly to assure the reformers that the emperor was with them. It abounded in promises that the kaiser would do his utmost to effect necessary reforms within the empire. The reformers were in great spirits, but they soon learned, by the summoning of Luther to Worms, and by the subsequent conduct of the emperor, that they had nothing to expect from him which they could thankfully acknowledge.
Ulrich only wrote the more boldly, and agitated the more unceasingly, in behalf of the cause of which Luther was the great advocate. To the kaiser himself he addressed many a daring epistle, as logical as audacious, in order to induce him to shake off the yoke of Rome, and be master of the Roman world, by other sanction than that of German election and papal consent. Von Hutten was more bold and quite as logical in his witheringly sarcastic epistles addressed to the pope’s legates at Worms. These epistles show that if at the time there was neither a recognised liberty of the press nor of individual expression, the times themselves were so out of joint that men dared do much which their masters dared not resent.
To the entire body of the priesthood assembled at Worms to confront Luther, he addressed similar epistles. They abound in “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” In every word there is defiance. Every sentence is a weapon. Every paragraph is an engine of war. The writer scatters his deadly missiles around him, threatening all, wounding many, sometimes indeed breaking his own head by rash management, but careless of all such accidents as long as he can reach, terrify, maul, and put to flight the crowd of enemies who have conspired to suppress both learning and religion in Germany.
In unison with Sickingen, he earnestly entreated Luther to repair to Ebernburg rather than to Worms, as there his knightly friends would protect him from all assailants. The reply of the great reformer is well known. He would go to Worms, he said, though there were as many devils as tiles on the roofs, leagued against him to oppose his journey thither. We can not doubt but that Luther would have been judicially assassinated in that ancient city but for the imposing front assumed by his well-armed and well-organized adherents, who not only crowded into the streets of Worms, but who announced by placards, even in the very bedchamber of the emperor, that a thousand lives should pay for the loss of one hair of the reformer’s head.
Had it depended on Von Hutten, the reformers would not have waited till violence had been inflicted on Luther, ere they took their own revenge for wrongs and oppressions done. But he was overruled, and his hot blood was kept cool by profuse and prosaic argument on the part of the schoolmen of his faction. He chafed, but he obeyed. He had more difficulty in reducing to the same obedience the bands of his adherents who occupied the city and its vicinity. These thought that the safety of Luther could only be secured by rescuing him at once from the hands of his enemies. The scholar-knight thought so too; and he would gladly have charged against such enemies. He made no signal, however, for the onslaught; on the contrary he issued orders forbidding it; and recommended the confederates to sheathe their swords, but yet to have their hands on the hilt. The elector of Saxony was adverse to violence, and Luther left Worms in safety, after defying Rome to her face.
Then came those unquiet times in which Charles V. so warmly welcomed volunteers to his banner. Seduced by his promises, Franz von Sickingen, with a few hundreds of strong-sinewed men, passed over to the Imperial quarters. The old brotherly gathering at Ebernberg was thus broken up; and Ulrich, who had offended both pope and emperor by his denunciations of ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, betook himself to Switzerland, where he hoped to find a secure asylum, and a welcome from Erasmus.
This amphibious personage, however, who had already ceased to laud Luther, affected now a horror against Von Hutten. He wrote of him as a poor, angry, mangy wretch, who could not be content to live in a room without a stove, and who was continually pestering his friends for pecuniary loans. The fiery Ulrich assailed his false friend in wrathful pamphlets. Erasmus loved the species of warfare into which such attacks drew or impelled him. He replied to Ulrich more cleverly than conclusively, in his “Sponge to wipe out the Aspersions of Von Hutten.” But the enmity of Erasmus was as nothing compared with the loss of Von Sickingen himself. In the tumultuary wars of his native land he perished, and Ulrich felt that, despite some errors, the good cause had lost an iron-handed and a clear-sighted champion.
There is little doubt that it was at the instigation of Erasmus that the priestly party in Basle successfully urged the government authorities to drive Ulrich from the asylum he had temporarily found there. He quietly departed on issue of the command, and took his solitary and painful way to Muhlhausen, where a host of reformers warmly welcomed the tottering skeleton into which had shrunk the once well-knit man. Here his vigor cast aloft its last expiring light. Muhlhausen threw off the papal yoke, but the papist party was strong enough there to raise an insurrection; and rather than endanger the safety of the town, the persecuted scholar and soldier once more walked forth to find a shelter. He reached Zurich in safety. He went at once to the hearth of Zuinglius, who looked upon the terrible spectre in whom the eyes alone showed signs of life; and he could hardly believe that the pope cared for the person, or dreaded the intellect, of so ghostlike a champion as this.
Ulrich, excommunicated, outlawed and penniless, was in truth sinking fast. His hand had not strength to enfold the pommel of his sword. From his unconscious fingers dropped the pen.
“Who will defend me against my calumniators?” asked the yet willing but now incapable man.
“I will!” said the skilful physician, Otto Brunfels; and the cooper’s son stoutly protected the good name of Ulrich, after the latter was at peace in the grave.
The last hours of the worn-out struggler for civil and religious liberty, were passed at Ufnau, a small island in the Lake of Zurich. He had been with difficulty conveyed thither, in the faint hope that his health might profit by the change. There he slowly and resignedly died on the last day of August, 1523, and at the early age of thirty-eight.
A few dearly-loved books and some letters constituted all his property. He was interred on the island, but no monument has ever marked the spot where his wornout body was laid down to repose.
Through life, whether engaged with sword or pen, his absorbing desire was that his memory might be held dear by his survivors. He loved activity, abhorred luxury, adored liberty; and, for the sake of civil and religious freedom, he fought and sang with earnest alacrity. Lyre on arm, and sword in hand, he sang and summoned, until hosts gathered round him, and cheered the burthen of all he uttered. “The die is thrown! I’ve risked it for truth and freedom’s sake.” Against pope and kaiser, priest and soldier, he boldly cried, “Slay my frame you may, but my soul is beyond you!” He was the star that harbingered a bright dawn. His prevailing enemies drove him from his country; the grave which they would have denied him, he found in Switzerland, and “after life’s fitful fever,” the scholar-knight sleeps well in the island of the Zurich-Zee.
From the Zurich-Zee we will now retrace our steps, and consider the Sham Knights.