FOOTNOTES
[1] Many assumed the clerical character for no other reason than that it might screen them from the punishment which their actions deserved, and the monasteries were full of people who entered them to be secure against the consequences of their crimes and atrocities.—Rymer's Foedera, vol. xiii. p. 532.
[2] The maiden name of Margaret Luther, the mother of Martin, was Margaret Ziegler. There has been a traditional belief that her name was Margaret Lindeman. The mistake originated in confounding Luther's grandmother, whose name was Lindeman, with Luther's mother, whose name was Ziegler. Prof. Julius Köstlin, in his Life of Luther, after a thorough examination of original records and documents, gives this explanation.
[3] Bellarmine, an honored author of the Roman Church, one competent to judge concerning the state of things at that time, and not over-forward to confess it, says: "For some years before the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies were published there was not (as contemporary authors testify) any rigor in ecclesiastical judicatories, any discipline with regard to morals, any knowledge of sacred literature, any reverence for divine things: THERE WAS ALMOST NO RELIGION REMAINING."—Bellarm., Concio xviii., Opera, tom. vi. col. 296, edit. Colon., 1617, apud Gerdesii Hist. Evan. Renovati, vol. i. p. 25.
[4] In the famous Bull of Gregory IX., published in 1234, that pope exhorts and commands all good Christians to take up the cross and join the expedition to recover the Holy Land. The language is: "The service to which mankind are now invited is an effectual atonement for the miscarriages of a negligent life. The discipline of a regular penance would have discouraged many offenders so much that they would have had no heart to venture upon it; but the holy war is a compendious method of discharging men from guilt and restoring them to the divine favor. Even if they die on their march, the intention will be taken for the deed, and many in this way may be crowned without fighting."—Given in Collier's Eccl., vol. i.
[5] The Roman Chancery once put forth a book, which went through many editions, giving the exact prices for the pardon of each particular sin. A deacon guilty of murder was absolved for twenty pounds. A bishop or abbot might assassinate for three hundred livres. Any ecclesiastic might violate his vows of chastity for the third part of that sum, etc., etc.—See Robertson's Charles V.
[6] The pallium, or pall, was a narrow band of white wool to go over the shoulders in the form of a circle, from which hung bands of similar size before and behind, finished at the ends with pieces of sheet lead and embroidered with crosses. It was the mark of the dignity and rank of archbishops. Albert owed Pope Leo X. forty-five thousand thalers for his right and appointment to wear the archbishop's pallium.
It was in this way that the Roman Church was accustomed to sell out benefices as a divine right. Even expectative graces, or mandates nominating a person to succeed to a benefice upon the first vacancy, were thus sold. Companies existed in Germany which made a business of buying up the benefices of particular sections and districts and retailing them at advanced rates. The selling of pardons was simply a lower kind of simoniacal bartering which pervaded the whole hierarchical establishment.
[7] Many of the sayings which Tetzel gave out in his addresses to the people have been preserved, and are amply attested by those who listened to his harangues.
"I would not," said he, "exchange my privileges for those of St. Peter in heaven. He saved many by his sermons; I have saved more by my indulgences."
"Indulgences are the most precious and sublime of all the gifts of God."
"No sins are so great that these pardons cannot cover them."
"Not for the living only, but for the dead also, there is immediate salvation in these indulgences."
"Ye priests, nobles, tradespeople, wives, maidens, young men! the souls of your parents and beloved ones are crying from the depths below: 'See our torments! A small alms would deliver us; and you can give it, and you will not.'"
"O dull and brutish people, not to appreciate the grace so richly offered! This day heaven is open on all sides, and how many are the souls you might redeem if you only would! Your father is in flames, and you can deliver him for ten groschen, and you do it not! What punishment must come for neglecting so great salvation! You should strip your coat from your back, if you have no other, and sell it to purchase so great grace as this, for God hath given all power to the pope."
"The bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul, with those of many blessed martyrs, lie exposed, trampled on, polluted, dishonored, and rotting in the weather. Our most holy lord the pope means to build the church to cover them with glory that shall have no equal on the earth. Shall those holy ashes be left to be trodden in the mire?"
"Therefore bring your money, and do a work most profitable to departed souls. Buy! buy!"
"This red cross with the pope's arms has equal virtue with the Cross of Christ."
"These pardons make cleaner than baptism, and purer than Adam was in his innocence in Paradise."
In the certificates which Tetzel gave to those who bought these pardons he declared that "by the authority of Jesus Christ, and of his apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most holy pope, I do absolve thee first from all ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they have been incurred, and then from all thy sins, transgressions, and excesses, however enormous soever they may be. I remit to you all punishment which you deserve in Purgatory on their account, and I restore you to the holy sacraments of the Church, union with the faithful, and to that innocence and purity possessed at baptism; so that when you die the gates of punishment shall be shut and the gates of the happy Paradise shall be opened; and if your death shall be delayed, this grace shall remain in full force when you are at the point of death."
The sums required for these passports to glory varied according to the rank and wealth of the applicant. For ordinary indulgence a king, queen, or bishop was to pay twenty-five ducats (a ducat being about a dollar of our money); abbots, counts, barons, and the like were charged ten ducats; other nobles and all who enjoyed annual incomes of five hundred florins were charged six ducats; and so down to half a florin, or twenty-five cents.
But the commissioner also had a special scale for taxes on particular sins. Sodomy was charged twelve ducats; sacrilege and perjury, nine; murder, seven or eight; witchcraft and polygamy, from two to six; taking the life of a parent, brother, sister, or an infant, from one to six.
[8] A writer of the Roman Church, in a vein of somewhat mingled sarcasm and seriousness, remarks: "The university had reason to be proud of Luther, whose oral lectures attracted a multitude of strangers; these pilgrims from distant quarters joined their hands and bowed their heads at the sight of the towers of the city, like other travelers before Jerusalem. Wittenberg was like a new Zion, whence the light of truth expanded to neighboring kingdoms, as of old from the Holy City to pagan nations."
[9] Glapio, the confessor of Charles V., stated to Chancellor Brück at the Diet of Worms: "The alarm which I felt when I read the first pages of the Captivity cannot be expressed; they might be said to be lashes which scourged me from head to foot."
[10] The Bull was issued June 15, 1520. It specified forty-one propositions out of Luther's works which it condemned as heretical, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears. It forbade all persons to read his writings, upon pain of excommunication. Such as had any of his books in their possession were commanded to burn them. He himself, if he did not publicly recant his errors and burn his books within sixty days, was pronounced an obstinate heretic, excommunicated and delivered over to Satan. And it enjoined upon all secular princes, under pain of incurring the same censure, to seize his person and deliver him up to be punished as his crimes deserved; that is to be burnt as a heretic.
[11] Audin, in his Life of Luther, says: "A monk who wore a cassock out at the elbows had caused to the most powerful emperor in the world greater embarrassments than those which Francis I., his unsuccessful rival at Frankfort, threatened to raise against him in Italy. With the cannon from his arsenal at Ghent and his lances from Namur, Charles could beat the king of France between sunrise and sunset; but lances and cannon were impotent to subdue the religious revolution, which, like some of the glaciers which he crossed in coming from Spain, acquired daily a new quantity of soil."—Vol. i. chap. 25. Again, in chap. 30, he says of the emperor: "The thought of measuring his strength with the hero of Marignan was far from alarming him, but a struggle with the monk of Wittenberg disturbed his sleep. He wished that they should try to overcome his obstinacy."
[12] "The reception which he met with at Worms was such as he might have reckoned a full reward of all his labors if vanity and the love of applause had been the principles by which he was influenced. Greater crowds assembled to behold him than had appeared at the emperor's public entry; his apartments were daily filled with princes and personages of the highest rank; and he was treated with all the respect paid to those who possess the power of directing the understanding and sentiments of other men—a homage more sincere, as well as more flattering, than any which pre-eminence in birth or condition command."—Robertson's Charles V., vol. i. p. 510.
[13] A Romanist thus describes the picture: "When the approach of Luther was heard there ensued one of those deep silences in which the heart alone, by its hurried pulsations, gives sign of life. Attention was diverted from the emperor to the monk. On the appearance of Luther every one rose, regardless of the sovereign's presence. It inspired Werner with one of the finest acts of his tragedy.... Heine has glorified the appearance at Worms. The Catholic himself loves to contemplate that black gown in the presence of those lords and barons caparisoned in iron and armed with helmet and spear, and is moved by the voice of 'that young friar' who comes to defy all the powers of the earth."—Audin's Life of Luther.
"All parties must unite in admiring and venerating the man who, undaunted and alone, could stand before such an assembly, and vindicate with unshaken courage what he conceived to be the cause of religion, of liberty, and of truth, fearless of any reproaches but those of his own conscience, or of any disapprobation but that of his God."—Roscoe's Life of Leo X., vol. iv. p. 36.
Luther himself, afterward recalling the event, said: "It must indeed have been God who gave me my boldness of heart; I doubt if I could show such courage again."
[14] "With this noble protest was laid the keystone of the Reformation. The pontifical hierarchy shook to its centre, and the great cause of truth and regenerate religion spread with electric speed. The marble tomb of ignorance and error gave way, as it were, of a sudden; a thousand glorious events and magnificent discoveries thronged upon each other with pressing haste to behold and congratulate the mighty birth, the new creation, of which they were the harbingers, when, with a steady and triumphant step, the peerless form of human intellect rose erect, and, throwing off from its freshening limbs the death-shade and the grave-clothes by which it was enshrouded, ascended to the glorious resurrection of that noontide lustre which irradiates the horizon of our own day, rejoicing like a giant to run his race."—John Mason Good's Book of Nature, p. 321.
[15] Chevalier Bunsen says; "It is Luther's genius applied to the Bible which has preserved the only unity which is, in our days, remaining to the German nation—that of language, literature, and thought. There is no similar instance in the known history of the world of a single man achieving such a work."
[16] The death of Adrian VI., on the 14th of September, 1523, was a subject of general rejoicing in Rome. There was a crown of flowers hung to the door of his physician, with a card appended which read, "To the savior of his country."
[17] "The Reformation of Luther kindled up the minds of men afresh, leading to new habits of thought and awakening in individuals energies before unknown to themselves. The religious controversies of this period changed society, as well as religion, and to a considerable extent, where they did not change the religion of the state, they changed man himself in his modes of thought, his consciousness of his own powers, and his desire of intellectual attainment. The spirit of commercial and foreign adventure on the one hand and, on the other the assertion and maintenance of religious liberty, having their source in the Reformation, and this love of religious liberty drawing after it or bringing along with it, as it always does, an ardent devotion to the principle of civil liberty also, were the powerful influences under which character was formed and men trained for the great work of introducing English civilization, English law, and, what is more than all, Anglo-Saxon blood, into the wilderness of North America."—Daniel Webster, Works, vol. i. p. 94.
[18] "Never before was the human mind more prolific." "Luther holds a high and glorious place in German literature." "In his manuscripts we nowhere discover the traces of fatigue or irritation, no embarrassment or erasures, no ill-applied epithet or unmanageable expression; and by the correctness of his writing we might imagine he was the copyist rather than the writer of the work."—So says Audin, his Roman Catholic biographer.
Hallam's flippant and disparaging remarks on Luther, contained in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe, are simply outrageous, "stupid and senseless paragraphs," evidencing a presumption on the part of their author which deserves intensest rebuke. "Hallam knows nothing about Luther; he himself confesses his inability to read him in his native German; and this alone renders him incapable of judging intelligently respecting his merits as a writer; and, knowing nothing, it would have been honorable in him to say nothing, at least to say nothing disparagingly. And, by the way, it seems to us that writing a history of European literature without a knowledge of German is much like writing a history of metals without knowing anything of iron and steel.... Luther's language became, through his writings, and has ever since remained, the language of literature and general intercourse among educated men, and is that which is now understood universally to be meant when the German is spoken of. His translation of the Bible is still as much the standard of purity for that language as Homer is for the Greek."—Dr. Calvin E. Stowe.
[19] "Nothing can be more edifying than the scene presented by the last days of Luther, of which we have the most authentic and detailed accounts. When dying he collected his last strength and offered up the following prayer: 'Heavenly Father, eternal, merciful God, thou hast revealed to me thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Him I have taught, him I have confessed, him I love as my Saviour and Redeemer, whom the wicked persecute, dishonor, and reprove. Take my poor soul up to thee!'
"Then two of his friends put to him the solemn question: 'Reverend Father, do you die in Christ and in the doctrine you have constantly preached?' He answered by an audible and joyful 'Yes;' and, repeating the verse, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,' he expired peacefully, without a struggle."—Encyc. Britannica.
[20] Mattähus Ratzenberger, in a passage of his biography preserved in the Bibliotheca Ducalis Gothana, says: "Lutherus had also this custom: as soon as he had eaten the evening meal with his table companions he would fetch out of his little writing-room his partes and hold a musicam with those of them who had a mind for music. Greatly was he delighted when a good composition of the old master fitted the responses or hymnos de tempore anni, and especially did he enjoy the cantu Gregoriana and chorale. But if at times he perceived in a new song that it was incorrectly copied he set it again upon the lines (that is, he brought the parts together and rectified it in continenti). Right gladly did he join in the singing when hymnus or responsorium de tempore had been set by the Musicus to a Cantum Gregorianum, as we have said, and his young sons, Martinus and Paulus, had also after table to sing the responsoria de tempore, as at Christmas, Verbum caro factum est, In principio erat verbum; at Easter, Christus resurgens ex mortuis, Vita sanctorum, Victimæ paschali laudes, etc. In these responsoria he always sang along with his sons, and in cantu figurali he sang the alto."
The alto which Luther sang must not be confounded with the alto part of to-day. Here it means the cantus firmus, the melody around which the old composers wove their contrapuntal ornamentation.
Luther was the creator of German congregational singing.
[21] Luther's first poetic publication seems to have been certain verses composed on the martyrdom of two young Christian monks, who were burned alive at Brussels in 1523 for their faithful confession of the evangelical doctrines. A translation of a part of this composition is given in D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation in these beautiful and stirring words:
"Flung to the heedless winds or on the waters cast,
Their ashes shall be watched, and gathered at the last;
And from that scattered dust, around us and abroad,
Shall spring a plenteous seed of witnesses for God.
"Jesus hath now received their latest living breath,
Yet vain is Satan's boast of victory in their death.
Still, still, though dead, they speak, and trumpet-tongued proclaim
To many a wakening land the One availing Name."
Audin, though a Romanist, says: "The hymns which he translated from the Latin into German may be unreservedly praised, as also those which he composed for the members of his own communion. He did not travesty the sacred Word nor set his anger to music. He is grave, simple, solemn, and grand. He was at once the poet and musician of a great number of his hymns."
[22] Froude supplemented.
[23] "It must be observed that the coarse vituperations which shock the reader in Luther's controversial works were not peculiar to him, being commonly used by scholars and divines of the Middle Ages in their disputations. The invectives of Valla, Filelfo, Poggio, and other distinguished scholars against each other are notorious; and this bad taste continued in practice long after Luther down to the seventeenth century, and traces of it are found in writers of the eighteenth, even in some of the works of the polished and courtly Voltaire."—Cyclopædia of Soc. for Diffus. of Useful Knowledge.
[24] "In no other instance have such great events depended upon the courage, sagacity, and energy of a single man, who, by his sole and unassisted efforts, made his solitary cell the heart and centre of the most wonderful and important commotion the world ever witnessed—who by the native force and vigor of his genius attacked and successfully resisted, and at length overthrew, the most awful and sacred authority that ever imposed its commands on mankind."—A letter prefixed to Luther's Table-Talk in the folio edition of 1652.
[25] "To overturn a system of religious belief founded on ancient and deep-rooted prejudices, supported by power and defended with no less art than industry—to establish in its room doctrines of the most contrary genius and tendency, and to accomplish all this, not by external violence or the force of arms, are operations which historians the least prone to credulity and superstition ascribe to that divine providence which with infinite ease can bring about events which to human sagacity appear impossible."—Robertson's Charles V.
[26] "From the commencement of the religious war in Germany to the Peace of Westphalia scarce anything great or memorable occurred in the European political world with which the Reformation was not essentially connected. Every event in the history of the world in this interval, if not directly occasioned, was nearly affected, by this religious revolution, and every state, great or small, remotely or immediately felt its influence."—Schiller's Thirty Years' War, vol. i. p. 1.
[27] "Luther was as wonderful as he was great. His personal experience in divine things was as deep as his mind was mighty, large, and unbounded. Though called by the Most High, and continued by his appointment, in the midst of papal darkness, idolatry, and error, with no companions but the saints of the Bible, nor any other light but the lamp of the Word to guide his feet, his heaven-taught soul was ministerially furnished with as rich pasture for the sheep of Christ, as awful ammunition for the terror and destruction of the enemies by which he and they were perpetually surrounded. The sphere of his mighty ministry was not bounded by his defence of the truth against the great and powerful. No! He was as rich a pastor, as terrible a warrior. He fed the sheep in the fattest pastures, while he destroyed the wolves on every side. Nor will those pastures be dried up or lost until time, nations, and the churches of God shall be no more."—Dr. Cole's Pref. to Luther on Genesis.
[28] "It was by some of these qualities which we are now apt to blame that Luther was fitted for accomplishing the great work which he undertook. To rouse mankind when sunk in ignorance and superstition, and to encounter the rage of bigotry armed with power, required the utmost vehemence of zeal as well as temper daring to excess."—Robertson's Charles V.
[29] Acrelius's History, p. 21.
[30] "When he now beheld that the cause of Protestantism was menaced more seriously than ever throughout the whole of Germany, he took the decisive step, and, formally declaring war against the emperor, he, on the 24th of June, 1630, landed on the coast of Pomerania with fifteen thousand Swedes. As soon as he stepped upon shore he dropped on his knees in prayer, while his example was followed by his whole army. Truly he had undertaken, with but small and limited means, a great and mighty enterprise." "The Swedes, so steady and strict in their discipline, appeared as protecting angels, and as the king advanced the belief spread far and near throughout the land that he was sent from heaven as its preserver."—History of Germany, by Kohlrausch, pp. 328, 329.
"Bavaria and the Tyrol excepted, every province throughout Germany had battled for liberty of conscience, and yet the whole of Germany, notwithstanding her universal inclination for the Reformation, had been deceived in her hopes: a second Imperial edict seemed likely to crush the few remaining privileges spared by the edict of restitution.... Gustavus, urged by his sincere piety, resolved to take up arms in defence of Protestantism and to free Germany from the yoke imposed by the Jesuits."—Menzel's History of Germany, vol. ii. pp. 345, 346.
"The party of the Catholics were carrying all before them, and everything seemed to promise that Ferdinand (the Roman Catholic emperor) would become absolute through the whole of Germany, and succeed in that scheme which he seemed to meditate, of entirely abolishing the Protestant religion in the empire. But this miserable prospect, both of political and religious thraldom, was dissolved by the great Gustavus Adolphus being invited by the Protestant princes of Germany to espouse the cause of the Reformed religion, being himself of that persuasion."—Tytler's Univ. Hist., vol. ii. p. 451.
[31] The death of Gustavus Adolphus is thus described by Kohlrausch: "The king spent the cold autumnal night in his carriage, and advised with his generals about the battle. The morning dawned, and a thick fog covered the entire plain; the troops were drawn up in battle-array, and the Swedes sang, accompanied with trumpets and drums, Luther's hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott ('A mighty fortress is our God'), together with the hymn composed by the king himself, Verzage nicht, du Häuflein klein ('Fear not the foe, thou little flock'). Just after eleven o'clock, when the sun was emerging from behind the clouds, and after a short prayer, the king mounted his horse, placed himself at the head of the right wing—the left being commanded by Bernard of Weimar—and cried, 'Now, onward! May our God direct us!—Lord, Lord! help me this day to fight for the glory of thy name!' and, throwing away his cuirass with the words, 'God is my shield!' he led his troops to the front of the Imperialists, who were well entrenched on the paved road which leads from Lützen to Leipsic, and stationed in the deep trenches on either side. A deadly cannonade saluted the Swedes, and many here met their death; but their places were filled by others, who leaped over the trench, and the troops of Wallenstein retreated.
"In the mean time, Pappenheim came up with his cavalry from Halle, and the battle was renewed with the utmost fury. The Swedish infantry fled behind the trenches. To assist them, the king hastened to the spot with a company of horse, and rode in full speed considerably in advance to descry the weak points of the enemy; only a few of his attendants, and Francis, duke of Saxe-Lauenberg, rode with him. His short-sightedness led him too near a squadron of Imperial horse; he received a shot in his arm, which nearly precipitated him to the ground; and just as he was turning to be led away from the tumultuous scene he received a second shot in the back. With the exclamation, 'My God! my God!' he fell from his horse, which also was shot in the neck, and was dragged for some distance, hanging by the stirrup. The duke abandoned him, but his faithful page tried to raise him, when the Imperial horsemen shot him also, killed the king, and completely plundered him." Pappenheim was also mortally wounded, Wallenstein retreated, and the victory was with the Swedes, but their noble king was no more.
[32] The description of the features of this plan is taken from Geijer's Svenska Folkets Historia, vol. iii. p. 128, given by Dr. Reynolds in his Introduction to Israel Acrelius's History of New Sweden, published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It was first propounded by Gustavus Adolphus in 1624. Also referred to in Argonautica Gustaviana, pp. 3 and 22.
[33] Count Galeazzo Gualdo, a Venetian Roman Catholic, who spent some years in both the Imperial and the Swedish armies, says of Gustavus Adolphus that "he was tall, stout, and of such truly royal demeanor that he universally commanded veneration, admiration, love, and fear. His hair and beard were of a light-brown color, his eye large, but not far-sighted. Eloquence dwelt upon his tongue. He spoke German, the native language of his mother, the Swedish, the Latin, the French, and the Italian languages, and his discourse was agreeable and lively. There never was a general served with so much cheerfulness and devotion as he. He was of an affable and friendly disposition, readily expressing commendation, and noble actions were indelibly fixed upon his memory; on the other hand, excessive politeness and flattery he hated, and if any person approached him in that way he never trusted him."
[34] See sketch of the plan of Gustavus Adolphus for his colony, page [143], and the instructions given to Governor Printz in 1642.
[35] Introduction to Acrelius's History.
[36] Swedish Annals, p. 26.
[37] Dr. Reynolds's Introduction to Acrelius, p. 14.
[38] See Acrelius's History, pp. 64, 65, and Clay's Swedish Annals, pp. 24, 25.
[39] History of New Sweden, by Israel Acrelius, p. 21.
[40] Rehearsed in the commission to Governor Printz, 1642, sections 9 and 26.