3. The last question—that of the attitude of the Diet towards Luther—was to prove a far more serious question than any one at that time dreamt of—a question which was to affect deeply the future history not only of the Empire, but of Europe.
The Reformation was the outcome of two forces, independent in origin, and never wholly in agreement: the Renaissance, and the desire for reform in dogma and practice.The Renaissance and the Reformation. Of these, the first owes its birth to Italy. The Italians, despairing of political unity or stability, yet excelling other people in material prosperity and comfort, betook themselves to the study of the past for which their unbroken connection with the language and memories of Rome well fitted them. The movement, beginning in the earlier decades of the fifteenth century, had made rapid strides before it closed, and was many-sided. In art, it was marked by a return to the study of the antique; in literature, by a fresh taste for prose and poetry, founded on classic models; in scholarship, it was accompanied by the discovery of ancient manuscripts, and the revival of criticism; in philosophy, it led to a revival of the knowledge of Plato; in natural science, to a more critical inquiry into the nature of the earth and its relation to the system of the universe.
But the principles which underlay and actuated these different energies were the same. Mediæval thought had striven to sacrifice the individual. It had taught men to crucify the body with its fleshly lusts, to check the rebellious passion for independence and individuality. It had bidden men accept without question the authority of the Church, and of the temporal power. The new spirit revolted from all these doctrines. It preached the dignity of man, and of this life. It questioned the virtue of asceticism, and lusted after the world in thought and deed. It proclaimed the right of the individual to think, and feel, and shape his creed according to the dictates of reason. It inculcated the lessons of inquiry, of criticism, of naturalism. Thus a new paradise was opened to the imagination, and men rushed headlong into it with a pleasing sense of freedom. There was much that was valuable, and indeed necessary to progress, in this movement of emancipation. It led to more accurate observation, to more careful criticism, to greater regard for literature, and to the triumph of individualism. Nevertheless, it had its darker side. It was accompanied by much riot and licence. The sensuous delight in form and colour betrayed some into sensuality; the undue devotion to things of this world led to a mundane pagan spirit; criticism, to scepticism and infidelity. The atmosphere of the Renaissance was indeed inimical to that of the Christian life, yet, with a few exceptions, the Italians made no direct attack upon the Church. The literary men were well content to leave an institution alone, which was so closely wrapped up with their past traditions and with the general culture of the day, and which so conveniently patronised them, and even tolerated their satires, so long as they left her government and her dogmas alone. With the philosophers it was different. Yet even they assailed Christianity rather than the Church; and if Ficino tried to reconcile Christianity and Platonism, or Pomponazzi questioned the immortality of the soul, these scholars affected to distinguish between science and religion, and while they speculated as philosophers, professed to believe as Christians. Thus there is hardly any humanist of Italy, if we except Laurentius Valla, who attacked the claims of the Pope to interfere in temporal affairs, or the tradition that the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles; and even he, for the sake of papal protection, easily retracted his errors.
For the rest, the Italian humanists were scarcely serious enough to undertake a reformation of the Church. Their temper, if not anti-religious, was irreligious, and their lives, with few exceptions, as loose as those of the churchmen whom they lampooned. Reformers there were indeed in Italy, but these had no connection with the humanists. They were men of the type of Savonarola, whose sole idea of reform was one of morals and of life, and who had no quarrel with the dogmas, or the organisation of the Church.
No sooner did the Renaissance cross the Alps than, in the hands of the more earnest-minded Germans, it became more serious and more theological, less philosophical and more dogmatic. Criticism they now applied to the Church, and in another sense to the Bible, with the intention not of destroying Christianity but of restoring it to its primitive purity.
Among numerous scholars who rose in Germany at the close of the fifteenth century,Reuchlin and Erasmus. the two most characteristic representatives of the age were John Reuchlin (1455–1522) and Desiderius Erasmus (1467–1536). Reuchlin is chiefly noticeable for his revival of the study of Hebrew, a study which he applied to the criticism of the Vulgate, and for his attempt to save the Jewish writings from indiscriminate destruction at the hands of the bigoted Dominican Hochstraten. Although a philologist, rather than a theologian, he may yet be called the father of Old Testament criticism, and during the struggle over the Jewish literature, the conflict between the old and new ideas is strongly emphasised.
But the most famous child of the German revival is Erasmus. Educated at the school of Deventer, a school which owed its origin to the Brethren of the Common Life, he was, at the date of the Diet of Worms, looked upon as the greatest scholar of his age, and enjoyed a reputation such as probably has never been equalled since. If Reuchlin may be called the father of Old Testament criticism, Erasmus may be termed the father of New Testament criticism, and of scientific theology. In 1505, he republished Valla’s notes on the New Testament, the solitary piece of biblical criticism which had come from Italy. This was followed, in 1516, by his Greek edition of the New Testament, with a Latin translation and notes. The aim of these works was to revive the knowledge of the original, and by the collation of such MSS. as were procurable, to furnish as correct a version as possible of the text. In the notes, Erasmus applied the canons of ordinary criticism to the New Testament, and thereby laid the foundations of modern biblical scholarship. The aim of his third work, the Enchiridion Militis Christi, may be gathered from a letter to his friend Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s: ‘I write,’ he says, ‘to remedy the error which makes religion depend on ceremonies and on observance of bodily acts, while neglecting true piety.’ With these views Erasmus was naturally a severe critic of the existing state of things. He lamented the ignorance of many churchmen who dreaded the new learning without understanding it; who went so far as to denounce Hebrew and Greek as heretical because they were not the language of the Vulgate, and whose bigotry had just been so conspicuously displayed in the Reuchlin controversy. He despised the idleness of the monks, and the intolerable narrowness of the scholastic pedants, with their barren disputations and endless hair-splittings. He denounced the folly of that Church which insisted on every tittle of outward ceremony and dogma, and yet neglected practical piety. These were the objects of his satirical pen in his Praise of Folly, which was written in England in 1509. In this wonderful satire, Folly, declaring herself the real source of happiness, represents herself as the authoress of all the superstition, the pedantry, the idleness, the hypocrisy, which were so prosperous in the world.
Nor was the satire of Erasmus the only one which appeared at this time. The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brandt in 1494, and the more famous Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, which arose out of the Reuchlin controversy, deal with much the same evils, though without the literary refinement of the northern scholar; while the Ship of Fools is specially noticeable as having been originally written in German, and therefore written for the people, not to the scholars. But although these and other writings indicate how deeply Germany was stirred by the corruptions of the Church, and although they had done much to prepare the way, there was as yet no idea of breaking away from her. Men still looked to internal reform by Council, or if not, by some other method.
It has been usual to accuse Erasmus of half-heartedness in the cause of religion, of carelessness in his private life, and of time-serving in his public conduct. There is certainly some truth in this attack, and assuredly he was not the man to raise the standard of avowed rebellion. As he himself confessed, he was not of the stuff of which martyrs were made. He was a scholar who loved peace, and had nothing of the religious enthusiast about him. But quite apart from his character, his whole intellectual position was incompatible with that of the Reformation, as the Protestants understand the meaning of the word. Erasmus belongs to that school of broad churchmen, who did not believe that the cure for the evils afoot was to be found in the assertion of new dogmas. In their view, too much dogma was insisted upon already. Much was at least not comprehensible to the multitude, and, if to be altered, should be altered by the slow dissolvent of learned criticism. Reform with them meant a gradual autumnal change, which might take place without violently breaking with the past, while the moral principles acknowledged by all should be enforced, and made more real. In short, Erasmus is the father of modern latitudinarianism, as well as of biblical criticism. His whole nature shrank from more violent methods, and he feared their results. He foresaw the extravagances, the controversies, and the schisms which would inevitably follow, and delay the triumph of rational theology. The Reformation of the sixteenth century could not be guided by him; but, as it has been well said, perhaps the Reformation that is to come will trace itself back to Erasmus.
The final breach with Rome was not to come from scholars of world-wide reputation, but from the son of a Thuringian peasant who,Martin Luther, 1483–1546. although of robust mind, was an indifferent Greek scholar, and knew no Hebrew. In dealing with Martin Luther it is of importance to remember the various steps in his career.