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.