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.