Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

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.