Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

He answered in a friendly letter to Luther on February 13, 1526, that he had been pleased to take note of the difficulty, and would for the future know how to comport himself in these matters in a Christian and irreproachable manner.[986] Subsequent to this assurance he acted as an apt pupil of the Wittenberg Professor.

In accordance with the instructions given by the Elector in 1527 for the general Visitation of the Churches in the Saxon Electorate, an “inquisition” was to be held everywhere by the ecclesiastical Visitors as to whether any “sect or schism” existed in the country. Whoever was “suspected of error in respect of the sacraments or some doctrine of faith” was to be “summoned and interrogated, and, if the occasion required, hostile witnesses were to be heard”; if any refused to give up their “error,” they were commanded to sell their possessions within a given time and to quit the country.[987] One thing only was still wanting, viz. that the people should be compelled by the Ruler to attend the Lutheran sermons and services. Even this was, however, implied in the regulations, since those who did not attend were classed among the “suspects.” As time went on Luther demanded the exercise of such coercion, and it was actually introduced in the Electorate and, later, in the Protestant Duchy of Saxony.[988]

The proceedings on the introduction of the innovations in other districts were similar to those in the Electorate of Saxony. Wherever a small group of persons were willing to throw in their lot with the first local representatives of the new faith—generally clerics—they were backed up by the State authorities, who reconstructed the religious system as they thought best. “Nowhere was the primitive Lutheran ideal realised of a congregation forming itself in entire independence.... Thus at an early date Lutheranism took its place among the political factors, and its development was to a certain extent dependent upon the tendencies and inclinations of the authorities and ruling sovereigns of that day.”[989]

The Electors Frederick and Johann of Saxony were gradually joined by a number of other Princes who introduced the innovations into their lands, and the magistrates of the larger, and even of some of the smaller, Imperial cities soon followed suit. Thus the whole movement, having owed its success so largely to the authorities, was governed and exploited by them and assumed a strongly political character, needless to say, much to the detriment of its religious aspect.

What part the “inclinations of the ruling sovereigns” played, even in opposition to Luther’s own wishes, is plain from the example of the Margrave Philip of Hesse, who, next to the Elector of Saxony, was the most powerful, and undoubtedly the most determined, promoter of the great apostasy. This Prince, whose leanings were towards Zürich, as early as 1529 was anxious to extend the alliance he had concluded in the interests of the innovations with the Saxon Electorate, so as to embrace also the Zwinglians. Attracted by Zwingli’s denial of the sacrament, he also sought, with the assistance of theologians of his own way of thinking, to amalgamate the Swiss doctrine with that of Wittenberg; in this he was not, however, successful. The great religious alliance with Wittenberg aimed at by Zwingli himself as well as by Philip, and which it was hoped to settle at the Conference of Marburg (see vol. iii., xix. 1), was never realised, Luther refusing to give in on any point. In Hesse, however, the Zwinglian influence was maintained through the agency of theologians of Bucer’s school, which had the favour of the Court, while at Strasburg and other South German cities the authorities, leaning even more to the Swiss Confession, set up their “reformed” view as the actual rule of faith in their domains.

Nuremberg

The history of the apostasy of Nuremberg, which may be considered separately here, exhibits another type of the proceedings at the general religious revolution.

Here the two centres of the inception of the movement were the Augustinian monastery, inhabited by monks of Luther’s own Order, and, as in so many other places, the town-council. Several clerics had already preached the new doctrines when the magistrates, at the time of the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1522, from motives of prudence, forbade the discussion of controversial questions in the pulpit. In 1524 two Provosts, and likewise the Prior of the Augustinians, abolished the celebration of Mass. The most active in the cause of the change of religion was the former priest and preacher, Andreas Osiander. At the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, Catholic prelates were insulted by the excited mob. Wives were taken by the Augustinian Johann Walter, by Dominic Schleupner, preacher at St. Sebaldus, by the Abbot of St. Ægidius, by Provost Pessler and Osiander himself. Whereas the town-council—the moving spirits of which were Hieronymus Ebner, Caspar Stützel and particularly Lazarus Spengler, the Town Clerk—formally decided to join Luther’s party, many among the people remained wavering, doubtful and undecided; here, as in so many other places, we find no trace of any sudden falling away of the people as a whole.

What Charity Pirkheimer, the sister of the learned Nuremberg patrician, wrote of her native city is applicable to many other towns: “I frequently hear that there are many people in this city who are almost in despair and no longer go to any sermons, but say the preaching has led them astray so that they really do not know what to believe, and that they are sorry they ever listened to it.”[990]