We find Lang, in the summer of 1520, still Rural Vicar of his Order, and he may have retained the dignity for some time longer when Wenceslaus Link was elected as Staupitz’s successor at the Chapter held at Eisleben in that year. The fourteen monks of the Augustinian Congregation—at one time so faithful to the Church—who quitted the Order before Lang, remind us of the sad fact, that in his work Luther met with support in many places from those who were originally Catholics, and that the innovation was often heartily welcomed by members of the clergy, secular and regular.
The Saxon Augustinian Congregation, which was strongly represented at Erfurt, had been undermined by Luther’s spirit no less than by the struggle between the Conventuals and the Observantines. At the convention of the Order, held at Wittenberg on the Feast of the Three Kings in 1522, it was decided that begging would henceforth be no longer allowed,[992] “because we follow Holy Scripture.” At that time many had already apostatised. It was further ordained, that, by virtue of the evangelical freedom of the servants of God, everyone was free to leave his monastery. “Among those who are Christ’s there is neither monk nor layman. Whoever is not yet able to comprehend this freedom may act as he thinks fit, but must not give scandal to others by his conduct, in order that the Holy Evangel be not blasphemed.” On this the Protestant historian of the Augustinian Congregation remarks: “This [i.e. the giving of no scandal] was more easily commended than put into effect.” And, speaking of the time when the Erfurt Augustinian house was already almost empty (Usingen, Nathin and a few others alone remaining faithful), he writes: “Lang and his companions were in great danger of seeing the triumph of the Evangel rather in the rooting out of Popery than in the promoting of the new evangelical life.... Usingen, exposed to the mockery and insults of his own pupils, which he had certainly never deserved, at last quitted in anger the spot where he had worked for many years,” “an honest man.”[993] He withdrew in 1525 to the Augustinian monastery at Würzburg.
Factors favourable to the spread of Lutheranism in Erfurt were: The Humanism, antagonistic to the Church, which was all-powerful at the University; the restlessness of the common people, who were dissatisfied with their condition; the jealousy existing between the secular and regular clergy, the struggle which the town was carrying on with its chief pastor, the Archbishop of Mayence, concerning rights and property; last, but not least, the hatred of the laity for the opulent and far too numerous clergy. Here, therefore, we find the selfsame elements present which elsewhere so ably seconded the preaching of the new evangelists.
Erfurt affords an example of how pious foundations of former ages had multiplied to an excessive and burdensome extent, a condition of things which was no longer any real advantage to the Church, and simply tended to arouse the jealousy of the laity and working man.
There were more than three hundred vicariates (livings, or benefices), twenty-one parish churches or churches of the same standing, thirty chapels and six hospitals; the number of secular clergy was in proportion to the work entailed in serving the above, and there was an even greater number of monks and nuns. In every corner there were monastic establishments. Benedictines, the Scottish Brotherhood, the Canons Regular, Carthusians, Dominicans and Franciscans, Servites and Augustinians, all were represented. In addition to this were four or five convents of women. Erfurt perhaps possessed more ecclesiastical foundations and institutions than any other town in Germany, with the possible exception of Cologne and Nuremberg.[994] The rich possessions of the convents and churches at Erfurt were made the pretext for the religious innovations. The immunity they enjoyed from the burdens borne by the citizens was to be made an end of, the ecclesiastical property was to be handed over to the town, and the town itself was to be withdrawn from the temporal sway of the Archbishop of Mayence.
When Luther, who was already under the ban, preached at Erfurt, on April 7, 1521, in the Church of the Augustinians (see above, p. 63), he represented the religious change, the way for which had already been paved, in the light of that evangelical freedom which his view of faith and works was to bring to the inhabitants of Erfurt.[995]
“We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “sola fides” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us.
It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]
The contrary “delusion,” he says, had been invented and encouraged by the preachers, whose proceedings were infinitely worse than any mere “numbering of the people.” He storms against the clergy and vigorously foments the social discontent. To build churches, or found livings, etc., was mere outward show; “such works simply gave rise to avarice, desire for the praise of men and other vices.” “You think that as a priest you are free from sin, and yet you nourish so much jealousy in your heart; if you could slay your neighbour with impunity you would do so and then go on saying Mass. Surely it would not be surprising were a thunderbolt to smite you to the earth.” In order to complete the effect of this demagogic outburst he mocks at the sermons, with their legends “about the old ass,” etc., and their quotations from ancient philosophers, who were “not only against the Gospel, but even against God Himself.”
The result was stupendous, especially in the case of the young men at the University whom the Humanists had disposed in Luther’s favour. On the day after Luther’s departure one of his sympathisers, a Canon of the Church of St. Severus, who had taken part in the solemn reception accorded Luther on his arrival in the town, was told by the Dean, Jakob Doliatoris, that he was under excommunication and might no longer attend the service in choir. On his complaining to the University, of which he was a member, the students intervened with demonstrations in his favour.[997]