Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

3. Luther’s Great Reformation-Works—Radicalism and Religion

It was at the time when the Bull of Excommunication was about to be promulgated by the Head of Christendom that Luther composed the Preface to the work entitled: “An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung.”[65] The booklet appeared in the middle of August, and by the 18th four thousand copies were already in circulation, eagerly devoured by a multitude of readers hungry for books of all kinds. Staupitz’s warning not to publish it had come too late. “Luther’s friends, the Knights, were urging him on, and something had to be done at once.”[66]

This inflammatory pamphlet, so patronised by the rebellious Knights, was, with its complaints against Rome, in part based on the writings of the German Neo-Humanists.

Full of fury at the offences committed by the Papacy against the German nation and Church, Luther here points out to the Emperor, the Princes and the whole German nobility, the manner in which Germany may break away from Rome, and undertake its own reformation, for the bettering of Christianity. His primary object is to show that the difference between the clerical and lay state is a mere hypocritical invention. All men are priests; under certain circumstances the hierarchy must be set aside, and the secular powers have authority to do so. “Most of the Popes,” so Luther writes with incredible exaggeration, “have been without faith.” “Ought not Christians, who are all priests, also to have the right [like them, i.e. the bishops and priests] to judge and decide what is true and what false in matters of faith?”

The work was, as Luther’s comrade Johann Lang wrote to the author, a bugle-call which sounded throughout all Germany. Luther had to vindicate himself (even to his friends) against the charge of “blowing a blast of revolt.”[67] It is not enough to acquit him to point out in his defence that he had merely assigned to the Rulers the right of employing force, and that his intention was to “make the Word triumphant.”

One of the most powerful arguments in Luther’s work consisted in the full and detailed description of the Roman money traffic, Germany and other countries being exploited on the pretext that contributions were necessary for the administration of the Church. Luther had drawn his information on this subject from the writings of the German Neo-Humanists, and from a certain “Roman courtier” (Dr. Viccius) resident in Wittenberg.

It was, however, the promise he received of material help which spurred Luther on to give a social aspect to his theological movement and thus to ensure the support of the disaffected Knights and Humanists. Concerning Silvester von Schauenberg, he wrote to a confidant, Wenceslaus Link: “This noble man from Franconia has sent me a letter ... with the promise of one hundred Franconian Knights for my protection, should I need them.... Rome has written to the Prince against me, and the same has been done by an important German Court. Our German book addressed to the whole Nobility of Germany on the amelioration of the Church is now to appear; that will be a powerful challenge to Rome, for her godless arts and usurpations are therein unmasked. Farewell and pray for me.”[68]

By the end of August another new book by Luther, which, like the former, is accounted by Luther’s Protestant biographers as one of the “great Reformation-works,” was in the press; such was the precipitancy with which his turbulent spirit drove him to deal with the vital questions of the day. The title of the new Latin publication which was at once translated into German was “Prelude to the Babylonish Captivity of the Church.”[69]

He there attacks the Seven Sacraments of the Church, of which he retains only three, namely, Baptism, Penance, and the Supper, and declares that even these must first be set free from the bondage in which they are held in the Papacy, namely, from the general state of servitude in the Church; this condition had, so he opined, produced in the Church many other perverse doctrines and practices which ought to be set aside, among these being the whole matrimonial law as observed in the Papacy, and, likewise, the celibacy of the clergy.