[525] In Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 697, after a reference to the oppression of the peasantry, their insolence and desire for innovation, we read: “In addition to all this there now supervened the preaching of the new Evangel.... A higher warrant was bestowed upon the complaints and the demands concerning secular and material matters.... The Christian liberty of which the New Testament speaks and which Luther proclaimed was applied directly to temporal questions. Paul’s words that in Christ there is neither bond nor free became a weapon.... Even the Old Testament was also appealed to. From the circumstance that God had granted to our first parents dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, they concluded that at least the right to fish and hunt was common to all. Great opposition was raised, above all, to the taxes due to the monasteries and clergy, and even the very existence of the monastic state and temporal authority of the clergy was called into question. Such ideas were readily fostered among the excited masses when the new preaching found its way amongst them by word of mouth or in writings”; p. 701: “Luther, however, was the man of the Evangel on whom the eyes of the great mass of the peasants in southern Germany were directed when their rising commenced.” The editors of the Weimar edition of Luther’s writings (18, 1908) remark in the first introduction to the same (p. 279): “The rebellion found its encouragement and support in Luther’s victorious gospel of ecclesiastical reformation; ultimately, however, it secularised the new gospel. Whence it came to pass that in the end, not Luther, but rather the religious fanatics, above all, Thomas Münzer, drew the excited masses under their spell and impressed their stamp on the whole movement.” Concerning Luther’s attitude towards the revolt at the time it was preparing, we read on p. 280: “Up to that time [the spring of 1525], Luther had taken no direct part in the social movement. He was, however, without doubt indirectly engaged; his writings had fallen like firebrands on the inflammable masses, who misunderstood them, interpreted them according to their own ideas and forged from them weapons for their own use.”
[526] Fritz Herrmann, “Evangelische Regungen zu Mainz in den ersten Zeiten der Reformation,” in “Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgesch.,” No. 100, 1910 (p. 275-304), p. 297.
[527] F. Herrmann, ibid., p. 298.
[528] F. Herrmann, p. 296. W. Vogt, “Die Vorgesch. des Bauernkrieges” (in “Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgesch.,” 20, 1887), points to the general expectation prevailing, more particularly in the south-west of Germany, that a fundamental change in the existing state of things was imminent. “Every reform, however, even the most trifling, in the social sphere encroached upon the political and even the ecclesiastical domain, for the nobility and clergy, whose authority and possessions were the subject of discussion, were at the same time political and ecclesiastical factors.... All felt that in the last instance the appeal would be to force” (p. 142).
[529] For examples, see above, p. 152 ff., and below, p. 297 ff. Cp. also P. Drews, “Entsprach das Staatskirchentum Luthers Ideal?” Tübingen, 1908, p. 31.
[530] Concerning Usingen’s utterance of 1523: “Nescitis populum esse bestiam ... quæ sanguinem sitit?” etc., cp. N. Paulus, “Barthol. Usingen,” p. 102. And (ibid.) another striking saying of Usingen concerning the preacher Culsamer. He declared that he feared Germany would see a storm similar to that which Constantinople had suffered at the hands of the iconoclasts (p. 101). The preacher Eberlin von Günzburg announced in 1521: “There will be no end to the impositions of the clergy until the peasants rise and hang and drown good and bad alike; then the cheating will meet with its reward.” See Janssen-Pastor, “Gesch. des deutschen Volkes,” 218, p. 490 ff.
[531] F. Herrmann, loc. cit., p. 297.
[532] The circular letter, reprinted in the “Annalen des Vereins für Nassauisshe Gesch.,” 17, 1882, p. 16 ff.
[533] W. Stolze, “Der deutsche Bauernkrieg,” Halle, 1907, p. v.
[534] Cp. particularly p. 22 ff. In “Archiv. f. Reformationsgesch.,” 1909, Hft. 1, p. 160, the author’s blame of the “previous prejudiced insistence on the social side of the Peasant War” meets with recognition; we read there, “the emphasis laid on the religious side by Stolze appears to be thoroughly justified.”