2. Carlstadt
Carlstadt, the fanatic, failed to obtain any peace from Luther until he passed over to the camp of the Swiss theologians. In 1534 he became preacher at St. Peter’s in Basle, and professor of theology. We may here cast a glance at the troubles brought on him, partly through Luther, partly through his own passionate exaltation, both previous to this date and until his death at Basle, where he was carried off by the plague in 1541.
Carlstadt’s violent doings at Wittenberg and the iconoclasm which he justified by the Mosaic prohibition of graven images, had miscarried owing to Luther’s warnings.[1280] Soon it became clear that there was no longer any room for him at the University town near the leader of the Reformation, more particularly since, in 1522, he had seen fit to deny the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Luther loudly bewailed Carlstadt’s sudden determination to become a new teacher, and to lay new injunctions on the people to the detriment of his (Luther’s) authority.[1281]
Carlstadt now migrated to Orlamünde in the Saxon Electorate, where the magistrates appointed him pastor. In August, 1524, however, Luther passed through Weimar, Jena, and the other districts where the fanatics had gained a footing, preaching energetically against them. Carlstadt he had met at Jena on August 22, 1523, in the Black Bear Inn. In vain did they seek a friendly settlement, for each overwhelmed the other with reproaches. Finally, in the tap-room of the inn, Luther handed his opponent a goldgulden as a pledge that he was at liberty to write against him without reserve and that he did not mind in the least: “Take it and attack me like a man, don’t fear!”[1282] Shortly after, however, he complained of the treatment he had received: “At the inn at Jena ... he turned upon me and abused me, snapped his fingers at me and said: ‘I don’t care that for you.’ But if he does not respect me, whom, then, amongst us does he respect?”[1283]
The struggle continued after they had gone their ways, both seeking to secure the favour of the Court. Luther, through the agency of Prince Johann Frederick, proposed that Carlstadt should be hounded from his place of refuge and from the whole upper valley of the Saale. Ultimately the disturber of the peace was banished from the Electorate; Luther, in his work “Widder die hymelischen Propheten,” approved of his expulsion, roughly declaring that, so far as lay in him, Carlstadt would never again set foot in the country.[1284] The homeless man now betook himself to Strasburg, whither he was pursued by a furious letter of Luther’s, directed against him and his teaching, entitled “An die Christen zu Straspurg widder den Schwermer Geyst.”
Luther became greatly enraged when he perceived that the denial of the Sacrament, already widespread in Switzerland, was also gaining ground at Strasburg and was being adopted by Capito and Bucer. In his excitement, in the hope of checking the falling away from his doctrine, of closing the mouth of that “fiend” Carlstadt—who likewise stood for the denial of the Sacrament—and of preventing “the overthrow of all political and ecclesiastical order,” he penned, in the course of a few weeks, a violent screed entitled, “Widder die hymelischen Propheten.” The knowledge that everywhere revolt “was being associated with the Lutheran doctrines and reforms”[1285] roused his terrible eloquence, of which the principal aim was to annihilate Carlstadt. Having completed the first part, comprising seventy pages of print in the Erlangen edition, he rushed this through the press as a preliminary instalment, informing his readers at the end that “the remainder will follow on foot.”[1286] As good as his word, three weeks later, he had ready the conclusion, consisting of nearly one hundred pages of print. He asserts that Carlstadt had, “for three years, been making a hash” of his books; he was even anxious to throw them all overboard. Luther’s strongest argument against him was the revolutionary peril which this man represented. Even if he did not actually plot “murder and revolt,” he writes, “yet I must say that he has a murderous and revolutionary spirit.... Because he carries a dagger, I do not trust him; he might well be simply awaiting a good opportunity to do what I apprehend. By the dagger I mean his false interpretation and understanding of the Law of Moses.”[1287] “What is the use of admonishing him?” he writes, alluding to Carlstadt’s departure from the Lutheran interpretation of the Bible and his obstinacy in accepting no exegesis but his own; “I believe that he still considers me one of the most learned men at Wittenberg and yet he tells me to my very face, that I am of no account, though all the while he pretends to be quite willing to be instructed.”[1288]
From Strasburg, Carlstadt, the restless wanderer, had gone to Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber, a hotbed of Anabaptists. It was whilst here, that finding himself in dire want, he besought Luther’s aid, at a time when the latter had not yet finished the above writing against him; he, however, frustrated all hopes of any reconciliation by previously penning a defence of his own doctrine of the Sacrament against the Wittenberg professor. The unfortunate termination of the Peasant War exposed him to grave danger, when he broke his promise to keep silence, and again renewed his complaints concerning Luther, and bewailed his own reduced circumstances, dissensions broke out afresh between them. Luther, who was greatly vexed, was very anxious to find some new means of muzzling his opponent. He proposed that he should in no case advocate in the presence of others his own theological opinions or his private interpretation of the Bible, though he might cherish them as his private convictions, for of the heart no man is judge; doctrines which differed from his own, so Luther declared, were not to be defended publicly, else they would come under the cognisance of the authorities. Under these circumstances Carlstadt thought it better to depart. In the beginning of 1529 he escaped, and, in 1530, found a home in Switzerland, where he enjoyed a quieter life and was free to proceed with his theological labours. “Luther, like Carlstadt, never doubted for a moment that his doctrine was really founded on Scripture. Hence Luther and the Elector felt themselves bound in conscience to defend as best they could the Christian faith and their country against any invasion of false doctrine.”[1289] Such is the considered judgment of a Protestant historian.[1290]
For the period subsequent to 1534, when Carlstadt at length began to lead a more tranquil life as professor and preacher at Basle, the Table-Talk is the principal source of information concerning Luther’s relations with him.
Luther, in his conversations, frequently referred to his former friend, particularly in 1538.
“He, like Bucer, greatly retarded the progress of the Evangel by his arrogance. In other matters pride of intellect is not so dangerous, but in theology it is utterly pestilential to desire to arrogate anything to oneself.... Hence I was greatly troubled when Carlstadt once remarked to me: ‘I am as fond of honour as any other man.’ At Leipzig he refused to concede me the first place at the Disputation lest I should rob him of his part of the praise. And yet I was always glad to do him a favour. But he reaped shame instead of honour at Leipzig, for no worse disputant could be imagined than a man of so dull and wretched a spirit.... At first he, like Peter Lupinus, withstood me, but when I rebutted them with Augustine, they, too, studied Augustine and then insisted upon my doctrine more than I did myself. Carlstadt, however, was deceived by his arrogance.”[1291] Indeed, Carlstadt belonged to the category of the “arrogantissimi.”[1292]