Another Catholic contemporary complains in similar fashion: “Religion is perverted, all obedience to the Emperor destroyed, justice set aside and insolence of all sorts everywhere encouraged.” The Emperor “has tried many and various means of putting a stop to this insubordination, but all measures have been fruitless and he must now wield in earnest the sword that God put into his hands to bring back his and our fatherland to peace, order and unity.”[1327] In the Emperor’s own circle the conviction had ripened that so much injustice had been done to Catholics and so much detriment to the Church, that armed intervention was the only course that remained. “Things had come to such a pass in Germany,” said the Imperial Chancellor Granvell to Farnese, the Papal Legate, about the time of the Diet of Worms, “that neither the Emperor’s nor the Pope’s name any longer carried any weight; indeed, it was to be feared that the Protestants looked upon the opening of the Council as a signal for war, and that they would at once begin to equip themselves not merely for the sake of being ready for any emergency, but rather in order to suppress the Catholics and to make an attack on Italy, the object of their bitter hatred.”[1328]
[4. The Literary Opposition]
Most of those who opposed Luther in the literary field have already made their appearance in the various episodes narrated in the foregoing pages. In the present section, which is in the nature of a retrospect and amplification of certain points, we must first touch on the charge frequently put forward by Luther, viz. that it was the furious polemics of his foes which drew from him his violent rejoinders, and, particularly in the earlier part of his career, drove him to take the field against Rome.
We have already repeatedly admitted the too great acrimony of some of the writings against Luther, the exasperation they frequently ill conceal and their needlessly strong and insulting language; of this we saw instances in the case of Tetzel, Eck, Prierias, Emser and many others.[1329]
It can, however, readily be proved by a comparison with Luther’s own writings, that the champions of the Church fell far short of their opponent, generally speaking, in the matter of violence and contemptuous satire. Luther not only maintained in this respect his supremacy as a speaker, but the small account he made of truth[1330] lent an immense advantage to his overwhelming invective. It is also easy to discern a difference in the writings directed against his revolutionary movement, according as they were written earlier or later. At first, when it was merely a question of exposing his theological errors, his opponents were comparatively calm; the first counter theses and the discussions to which they led are replete with the ponderous learning of the Schoolmen, though, even there, we find occasional traces of the indignation felt that the sanctuary of the faith should have been attacked in so wanton a fashion. But after the actual subversion of the Church had begun and the social peril of the radical innovations had revealed itself, the voices of Luther’s opponents grow much harsher. Many, in their anguish at the growing evil, do not spare the person of the man responsible for it all, whose own methods of controversy, unfortunately, became a pattern even to his foes. At no time, not even in a warfare such as that then going on, can all the things be justified which were said by Augustine Alveld, Franz Arnoldi, Johann Cochlæus, Paul Bachmann, Duke George, King Henry VIII and even, occasionally, by Sir Thomas More.
What helped to poison the language was, on the one hand, the coarse tone then generally prevalent amongst the German people, which contrived to find its way into the literary treatment of theological questions to an extent never heard of before, and, on the other, the love of the Humanists for mockery and satire, to which end they ransacked the storehouse of antiquity, classical or otherwise. Among earnest Catholics the most powerful factor was overpowering indignation at the sight of such ruthless trampling under foot of the religion of their forefathers and of a faith so closely bound up with the greatness of the fatherland and with every phase of life. Their indignation led them to utter things that were less praiseworthy than the feeling which inspired them.
Besides this, there was a great temptation to use, as the best way of testifying to their abhorrence for the opponent of religious truth, that drastic language handed down by past ages, indeed largely borrowed from the Bible, particularly from the Prophets of the Old Testament. Of this, not theological writers only, but even official ecclesiastical documents, had made such liberal use, that scholars had it at their finger-tips. Even in our own day such mediæval thunders are still sometimes heard rumbling, particularly among the Latin races. When dealing with the Bull of Excommunication against Luther, we already had occasion to remark that much in it was due to the after-effects of the older habits of speech usual in earlier condemnations.[1331] It may be mentioned of Hadrian VI that in a stern missive addressed in 1522 to Frederick the Elector of Saxony, he denounced Luther as a “serpent” infecting heaven and earth with the venom of its tongue, as a “boar” laying waste the vineyard of the Lord, as a “thief” who broke in pieces the cross of Christ, as a man with “diabolical, impious and pestilential lips.” He also, in the words of Scripture, tells the Prince that Luther, whom he was protecting, is a devil who has assumed the appearance of an angel of light.[1332]
As regards the beginnings of the controversy, both series of Theses advanced by Johann Tetzel in 1517 against Luther’s attack on the system of indulgences, are exclusively of a technical nature and never even mention by name the originator of the controversy.[1333]