Luther, vol. 4 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Apart from his too rhetorical and acrimonious tone other unsympathetic features met with in Cochlæus are his frequent petitions to high dignitaries of the Church, in Germany and even in Rome, for material assistance; his complaints that he was not taken seriously enough; his too great eagerness, during the first years of the struggle, to hold a disputation with Luther; too much pushfulness and sometimes a certain credulity, not to speak of occasional lapses into a frivolity which, like his rhetoric, recalls the more blatant faults of Humanism and ill beseemed a man anxious to censure the morals of his opponents. He deemed it right and proper, for instance, to write under an assumed name a work against the Reformers’ wives and matrimonial relationships, where, in colloquial form and in a manner highly offensive, he introduces much that was mere tittle-tattle and quite without foundation. His authorship of this “Private Conversation” has been proved up to the hilt in recent times.[1359]

Among the ranks of the opponents of Lutheranism Johann Faber and Frederick Nausea, both of them bishops of Vienna, hold a high place. The efforts of these two theologians to elucidate controverted points and to refute Luther were much appreciated in the Catholic circles of that day.

In the more popular field quite a number of good speakers and writers belonging to various Religious Orders, particularly the German Dominicans, distinguished themselves for their zeal in the campaign against Lutheranism. Johann Mensing, who became a licentiate at Wittenberg in 1517 and was Luther’s best-hated opponent, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; so also was Augustine von Getelen, of whose sermons the Lutheran preacher Martin Undermark admitted, that, “with his tongue he was able to sway the people as he pleased”;[1360] Matthias Sittardus, Johann Dietenberger and Ambrosius Pelargus were also all Dominicans, nor did they confine themselves to preaching, but were all of them authors of publications suited to the times. Michael Vehe, another Dominican, was renowned for his ability to wield the pen in German not less than for his Latin discourses from the pulpit. His brother friar, Johann Fabri, earned praise as a preacher and as a clever popular writer. The Protestant preacher H. Rocholl wrote of him: “The turn of what he writes gives proof of great eloquence and his language is oratorically fine; his exhortations are also from an homiletic point of view quite excellent.”[1361] Antonius Pirata of the Dominican friary at Constance received the following encomium from Erasmus in a letter to Laurinus: “He is a respected man of good morals and profound learning, who displays in his sermons an eloquence truly wonderful.”[1362] Conrad Köllin and Jacob Hoogstraaten also adorned the Dominican Order in Germany at that time with their learning, though their interest lay more in scholastic theology than in popular works.

All the above belonged to the German province of a single Order, and, altogether, quite thirty Dominicans might be enumerated who engaged in controversy with Luther. Amongst the polemists hailing from other Orders and deserving honourable mention was the zealous and scholarly Franciscan Caspar Schatzgeyer, also another Franciscan, Thomas Murner, to whom we shall return immediately, the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister and the Carmelite Eberhard Billick.[1363]

The reason that the old Orders, with the exception of the Dominicans, did not furnish more controversialists was in great part due to the disastrous effect of the apostasy on their houses. Many of their subjects, deluded by Lutheranism, forsook their cells, and those who remained were frequently exposed to severe persecution. Many monasteries were not only deprived of their means of subsistence, but, owing to the new spirit of the age and the material difficulties of the monastic life, the supply of novices began to run short.

During this period of the German Church’s distress the secular clergy were not behindhand in furnishing tried combatants, though the influence of the new ideas and the decline in morals, particularly during the preceding thirty or forty years, had brought ecclesiastical life and learning to an even lower level than before. There were, however, still some cheering examples to be met with. Conspicuous amongst the veterans who opposed Luther’s teaching and innovations, were, in addition to those already mentioned, Michael Helding, auxiliary bishop and preacher at Mayence (later bishop of Merseburg), and Conrad Wimpina of Leipzig and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, the author of a good Latin collection of works against Luther entitled “On the sects and errors,” etc. (1528).[1364] The Lutheran cause suffered considerably at the hands of these writers.

Thomas Murner, the famous Alsatian preacher and writer, a new Sebastian Brant even mightier than the former, entered the lists against Luther and made full use of the satirical style he had cultivated even earlier. Even Protestants have admitted his principal work against Luther (1522) to be a highly incisive and significant production, whilst a recent editor of his works describes him as the most weighty of Luther’s literary opponents in Germany.[1365] There is certainly no question of his “wanton, cheerful, nay, bacchantic humour,” and of his wealth of caustic irony; he enters into Luther’s arguments and proofs, and refutes them, more particularly those taken from the Bible. Murner speaks a very simple and pithy language, though not loath to have recourse occasionally to coarse words, of which an example has been given above (p. 376). Luther paid him out by “amusing his readers with an account of the lice on Murner’s cowl, and by circulating a lampoon alleged to have been sent him from the Rhine, but, at any rate, printed at Luther’s own instance.”[1366]

Not one of those who took the field against Luther and pitted their strength against his was really a match for him in energy, in ability to handle the language, in wealth of fancy or in power over the people. To every clear-sighted observer it must have been apparent that truth and logic were on the side of the Catholic controversialists, but, unfortunately, not one of them was able to rival in effectiveness the writings of the Wittenberg Professor.

Here and there, in certain ruder passages, we can easily see how his opponents are clumsily endeavouring to retort upon their readier and more inventive foe in language almost identical with his own. Luther, however, stands alone in the originality of his abuse. But if his adversaries, as was too often the case, overstepped the bounds of moderation of language, we must bear in mind their pain and indignation at the unspeakable injustice done to the Church of their fathers. In those rude encounters people were only too apt to forget that, according to Christ’s command, charity must be displayed even towards those who err. Yet the Church had received as part of her heirloom the injunction set by her Founder against the practice of the Jewish synagogue and its saying, “Hate thy enemy” (Mt. v. 42). “But I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.”