A. Hausrath remarks concerning this in his “Luthers Leben”: That Philip was lying “can hardly be taken for granted”;[664] G. Mentz, likewise, in his recent work, “Joh. Friedrich der Grossmütige,”[665] says: “It is difficult simply to ignore the Landgrave’s statement, but we do not know whether the allusion may not be to some sin committed in youth.” Here belongs also the passage in Philip of Hesse’s letter to Luther of July 27, 1540 (above, p. 60), where he calls the Elector to bear witness that he (the Landgrave) had done “the worst.” The Biblical expression “peccatum pessimum” stood for sodomy. Further charges of a similar nature were even more explicitly laid at the door of Johann Frederick. A Catholic, relating the proceedings in Brunswick at the close of the conquest of that country by the Protestant troops in 1542, speaks of “vices and outrages against nature then indulged in by the Elector at the Castle as is commonly reported and concerning which there is much talk among the Court people.”[666] Duke Henry of Brunswick in a tract of 1544 referred not only to the Elector’s sanction of the Landgrave’s bigamy, in return for which he was spared by the latter, but also to the “many other pranks which might be circumstantially proved against them and which deserved more severe punishment” than that of the sword.[667] The “more severe punishment” means burning at the stake, which was the penalty decreed by the laws of the Empire for sodomy, whereas polygamy and adultery were simply punished by decapitation. Both sovereigns in their reply flatly denied the charge, but, evidently, they clearly understood its nature; they had never been guilty, they said, of “shameful, dishonourable pranks deserving of death by fire.”[668]
Whatever the truth may be concerning this particular charge which involves them both,[669] both Landgrave and Elector certainly left behind them so bad a record that Adolf Hausrath could say: The pair (but the Landgrave even more than the Elector) did their best “to make mockery of the claim of the Evangelicals that their Evangel would revive the morality of the German nation.” He instances in particular the bigamy, “which put any belief in the reality of their piety to a severe test and prepared the way for a great moral defeat of Luther’s cause.”[670]
In the matter of the bigamy attempts were made to exculpate the Elector Johann Frederick by alleging, that he regarded the Landgrave’s step not as a real new marriage but as mere concubinage. The fact is, however, he was sufficiently well informed by Bucer in Dec. 1539, i.e. from the very beginning, learnt further details two months later from the Landgrave’s own lips, and declared himself “satisfied with everything.” When, later, the Elector began to take an unfavourable view of the business, Philip wrote to Bucer (July 24, 1540), pointing out that he had nevertheless sent his representative to the wedding. It is, however, true that the Elector had all along been against any making public of so compromising an affair and had backed up his theologians when they urged the Landgrave to deny it.[671]
There is no more ground for crediting Johann Frederick with “strictness of morals” than for saying that the Elector Frederick the Wise (1486-1525), under whose reign Lutheranism took root in the land, was upright and truthful in his dealings with the Pope and the Empire.
The diplomatic artifices by which the latter protected Luther whilst pretending not to do so, the dissembling and double-dealing of his policy throws a slur on the memory of one who was a powerful patron of Lutheranism. Even in Köstlin-Kawerau[672] we find his behaviour characterised as “one long subterfuge, seeing, that, whilst giving Luther a free hand, he persisted in making out that Luther’s cause was not his”; his declaration, that “it did not become him as a layman to decide in such a controversy,” is rightly branded as misleading.
The Protestant Pietists were loudest in their complaints. In his “Kirchenhistorie,” Gottfried Arnold, who was one of them, blamed, in 1699, this Elector for the “cunning and the political intrigues” of which he was suspected; he is angry that this so undevout promoter of Lutheranism should have written to Duke George, his cousin, “that he never undertook nor ever would undertake to defend Luther’s sermons or his controversial writings,” and that he should have sent to his minister at Rome the following instructions, simply to pacify the Pope: “It did not become him as a secular Prince to judge of these matters, and he left Luther to answer for everything at his own risk.”[673] The same historian also points out with dissatisfaction that the Elector Frederick, “though always unmarried, had, by a certain female, two sons called Frederick and Sebastian. How he explained this to his spiritual directors is nowhere recorded.”[674] The “female” in question was Anna Weller, by whom he had, besides these two sons, also a daughter.[675]
Against his brother and successor, Johann, surnamed the Constant (1525-1532), Luther’s friends brought forward no such complaints, but merely reproached him with letting things take their course. Arnold instances a statement of Melanchthon’s according to which this good Lutheran Prince “had been very negligent in examining this thing and that,” so that grave disorders now called for a remedy. Luther, too, whilst praising the Elector’s good qualities, declares, that “he was far too indulgent.”[676] “I interfere with no one,” was his favourite saying, “but merely trust more in God’s Word than in man.” The protests of the Emperor and the representations of the Catholics, politics and threats of war left him quite unmoved, whence his title of “the Constant”; “he was just the right man for Luther,” says Hausrath,[677] “for the latter did not like to see the gentlemen of the Saxon Chancery, Brück, Beyer, Planitz and the rest, interfering and urging considerations of European politics. ‘Our dear old father, the Elector,’ Luther said of him in 1530, ‘has broad shoulders, and must now bear everything.’”
The favour of these Princes caused Luther frequently to overstep the bounds of courtesy in his behaviour towards them. Julius Boehmer, who is sorry for this, in the Introduction to his selection of Luther’s works remarks, that he was guilty of “want of respect, nay, of rudeness, towards the Elector Frederick and his successor Johann.”[678] Of Luther’s relations with Johann Frederick, Hausrath says: “It is by no means certain that the Duke’s [Henry of Brunswick’s] opinion [viz. that Luther used to speak of his own Elector as Hans Wurst (i.e. Jack Pudding)] was without foundation; in any case, it was not far from the mark. With his eternal plans and his narrow-minded obstinacy, Luther’s corpulent master was a thorn in the side of the aged Reformer.... ‘He works like a donkey,’ Luther once said of him, and, unfortunately, this was perfectly true.”[679]
In his will, dated 1537, Luther addressed the following words of consolation to the princely patrons and promoters of his work, the Landgrave and the Elector Johann Frederick: It was true they were not quite stainless, but the Papists were even worse; they had indeed trespassed on the rights and possessions of others, but this was of no great consequence; they must continue to work for the Evangel, though in what way he would not presume to dictate to them.[680]—Melanchthon, who was so often distressed at the way the Princes behaved on the pretext of defending the Evangel, complains that “the sophistry and wickedness of our Princes are bringing the Empire to ruin,” in which “bitter cry,” writes a Protestant historian, “he sums up the result of his own unhappy experiences.”[681]
From the accounts of the Visitations in the Electorate we learn more details of the condition of morality, law and order in this the focus of the new Evangel. The proximity and influence of Luther and of his best and most faithful preachers did not constitute any bulwark against the growing corruption of morals, which clear-sighted men indeed attributed mainly to the new doctrines on good works, on faith alone and on Evangelical freedom.