The fruitless meetings of Frankfurt and Hagenau and the equally fruitless conferences of Worms and Ratisbon were followed, in 1541, by the Ratisbon Interim. This, as might have been foreseen, satisfied neither party. As for the Council it had been repeatedly postponed by Paul III on account of the embroilments between the Emperor and France and the opposition of the Protestants.
At last, on May 22, 1542, the Pope convened a General Synod to begin in the town of Trent on Nov. 1 of that same year. The head on earth of the Catholic Church, in the Bull summoning the Council, spoke of the political obstacles now at last happily removed. The aim of the assembly was to be to debate, and by the light of divine wisdom and truth, settle on such steps “as might appear effective for the safeguarding of the purity and truth of the Christian religion, for the restoration of good morals and the amendment of the bad, for the establishing of peace, harmony and concord among Christians, both rulers and ruled, and lastly for opposing the inroads of the unbelievers [the Turks].” The Pope most earnestly implores the Emperor and the other Christian monarchs “by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose faith and religion are being most violently assailed both from within and from without,” not to forsake God’s cause but by active co-operation to support it in every way.
The grand project of a Council was, however, further delayed by the war which suddenly broke out between Charles V and France. Only on Dec. 13, 1545, could the first session be held at Trent. It was then indeed high time, for the Emperor Charles V, in the hope of securing a united front against the French, had shown himself much too disposed to yield to the German Protestants, as is evident from the Reichsabschied of Spires in 1544.
As to Luther: up to the very last moment he scoffed at the efforts of Rome, as though her proposals for reform were all mere sham. Under this cloak of contempt he concealed his real annoyance at the opening of the Council.
As soon as the new Bull of Convocation for 1545 appeared he wrote to his old friend, Wenceslaus Link: “I have seen the Pope’s writing and the Bull convening the Council to Trent for Lætare Sunday. May Christ laugh last at the reprobates who laugh at Him. Amen.”[1524] A few days later he said in a letter to his confidant, Justus Jonas: “To believe the Pope’s promises would be like placing faith in the father of lies whose own darling son he is.”[1525]—“The Pope is mad and foolish from top to toe,” so he informs his Elector.[1526] A “Feast of Fools”[1527] is the only fit word with which he can describe the assembly of the ablest and most learned men in the Church, who came from every land, honourably intent on bringing peace to Christians and gaining a victory for truth. Luther had not the slightest doubt where the real well-spring of truth undefiled was to be found; on the same day that he wrote to his Elector the words just quoted, in a letter to Nicholas Amsdorf, the “true and genuine bishop of the Church of Naumburg,” as he styles him, he says: “I glory in the fact that this at least is certain: The Son of God is seated at the right hand of the Father and by His Spirit speaks most sweetly to us here below, just as He spoke to the Apostles; we, however, are His disciples and hear the Word from His lips. Praise be to God Who has chosen us unworthy sinners to be thus honoured by His Son and has permitted us to hearken to His Majesty through the Word of the Evangel. The angels and the whole of God’s creation wish us luck; but the Pope, Satan’s own monster, grieves and is affrighted, and all the gates of hell shake. Let us rejoice in the Lord. For them the Day approaches and the end. I have in mind another book against Popery, but the state of my head and my endless correspondence hinders me. Yet with God’s help I shall set about it shortly.”[1528] What he is thinking of is a continuation—which death prevented him from carrying out—of a new book with which we must now deal.
[2. “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel Gestifft.” The Papacy renews its Strength]
Luther’s anger against the Papacy had been kindled into a glowing flame by the sight of the unity displayed by the Catholic Church in view of the Council. It seemed incredible to him that the old body which he had pronounced dead should again sit in Council and prepare to infuse new life into itself, to revive ecclesiastical discipline and to condemn the Church he himself had founded. His soreness at such a consolidation of Catholicism he relieved by a sort of last effort in his book “Against the Roman Papacy founded by the devil.”[1529]
It was only his broken health, a foretoken of approaching death, and his many cares that prevented his following it up as he had threatened in his letter to Amsdorf just quoted. As he says there, he only hopes that God will give him “bodily strength and ghostly energy enough” to enable him, “like Samson of old, to wreak one act of vengeance on these Philistines.” The simile is truly a horrible one; the unhappy man, broken down from the effects of a life of tireless labour and endless excitement, still burns with the desire once more to shake the pillars of the ancient Church so as to bury all faithful Catholics beneath her ruins. As to what would be his, the blind Samson’s, fate beneath the ruins he does not consider as seriously as the true members of the ancient Church would have wished him to do.
The occasion of the book was the following. Pope Paul III had sent to the Emperor two briefs in quick succession to dissuade him from making perilous concessions to the Protestants, and, in particular, in the interests of the Œcumenical Council, to oppose the project of holding a German National Council. Luther received from two different quarters an invitation to write against the supposed interference of the Pope. His Elector, through Chancellor Brück, requested, “that the said Martin may deal with the Pope’s writing, particularly as the formal announcement of the Council is now to hand; for we have no doubt that he is well able to do this. The same might then be printed and launched into the public.”[1530] Another invitation to the same effect, supported by information to be used against the Pope, reached Luther indirectly from the Imperial chancery itself through the intermediary of Nicholas Perrenoti, a councillor; some of the officials seem to have been anxious to avenge themselves on Paul III for crossing their plans.[1531]
The work was published on March 26, 1545. As early as April 13, Marsupino, Secretary to King Ferdinand, was able to present a copy to the Papal Legates at the Council of Trent. Justice Jonas at once brought out a Latin translation entitled “Contra papatum romanum a diabolo inventum.” Thus at the very time the General Council made its bow before the world, Luther’s attack was brought to the notice of educated readers of all nations. No great harm was done to Catholic interests by Luther’s hanging up the drastic picture of himself, depicted in this scurrilous writing, as a warning to the whole world; humanistic culture and the grand classic idiom had, however, scarcely ever before suffered such degradation as in the Latin rendering of this foul book.