Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Luther followed with great sympathy and perturbation the warlike proceedings instituted by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse against Duke Henry of Brunswick, whom he had himself already attacked with the pen in his “Wider Hans Worst.” They made war on the Duke in the summer of 1542, seized upon his lands and of their own initiative introduced the innovations, their troops at the same time committing unexampled excesses.

Luther acclaimed the victory as a deed of God; such a proceeding could not be described as the work of man; such a success foreboded the approach of the Day of Judgment and retribution.[1575]

The Imperial Chamber of Justice protested against the violent appropriation of the country by the Schmalkalden Leaguers, and, on Sep. 3, summoned the two princes and their confederates to Spires to answer for the breach of the peace committed at the expense of Duke Henry. Thereupon all the members of the League of Schmalkalden repudiated their obedience to the “wicked, dissolute, Popish rascals,” as the Landgrave Philip politely styled the Imperial Court. In this he was at one with Luther, who, in former years, had called the Imperial Chamber “a devil’s whore.”[1576]

A new war of the Leaguers on Henry, who was anxious to recover his lands, was crowned in 1545 by a still more notable success on the part of the rebels, who this time contrived to take the Duke himself prisoner. When, however, Philip of Hesse, out of consideration for the Emperor, seemed inclined to set the captive free, Luther intervened with a circular letter addressed to Philip and his own Elector. He was determined to characterise any idea of setting free the “mischievous, wild tool of the Roman idol” as an open attack not merely on the Evangel, but even on the manifest will of God as displayed in the recent war which had been waged “by His angels.” Here his pseudo-mysticism is again much to the fore. The circular letter was soon printed and spread broadcast.[1577]

Without any deep insight into the real state of affairs, either political or ecclesiastical, unmindful even of diplomacy, Luther seeks to work on the fears of the Protestant princes by an extravagant description of the Divine Judgments which were overtaking blasphemers, and tells them they will be sharers in the sin of others if, now that God had “broken down the bulwark” of the Papacy, they were to set it up anew.

To the Papists he says: “Stop, you mad fools, Pope and Papists, and do not blow the flame that God has kindled. For it will turn against yourselves so that the sparks and cinders will fly into your eyes. Yes, indeed, this is God’s fire, Who calls Himself a consuming fire. You know and are convinced in your own conscience that your cause is wicked and lost and that you are striving against God.”[1578]

He writes confidently: We on this side, without causing either Emperor or Pope “to raise a hair, have unceasingly prayed, implored, besought and clamoured for peace, as they very well know; this, however, we have never been able to obtain from them, but have had daily to endure nothing but insults, attacks and extermination.” The defensive alliance of the Catholic Princes and Estates became in his eyes a robber-league, established under pretext of religion; “what they wanted was not the Christian religion but the lands of the Elector and Landgrave.”[1579] The captive Duke had obtained help from Italy, very likely from the Pope. “In short, we all know that the Pope and the Papists would gladly see us dead, body and soul, whereas we for our part would have them all to be saved body and soul together with us.”[1580] The whole writing, with its combination of rage and mysticism, and likewise much else dating from that period, may well raise grave doubts as to the state of the author’s mind.

The inroad into Brunswick was merely a preliminary to the religious wars soon to break out and ravage Germany. No sooner had Luther closed his eyes in death than they began on a larger scale with the Schmalkalden War, which was to prove so disastrous to the Protestants. His words just quoted to the princes of his party were repeated almost word for word in the Protestant manifestos during the religious wars.

It is possible that he may have been roused to make such attacks on the Catholics by certain disagreeable events which occurred from 1541 onwards. Political steps were being taken which were unfavourable to Lutheranism and not at all adequately balanced by the Protestants’ victory in Brunswick and elsewhere.

Luther was made painfully aware of the unexpected weakening of the League of Schmalkalden which resulted from the bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. By virtue of a secret compact with the Emperor, into which Philip of Hesse had found himself forced (June 13, 1541),[1581] the latter, in his position of head of the German Protestants, had bound himself not to consent that Duke William of Cleves, who inclined to Protestantism, should be admitted into the Schmalkalden League; he had also to refuse any assistance to the Duke when the Emperor Charles V took the field against him on account of the union of Guelders with Cleves. The progress of Protestantism in these districts was checked by the Emperor’s victory in 1543. The formal introduction of the new faith into Metz was frustrated by the Emperor; at Cologne too the Reformers saw all their efforts brought to naught.