He was, however, not always so circumspect in his demands and principles. In a passage of his work “An den Adel” he makes a wild appeal, which in its practicability falls short of what had already been done in various parts of Germany. The only really new point in it is, that, in order to make an end of begging and poverty, the mendicant Orders should be abolished, and the Roman See deprived of their collections and revenues. Of the ordinary beggars he says, without being sufficiently acquainted with the state of the case, that they “might easily be expelled,” and that it would be an “easy matter to deal with them were we only brave and in earnest enough.” To the objection that the result of violent measures would be a still more niggardly treatment of the poor he replied in 1520: “It suffices that the poor be fairly well provided for, so that they die not of hunger or cold.” With a touch of communism he exaggerates, at the expense of the well-to-do and those who did no work, an idea in itself undoubtedly true, viz. that work is man’s portion: “It is not just that, at the expense of another’s toil, a man should go idle, wallow in riches and lead a bad life, whilst his fellow lives in destitution, as is now the perverted custom.… It was never ordained by God that anyone should live on the goods of another.”[141]
In itself it could only have a salutary effect when Luther goes on to speak, as he frequently does, against begging among the class whose duty it was to work with their hands, and when he attempts both to check their idleness and to rouse a spirit of charity towards the deserving.[142] He even regards the Bible text, “Let there be no beggar or starving person amongst you,” as universally binding on Christians. Only that he is oblivious of the necessary limitations when he exclaims: “If God commanded this even in the Old Testament how much more is it incumbent on us Christians not to let anyone beg or starve!”[143]
The latter words refer to those who are really poor but quite willing to work (a class of people which will always exist in spite of every effort); as for those who “merely eat” he demands that they be driven out of the land. This he does in a writing of 1526 addressed to military men; here he divides “all man’s work into two kinds,” viz. “agricultural work and war work.” A third kind of work, viz. the teaching office, to which he often refers elsewhere, is here passed over in silence. “As for the useless people,” he cries, “who serve neither to defend us nor to feed us, but merely eat and pass away their time in idleness, [the Emperor or the local sovereign] should either expel them from the land or make them work, as the bees do, who sting to death the drones that do not work but devour the honey of the others.”[144] His unmethodical mind failed to see to what dire consequences these hastily penned words could lead.
With the object of alleviating poverty he himself, however, lent a hand to certain charitable institutions, which, though they did not endure, have yet their place in history. Such were the poor-boxes of Wittenberg, Leisnig, Altenburg and some other townships. This institution was closely bound up with his scheme of gathering together the “believing Christians” into communities apart. These communities were not only to have their own form of divine worship and to use the ecclesiastical penalties, but were also to assist the poor by means of the common funds in a new and truly Evangelical fashion.
The olden poor-law ordinances of mediæval times had been revised at Wittenberg and embodied in the so-called “Beutelordnung.”[145] Carlstadt and the town-council, under the influence of Luther’s earlier ideas, substituted for this on Jan. 24, 1522, a new “Order for the princely town of Wittenberg”; at the same time they reorganised the common funds.[146] These regulations Luther left in force, when, on his return from the Wartburg, he annulled the rest of Carlstadt’s doings; the truth is, that they were not at variance even with his newer ideals.
In 1523 he himself promoted a similar but more highly developed institution for the relief of the poor in the little Saxon town of Leisnig on the Freiberg Mulde; this was to be in the hands of the community of true believers into which the inhabitants had formed themselves at the instigation of the zealous Lutheran, Sebastian von Kötteritz. At Altenburg also, doubtless through Luther’s doing, his friend Wenceslaus Link, the preacher in that town, made a somewhat similar attempt to establish a communal poor-box. In many other places efforts of a like nature were made under Lutheran auspices.
How far such undertakings spread throughout the Protestant congregations cannot be accurately determined. We know, however, the details of the scheme owing to our still having the rules drawn up for Leisnig.[147]
According to this the whole congregation, town-councillors, aldermen, elders and all the inhabitants generally, were to bind themselves to make a good use of their Christian freedom by the faithful keeping of the Word of God and by submitting to good discipline and just penalties. Ten coffer-masters were to be appointed over the “common fund” and these were three times a year to give an account to the “whole assembly thereto convened.” Into this fund was to be put not merely the revenue of the earlier institutions which hitherto had been most active in the relief of the poor, viz. the brotherhoods and benevolent associations, as also that of most of the guilds, and, moreover, the whole income drawn by the parish from the glebes, pious foundations, tithes, voluntary offerings, fines, bridge dues and private industrial concerns. Thus it was not merely a relief fund but practically a trust comprising all the wealth of the congregation, which chiefly consisted in the extensive Church property it had annexed. In keeping with this is the manner in which the income was to be apportioned. Only a part was devoted to the relief of the poor, i.e. to the hospital, orphanage and guest-houses. Most of the money was to go to defray the stipend of the Lutheran pastor and his clerk, to maintain the schools and the church, and to allow of advances being made to artisans free of interest; the rest was to be put by for times of scarcity. The members of the congregation were also exhorted to make contributions out of charity to their neighbour.
The scheme pleased Luther so well that he advised the printing of the rules, and himself wrote a preface to the published text in which he said, he hoped that “the example thus set would prove a success, be generally followed, and lead to a great ruin of the earlier foundations, monasteries, chapels and all other such abominations which hitherto had absorbed all the world’s wealth under a show of worship.”
Hence here once more his chief motive is a polemical one, viz. his desire to injure Popery.