What Bugenhagen achieved, thanks to the ecclesiastical regulations for poor relief, for which he was directly or indirectly responsible, gave “good hopes, at least at first, of bringing the difficult social problem of those days nearer to a solution.” At any rate they were a “successful attempt to bring some order into the whole system of relief, by means of the authorities and on a scale not hitherto attempted by the Church.”[166] It is true that he, like those who were working on the same lines, e.g. Hedio, Rhegius, Hyperius, Lasco and others, often merely transplanted into a new soil the rules already in vogue in the Catholic Netherlands and the prosperous South German towns. Hedio of Strasburg, for instance, translated into German the entire work of Vives, the opponent of Lutheranism, and exploited it practically and also sought to enter into epistolary communication with Vives. The prohibition of mendicancy, the establishment of an independent poor-box apart from the rest of the Church funds, and many other points were borrowed by Bugenhagen and others from the olden Catholic regulations.
Such efforts were in many localities supplemented by the kindliness of the population and, thanks to a spirit of Christianity, were not without fruit.
As, however, everybody, Princes, nobles, townships and peasants, were stretching out greedy hands towards the now defenceless possessions of the olden Church, a certain reaction came, and the State, in the interests of order, saw fit to grant a somewhat larger share to the ecclesiastical authorities in the administration of Church property and relief funds. The Lutheran clergy and the guardians of the poor were thus allowed a certain measure of free action, provided always that what they did was done in the name of the sovereign, i.e. the principal bishop. The new institutions created by such men as Bugenhagen soon lost their public, communal or State character, and sank back to the level of ecclesiastical enterprises. Institutions of this stamp had, however, “been more numerous and better endowed in the Middle Ages and were so later in the Catholic districts.”
Owing in part to a technical defect in the Protestant regulations, dishonesty and carelessness were not excluded from the management and distribution of the poor fund, the administration falling, as a matter of course, into the hands of the lowest class of officials. Catholics had good reason for branding it as a “usury and parson’s box.”[167] The reason why, in Germany, Protestant efforts for poor relief never issued in a satisfactory socio-political system capable of relieving the poor and thus improving the condition of both Church and State, lay, not merely in the economic difficulties of the time, but, “what is more important, in the social and moral working of the new religion and new piety which Luther had established.”[168]
Influence of Luther’s Ethics. Robbery of Church Property Proves a Curse
Not only had the Peasant Rising and the reprisals taken by the rulers and the towns brought misery on the land and hardened the hearts of the princes and magistrates, not only had the means available for the relief of the poor been diminished, first by the founding of new parishes in place of the old ones, which had in many cases been supported by the monasteries and foundations, secondly, by the demands of Protestants for the restitution of many ecclesiastical benefices given by their Catholic forefathers, thirdly, by the drying up of the spring of gifts and donations, but “the common fund, which had been swelled by the shekels of the Church, had now to bear many new burdens and only what remained—which often enough was not much—was employed for charitable purposes.” In the same way, and to an even greater extent, must the Lutheran ethics be taken into account. Luther’s views on justification by faith alone destroyed “that impulse of the Middle Ages towards open-handed charity.” This was “an ethical defect of the Lutheran doctrine”; it was only owing to his “utter ignorance of the world” that Luther persisted in believing that faith would, of itself and without any “law,” beget good works and charity.[169] “It was a cause of wonder and anxiety to him throughout his life that his assumption, that faith would be the best ‘taskmaster and the strongest incentive to good works and kindliness,’ never seemed to be realised.… The most notable result of Luther’s doctrine of grace and denial of all human merit was, at least among the masses, an increase of libertinism and of the spirit of irresponsibility.”[170]
The dire effects of the new principles were also evident in the large and wealthy towns, the exemplary poor-law regulations of which we have considered above. After the innovations had made their way among them we hear little more of provisions being made against mendicancy, for the promotion of work and for the relief of poverty. Hence, as regards these corporations … the change of religion meant, according to Feuchtwanger, “a decline in the quality of their social philanthropy.” (Cp. above, vol. iv., p. 477 ff.)
From some districts, however, we have better reports of the results achieved by the relief funds. In times of worst distress good Christians were always ready to help. Much depended on the spirit of those concerned in the work. In general, however, the complaints of the preachers of the new faith, including Melanchthon, wax louder and louder.[171] They tell us that the patrimony of the poor was being carried off by the rapacity of the great or disappearing under the hands of avaricious and careless administrators, whilst new voluntary contributions were no longer forthcoming. We find no lack of those, who, like Luther’s friend Paul Eber, are given to noting the visible, palpable consequences of the wrong done to the monasteries, brotherhoods and churches.[172]