Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

The Merchant Class

The opening up of many previously unknown countries, the discovery of new trade routes, and the new industries called forth by new inventions brought about a sudden and quite unforeseen revival in trade and prosperity at the time of the religious schism. An alteration in the earlier ideas on political economy was bound to supervene. The upsetting of the mediæval notions which now could no longer hold and the uncertainty as to what to build on in future led to a deal of confusion in that period of transition.

What was chiefly needed in the case of one anxious to judge of things from their ethical and social side was experience and knowledge of the world joined with prudence and the spirit of charity. Annoyance was out of place; what was called for was a capacity to weigh matters dispassionately.

Among the Humanists there were some, who, because the new era of commerce turned men’s minds from learning, condemned it absolutely. Thus Eobanus Hessus of Nuremberg laments, that, there, people were bent on acquiring riches rather than learning; the world dreamt of nothing but saffron and pepper; he lived, as it were, among “empurpled monkeys” and would rather make his home with the peasants of his Hessian fatherland than in his present surroundings.[226]—What was Luther’s attitude towards the rising merchant class and its undertakings?

In his case it was not merely the injury done to the schools and to “Christian” posterity, and the ever growing luxury that prejudiced him against commerce, but, above all, the constant infringement of the principles of morality, which, according to him, was a necessary result of the new economic life and its traffic in wares and money. He exaggerated the moral danger and failed entirely to see the economic side of the case. We do not find in him, says Köstlin-Kawerau, “a sufficient insight into the existing conditions and problems,”[227] nevertheless he did not shrink from the harshest and most uncharitable censure.

It was his deliberate intention, so he says, “to give scandal to many more people on this point by setting up the true doctrine of Christ.” This we find in a letter he wrote after the Leipzig Disputation when putting the finishing touch to his first works on usury (1519).[228] Because no attention was paid to his “Evangelical” ideas on usury he came to the conclusion that, “now, in these days, clergy and seculars, prelates and subjects are alike bent on thwarting Christ’s life, doctrine and Gospel.”[229] Hence he must once again vindicate the Gospel. He, however, distorts the Christian idea by making into strict commands what Christ had proposed as counsels of perfection. There is reason to believe that the mistake he here makes under the plea of zeal for the principles of the Gospel is bound up not merely with his antipathy to the idea of Evangelical Counsels,[230] but also with his older, pseudo-mystic tendency and with his conception of the true Christian. We cannot help thinking of his fanciful plan of assembling apart the real Christians when we hear him in these very admonitions bewailing that “there are so few Christians”; if anyone refused to lend gratis it was “a sign of his deep unbelief,” since we are assured that by so doing “we become children of the Most High and that our reward is great. Of such a consoling promise he is not worthy who will not believe and act accordingly.”[231]

In any case it was a quite subjective and unfounded application of Holy Scripture, when, in his sermon on usury, he makes the following the chief point to be complied with:

“Christian dealings with temporal possessions,” he there says, “consist in three things, in giving for nothing, lending free of interest and lovingly allowing our belongings to be taken from us [Matt. v. 40, 42; Luke vi. 30]; for there is no merit in your buying something, inheriting it, or gaining possession of it in some other honest way, since, if this were piety, then the heathen and Turks would also be pious.”[232]

This extravagant notion of the Christian’s duties led to his rigid and untimely vindication of the mediæval prohibition of the charging of interest, of which we shall have to speak more fully later. It also led him to assail all commercial enterprise.