Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

It was “his duty to oppose false teachers,” Luther had written to his Elector on May 8, 1522, of the Canons of Altenburg.[813] In the same way, with much storming, he had insisted that the secular power should make an end of Catholic worship in the collegiate church of Wittenberg.

From the standpoint of his principles it is rather remarkable that, when the persecuted Canons of Wittenberg appealed to the Elector’s authority, Luther retorted: “What has the Elector to do with us in such things?”[814] and that, later, in one of his sermons, he boldly replied to their objections in law: “What care we about the Elector? He commands only in worldly matters.”[815] In making a stand against the celebration of Mass at Wittenberg he had frankly declared: “It is the duty of the authorities to resist and to punish such public blasphemy,” just as they are bound to punish the blasphemies uttered in the streets by godless men. The Elector and his Councillors were quite aware of the contradictions involved in Luther’s teaching. Hence, at the Prince’s instance, the Court pointed out to him on Nov. 24, 1524, that “he himself preached that the Word should be left to fight its own way, and that this it would do in its own good time, so God willed”; he ought himself to be the first “to practise what he taught and preached.”[816] In spite of this Luther, soon after, was successful in violently making a clean sweep of the Catholic Mass at Wittenberg.[817]

The theory that the Evangelical ruler must use force to root out Catholic worship was proclaimed by the Court chaplain Spalatin, a man “standing altogether under Luther’s influence, and who, as a rule, merely voiced his views”;[818] this he did in a letter of May 1, 1525, where he cites the prescriptions of the Mosaic law (Deut. vii.). According to this the secular authorities are bound “by the Law of God to abrogate idolatrous and blasphemous worship”; any further toleration on the part of the Elector of “idolatry” in his lands would be a great sin; on the other hand it would be a “great, consoling and Christian work” were he “to put the Christian bit in the mouth of all the clergy.” “Ah, that would indeed be a noble work!”[819] To the successor of the then Elector who died shortly after this, Spalatin wrote on Oct. 1, 1525: “Dr. Martin also says, that Your Electoral Highness ought in no way to suffer anyone to proceed any longer with the unchristian ceremonies, or to set them up again”;[820] on Jan. 10, 1526, he, together with two Altenburg preachers, backed up the petition to the Elector for the extirpation of “idolatry” by pointing to the example of the pious kings of the Jews.[821] At Altenburg and elsewhere such exhortations were crowned all too speedily with success.

“A secular ruler,” Luther himself wrote to the Elector Johann on Feb. 9, 1526, “must not permit his underlings to be led into strife and discord by contumacious preachers, for this may issue in uproar and sedition, but in each locality there must be but one kind of preaching.”[822]

On such grounds, however, Protestantism itself might just as well have been denied a hearing, seeing that it had come to disturb the peace, the “one kind of preaching” and the one faith. The princes, however, spurred on by their theologians, seized only too eagerly on this principle, using it in favour of the innovations. The Elector Johann declared as early as Feb. 31, 1526, that he had “graciously taken note of the Memorandum” and would, “for the future, conduct himself in such matters as beseemed a Christian”;[823] and he kept his word.

The intolerance shown to Catholics and their systematic oppression in Saxony stands in blatant contrast with the claim made, that Luther by his preaching had won religious freedom for the German lands. Banishment was the punishment incurred by those who chose to remain steadfast in their attachment to the Catholic faith. Thus, in 1527, it was expressly laid down in the regulations for the Saxon Visitation, that: “Whoever is suspected in the matter of the Sacraments, or of any other error in the faith” is to “be summoned and questioned, and, if necessary, witnesses against him are also to be called.” “Such an ‘inquisition’ is also to be instituted by the Visitors in the case of the laity.”[824] If they refuse to abjure their “errors” they are to be given a certain time to sell their possessions and to quit the land, with a “warning of the severe penalties” with which any ecclesiastic or layman will be visited who is again found in the country.[825] Bearing in mind the difficulty emigration presented at that time, particularly in the case of the people on the land, one can appreciate the injustice of the measure.

Luther and his followers frequently enough appealed to theological grounds in support of such measures, above all to the Old Testament enactments against blasphemers and contemners of religion. One-sidedly they simply applied to their own day and to their own controversial purposes, the exceptional regulations of the Mosaic dispensation which sought to preserve the religion of the chosen people in the midst of a heathen world. In this connection Luther appeals to Moses without the slightest hesitation though, as a rule, armed with the New Testament, he is ready enough to assail the Mosaic Law; he also set up the pious “Kings of Juda and Israel” as patterns. Wenceslaus Link did much the same when he summoned the Altenburg Town-Council to make a stand against Catholicism and abrogate the “lies and fond inventions of the idolaters”;[826] nor did Spalatin hesitate to point out to the Saxon Elector the commendation the pious rulers of the Jews had earned from God for their bloody repression of idolatry.[827]

Another ground for compulsion, to which Spalatin gives expression in a letter to the Elector, was, that: They must not forget how “many a poor man would more readily come to the Evangel, were that wretched system [of Popery and its idolatry] no longer in existence.” In other words, were Catholic worship rooted out, Catholics would more easily be won over to the Evangel.[828] It was on such a standpoint as this that the Augsburg declaration of 1530 made by the theologians of the Saxon Electorate was based. The Emperor had demanded from the Protesting Princes toleration of the Catholic worship for those of their subjects who chose to remain Catholic. The theologians thereupon expressed themselves against such an arrangement, and urged that, in this case, Lutheran proselytism would be hampered: “Were it to be said that the rulers were not to hinder it, though the preachers were to preach against it, it is clear of what [small] good would be all the teaching and preaching of the ministers.”[829]

In the Duchy of Saxony, as everybody knows, the introduction of Lutheranism was opposed by Duke George. His severity he justified by appealing to the thousand-year-old law of the one great world-wide Church, the Church of the Apostles, of the Fathers and martyrs and Œcumenical Councils and great missioners of all ages, a law, moreover, sanctioned by the Empire. When, in 1533, a number of Lutherans were banished from the Duchy[830] Luther seized upon this as a pretext for controversy. Roundly scolding the “Ducal tyrant,” he declared this sentence of banishment to be “a devilish and criminal thing.” The authority of the sovereign, so he now wrote, again contradicting himself, “only extends over life and property in secular matters.”[831] But, after George’s death in 1539 and the accession of his brother Henry, Luther’s tone changed, for Henry held Lutheran views. In a letter he sent about that time to the Elector Johann Frederick, he is angry because more than 500 of the Saxon clergy, all of them “venomous Papists,” had not yet been driven out. “For the sake of the poor souls, many thousands of whom live neglected under such parsons,” he urges the Elector to do his best “to help and promote a Visitation.”[832] He demands that Duke Henry, as the sovereign and protector of the bishopric of Meissen, should “put a damper on the blasphemous idolatry” as best he could, for “the Princes who are able to do so should at once abolish Baal and all idolatry.”[833] He also wished that the bishop of Meissen, though a Prince of the Empire, should “at once bow his head to the Evangel”; in this matter there is no need for “much disputing.”