[XXV.]
THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY.

The opening of the sixteenth century witnessed an ominous breaking down of the landmarks of thought. The revival of letters, which was fast rendering learning the privilege of all men in place of the special province of the legal and clerical professions; the discovery of America, which destroyed reverence for primæval tradition, and accustomed men’s minds to the idea that startling novelties might yet be truths; the invention of printing, which placed within the reach of all inquirers who had a tincture of education the sacred writings for investigation and interpretation and enabled the thinker and the innovator at once to command an audience and disseminate his views in remote regions; the European wars, commencing with the Neapolitan conquest of Charles VIII., which brought the nations into closer contact with each other, and carried the seeds of culture, civilization, and unbelief from Italy to the farthest Thule; all these causes, with others less notable, had been silently but effectually wearing out the remnants of that pious and unquestioning veneration which for ages had lain like a spell on the human mind.

In this bustling movement of politics and commerce, arts and arms, science and letters, religion could not expect to escape the spirit of universal inquiry. Even before opinion had advanced far enough to justify examination into doctrinal points and dogmas, there was a general readiness to regard the shortcomings of sacerdotalism, in the administration of its sacred trust, with a freedom of criticism which could not long fail to destroy the respect for claims of irrefragable authority. John of England and the Emperor Otho might gratify individual spite, in the intoxication of anticipated triumph, by insultingly defying the sacerdotal power. Philippe-le-Bel, a man far in advance of his age, might reduce the papacy to temporary subjection by means of rare instruments such as Guillaume de Nogaret. Philippe de Valois, with the aid of his civil lawyers, might essay to limit the extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Wickliffe, and Huss, and Savonarola might raise the standard of opposition to papal usurpation—but these were sporadic instances of rebellion, resulting either from the selfish ambition of rulers or the fanatical enthusiasm of individuals, unsupported by the concurrent opinion of the masses of the people, and their permanent results were rather remote than direct. At the period to which we have arrived, however, the disposition to criticise the abuses of the ecclesiastical system, to note its shortcomings, and to apply remedial measures was general, and savored little of the respect which an infallible church had for so many centuries inculcated as one of the first of Christian duties. Its past services were forgotten in present wrongs. Its pretensions had, at one time, enabled it to be the protector of the feeble, and the sole defence of the helpless; but that time had passed. Settled institutions were fast replacing anarchy throughout Europe, and its all-pervading authority would no longer have been in place, even if exercised for the common benefit. When it was notorious, however, that the powers and immunities claimed by the church were everywhere employed for the vilest ends, their anachronism became too palpable, and their destruction was only a question of time.

Signs of the coming storm were not wanting. In 1510 a series of complaints against the tyranny and extortion of Rome was solemnly presented to the emperor. The German churches, it was asserted, were confided by the successors of St. Peter to the care of those who were better fitted to be keepers of mules than pastors of men, and the pope was significantly told that he should act more tenderly and kindly to his children of Teutonic race, lest there might arise a persecution against the priesthood, or a general defection from the Holy See, after the manner of the Hussites.[1031] The emperor was warned, in his efforts to obtain the desired reform, not to incur the censures and enmity of the pope, in terms which show that only the political effects of excommunication were dreaded, and that its spiritual thunders had lost their terrors. He was further cautioned against the prelates in general, and the mendicant friars in particular, in a manner denoting how little reverence was left for them in the popular mind, and how thoroughly the whole ecclesiastical system had become a burden and reproach, a thing of the past, an excrescence on society, and no longer an integral part of every man’s life, and the great motive power of Christendom.[1032]

It was evident that the age was rapidly outstripping the church, and that the latter, to maintain its influence and position, must conform to the necessities of progress and enlightenment. On previous occasions it had done so, and had, with marvellous tact and readiness, adapted itself to the exigencies of the situation in the long series of vicissitudes which had ended by placing it supreme over Europe. But centuries of almost uninterrupted prosperity had hardened it. The corruption which attends upon wealth had rendered wealth a necessity, and that wealth could only be had by perpetuating and increasing the abuses which caused ominous murmurs of discontent in those nations not fortunate enough to be defended by Concordats or Pragmatic Sanctions. The church had lost its suppleness, and was immovable. A reform such as was demanded, while increasing its influence over the souls of men, would have deprived it of control over their purses; reform meant poverty. The sumpter-mule loaded with gold, wrung from the humble pittance of the Westphalian peasant, under pretext of prosecuting the war against the infidel, would no longer cross the Alps to stimulate with its treasure the mighty genius of Michael Angelo, or the fascinating tenderness of Raphael; to provide princely revenues for the bastards of a pope, or to pay mercenaries who were to win them cities and lordships; to fill the antechamber of a cardinal with parasites, and to deck his mistresses with the silks and jewels of Ind; to feed needy men of letters and scurrilous poets; to soothe the itching palms of the Rota, and to enable all Rome to live on the tribute so cunningly exacted of the barbarian.[1033] The wretched ending of the council of Bâle rendered any internal reformation impossible which did not derive its initiative and inspiration from Rome, as was shown by the failure of the council of Pisa. In Rome, it would have required the energy of Hildebrand, the stern self-reliance of Innocent, the unworldly asceticism of Celestin combined, to even essay a reform which threatened destruction so complete to all the interests accumulated by sacerdotalism around the Eternal City. Leo X. was neither Hildebrand, nor Innocent, nor Celestin. With his voluptuous nature, elegant culture, and easy temper, it is no wonder that he failed to read aright the signs of the times, and that he did not even recognize the necessity which should impose upon him a task so utterly beyond his powers. The fifth council of Lateran had no practical result. Blindly he plunged on; money must be had at any cost, until the salvation mongering of Tetzel, little if any worse than that of his predecessors, could no longer bear the critical spirit of the age, and Teutonic insubordination at length found a mouth-piece in the Monk of Wittenberg.

It would be a mistake to credit Luther with the Reformation. His bold spirit and masculine character gave to him the front place, and drew around him the less daring minds who were glad to have a leader to whom to refer their doubts, and on whom their responsibility might partly rest; yet Luther was but the exponent of a public sentiment which had long been gaining strength, and which in any case would not have lacked expression. In that great movement of the human mind he was not the cause, but the instrument. Had his great opponent Erasmus enjoyed the physical vigor and practical boldness of Luther, he would have been handed down as the heresiarch of the sixteenth century.[1034] He, too, had borne his full share in preparing the minds of men for what was to come. The whole structure of sacerdotalism felt the blows of his irreverential spirit, which boldly declared that the Scriptures alone contained what was necessary to salvation.[1035] Theological subtleties and priestly observances were alike useless or worse than useless. For the living, it was idle to attend mass; for the dead, it was folly to look to such a means for extrication from purgatory.[1036] The confessional was to be visited only as a formal prerequisite to partaking the Eucharist;[1037] pilgrimages and the veneration of relics were ridiculed with a reckless freedom which showed that the advance of enlightenment had utterly destroyed the reverence of the past.[1038] Nothing, indeed, can give us a more thorough conviction of the readiness of the public to welcome a radical change than the wealth of indignant bitterness which Erasmus, himself a canon regular and a priest, heaps upon all orders of the church, and the immense applause which everywhere greeted his attacks. His sarcastic humor, his biting satire, his exquisite ridicule, nowhere find a more congenial subject than the vices of the monks, the priests, the prelates, the cardinals, and even of the pope himself, until even Luther, as late as 1517, feels constrained to deplore that the evils which afflicted the church should be thus exposed to derision.[1039] It affords a curious illustration of the times to read those writings which a century earlier would have consigned him to the dungeon or the stake, and to reflect that he was not only the admiration of both the learned and the vulgar of Europe, but also the petted protégé of king and kaisar, the correspondent of popes, and finally the champion of the system which he had so ruthlessly reviled, and which he never ceased to deplore.[1040] The extraordinary favor with which his works were received by all classes shows how fully he was justified in the indignation which he so unsparingly lavished on clerical abuses, and how eagerly the public appreciated one who could so well express that which was felt by all. Equally significant was the popularity of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” in which the learned wits of the new school poured forth upon the clergy a broad and homely ridicule which exactly suited the taste of the age;[1041] while Cornelius Agrippa more than rivalled Erasmus in the wealth of vigorous denunciation with which he lashed the vices of all the orders of ecclesiastics, from the pope to the béguine.[1042]

Not less indicative of the dangerous state of opinion was an address delivered in the Diet held at Augsburg in 1518, when the legates of Leo X. appealed to Germany for a tithe to assist in carrying on the war against the Turk. The orator who replied to them did not restrain his indignation at the deplorable condition of the church, which he attributed solely to the worldly ambition of the popes. Since they had united temporal with spiritual dominion—or, rather, since they had allowed temporal interests to divert them wholly from their spiritual duties—all had gone amiss. Christendom was despoiled from without, and filled with tumult within. Religion was openly contemned; Christ was daily bought and sold; the sheep were shorn, and the pastor took no care of them. He did not even hesitate to charge, with emphasis and at much detail, that the money extorted from Germany under pious pretexts was squandered in Italy on the private quarrels and for the aggrandizement of the papal houses, and those of the members of the sacred college.[1043] All other nations were protected from papal rapacity and tyranny by formal agreements. Germany alone was surrendered defenceless, and not only were her bishops plundered but even the smallest benefice could not be confirmed without the recipient running the gauntlet of a horde of officials whose exactions forced him to sell the very furniture of his church. As the rules of law and the dictates of justice were equally disregarded, the popular sentiment was becoming openly hostile to the church.[1044] A state of feeling which dictated and permitted such a declaration from the supreme representative body of the empire, when brought into collision with the pretensions of the Holy See, now more exaggerated than ever, could have but one result—Revolution.

With all this license Germany was still, by the force of circumstances, less independent of the papacy than any other Tramontane power. What was going on elsewhere in Europe may be guessed from the humiliating conditions exacted in 1517 of Silvester Darius, the papal collector, on his assuming the functions of his important office in England. He bound himself by oath not to execute any letters or mandates of the pope injurious to the king, the kingdom, or the laws; not to transmit from England to Rome, without a special royal license, any gold, or silver, or bills of exchange; not to leave the kingdom himself without a special license under the great seal; with other less notable restrictions, the practical effect of all being to place him and his duties wholly under the control of the king.[1045] The position of England had changed since the days of Innocent and John. Had the dissensions of Germany permitted equal progress, Luther might perhaps have only been known as an obscure but learned orthodox doctor, and the inevitable revolt of half of Christendom have been postponed for a century.