Their contention with Reuchlin. 53. The famous contention between Reuchlin and the German monks, though it began in the preceding decennial period, belongs chiefly to the present. In the year 1509, one Pfeffercorn, a converted Jew, induced the inquisition at Cologne to obtain an order from the emperor for burning all Hebrew books except the Bible, upon the pretext of their being full of blasphemies against the Christian religion. The Jews made complaints of this injury; but before it could take place, Reuchlin, who had been consulted by the emperor, remonstrated against the destruction of works so curious and important, which, from his partiality to Cabbalistic theories, he rated above their real value. The order was accordingly superseded, to the great indignation of the Cologne inquisitors, and of all that party throughout Germany which resisted the intellectual and religious progress of mankind. Reuchlin had offended the monks by satirising them in a comedy which he permitted to be printed in 1506. But the struggle was soon perceived to be a general one; a struggle between what had been and what was to be. Meiners has gone so far as to suppose a real confederacy to have been formed by the friends of truth and learning through Germany and France, to support Reuchlin against the mendicant orders, and to overthrow, by means of this controversy, the embattled legions of ignorance.[593] But perhaps the passages he adduces do not prove more than their unanimity and zeal in the cause. The attention of the world was first called to it about 1513; that is, it assumed about that time the character of a war of opinions, extending, in its principle and consequences, beyond the immediate dispute.[594] Several books were published on both sides; and the party in power employed its usual argument of burning what was written by its adversaries. One of these writings is still known, the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum; the production, it is said, of three authors, the principal of whom was Ulric von Hutten, a turbulent hotheaded man, of noble birth and quick parts, and a certain degree of learning, whose early death seems more likely to have spared the reformers some degree of shame, than to have deprived them of a useful supporter.[595] Few books have been more eagerly received than these epistles at their first appearance in 1516,[596] which surely proceeded rather from their suitableness to the time, than from much intrinsic merit; though it must be owned that the spirit of many temporary allusions, which delighted or offended that age, is now lost in a mass of vapid nonsense and bad grammar, which the imaginary writers pour out. Erasmus, though not intimately acquainted with Reuchlin, could not but sympathise in a quarrel with their common enemies in a common cause. In the end the controversy was referred to the pope; but the pope was Leo; and it was hoped that a proposal to burn books, or to disgrace an illustrious scholar, would not sound well in his ears. But Reuchlin was disappointed, when he expected acquittal, by a mandate to supersede, or suspend, the process commenced against him by the inquisition of Cologne, which might be taken up at a more favourable time.[597] This dispute has always been reckoned of high importance; the victory in public opinion, though not in judicature, over the adherents to the old system, prostrated them so utterly, that from this time the study of Greek and Hebrew became general among the German youth; and the cause of the Reformation was identified in their minds with that of classical literature.[598]
[593] Lebensbeschreib. i. 144. et seq.
[594] Meiners brings many proofs of the interest taken in Reuchlin, as the champion, if not the martyr, of the good cause.
[595] Herder, in his Zerstreute Blätter, v. 329, speaks with unreasonable partiality of Ulric von Hutten; and Meiners has written his life with an enthusiasm which seems to me quite extravagant. Seckendorf, p. 130, more judiciously observes that he was of little use to the Reformation. And Luther wrote about him in June, 1521: Quid Huttenus petat vides. Nollem vi et cæde pro evangelio certari, ita scripsi ad hominem. Melanchthon of course disliked such friends. Epist. Melanchth., p. 45 (1647), and Camerarius, Vita Melanchth. Erasmus could not endure Hutten; and Hutten, when he found this out, wrote virulently against Erasmus. Jortin, as biographer of Erasmus, treats Hutten perhaps with too much contempt; but this is nearer justice than the veneration of the modern Germans. Hutten wrote Latin pretty well, and had a good deal of wit; his satirical libels, consequently, had great circulation and popularity, which, in respect of such writings, is apt, in all ages, to produce an exaggeration of their real influence. In the mighty movement of the Reformation, the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum had about as much effect as the Mariage de Figaro in the French Revolution. A dialogue severely reflecting on pope Julius II., called Julius exclusus, of which Jortin suspects Erasmus, in spite of his denial, ii. 595, is given by Meiners to Hutten.
[596] Meiners, in his Life of Hutten, Lebensbesch. iii. 73, inclines to fix the publication of the first part of the Epistles in the beginning of 1517; though he admits an earlier date to be not impossible.
[597] Meiners, i. 197.
[598] Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformat. l. ii. Brucker, iv. 366. Mosheim. Eichhorn, iii. 238,vi. 16. Bayle, art. Hochstrat. None of these authorities are equal in fulness to Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, i. 98-212; which I did not consult so early as the rest. But there is also a very copious account of the Reuchlinian controversy, including many original documents, in the second part of Von der Hardt’s Historia Litteraria Reformationis.
Origin of the Reformation. 54. We are now brought, insensibly perhaps, but by necessary steps, to the great religious revolution which has just been named. I approach this subject with some hesitation, well aware that impartiality is no protection against unreasonable cavilling; but neither the history of literature, nor of human opinion upon the most important subjects, can dispense altogether with so extensive a portion of its materials. It is not required, however, in a work of this nature, to do much more than state shortly the grounds of dispute, and the changes wrought in the public mind.
55. The proximate cause of the Reformation is well known. Indulgences, or dispensations granted by the pope from the heavy penances imposed on penitents after absolution by the old canons, and also, at least in later ages, from the pains of purgatory, were sold by the papal retailers with the most indecent extortion, and eagerly purchased by the superstitious multitude, for their own sake, or that of their deceased friends. Luther, in his celebrated theses, propounded at Wittenberg, in November 1517, inveighed against the erroneous views inculcated as to the efficacy of indulgences, and especially against the notion of the pope’s power over souls in purgatory. He seems to have believed, that the dealers had exceeded their commission, and would be disavowed by the pope. This, however, was very far from being the case; and the determination of Leo to persevere in defending all the abusive prerogatives of his see, drew Luther on to levy war against many other prevailing usages of the church, against several tenets maintained by the most celebrated doctors, against the divine right of the papal supremacy, and finally to renounce all communion with a power which he now deemed an antichristian tyranny. This absolute separation did not take place till he publicly burned the pope’s bull against him, and the volumes of the canon law, at Wittenberg, in November 1520.
Popularity of Luther. 56. In all this dispute Luther was sustained by a prodigious force of popular opinion. It was perhaps in the power of his sovereign, Frederic elector of Saxony, to have sent him to Rome, in the summer of 1518, according to the pope’s direction. But it would have been an odious step in the people’s eyes, and a little later would have been impossible. Miltitz, an envoy despatched by Leo in 1519, upon a conciliatory errand, told Luther that 25,000 armed men would not suffice to make him a prisoner, so favourable was the impression of his doctrine upon Germany. And Frederic himself, not long afterwards, wrote plainly to Rome, that a change had taken place in his country; the German people were not what they had been; there were many men of great talents and considerable learning among them, and the laity were beginning to be anxious about a knowledge of Scripture; so that unless Luther’s doctrine, which had already taken root in the minds of a great many both in Germany and other countries, could be refuted by better argument than mere ecclesiastical fulminations, the consequence must be so much disturbance in the empire, as would by no means redound to the benefit of the Holy See.[599] In fact, the university of Wittenberg was crowded with students and others, who came to hear Luther and Melanchthon. The latter had at the very beginning embraced his new master’s opinions with a conviction he did not in all respects afterwards preserve. And though no overt attempts to innovate on the established ceremonies had begun in this period, before the end of 1520 several preached against them, and the whole north of Germany was full of expectation.