It is impossible to exaggerate the impression of deep and widespread discontent with the condition of the Church which one meets in the writings of the early sixteenth century. The whole German people, from the rulers down to the humblest tiller of the fields, felt themselves unjustly used. The clergy were denounced as both immoral and inefficient. One devout writer exclaims that young men are considered quite good enough to be priests to whom one would not intrust the care of a cow. While the begging friars—the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians[274]—were scorned by many, they, rather than the secular clergy, appear to have carried on the real religious work. It was an Augustinian monk, we shall find, who preached the new gospel of justification by faith.
Very few indeed thought of withdrawing from the Church or of attempting to destroy the power of the pope. All that most of the Germans wished was that the money which, on one pretense or another, flowed toward Rome should be kept at home, and that the clergy should be upright, earnest men who should conscientiously perform their religious duties. One patriotic writer, however, Ulrich von Hutten, was preaching something very like revolution at the same time that Luther began his attack on the pope.
Ulrich von Hutten, 1488–1523.
Hutten was the son of a poor knight, but early tired of the monotonous life of the castle and determined to seek the universities and acquaint himself with the ancient literatures, of which so much was being said. In order to carry on his studies he visited Italy and there formed a most unfavorable impression of the papal court and of the Italian churchmen, whom he believed to be oppressing his beloved fatherland. When the Letters of Obscure Men appeared, he was so delighted with them that he prepared a supplementary series in which he freely satirized the theologians. Soon he began to write in German as well as in Latin, in order the more readily to reach the ears of the people. In one of his pamphlets attacking the popes he explains that he has himself seen how Leo X spends the money which the Germans send him. A part goes to his relatives, a part to maintain the luxurious papal court, and a part to worthless companions and attendants, whose lives would shock any honest Christian.
In Germany, of all the countries of Europe, conditions were such that Luther's appearance wrought like an electric shock throughout the nation, leaving no class unaffected. Throughout the land there was discontent and a yearning for betterment. Very various, to be sure, were the particular longings of the prince and the scholar, of knight, burgher, and peasant; but almost all were ready to consider, at least, the teachings of one who presented to them a new conception of salvation which made the old Church superfluous.
General Reading.—The most complete account of the conditions in Germany before Luther is to be found in Janssen, History of the German People (Herder, Vols. I and II, $6.25). Cambridge Modern History (The Macmillan Company, $3.75 per vol.), Vol. I, Chapters IX and XIX; Creighton, History of the Papacy (see Vol. I, p. 320), Vol. VI, Chapters I and II; and Beard, Martin Luther (P. Green, London, $1.60), Chapters I and III, are excellent treatments of the subject. For Erasmus, see Emerton's charming Desiderius Erasmus (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50), which gives a considerable number of his letters.