In spite of his sufferings he retained his peculiar bearing with head thrown back and upturned face. His features, especially the mouth, now showed more plainly even than in earlier life the calm strength acquired by struggles and suffering. The pathos which later portraits have often given to his countenance is not apparent in the earlier ones, but rather an expression of melancholy. The deep glow and energy of his spirit, which even Cranach's pencil has failed wholly to represent, seems to have found chief expression in his dark eyes. These evidently struck the old rector of Wittenberg, Pollich, and the legate Caietan at Augsburg; it was with these that, on his arrival at Worms, the legate Aleander saw him look around him 'like a demon'; it was these that 'sparkled like stars' on the young Swiss Kessler, so that he could 'hardly endure their gaze.' After his death, another acquaintance of his called them 'falcon's eyes'; and Melancthon saw in the brown pupils, encircled by a yellow ring, the keen, courageous eye of a lion.
This fire in Luther never died. Under the pressure of suffering and weakness, it only burst forth when stirred by opposition into new and fiercer flames. It became, indeed, more easily provoked in later life, and produced in him an irritation and restless impatience with the world and all its doings. His full and clear gaze was fixed on the Hereafter.
CHAPTER VIII.
LUTHER'S LAST YEAR AND DEATH.
The Emperor Charles, after concluding the peace of Crespy with King Francis, turned his policy entirely to ecclesiastical affairs. The Pope could no longer resist his urgent demand for a Council, and accordingly a bull, of November 1544, summoned one to assemble at Trent in the following March. With regard to the Turks, the Emperor sought to liberate his hands by means of a peaceful settlement and concessions. He entered into negotiations with them in 1545, in which he was supported by an ambassador from France. These led ultimately to the result that the Turks left him in possession, on payment of a tribute, of those frontier fortresses which he still occupied, and which they had previously demanded from him, and agreed to a truce for a year and a half. 'This is the way,' exclaimed Luther, 'in which war is now waged against those who have been denounced so many years as enemies to the name of Christ, and against whom the Romish Satan has amassed such heaps of gold by indulgences and other innumerable means of plunder.'
Meanwhile the Elector John had commissioned his theologians to prepare the scheme of reformation which was to be submitted according to the decree of the Diet at Spires. On January 14,1545, they sent him a draft compiled by Melancthon. Luther headed with his own the list of signatures. It was a last great message of peace from his hand. The draft set forth clearly and distinctly the principles of the Evangelical Church; but expressed a hope that the bishops of the Catholic Church would fulfil the duties of their office, and promised them obedience if they accepted and furthered the preaching of the gospel in its purity. This was too moderate for the Elector. His chancellor Brück, however, assured him that Luther and the others were agreed with Melancthon, though the document bore no evidence of 'Doctor Martin's restless spirit.'
Nor did Luther even here insist on that strong expression of opinion with regard to the Lord's Supper which he himself gave to the doctrine of Christ's Bodily Presence in the Sacrament. They only spoke briefly of the 'receiving the true Body and Blood of Christ,' and of the object and benefit of this reception for the soul and for faith.
But Luther now unburdened his heart with redoubled energy and passion against the Pope and the Popedom, of which no mention had been made in the draft. In January 1545 he learned of that Papal letter in which the Holy Father had protested to his son the Emperor, with pathetic indignation, against the decrees of the Diet at Spires. Luther at first took it seriously for a forgery—a mere pasquinade—until he was assured by the Elector of the genuineness of this and another and similar letter, and thus provoked to take public steps against it. He thought that, if the brief was genuine, the Pope would sooner worship the Turks—nay, the devil himself—than ever dream of consenting to a reform in accordance with God's Word. Accordingly, he composed his pamphlet 'Against the Popedom at Rome, instituted by the Devil.' In this his 'restless spirit' spoke out once more with all its strength; he poured out the vials of his wrath in the plainest and most violent language—more violent than in any of his earlier writings—against the Antichrist of Rome. The very first word gives the Pope the title of 'the most hellish Father.' Luther is not surprised that to him and his Curia the words 'free Christian German Council' are sheer poison, death, and hell. But he asks him, what is the use of a Council at all if the Pope arrogates to himself beforehand, as his decrees fulminate, the right of altering and tearing up its decisions. Far better to spare the expense and trouble of such a farce, and say, 'We will believe and worship your hellship without any Councils.' The piece of arch-knavery practised by the Pope in himself announcing a Council against Emperor and Empire was, in fact, nothing new. The Popes from the very first had practised all kinds of devilish wickedness, treachery, and murder against the German Emperors. Luther recalls to mind how a Pope had caused the noble Conradin to be executed with the sword. Paul III., in his admonition to his 'son' the Emperor Charles, referred in pious strain to the example of Eli, the high-priest, who had been punished for not rebuking his sons for their sins. Luther now points him to his own, the Pope's natural son, whom the Pope was so anxious to enrich; he asks if Father Paul then had nothing to punish in him. It was well known what tricks Paul himself, with his insatiable maw, was playing together with his son with the property of the Church. Further, he puts before the Pope his cardinals and followers, who forsooth needed no admonition for their detestable iniquities. But his dear son Charles, it seemed, had wished to procure for the German Fatherland a happy peace and unity in religion, and to have a Christian Council, and, finding he had been made a fool of by the Pope for four-and-twenty years, sat last to convene a national Council. This was his sin in the eyes of the Pope, who would like to see all Germany drowned in her own blood: the Pope could not forgive the Emperor for thwarting his horrible design. Luther dwells at length on such reflections in his introduction, and then says 'I must now stop, for my head is too weak, and I have not yet come to what I meant to say in this treatise.' This was the three points, as follow: Whether, indeed, it was true that the Pope was the head of Christendom; that none could judge and depose him; and that he had brought the Holy Roman Empire to the Germans, as he boasted so arrogantly he had done. On these points he then proceeds to enlarge once more with a wealth of searching proof. On the last point we hear him speak once more as a true German. He wished that the Emperor had left the Pope his anointing and coronation, for what made him truly Emperor was not these ceremonies, but the election of the princes. The Pope had never yielded a hairsbreadth to the Empire, but, on the contrary, had plundered it immoderately by his lying and deceit and idolatry. The book concludes thus: 'This devilish Popery is the supreme evil on earth, and the one that touches us most closely; it is one in which all the devils combine together. God help us! Amen.'
Cranach published a series of sketches or caricatures, controversial and satirical, against the Popedom, some of which are cynically coarse, one of them representing to his countrymen the murder of Conradin, the Pope himself beheading him, and another a German Emperor with the Pope standing on his neck. Luther added short verses to these pictures. But he disapproved of one of Cranach's caricatures, as insulting to woman.
We have seen already what degree of importance Luther attached to a Council appointed by the Pope. The Protestants could not, of course, consent to submit to the one at Trent. On the other hand, their demand that the Council must be a 'free' and a 'Christian' one in their sense of the terms was an impossibility for the Emperor and the Catholics; for it meant not only their independence of the Pope—which he could never assent to—but also a free reversion to the single rule and standard of Holy Scripture, with a possible rejection of tradition and the decrees of previous Councils. The Emperor thereupon granted something for appearance sake to the Protestant States by arranging another conference on religion to be held at Ratisbon in January 1546. He told the Pope, in June 1545, that he could not engage to make war on the Protestants for at least another year. The Council was opened in December 1545, without the Protestants taking any part in it.