Life of Luther

by Julius Köstlin

Shortly after his arrival at the Wartburg, he received the news that Bartholomew Bernhardi of Feldkirchen, provost in the little town of Kemberg near Wittenberg, had publicly, and with the consent of his congregation, taken a wife. He was not the first priest who had ventured to break the unchristian prohibition of marriage by the Romish Church. But he was the most distinguished of such offenders hitherto, besides being a particular disciple of Luther and a man of unimpeachable integrity. Luther wrote about it to Melancthon, saying: 'I admire the newly married man, who in these stormy times has no fears, and has lost no time about it. May God guide him.'

At Wittenberg it was now demanded, not without violence, that monasticism should be abolished, and that the mass and the Lord's Supper should be changed in conformity with the institution of Christ. It seemed as if here, in the place of Luther, who had gone before with the simple testimony of the Word and doctrine, two other men were now to step in as practical and energetic Reformers. One of them was Luther's old colleague, Carlstadt, who had returned in July from a short visit to Copenhagen, whither the King of Denmark had invited him to promote the new evangelical theology at the university, but had soon again dismissed him, and who now assumed the lead at Wittenberg with a passionate and ambitious, but undeterminate zeal. The other was the Augustine monk, Gabriel Zwilling, who had introduced himself to notice as a fiery preacher in the convent church, and in spite of his unattractive appearance and weak voice had drawn together a large congregation from the town and university, and fascinated them with his eloquence. A young Silesian wrote home from the university of Wittenberg about him, saying: 'God has raised up for us another prophet; many call him a second Luther. Melancthon is never absent when he preaches.'

For the clergy Carlstadt sought, by a perverse interpretation of Scripture, to make the married state into a law. Only married men were to be appointed to offices in the Church. For monks and nuns he claimed the liberty of renouncing their cloistered and celibate life, if they found its moral requirements insupportable; but the biblical evidence that he adduced in support of this doctrine was unhappily chosen; and he still declared the renunciation of vows to be a sin, though justified by the avoidance thereby of a still greater sin, that of unchastity in monastic life. Luther had required that at the Lord's Supper the cup, in accordance with the original institution of Christ, should be given to the laity. Carlstadt and Zwilling, however, wished to make it a sin for a person to partake of the Communion without the cup being given to the communicants. Other changes also were now demanded in the mode of administering the elements, conformably with the Holy Supper held by Jesus Himself with His twelve disciples. Zwilling would have twelve communicants at a time partake of the bread and wine. It was further insisted that, like as at ordinary meals, the elements should be given into the hand of each individual to partake of, and not put into his mouth by the priest. The sacrifice of the mass Zwilling would abolish altogether, but Carlstadt thought it necessary, in dealing with so important a feature of the old form of worship, to proceed with caution.

Upon these questions and proceedings Luther expressed his opinion early in August to Melancthon, who was keenly excited about them, but on many points was unsettled in his mind. The project of restoring at Wittenberg the celebration of the Lord's Supper, as originally instituted, with the cup, met with Luther's full approval; for the tyranny which the Christian congregations had hitherto endured in this respect had been acknowledged there, and there was a general wish to resist it. He declared further, with regard to private masses, that he was resolved never to say any more while he lived. But compulsion he would not dream of: if any who still suffered from this tyranny partook of the Communion without the cup, no man durst account it to him as a sin. As for the troubles of the monks and nuns, under their self-imposed vows, his sympathy for them was no less acute than that of his friends at Wittenberg, but the arguments by which they sought to help them to liberty he did not consider sound. He gave now this subject a more searching and deeper consideration, and shortly addressed a series of theses on celibacy to the bishops and deacons of the church at Wittenberg. He attacked vows in general, and assailed them at the very root. Inasmuch, moreover, as the vows of chastity, he said, and of other monastic observances were commonly made to God with the intent and purpose of working out one's own salvation by one's own works and righteousness, these were not vows in accordance with the will of God, but denials of the faith. And even though a man should have made a vow in a spirit of piety, he placed himself at all events, by his own will and act, under a restraint and yoke at variance with the gospel and the liberty which faith in Christ bestows. Luther went still farther, and declared that the chastity enjoined upon the monk was only possible if he possessed the special gift of continence spoken of by St. Paul. How dare a man make a vow to God, which God must first endue him with the power to keep? A man, therefore, in vowing chastity, makes a vow which it is not really possible for him to keep, whilst true chastity is made possible for him by God in the married life which he condemns. These vows, accordingly, are radically vicious and displeasing to God, and cease to be binding on a Christian who has been made free in faith, and has recognised the true will of God.

Personally concerned as Luther was, as an Augustine monk himself, in these questions which he discussed, he treated the liberty, which inwardly he knew himself to possess, as quietly and coolly as possible. On receiving the news from Wittenberg, he wrote to Spalatin, 'Good Heaven! our Wittenbergers will allow even the monks to have wives, but they shall not force me to take one.' And he asks Melancthon jokingly, if he was going to revenge himself upon him for having helped him to get a wife; he would know well enough how to guard against that.

At Wittenberg there was great excitement, particularly on account of the mass. In the Augustinian convent there, the majority of the monks held with Zwilling; they wished to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in strict accordance with the institution of Christ. Their prior, Conrad Held, took the opposite side, and adhered to the ancient usage. Justus Jonas, the provost, expressed his views with equal ardour in the convent church attached to the university, and met with violent opposition from other members of the foundation. A committee, composed of deputies from the university and chapter of canons, from whom the Elector in October demanded a formal opinion on the subject, expressed by their majority the same view, and requested the Elector himself to abolish the abuse of the mass. But Frederick utterly rejected the idea of decreeing on his own authority innovations which would constitute a deviation from the great Christian Catholic Church, more especially as opinions were not agreed on them even at Wittenberg. He would do no more than give free scope and protection to the new testimony of biblical truth, until it should be properly sifted by the Church. In the church of the Augustinian convent, the mass and the Lord's Supper were now both suspended.

Men set to work now in earnest to give effect to the new principles applied to monachism. Thirteen Augustine monks, about a third of the then inmates of the convent at Wittenberg, quitted that convent early in November, and cast away their cowls. Some of them took up at once a civil trade or handicraft. This step increased the growing feeling of hostility to the monks among the students and inhabitants of the town. All kinds of enormities ensued: monks were mocked at in the streets; the convents were threatened; and even the service of the mass was disturbed by rioters who forced their way into the parish church.

Meanwhile Luther went on, in the quietness of his seclusion, to teach the Christian truth about vows and masses, to explain and establish his newly-acquired knowledge and convictions, and to prepare by that means the way of ultimate reform. He composed a tract, in Latin and German, 'On the Abuse of Masses,' and another, in Latin, 'On Monastic Vows.' The latter he dedicated to his father, taking note of his protest against his entering the convent, and telling him with joy that he was now a free man, a monk, and yet no longer a monk. As for his brethren's desertion of the convent, however, he disapproved the manner of it. They could, and should, have parted in peace and amity, not as they did, in a tumult. These two works he completed in November, and sent them to Spalatin, to have them printed at Wittenberg.

In this manner Luther occupied himself from the summer to the winter, continuing all the while his biblical studies and the composition of his Church-Postills. But he was also preparing to deal a heavy blow at the Cardinal Albert. This prelate had abstained as yet, with great caution, from taking any stringent measures to prevent the spread of Lutheran preaching in his diocese. But he was in want of money. To supply this want, he published a work, giving news of a precious relic, which he had placed for view at Halle, his town, and inviting pilgrimages to see it. A multitude of other rich and wondrous relics had been collected there; not only heaps of bones and entire corpses of saints, with a portion of the body of the patriarch Isaac, but also pieces of the manna, as it had fallen from heaven in the desert, little bits of the burning bush of Moses, jars from the wedding at Cana, and some of the wine into which Jesus there had changed the water, thorns from the Saviour's crown, one of the stones with which Stephen was stoned, and a multitude of other, in all nearly 9,000, relics. Whoever should attend with devotion at the exhibition of these sacred treasures in the Collegiate Church at Halle, and should give a pious alms to the institution, was to receive a 'surpassing' indulgence. The first exhibition of this kind took place about the beginning of September. Albert also had not scrupled to cause one of the priests who wished to marry to be imprisoned, though it was notorious how he himself made up for his celibacy by his loose living.

Luther now, as he wrote to Spalatin on October 7, 1521, could not restrain himself any longer from breaking out, in private and in public, against his 'Idol of indulgences' and his scandalous whoredoms. He took no thought of the fact that his own pious Elector, only a few years before, had arranged a similar, though less showy exhibition of relics at the convent church at Wittenberg, and was thus indirectly assailed by reproaches now no longer deserved. By the end of the month Luther had a pamphlet ready for publication. But an attack of such a kind on a magnate like Albert, the great prince of the Empire, Elector of Mayence, and brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, was not to Frederick's taste, and he informed Luther, through Spalatin that he forbade it. He would not sanction anything, he said, which might disturb the public peace. Luther told Spalatin, in his reply, that he had never read a more disagreeable letter than Frederick's. 'I will not put up with it,' he indignantly broke out; 'I will rather lose you and the prince himself, and every living being. If I have stood up against the Pope, why should I yield to his creature?' He wished only to show his pamphlet first to Melancthon, and submit a few alterations in it to the judgment of his friend. For this purpose he sent it to Spalatin, requesting him to forward it. Then, on December 1, he wrote a letter to Albert himself. Its tone and contents indicate pretty plainly what the pamphlet itself contained. In clear vigorous German, and without any circumlocution, he submits to the Cardinal his 'humble request,' to abstain from corrupting the poor people, and not to show himself a wolf in bishop's clothing. He must surely know by this time that indulgences were sheer knavery and trickery. He was not to imagine that Luther was dead: Luther would trust cheerfully in God, and carry on a game with the Cardinal of Mayence, of which not many people were yet aware. As for the priests who had wished to marry, he warned the Archbishop that a cry would be raised from the gospel about it; and the bishops would learn that they had better first pluck out the beam from their own eyes, and drive their own mistresses away. Luther concluded by giving him fourteen days for a 'proper' answer; otherwise, when that time expired, he would immediately publish his pamphlet on 'The Idol at Halle.' All this while, the news from Wittenberg kept Luther in a state of constant anxiety. The distance and the difficulty of correspondence had become quite insupportable. A few days after his letter of December 1, he suddenly re-appeared there among his friends. In secret, and accompanied only by a servant, he had gone thither on horseback in his knight's dress. He stayed there for three days with Amsdorf. Only his most intimate friends were allowed to know of his arrival. His meeting with them again gave him, as he wrote to Spalatin, the keenest pleasure and enjoyment. But it was a bitter sorrow to hear that Spalatin would not look at, or listen to, his pamphlet against Albert, nor his tracts on masses and monastic vows, but had kept them back. What his friends now told him of their efforts and labours he approved of, and he wished them strength from above to persevere. But he had heard already, when on his way, of fresh outrages committed by some of the townspeople and students against the priests and monks, and henceforth he deemed it his nearest duty to warn them publicly against such acts of violence and disorder.