Another interesting series of facts serves also to show the growth of a non-ecclesiastical religious sentiment. The later decades of the fifteenth century saw the rise of innumerable associations, some of them definitely religious, [pg 145] and all of them with a religious side, which are unlike what we meet with earlier. They did not aim to be, like the praying circles of the Mystics or of the Gottesfreunde, ecclesiolæ in ecclesia, strictly non-clerical or even anti-clerical. They had no difficulty in placing themselves under the protection of the Church, in selecting the ordinary ecclesiastical buildings for their special services, and in employing priests to conduct their devotions; but they were distinctively lay associations, and lived a religious life in their own way, without any regard to the conceptions of the higher Christian life which the Church was accustomed to present to its devout disciples. Some were associations for prayer; others for the promotion of the “cult” of a special saint, like the confraternities dedicated to the Virgin Mother or the associations which spread the “cult” of the Blessed Anna; but by far the largest number were combinations of artisans, and resembled the workmen's “gilds” of the Roman Empire.
Perhaps one of the best known of these associations formed for the purpose of encouraging prayer was the “Brotherhood of the Eleven Thousand Virgins,” commonly known under the quaint name of St. Ursula's Little Ship. The association was conceived by a Carthusian monk of Cologne, and it speedily became popular. Frederick the Wise was one of its patrons, his secretary, Dr. Pfeffinger, one of its supporters; it numbered its associates by the thousand; its praises were sung in a quaint old German hymn.[96] No money dues were exacted from its members. The only duty exacted was to pray regularly, and to learn to better one's life through the power of prayer. This was one type of the pious brotherhoods of the fifteenth century. [pg 146] It was the best known of its kind, and there were many others. But among the brotherhoods which bear testimony to the spread of a non-ecclesiastical piety none are more important than the confraternities which went by the names of Kalands or Kalandsgilden in North Germany and Zechen in Austria. These associations were useful in a variety of ways. They were unions for the practice of religion; for mutual aid in times of sickness; for defence in attack; and they also served the purpose of insurance societies and of burial clubs. It is with their religious side that we have here to do. It was part of the bond of association that all the brethren and sisters (for women were commonly admitted) should meet together at stated times for a common religious service. The brotherhood selected the church in which this was held, and so far as we can see the chapels of the Franciscans or of the Augustinian Eremites were generally chosen. Sometimes an altar was relegated to their exclusive use; sometimes, if the church was a large one, a special chapel. The interesting thing to be noticed is that the rules and the modes of conducting the religious services of the association were entirely in the hands of the brotherhood itself, and that these laymen insisted on regulating them in their own way. Luther has a very interesting sermon, entitled Sermon upon the venerable Sacrament of the holy true Body of Christ and of the Brotherhoods, the latter half of which is devoted to a contrast between good brotherhoods and evil ones. Those brotherhoods are evil, says Luther, in which the religion of the brethren is expressed in hearing a Mass on one or two days of the year, while by guzzling and drinking continually at the meetings of the brotherhood, they contrive to serve the devil the greater part of their time. A true brotherhood spreads its table for its poorer members, it aids those who are sick or infirm, it provides marriage portions for worthy young members of the association. He ends with a comparison between the true brotherhood and the Church of Christ. Theodore Kolde remarks that a careful monograph on the [pg 147] brotherhoods of the end of the fifteenth century in the light of this sermon of Luther's would afford great information about the popular religion of the period. Unfortunately, no one has yet attempted the task, but German archæologists are slowly preparing the way by printing, chiefly from MS. sources, accounts of the constitution and practices of many of these Kalands.
From all this it may be seen that there was in these last decades of the fifteenth and in the earlier of the sixteenth centuries the growth of what may be called a non-ecclesiastical piety, which was quietly determined to bring within the sphere of the laity very much that had been supposed to belong exclusively to the clergy. The jus episcopale which Luther claimed for the civil authorities in his tract on the Liberty of the Christian Man, had, in part at least, been claimed and exercised in several of the German principalities and municipalities; the practice of Christian charity and its management were being taken out of the hands of the clergy and entrusted to the laity; and the brotherhoods were making it apparent that men could mark out their religious duties in a way deemed most suitable for themselves without asking any aid from the Church, further than to engage a priest whom they trusted to conduct divine service and say the Masses they had arranged for.
The appearance of numerous translations of the Scriptures into the vernacular, unauthorised by the officials of the mediæval Church, and jealously suspected by them, appears to confirm the growth and spread of this non-ecclesiastical piety. The relation of the Church of the Middle Ages, earlier and later, to vernacular translations of the Vulgate is a complex question. The Scriptures were always declared to be the supreme source and authority for all questions of doctrines and morals, and in the earlier stages of the Reformation controversy the supreme authority of the Holy Scriptures was not supposed to be one of the matters in dispute between the contending parties. This is evident when we remember that the Augsburg [pg 148]Confession, unlike the later confessions of the Reformed Churches, does not contain any article affirming the supreme authority of Scripture. That was not supposed to be a matter of debate. It was reserved for the Council of Trent, for the first time, to place traditiones sine Scripto on the same level of authority with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Hence, many of the small books, issued from convent presses for the instruction of the people during the decades preceding the Reformation, frequently declare that the whole teaching of the Church is to be found within the books of the Holy Scriptures.
It is, of course, undoubted that the mediæval Church forbade over and over again the reading of the Scriptures in the Vulgate and especially in the vernacular, but it may be asserted that these prohibitions were almost always connected with attempts to suppress heretical or schismatic revolts.[97]
On the other hand, no official encouragement of the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular by the people can be found during the whole of the Middle Ages, nor any official patronage of vernacular translations. The utmost that was done in the way of tolerating, it can scarcely be said of encouraging, a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures was the issue of Psalters in the vernacular, of Service-Books, and, in the fifteenth century, of the Plenaria—little books which contained translations of some of the paragraphs of the Gospels and Epistles read in the Church service accompanied with legends and popular tales. Translations of the Scriptures were continually reprobated [pg 149] by Popes and primates for various reasons.[98] It is also unquestionable that a knowledge of the Scriptures in the vernacular, especially by uneducated men and women, was almost always deemed a sign of heretical tendency. “The third cause of heresy,” says an Austrian inquisitor, writing about the end of the thirteenth century, “is that they translate the Old and New Testaments into the vulgar tongue; and so they learn and teach. I have heard and seen a certain country clown who repeated the Book of Job word for word, and several who knew the New Testament perfectly.”[99] A survey of the evidence seems to lead to the conclusion that the rulers of the mediæval Church regarded a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures with grave suspicion, but that they did not go the length of condemning entirely their possession by persons esteemed trustworthy, whether clergy, monks, nuns, or distinguished laymen.
Yet we have in the later Middle Ages, ever since Wiclif produced his English version, the gradual publication of the Scriptures in the vernaculars of Europe. This was specially so in Germany; and when the invention of printing had made the diffusion of literature easy, it is noteworthy that the earliest presses in Germany printed many more books for family and private devotion, many more Plenaria, and many more editions of the Bible than of the classics. Twenty-two editions of the Psalter in German appeared before 1509, and twenty-five of the Gospels and Epistles before 1518. No less than fourteen (some say seventeen) versions of the whole Bible were printed in High-German and three in Low-German during the last decades of the fifteenth and the earlier decades of the sixteenth century—all translations from the [pg 150] Vulgate. The first was issued by John Metzel in Strassburg in 1466. Then followed another Strassburg edition in 1470, two Augsburg editions in 1473, one in the Swiss dialect in 1474, two in Augsburg in 1477, one in Augsburg in 1480, one in Nürnberg in 1483, one in Strassburg in 1485, and editions in Augsburg in 1487, 1490, 1507, and 1518. A careful comparison of these printed vernacular Bibles proves that the earlier editions were independent productions; but as edition succeeded edition the text became gradually assimilated until there came into existence a German Vulgate, which was used indiscriminately by those who adhered to the mediæval Church and those who were dissenters from it. These German versions were largely, but by no means completely, displaced by Luther's translation. The Anabaptists, for example, retained this German Vulgate long after the publication of Luther's version, and these pre-Reformation German Bibles were to be found in use almost two hundred years after the Reformation.[100]
Whence sprang the demand for these vernacular versions of the Holy Scriptures? That the leaders of the mediæval Church viewed their existence with alarm is evident from the proclamation of the Primate of Germany, Berthold of Mainz, issued in 1486, ordering a censorship of books with special reference to vernacular translations of the Scriptures.[101] On the other hand, there is no evidence that these versions were either wholly or in great part the work of enemies of the mediæval Church. The mediæval Brethren, as they called themselves (Waldenses, Picards, Wiclifites, Hussites, etc., were names given to them very indiscriminately by the ecclesiastical authorities), had translations of the Scriptures both in the Romance and in the Teutonic languages as early as the close of the thirteenth century. The records of inquisitors and of councils prove it. But there is no evidence to connect any of these German versions, save, perhaps, one at Augsburg, [pg 151] and that issued by the Koburgers in Nürnberg, with these earlier translations. The growing spread of education in the fifteenth century, and, above all, the growth of a non-ecclesiastical piety which claimed to examine and to judge for itself, demanded and received these numerous versions of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.[102] The “common man” had the word of God in his hands, could read, meditate, and judge for himself. The effect of the presence of these vernacular Scriptures is apt to be exaggerated.[103] The Humanist, Conrad Celtes, might threaten the priests that the Bible would soon be seen in every village tavern; but we know that in these days of early printing a complete Bible must have been too expensive to be purchased by a poor man. Still he could get the Gospels or the Epistles, or the Psalter; and there is evidence, apart from the number of editions, that the people were buying and were studying the Scriptures. Preachers were exhorted to give the meaning of the passages of Scripture read in Church to prevent the people being confused by the different ways in which the text was translated in the Bibles in their possession. Stories were told of peasants, like Hans Werner, who worsted their parish priests in arguments drawn from Scripture. The ecclesiastical authorities were undoubtedly anxious, and their anxiety was shared by many who desired a reformation in life and manners, but dreaded any revolutionary movement. It was right that the children should be fed with the Bread of Life, but Mother Church ought to keep the bread-knife in her hands lest the children cut their fingers. Some publishers of the translations inserted prefaces saying that the contents of the volumes should be understood in the way taught by the Church, as was done in the Book of the Gospels, [pg 152] published at Basel in 1514. But in spite of all a lay religion had come into being, and laymen were beginning to think for themselves in matters where ecclesiastics had hitherto been considered the sole judges.