CHAPTER IV.

LUTHER.

THE Reformation of the sixteenth century nad its birth and growth in a union of spiritual and secular forces such as the world has seldom seen at any other period of its history. On the secular side, the times were full of new movements, intellectual and moral, political, social, and economic ; and spiritual forces were everywhere at work, which aimed at making religion the birthright and possession of the common man- whether king, noble, burgher, artisan, or peasant-as well as of the ecclesiastic, a possession which should directly promote a worthy life within the family and the State. These religious impulses had all a peculiar democratic element and were able to impregnate with passion and, for a time, to fuse together the secular forces of the period. Hence their importance historically. If the main defect in the earlier histories of the Reformation has been to neglect the secular sides of the movement, it is possible that more recent historians have been too apt to ignore the religious element which was a real power.

It may be an exaggeration to say, as is sometimes done, that this religious side of the Reformation began in the inward religious growth of a single personality-the river comes from a thousand nameless rills and not only from one selected fountain-head; yet Luther was so prominent a figure that the impulses in his religious life may be taken as the type of forces which were at work over a wide area, and the history of these forces may be fitly described in tracing the genesis and growth of his religious opinions from his early years to his struggle against Indulgences.

The religion taught by parents to children in pious German families seems to have been simple, unaffected and evangelical. Myconius relates how his father, a burgher, was accustomed to expound the Apostles' Creed to the boy and to tell him that Jesus Christ was the Saviour from all sins ; that the one thing needed to obtain God's pardon for sins was to pray and to trust ; and how he insisted above all that the forgiveness of God was a free gift, bestowed without fee by God on man for the sake of what Christ had done. Little books suitable for family instruction were in circulation in which were printed the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and sometimes one or two Psalms in the German tongue. Simple catechisms and other small books of devotion seem to have been in circulation which were full of very simple evangelical teaching. It is probable that Luther repeated a great deal of what was commonly taught to children in his own earliest years, when, in later days, he himself wrote little books for the young. Traces of this simple family piety, which insisted that all holiness came from "trusting in the holy passion of Christ," and that nothing which the sinner could do for himself availed anything, may be found all down the stream of medieval religious life in the most popular hymns and in the sermons of the great revival preachers.

Sometimes the desire to go on pilgrimage became almost an epidemic. Bands of children thronged the roads, bareheaded and clad in nothing but their shirts ; women left their families and men deserted their work. In vain preachers of morals like Geiler von Kaisersberg denounced the practice and said that on pilgrimages more sinners were created than sins pardoned. »-The terror swayed men and they fled to shrines where they believed they could find forgiveness ; the pilgrimage songs make a small literature ; and pilgrim guide-books, like the Mirabilia Romae and Die Walfart und Strosse zu Sont Jacob, appeared in many languages.

This revival of religion had its special effect on men destined to a religious life. -The secular clergy seem to have been the least affected. Chronicles, whether of towns or of families, bear witness to the degradation of morals among the parish priests and the superior clergy. The Benedictines and their dependent Orders of monks do not appear to have shared largely in the religious movement. It was different however with the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the mendicant Augustinians. These begging friars reformed themselves strenuously, in the medieval sense of reformation. They went back to their old lives of mortifying the flesh, of devoting themselves to works of practical benevolence and of self-denying activity. As a consequence, they, and not the parish clergy, had become the trusted religious leaders of the people. Their chapels were thronged by the common folk, and the better disposed nobles and burghers took them for their confessors and spiritual directors. It was in vain that the Roman Curia proclaimed, by its Legates in Germany, the old doctrine that the benefits of religious acts do not depend upon the personal character of the administrators; that it published regulations binding all parishioners to confess at least once a year to their parish priests. The people, high and low, felt that Bishops who rode to the Diet accompanied by their concubines disguised in men's clothing, and parish priests who were tavern-keepers or the most frequent customers at the village public-house, were not true spiritual guides. They turned for the consolations of religion to the poor-living, hard-working Franciscans and Augustinian Eremites who listened to their confessions and spoke comfortingly to their souls, who taught the children and said masses without taking fees. The last decades of the fifteenth century were the time of a revival in the spiritual power and devotion of the mendicant Orders.

Side by side with this flamboyant popular religion can be discerned another spiritual movement so unlike it, so utterly divergent from it in character and in aim, that it is surprising to detect its presence within the same areas and at the same period, and that we need scarcely wonder that it has been so largely overlooked. Its great characteristic was that laymen began to take into their own hands matters which had hitherto been supposed to be the exclusive property of churchmen. We can discern the impulse setting in motion at the same time princes, burghers, and artisans, each class in its own way.

The same assertion of the rights of laymen to do Christian work in their own way appears when the records of the boroughs are examined. The whole charitable system of the Middle Ages had been administered by the Churchy all bequests for the relief of the poor had been placed in the hands of the clergy ; and all donations for the çelief of the poor were given to clerical managers. The burghers saw the charitable bequests of their forefathers grossly perverted from their original purposes, and it began to dawn upon them that, although the law of charity was part of the law of Christ, it did not necessarily follow that all charities must be under ecclesiastical administration. Hence cases appear, and that more frequently as the years pass, where burghers leave their charitable bequests to be managed by the town council or other secular authority; and this particular portion of Christian work ceased to be the exclusive possession of the clergy.

Another feature of the times was the growth of an immense number of novel religious associations or confraternities. They were not, like the praying circles of the Mystics or of the Gottesfreunde, strictly non-clerical or anti-clerical ; they had no objection to the protection of the Church, but they had a distinctively lay character. Some of them were associations of artisans ; and these were commonly called Kalands, because it was one of their rules to meet once a month for divine service, usually in a chapel belonging to one of the mendicant Orders. Others bore curious names, such as St Ursula's Schifflein, and enforced a rule that all the members must pray a certain number of times a week. Pious people frequently belonged to a number of these associations. The members united for religious purposes, generally under the auspices of the Church ; but they were confraternities of laymen and women who had marked out for themselves their own course of religious duties quite independently of the Church and of its traditional ideals. Perhaps no greater contribution could be made to our knowledge of the quiet religious life at the close of the fifteenth century than to gather together in a monograph what can be known about these religious confraternities.

After three happy years at Eisenach Luther was sent to Erfurt and entered his name on the matriculation roll in letters which can still be read, Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeldt. Hans Luther had been prospering; he was able to pay for his son's college expenses ; Luther was no longer a "poor student," but was able to give undivided attention to his studies. The father meant the son to become a trained lawyer ; and the lad of seventeen seems to have accepted without question the career marked out for him.

The University teaching was medieval in all essentials, but represented the new, as Cologne championed the old, scholasticism. Gabriel Biel, the disciple of William of Occam, had been one of the teachers. Humanism of the German type, which was very different from the Italian, had found an entrance as early as 1460 in the persons of Peter Luder and Jacob Publicius, and in the following years there was a goo$. deal of intercourse between Erfurt scholars and Italian humanists. Maternus Pistoris was lecturing on the Latin classics in 1494 and had for his colleague Nicholas Marschalk, who was the first to establish a printing-press in Germany for Greek books. They had speedily gathered round them a band of enthusiastic scholars, Johannes Jäger of Drontheim (Crotus Rubeanus), Henry and Peter Eberach, George Burkhardt of Spelt (Spalatinus), John Lange, and others known afterwards in the earlier stages of the Reformation movement. Conrad Mutti (Mutianus Rufus), who had studied in Italy, was one of the leaders ; Eoban of Hesse (Helius Eoban us Hessus), perhaps the most gifted of them all, joined the circle in 1494. These humanists did not attack openly the older course of study at Erfurt. They wrote complimentary Latin poems in praise of their older colleagues ; they formed a select circle who were called the "Poets"; they affected to correspond with each other after the manner of the ancients. In private, Mutianus and Crotus seem to have delighted to reveal their eclectic theosophy to a band of half-terrified, half-admiring youths ; to say that there was but one God, who had the various names of Jupiter, Mars, Hercules, Jesus, and one Goddess, who was called Juno, Diana, or Mary as the worshippers chose ; but these things were not supposed to be for the public ear.

Luther's course of study flowed on regularly. He was a bright, sociable, hard-working student and took his various degrees in an exceptionally short time. He»was Bachelor in 1502, and Master in 1505, when he stood second among the seventeen successful candidates. He had attained what he had once thought the summit of earthly felicity and found himself marching in a procession of University magnates and civic dignitaries clothed in his new robes. His father, proud of his son's success, sent him the costly present of a Corpus Juris. He may have begun to attend lectures in the faculty of Law, when he suddenly retired into a convent and became a monk.

This action was so unexpected that his student friends made all sorts of conjectures about his reasons, and these have been woven into stories which are pure legends. Little or nothing is known about Luther's religious convictions during his stay at Erfurt. This is the more surprising since Luther was the least reticent of men. His correspondence, his sermons, his commentaries, all his books are full of little autobiographical details. He tells what he felt when a child, what his religious thoughts were during his school-days; but he is silent about his thoughts and feelings during his years at Erfurt, and especially during the months which preceded his plunge into the convent. He has himself made two statements about his resolve to become a monk, and they comprise the only accurate information obtainable. He says that the resolve was sudden, and that he left the world and entered the cloister because "he doubted of himself"; that in his case the proverb was true, "doubt makes a monk."

The Order of monks which Lutjier selected was the Augustinian Eremites. Their history was somewhat curious. Originally they had been formed out of the numerous hermits who lived solitary religious lives throughout Italy and Germany. Several Popes had desired to bring them together into convents ; and this was at last effected by Alexander IV, who had enjoined them to frame their constitution according to the Rule of St Augustine. No other order of monks shared so largely in the flligious revival of the fifteenth century. The convents which had reformed associated themselves together into what was called the Congregation. The reformed Augustinian Eremites strictly observed their vows of poverty and obedience ; they led self-denying lives ; they represented the best type of later medieval piety. Their convents were for the most part in the larger towns of Germany, and the monks were generally held in high esteem by the citizens who took them for confessors and spiritual directors. The Brethren were encouraged to study, and this was done so successfully that professorships in theology and in philosophy in most of the Universities of Germany in the fifteenth century were filled by Augustinian Eremites. They also cultivated the art of preaching ; most of the larger convents had a special preacher attached; and the townspeople flocked to hear him.

Their theology had little to do with Augustine ; nor does Luther appear to have studied Augustine until he had removed to Wittenberg. Their views belonged to the opposite pole of medieval thought and closely resembled those of the Franciscans. No Order paid more reverence to the Blessed Virgin. Her image stood in the Chapter-house of every convent; their theologians were strenuous defenders of the Immaculate Conception ; they aided to spread the " cult of the Blessed Anna." They were strong advocates of papal supremacy. In the person of John von Palz, the professor of theology in the Erfurt convent and the teacher of Luther himself, they furnished the most outspoken defender of papal Indulgences. This was the Order into which Luther so suddenly threw himself in 150^.

Soon after he had attained inward peace Luther was ordained, and Hans Luther came from Mansfeld for the ceremony, not that he took any pleasure in it, but because he did not wish to shame his eldest son. The sturdy peasant adhered to his anti-clerical Christianity, and when his son told him that he had a clear call from God to the monastic life, the father suggested that it might have been a prompting from the devil. Once ordained, it was Luther's duty to say mass and to hear confessions, impose penance and pronounce absolution. He had no difficulties about the doctrines and usages of the Church ; but he put his own meaning into the duties and position of a confessor. His own experience had taught him that man could never forgive sin ; that belonged to tifod alone. But the human confessor could be the spiritual guide of those who came to confess to him ; he could warn them against false grounds of confidence, and show them the pardoning grace of God.

Luther's theological studies were continued. He devoted himself to Augustine, to Bernard, to men who might be called " experimental " theologians. He began to show himself a good man of business, with an eye for the heart of things. Staupitz and his chiefs entrusted him with some delicate commissions on behalf of the Order, and made quiet preparation for his advancement. In 1508 he, with a few other brother monks, was transferred from the convent at Erfurt to that at Wittenberg, to assist the small University there.

Augustinian Eremites. There was not much money to spare at the Electoral Court. A sum got from the sale of Indulgences some years before, which Frederick had not allowed to leave the country, served to make a beginning. Prebends attached to the Castle Church-the Church of All Saints was its ecclesiastical name-furnished the salaries of some of the professors ; the other teachers were to be supplied from the monks of the convent of the Augustinian Eremites in the town. The Emperor Maximilian granted the usual imperial privileges, and the University was opened October 18, 1502. Staupitz himself was one of the professors and dean of the faculty of Theology; another Augustinian Eremite was dean of the faculty of Arts. The patron Saints of the Order, the Blessed Virgin and St Augustine, were the patron Saints of the University. Some distinguished teachers, outside the Augustinian Eremites, were induced to come, among others Jerome Schürf from Tübingen ; Staupitz collected promising young monks from convents of his Order and enrolled them as students; other youths were attracted by the teachers and came from various parts of Germany. The University enrolled 416 students during its first year. This success, however, appears to have been artificial ; the numbers gradually declined to 56 in the summer session of 1505. The first teachers left it for more promising places. Still Staupitz encouraged Frederick to persevere. New teachers were secured-among them Nicholas Amsdorf, who had then a great reputation as a teacher of the old-fashioned scholasticism, and Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. The University began to grow slowly.

Luther was sent to Wittenberg in 1508. He was made to teach the Dialectic and Physics of Aristotle, a task which he disliked, but whether in the University or to the young monks in the convent it is impossible to say. He also began to preach. His work was interrupted by a command to go to Rome on the business of his Order. The Augustinian Eremites, as has been already said, were divided into the unreformed and the reformed convents-the latter being united in an association which was called the Congregation. Staupitz was anxious to heal this schism and to bring all the convents in Germany within the reformation. Difficulties arose, and the interests of peace demanded that both the General of the Order and the Curia should be informed on all the circumstances. A messenger was needed, one whom he could trust and who would also be trusted by the stricter party among his monks. No one seemed more suitable than the young monk Martin Luther.

His official business did not cost much time ; he seems to have had no complaints to make against the Curia ; indeed the business on which he had been sent seems to have been settled in Germany by an amicable compromise. His official work done, he set himself to see the Holy City with the devotion of a pilgrim and the thoroughness of a German. He visited all the shrines, especially those to which Indulgences were attached. He climbed the thirty-eight steps which led to the vestibule of St Peter's-every step counting seven years' remission of penance ; he knelt before all the altars ; he listened reverently to all the accounts given him of the various relics and believed them all; he thought that if his parents had been dead, he could, by saying masses in certain chapels, secure them against purgatory. He visited the remains of antiquity which could tell him something of the life of the old Romans -the Pantheon, the Coliseum, and the Baths of Diocletian.

But if Luther was still unemancipated from his belief in relics, in the effect of pilgrimages, and in the validity of Indulgences for the remission of imposed penance, his sturdy German piety and his plain Christian morality turned his reverence of Rome into a loathing. The city he had greeted as holy, he found to be a sink of iniquity ; its very priests were infidel, and openly scoffed at the sacred services they performed ; the papal courtiers were men of depraved lives ; the Cardinals of the Church lived in open sin ; he had frequent cause to repeat the Italian proverb, first spread abroad by Machiavelli and by Bembo, " The nearer Rome the worfs Christian." It meant much for him in after-days that he had seen Rome for himself.

Luther was back in Wittenberg early in the summer of 1512. Staupitz sent him to Erfurt to complete the steps necessary for the higher graduation in Theology, preparatory to succeeding Staupitz in the Chair of Theology in Wittenberg. He graduated as Doctor of the Holy Scripture, took the Wittenberg doctor's oath to defend evangelical truth vigorously (viriliter), was made a member of the Senate three days later, and a few weeks after he succeeded Staupitz as Professor of Theology.

But about the middle of 1516 Luther had reached the parting of the ways, and the divergence appeared on the practical and not on the speculative side of theology. It began in a sermon he preached on the theory of Indulgences in July, 1516, and increased month by month-the widening divergence can be clearly traced step by step-until he could contrast "our theology," the theology taught by Luther and his colleagues at Wittenberg, with what was taught elsewhere and notably at Erfurt. The former represented Augustine and the Bible; the latter was founded on Aristotle. In September, 1517, his position had become so clear that he wrote against the scholastic theology, declaring that it was at heart Pelagian and that it obscured and buried out of sight the Augustinian doctrines of grace. He bewailed the fact that the current theology neglected to teach the supreme value of faith and of inward righteousness, that it encouraged men to seek to escape the due reward of sin by means of Indulgences, instead of exhorting them to practise that inward repentance which belongs to every genuine Christian life. It was at this stage of his own inward religious development that Luther felt himself forced to stand forth in public in opposition to the sale of Indulgences in Germany.

Luther began his work as a Reformer in an attack on what was called an Indulgence proclaimed in 1513 by Pope Leo X, farmed by Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, and preached by John Tetzel, a Dominican monk who had been commissioned by Albert to sell for him the " papal letters," as the Indulgence tickets were called. The money raised was to be devoted to the building of St Peter's Church in Rome, and to raise a tomb worthy of the great Apostle who, it was said, lay in a Roman grave. People had come to be rather sceptical about the destination of moneys raised by Indulgences ; but the buyers had their " papal letters," and it did not much matter to them where the money went after it had left their pockets. The seller of Indulgences had generally a magnificent welcome when he entered a German town. He drew near it in the centre of a procession with the Bull announcing the Indulgence, carried before him on a cloth of gold and velvet, and all the priests and monks of the town, the Burgomaster and Town Council, the teachers and the school-children and a crowd of citizens went out to meet him with banners and lighted candles, and escorted him into the town singing hymns. When the gates were reached all the bells began to ring, the church-organs were played, the crowd, with the commissary in their midst, streamed into the principal church, where a great red cross was erected and the Pope's banner displayed. Then followed sermons and speeches by the commissary and his attendants extolling the Indulgence, narrating its wonderful virtues, and inviting the people to buy. The Elector of Saxony had refused to allow the commissary to enter his territories ; but the commissary could approach most parts of the Elector's dominions without actually crossing the boundaries. Tetzel had come to Juterbogk in Magdeburg territory and Zerbst in Anhalt, and had opened the sale of Indulgences there ; and people from Wittenberg had gone to these places and made purchases. They had brought their "papal letters" to Luther and had demanded that he should acknowledge their efficacy. He had refused; the buyers had complained to Tetzel and the commissary had uttered threats ; Luther felt himself in great perplexity. The Indulgence, and the addresses by which it was commended, he knew, were doing harm to poor souls ; he got the letter of instructions given to Tetzel by his employer, the Archbishop of Mainz, and his heart waxed wroth against it. Still at the basis of the Indulgence, bad as it was, Luther thought that there was a great truth ; that it is the business of the Church to declare the free and sovereign grace of God apart from all human satisfactions.

Moreover, it must be remembered that in the course of Luther's religious life down to 1517 there are no traces of anything quixotic ; and that is a wonderful proof of the simplicity and strength of his character. He had something of a contempt for men who believe that they are born to set the world right ; he compared them to a player at ninepins who imagines he can knock down twelve pins when there are only nine standing. It was only after much hesitation and deep distress of mind that he felt compelled to interfere, and it was his intense earnestness in the practical moral life of his townsmen that compelled him to step forward. When he did intervene he went about the matter with a mixture of prudence and courage which were eminently characteristic of the man.

November, All Saints' Day. It was the anniversary of the consecration of the church, was commemorated by a prolonged series of services, and the benefits of an Indulgence were secured to all who took part in them. At noon on All Saints1 Day, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church. It was an academic proceeding. A doctor in theology offered to hold a disputation, such was the usual term, for the purpose of explaining the efficacy of the Indulgence. The explanation had ninety-five heads or propositions, all of which " Doctor Martin Luther, theologian," offered to make good against all comers. The subject, judged by the numberless books which had been written upon it, was eminently suitable for debate ; the propositions offered were to be matters of discussion ; and the author was not supposed, according to the usage of the times, to be definitely committed to the opinions he had expressed; they were simply heads of debate. The document differed however from most academic disputations in this that everyone wished to read it. A duplicate was made in German. Copies of the Latin original and of the German translation were sent to the University printing-house and the presses there could not throw them off fast enough to meet the demand which came from all parts of Germany.

The question which Luther raised in his theses was a difficult one ; the theological doctrine of Indulgences was one of the most complicated of the times, and ecclesiastical opinion on many of the points involved was doubtful. It was part of the penitential system of the medieval Church, and had changed from time to time according to the changes in that system. Indeed it may be said that in the matter of Indulgences doctrine had always been framed to justify practices and changes in practice. The beginnings go back a thousand years before the time of Luther.

In the ancient Church serious sins involved separation from the fellowship of Christians, and readmission to the communion was dependent not merely on public confession but also on the manifestation of a true repentance by the performance of certain satisfactions, such as the manumission of slaves, prolonged fastings, extensive almsgiving; which were supposed to be well-pleasing in God's sight, and were also the warrant for the community that the penitent might be again received within their midst. It often happened that these satisfactions were mitigated; penitents might fall sick and the prescribed fasting could not be insisted upon without danger of death-in which case the impossible satisfaction could be exchanged for an easier one, or the community might be convinced of the sincerity of the repentance without insisting that the prescribed satisfaction should be fully performed. These exchanges and mitigations are the germs out of which Indulgences grew.

Three conceptions, however, combined to effect a series of changes in the character of Indulgences, all of which were in operation in the beginning of the thirteenth century. These were the formulation of the thought of a Treasury of merits, the change of the institution of penance into the Sacrament of Penance, and the distinction between attrition and contrition. The two former led to the belief that the Pope alone had the power to grant Indulgences-the treasure needed a guardian to prevent its being squandered ; and, when Indulgences were judged to be extra-sacramental and a matter of jurisdiction and not of Orders, they belonged to the Pope, whose jurisdiction was supreme.

When the institution became the Sacrament of Penance it was divided into three parts-Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction ; and Absolution was made to accompany Confession and therefore to precede Satisfaction, which it had formerly followed. Satisfaction lost its old meaning. It was not the outward sign of inward sorrow, the test of fitness for pardon, and the necessary precedent of Absolution. According to the new theory, Absolution, which followed Confession and preceded Satisfaction, had the effect of removing the whole guilt of the sins confessed, and, with the guilt, the whole of the eternal punishment due ; but this cancelling of guilt and of eternal punishment did not open straightway the gates of Heaven. It was thought that the Divine righteousness could not permit the baptised sinner to escape all punishment; so the idea of temporal punishment was introduced, and these poenae temporales, strictly distinguished from the eternal, included punishment in Purgatory. The pains of Purgatory therefore were not included in the Absolution, and everyone must suffer these had not God in His mercy provided an alternative in temporal Satisfactions. This gave rise to a great uncertainty ; for who could have the assurance that the priest in imposing the Satisfaction or penance had calculated rightly and had assigned the equivalent which the righteousness of God demanded ? It was here that the new idea of Indulgences came in to aid the faithful. Indulgences in the sense of relaxations of imposed penance went into the background, and the valuable Indulgence was what would secure against the pains of Purgatory. Thus in the opinion of Alexander of Hales, of Bonaventura, and above all of Thomas Aquinas, the real value of Indulgences is that they procure the remission of penalties after Contrition, Confession, and Absolution, whether these penalties have been imposed by the priest or not; and when the uncertainty of the imposed penalties is considered, Indulgences are most valuable with regard to the unimposed penalties ; the priest might make a mistake, but God does not.

This doctrine of Attrition and its applications had not the undivided support of the Church of the later Middle Ages, but it was the doctrine which was taught by most of the Scotist divines who took the lead in theological thinking during these times. It was taught in its most pronounced form by such a representative man as John von Palz, who was professor of theology in the Erfurt monastery when Luther entered upon his monastic career ; it was preached by the Indulgence sellers ; it was specially valuable in securing good sales of Indulgences and therefore in increasing the papal profits. It lay at the basis of that whole doctrine and practice of Indulgences which confronted Luther when he felt~hhnself compelled to attack them.

Luther however approached the whole question not from the side of theological theory but from its practical moral effect on the minds of the common people, who were not theologians and on whom refined distinctions were thrown away; and the evidence that the people believed that the Indulgence remitted the guilt as well as the penalties of sins is overwhelming. Putting aside the statements or views of Hus, Wiclif, and the Piers Plowman series of poems, contemporary chroniclers are found describing Indulgences given for crusades or in times of Jubilee as remissions of guilt as well as of penalty ; contemporary preachers dwelt on the distinction between the partial and the plenary Indulgence, asserted that the latter meant remission of guilt as well as of penalty, and explained their statements by insisting that the plenary Indulgence included within it the Sacrament of Penance ; the popular guide-books written for pilgrims to Rome and Compostella spread the popular ideas about Indulgences, and this without any interference from the ecclesiastical authorities. The Mirabilia Romae, a very celebrated guide-book for pilgrims to Rome, which had gone through nineteen Latin and twelve German editions before the year 1500, says expressly that every pilgrim who visits the Lateran has forgiveness of all sins, of guilt as well as of penalty, and makes the same statement about the virtues of the Indulgences given to other shrines. The popular belief was so well acknowledged that even Councils had to excuse themselves from having fostered it, and did so by laying the blame on the preachers and sellers of Indulgences, or, like the Council of Constance, impeached the Pope •and compelled him to confess that he had granted Indulgences for the remission of guilt as well as of penalty. This widespread popular belief justified the attitude taken up by Luther.

Luther's Theses, in their lack of precise theological definition and of logical arrangement, are singularly unlike what might have been expected from a professional theologian ; and they contain repetitions which might easily have been avoided. They are not a clearly reasoned statement of a theological doctrine ; still less are they the programme of a scheme of reformation. They are simply ninety-five sledge-hammer blows directed against the most flagrant ecclesiastical abuse of the age. They look like the utterance of a man who was in close contact with the people, who had been shocked at statements made by the preachers of the Indulgence, who had read a good deal of the current theological opinions published in defence of Indulgences, and had noted several views which he longed to contradict as publicly as possible. They are prefaced with the expression of love and desire to elucidate the truth. They read as if they were addressed to the " common man " and appealed to his common sense of spiritual things. Luther had told the assembly of clergy, who met at Leitzkau in 1512 to discuss the affairs of the Church, that every true reformation must begin with individual men, and that it must have for its centre the regenerate heart, for its being an awakening faith, and for its inspiration the preaching of a pure Gospel.

The Theses had a circulation which for the times was unprecedented. They were known all over Germany, Myconius assures us, within a fortnight. This popularity was no doubt partly due to the growing dislike of papal methods of gaining money ; but there must have been more than that in it ; Luther was only uttering aloud what thousands of pious Germans had been thinking. The lack of all theological treatment must have increased their popularity. The sentences were plain and easily understood. They kept within the field of simple religious and moral truth. Their effect was so immediate that the sales of Indulgences began to decline. The Theses appealed to all those who had been brought up in the simple evangelical family piety and who had not forsaken it ; and they appealed also to all who shared that non-ecclesiastical piety which had been rising and spreading during the last decades of the fifteenth century. Both these forces, purely religious, at once rallied round the author.

Luther's hands as early as March 4, 1518, and was probably answered by Luther on March 24, although the answer was not published until August. The Theses had been sent to Rome by the Archbishop of Mainz. The Pope, Leo X, thinking that they represented a merely monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking the General of the Augustinian Eremites to keep things quiet among his monks. But at Rome, Silvester Mazzolini, called Prierias (from his birthplace, Prierio), a Dominican, Papal Censor for the Roman Province and an Inquisitor, was profoundly dissatisfied with Luther's declarations, and answered them in a book entitled A Dialogue about the power of the Pope, against the Presumptuous Conclusions of Martin Luther. In April, 1518, the Augustinian Eremites held their usual annual chapter at Heidelberg, and Luther went there in spite of many warnings that his life was not safe out of Wittenberg. At these general chapters some time was always spent in theological discussion, and Luther at last heard his Theses temperately discussed. He found the opposition to his views much stronger than he had expected, but the real discussion so pleased him that he returned to Wittenberg much strengthened and comforted. On his return he began a general answer to his opponents. The book, Resolutlones, was probably the most carefully prepared of all Luther's writings. It was meditated over long and rewritten several times. It contains an interesting and partly biographical dedication to Staupitz ; it is addressed to the Pope; it sets forth a detailed defence of the author's ninety-five conclusions on the subject of Indulgences.

This sudden summons (July, 1518) to appear before the Inquisitorial Office could be represented as an affront to Wittenberg; and Luther wrote to Spalatin, the Elector's chaplain, and the chief link between his Court and the University, suggesting that German princes ought to defend the rights of German universities attacked in his person. Spalatin immediately wrote to the Elector Frederick and to the Emperor Maximilian, both of whom were at Augsburg at the time. The Elector was jealous of the rights of his University, and he had a high regard for Luther, who had done so much to make his University the flourishing seat of learning it had become. The Emperor's keen political vision discerned a useful if obscure ally in the young German theologian. " Luther is sure to begin a game with the priests," he said ; "the Elector should take good care of that monk, for he will be useful to us some day." So the Pope was urged to suspend the summons and grant Luther a trial on German soil. The matter was left in the hands of the Pope's Legate in Germany, Cajetan (Thomas de Vio), and Luther was ordered to present himself before that official at Augsburg.

The Diet, which had just closed when Luther reached Augsburg, had witnessed some brilliant scenes. A Cardinal's hat had been bestowed on the Archbishop of Mainz with all gorgeous solemnities ; the aged Emperor Maximilian had been solemnly presented with the pilgrimage symbols of a hat and a dagger, both blessed by the Pope. His Holiness invited Germany to unite in a crusade against the Turks, and the Emperor would have willingly appeared as the champion of Christendom. But the German Princes, spiritual and secular, were in no mood to fulfil any demands made from Rome. The spirit of revolt had not yet taken active shape, but it could be expressed in a somewhat sullen refusal to agree to the Pope's proposals. The Emperor recognised the symptoms, and wrote to Rome advising the Pope to be cautious how he dealt with Luther His advice was thrown away. When, after wearying delays, the monk had his first interview with the Cardinal-Legate, he was told that no discussion could be permitted, private or public, until Luther had recanted his heresies, had promised not to repeat them, and had given assurance that he would not trouble the peace of the Church in the future. Being pressed to name the heresies, the adroit theologian named two opinions which had wide-reaching consequences-the 58th conclusion of the Theses and the statement in the Resolutlones that the sacraments were not efficacious apart from faith in the recipient. There was some discussion notwithstanding the Cardinal's declaration ; but in the end Luther was ordered to recant or depart. He departed ; and, after an appeal from the Pope ill-informed to the Pope to be well-informed, and also an appeal to a General Council, he returned to Wittenberg. There he wrote out an account of his interview with the Legate-the À eta Augustana-which was published and read all over Germany.

But the political condition of affairs in Germany was too delicate- the country was on the eve of the choice of a King of the Romans, and possibly of an imperial election-and the support of the Elector of Saxony too important, for the Pope to proceed rashly in the condemnation of Luther which had been pronounced by his Legate at Augsburg. It was resolved to send a special delegate to Germany to report upon the condition of affairs there. Care was taken to select a man who would be acceptable to the Elector. Charles von Miltitz belonged to a noble Saxon family ; he was one of the Pope's chamberlains, and for some years had been the Elector's agent at Rome. His Holiness did more to gain over Luther's protector. Frederick had long wished for that mark of the Pope's friendship, the Golden Rose, and had privately asked for it through Miltitz himself. The Golden Rose was now sent to him with a gracious letter. Miltitz was also furnished with formal papal letters to the Elector, to his councillors, to the magistrates of Wittenberg, and to several others-letters in which Luther figured as "a child of Satan." The phrase was probably forgotten when Leo wrote to Luther some time later and addressed him as his dear son.

Contemporary witnesses describe the common country carts which conveyed the Wittenberg theologians to the capital of Ducal Saxony, the two hundred students with their halberts and helmets who escorted their honoured professors into what was an enemy's country, the crowded inns and lodging-houses where the master of the house kept a man with a halbert standing beside every table to prevent disputes becoming bloody quarrels, the densely packed hall in Duke George's palace, the citizens' guard, the platform with its two chairs for the disputants and seats for academic and secular dignitaries, and the two theologians, both sons of peasants, met to protect the old or to cleave a way for the new. Eck's intention was to force Luther to make such a declaration as would justify him in denouncing his opponent as a partisan of the Bohemian heresy. The audience swayed with a wave of excitement, and Duke George placed his arms akimbo, wagged his long beard, and said aloud, " God help us ! the plague ! " when Luther was forced, in spite of protestations, to acknowledge that not all the opinions of Wiclif and Hus were wrong.

Three of these writings stand forth pre-eminently : The Liberty of a Christian Man ; To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation concerning the reformation of the Christian Commonwealth ; and On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church. They were all written during the year 1520, after three years spent in controversy, and at a time when Luther felt that he had completely broken with Rome. They are known in Germany as the three great Reformation treatises. The tract on Christian liberty was probably the last published (October, 1520), but it contains the principles which underlie the two others. It is a brief statement, free from all theological subtleties, of the priesthood of all believers, which is a consequence of the fact of justification by faith alone. The first part shows that everything which a Christian has can be traced back to his faith ; if he has faith, he has all: if he has not faith, he has nothing. The second part shows that everything which a Christian man does must come from his faith ; it is necessary to use all the ceremonies of divine service which have been found helpful for spiritual education ; perhaps to fast and practise mortifications; but these are not good things in the sense that they make a man good; they are all signs of faith and are to be practised with joy, because they are done to the God to Whom faith unites man. «

The Appeal To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation made the greatest immediate impression. Contemporaries called it a trumpet blast. It was a call to all Germany to unite against Rome. It was written in haste, but must have been long meditated upon. Luther wrote the introduction on the £3rd of June (1520); the printers worked as he wrote ; it was finished and published about the middle of August, and by the 18th of the month 4000 copies had gone into all parts of Germany and the printers could not supply the demand. This Appeal was the manifesto of a revolution sent forth by a true leader of men, able to concentrate the attack and direct it to the enemy's one vital spot. It grasped the whole situation; it summed up with vigour and directness all the grievances which had hitherto been stated separately and weakly ; it embodied every proposal of reform, however incomplete, and set it in its proper place in one combined scheme. All the parts were welded together by a simple and direct religious faith, and made living by the moral earnestness which pervaded the whole.

Reform had been impossible, the Appeal says, because the walls behind which Rome lay entrenched had been left standing-walls of straw and paper, but in appearance formidable fortifications. If the temporal Powers demanded reforms, they were told that the Spiritual Power was superior and controlling. If the Spiritual Power itself was attacked from the side of Scripture, it was affirmed that no one could say what Scripture really meant but the Pope. If a Council was called for to make the reform, men were informed that it was impossible to summon a Council without the leave of the Pope. Now this pretended Spiritual Power which made reform impossible was a delusion. The only real spiritual power existing belonged to the whole body of believers in virtue of the spiritual priesthood bestowed upon them by Christ Himself. The clergy were distinguished from the laity, not by an indelible character imposed upon them in a divine mystery called ordination, but because they were set in the commonwealth to do a particular work. If they neglected the work they were there to do, the clergy were accountable to the same temporal Powers which ruled the land. The statement that the Pope alone can interpret Scripture is a foolish one ; the Holy Scripture is open to all, and can be interpreted by all true believers who have the mind of Christ and come to the Word of God humbly and really seeking enlightenment. When a Council is needed, every individual Christian has a right to do his best to get it summoned, and the temporal Powers are there to represent and enforce his wishes.

Maximilian had died suddenly on the 12th of January, 1519. After some months of intriguing, the papal diplomacy being very tortuous, his grandson, Charles V, the young King of Spain, was unanimously chosen to be his successor (June 28). Troubles in Spain prevented him from leaving that country at once to take possession of his new dignities. He was crowned at Aachen on the 23rd of October, 1520, and opened his first German Diet on January 22, 1521.

The proceedings of this Diet were of great importance apart from its relation to Luther; but to the common people of Germany, to the papal Nuncios, Aleander and Caraccioli, and to the foreign envoys, the issues raised by Luther's revolt against Rome were the matters of absorbing interest. Girolamo Aleander had been specially selected by Pope Leo X to secure Luther's condemnation by the Emperor. He was a cultivated Churchman, who knew Germany well, and had been in intimate relations with many of the German humanists. His despatches and those of the envoys of England, Spain, and Venice witness to the extraordinary excitement among the people of all classes. Aleander had been in Germany ten years earlier, and had found no people so devoted to the Papacy as the Germans. Now all things were changed. The legion of poor nobles, the German lawyers and canonists, the professors and students, the men of learning and the poets, were all on Luther's side. Most of the monks, a large portion of the clergy, many of the Bishops, supported Luther, His friends had the audacity to establish a printing-press in Worms, whence issued quantities of the forbidden writings, which were hawked about in the market-place, on the streets, and even within the Emperor's palace. These books were eagerly bought and read with avidity ; large prices were sometimes given for them.

Next day Charles met the princes, and read them a paper in which he had written his own opinion of what ought to be done. The Germans pleaded for delay and negotiations with Luther. This was agreed to, and meetings were held in hopes of arriving at a conference. A commission of eight, representing the Electors, the nobles, and the cities, was appointed to meet with Luther. They were all sincerely anxious to arrive at a working compromise ; but the negotiations were in vain. The Emperor's assertion of the infallibility of a General Council, and Luther's phrase, a conscience fast bound to the Holy Scripture, could not be welded together by any diplomacy however sincere. The Word of God was to Luther a living voice speaking to his own soul, it was not to be stifled by the decisions of any Council ; Luther was ready to lay down his life, rather than accept any compromise which endangered the Christian liberty which came to men by justifying faith.

The negotiations having failed, the Ban of the Empire was pronounced against Luther. It was dated on the day on which Charles concluded his secret treaty with Pope Leo X, as if to make clear to the Pope the price which he paid for the condemnation of the Reformer. Luther was ordered to quit Worms on April 26th, and his safe-conduct protected him for twenty days, and no longer. At their expiration he was liable to be seized and destroyed as a pestilent heretic. On his journey homewards he was captured by a band of soldiers and taken to the Castle of the Wartburg by order of the Elector of Saxony. This was his " Patmos," where he was to be kept in safety until the troubles were over. His disappearance did not mean that he was no longer a great leader of men ; but it marks the time when the Lutheran revolt merges in national opposition to Rome.