§ 3 The Diet of Worms, 1521
The Diet of Worms. Jan. 1521.
Charles had been forced to let the revolt of the ‘comuneros’ in Spain run its course because of the serious problems in which he was involved by his position as an Austrian Prince and as Emperor. After his interview with Henry VIII. at Gravelines in the beginning of July, he had passed on to Germany to be crowned. Partly owing to need of money, partly because of an outbreak of the plague at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), this was delayed till October, and it was not till the following January, 1521, that he met his first Diet at Worms. Meanwhile he had settled the fate of the Austrian dominions. He had at first thought of keeping at least a portion of these lands in his own hands. Finally, however, while retaining the Netherlands and Franche-Comté, he granted to his brother Ferdinand the whole of the hereditary Austrian lands; to which were added the claims on Hungary and Bohemia, based on Ferdinand’s marriage with the Princess Anne. Thus Spain and Austria, which had been in Charles’ hands for two years, were once more divided, never to be again united. The questions which came before this important Diet were mainly three:
(1) The settlement of the Imperial Constitution.
(2) The war with France.
(3) The attitude to be adopted towards Luther.
1. The question of the reform of the Imperial Constitution revived those controversies, of which we have treated in speaking of Maximilian, and with very similar results. Charles had promised in his ‘Capitulations’ (p. 133) that the Council of Regency (Reichsregiment) which had existed for two brief years, 1500–1502, should be restored. But here, once more, the old controversies reappeared. The Electors wished that the Council should constitute the supreme administrative body in home and foreign affairs, even when Charles was present in Germany, and that its members should be elected by the States with the sole exception of the President, who was to be nominated by the Emperor. Charles, however, was fully determined to protect his imperial prerogatives. His views as to the imperial office were, if possible, more exalted than those of his grandfather. In his opening speech on the 28th of January, the day consecrated to the memory of Charles the Great, he declared that ‘no monarchy was comparable to the Roman Empire. This the whole world had once obeyed, and Christ Himself had paid it honour and allegiance. Unfortunately it was now only a shadow of what it had been, but he hoped with the help of those powerful countries and alliances which God had granted him, to raise it to its ancient glory.’ ‘My will,’ he said subsequently, ‘is not that there should be many, but one master, as befits the traditions of the Roman Empire.’ Yet the needs of Charles were great, and had the Diet been of one mind it might have forced its views upon him. The old jealousies, however, still existed, and Charles, by playing upon these, was able to make it abate something of its demands. It was accordingly agreed that the Emperor should nominate, not only the President, but two assessors. Of the other twenty members, the seven Electors were each to send one delegate; the six Circles, with Austria and the Netherlands, one apiece. From the imperial towns two more were to come, while one Elector in rotation, one temporal and one spiritual Prince, were always to have a seat. The Council, thus constituted, was to have the initiative in the negotiation of foreign alliances, and in settling feudal questions, subject, however, to the confirmation of the Emperor. Its powers, for the present at least, were only to continue during Charles’ absence. At the same time, the Imperial Chamber (Reichskammergericht) was slightly altered. The Emperor was to nominate the President and two assessors. The others were to be elected by the Electors and the Circles, while two were to represent the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg. The most difficult question yet remained. How were the members of these bodies to be paid? If no permanent revenue were established, continuity would be impossible, and if the Emperor were to pay them, the real control would lie with him. Accordingly, the old controversies began again. The plan of the Common Penny having failed (p. 111), the novel idea of establishing a system of custom-duties on all imports coming into the Empire was suggested. Had this been carried, a kind of customs-union (Zollverein) would have been set on foot which might in time have led the way to a closer political union. It was, however, violently opposed by the towns and merchants, who declared that the burden would fall on them and ruin trade; and, accordingly, the Diet fell back on the system of the ‘matricula’ of 1507 (cf. p. 114).
2. Difficulties also arose on the question of the army. The war with France had already been commenced by the invasion of Spanish Navarre by the French, and by the attack of Robert de la Marck, the Lord of Bouillon, on Luxembourg. Charles also was eager to enter Italy that he might put it to the arbitrament of war, ‘whether he should become a very poor Emperor, or Francis a sorry King.’ Yet all the Diet would provide was a levy of some 4000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry, levied on the separate states according to the system of the ‘matricula.’ It was further decreed that each contingent should be under its own officers, and that the commander-in-chief, though appointed by the Emperor, must be a German. This ‘matricula’ or imperial roll was the last ever drawn up, and thus became the model for future imperial levies. From 1535 onwards, the system was gradually adopted of substituting for the men themselves the money necessary to pay the contingent—the money being assessed on the separate States, according to their liability on the roll of 1521. The grants were termed ‘Roman Months,’ because they originated with the vote for the Roman expedition of 1521.
In these constitutional struggles, Charles had obtained something. He had at least succeeded in retaining more control over the Council of Regency and the Imperial Chamber than his grandfather had enjoyed. Yet the Diet had gained much. It had now a real share in the executive and judicial administration of the Empire, and Charles would be more often absent than present. For the rest, as before, the reforms were mainly in the interest of the Electors and more powerful Princes. The towns, though represented in the Council, could easily be outvoted, and had failed, in spite of urgent protests, to secure any delegates in the Imperial Chamber. Devoid of popular support, the Imperial Chamber failed to enforce its judicial authority, while the next few years were to prove conclusively that the Council was powerless to maintain order.
3. The last question—that of the attitude of the Diet towards Luther—was to prove a far more serious question than any one at that time dreamt of—a question which was to affect deeply the future history not only of the Empire, but of Europe.
The Renaissance and the Reformation.
The Reformation was the outcome of two forces, independent in origin, and never wholly in agreement: the Renaissance, and the desire for reform in dogma and practice. Of these, the first owes its birth to Italy. The Italians, despairing of political unity or stability, yet excelling other people in material prosperity and comfort, betook themselves to the study of the past for which their unbroken connection with the language and memories of Rome well fitted them. The movement, beginning in the earlier decades of the fifteenth century, had made rapid strides before it closed, and was many-sided. In art, it was marked by a return to the study of the antique; in literature, by a fresh taste for prose and poetry, founded on classic models; in scholarship, it was accompanied by the discovery of ancient manuscripts, and the revival of criticism; in philosophy, it led to a revival of the knowledge of Plato; in natural science, to a more critical inquiry into the nature of the earth and its relation to the system of the universe.
But the principles which underlay and actuated these different energies were the same. Mediæval thought had striven to sacrifice the individual. It had taught men to crucify the body with its fleshly lusts, to check the rebellious passion for independence and individuality. It had bidden men accept without question the authority of the Church, and of the temporal power. The new spirit revolted from all these doctrines. It preached the dignity of man, and of this life. It questioned the virtue of asceticism, and lusted after the world in thought and deed. It proclaimed the right of the individual to think, and feel, and shape his creed according to the dictates of reason. It inculcated the lessons of inquiry, of criticism, of naturalism. Thus a new paradise was opened to the imagination, and men rushed headlong into it with a pleasing sense of freedom. There was much that was valuable, and indeed necessary to progress, in this movement of emancipation. It led to more accurate observation, to more careful criticism, to greater regard for literature, and to the triumph of individualism. Nevertheless, it had its darker side. It was accompanied by much riot and licence. The sensuous delight in form and colour betrayed some into sensuality; the undue devotion to things of this world led to a mundane pagan spirit; criticism, to scepticism and infidelity. The atmosphere of the Renaissance was indeed inimical to that of the Christian life, yet, with a few exceptions, the Italians made no direct attack upon the Church. The literary men were well content to leave an institution alone, which was so closely wrapped up with their past traditions and with the general culture of the day, and which so conveniently patronised them, and even tolerated their satires, so long as they left her government and her dogmas alone. With the philosophers it was different. Yet even they assailed Christianity rather than the Church; and if Ficino tried to reconcile Christianity and Platonism, or Pomponazzi questioned the immortality of the soul, these scholars affected to distinguish between science and religion, and while they speculated as philosophers, professed to believe as Christians. Thus there is hardly any humanist of Italy, if we except Laurentius Valla, who attacked the claims of the Pope to interfere in temporal affairs, or the tradition that the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles; and even he, for the sake of papal protection, easily retracted his errors.
For the rest, the Italian humanists were scarcely serious enough to undertake a reformation of the Church. Their temper, if not anti-religious, was irreligious, and their lives, with few exceptions, as loose as those of the churchmen whom they lampooned. Reformers there were indeed in Italy, but these had no connection with the humanists. They were men of the type of Savonarola, whose sole idea of reform was one of morals and of life, and who had no quarrel with the dogmas, or the organisation of the Church.
No sooner did the Renaissance cross the Alps than, in the hands of the more earnest-minded Germans, it became more serious and more theological, less philosophical and more dogmatic. Criticism they now applied to the Church, and in another sense to the Bible, with the intention not of destroying Christianity but of restoring it to its primitive purity.
Reuchlin and Erasmus.
Among numerous scholars who rose in Germany at the close of the fifteenth century, the two most characteristic representatives of the age were John Reuchlin (1455–1522) and Desiderius Erasmus (1467–1536). Reuchlin is chiefly noticeable for his revival of the study of Hebrew, a study which he applied to the criticism of the Vulgate, and for his attempt to save the Jewish writings from indiscriminate destruction at the hands of the bigoted Dominican Hochstraten. Although a philologist, rather than a theologian, he may yet be called the father of Old Testament criticism, and during the struggle over the Jewish literature, the conflict between the old and new ideas is strongly emphasised.
But the most famous child of the German revival is Erasmus. Educated at the school of Deventer, a school which owed its origin to the Brethren of the Common Life, he was, at the date of the Diet of Worms, looked upon as the greatest scholar of his age, and enjoyed a reputation such as probably has never been equalled since. If Reuchlin may be called the father of Old Testament criticism, Erasmus may be termed the father of New Testament criticism, and of scientific theology. In 1505, he republished Valla’s notes on the New Testament, the solitary piece of biblical criticism which had come from Italy. This was followed, in 1516, by his Greek edition of the New Testament, with a Latin translation and notes. The aim of these works was to revive the knowledge of the original, and by the collation of such MSS. as were procurable, to furnish as correct a version as possible of the text. In the notes, Erasmus applied the canons of ordinary criticism to the New Testament, and thereby laid the foundations of modern biblical scholarship. The aim of his third work, the Enchiridion Militis Christi, may be gathered from a letter to his friend Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s: ‘I write,’ he says, ‘to remedy the error which makes religion depend on ceremonies and on observance of bodily acts, while neglecting true piety.’ With these views Erasmus was naturally a severe critic of the existing state of things. He lamented the ignorance of many churchmen who dreaded the new learning without understanding it; who went so far as to denounce Hebrew and Greek as heretical because they were not the language of the Vulgate, and whose bigotry had just been so conspicuously displayed in the Reuchlin controversy. He despised the idleness of the monks, and the intolerable narrowness of the scholastic pedants, with their barren disputations and endless hair-splittings. He denounced the folly of that Church which insisted on every tittle of outward ceremony and dogma, and yet neglected practical piety. These were the objects of his satirical pen in his Praise of Folly, which was written in England in 1509. In this wonderful satire, Folly, declaring herself the real source of happiness, represents herself as the authoress of all the superstition, the pedantry, the idleness, the hypocrisy, which were so prosperous in the world.
Nor was the satire of Erasmus the only one which appeared at this time. The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brandt in 1494, and the more famous Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, which arose out of the Reuchlin controversy, deal with much the same evils, though without the literary refinement of the northern scholar; while the Ship of Fools is specially noticeable as having been originally written in German, and therefore written for the people, not to the scholars. But although these and other writings indicate how deeply Germany was stirred by the corruptions of the Church, and although they had done much to prepare the way, there was as yet no idea of breaking away from her. Men still looked to internal reform by Council, or if not, by some other method.
It has been usual to accuse Erasmus of half-heartedness in the cause of religion, of carelessness in his private life, and of time-serving in his public conduct. There is certainly some truth in this attack, and assuredly he was not the man to raise the standard of avowed rebellion. As he himself confessed, he was not of the stuff of which martyrs were made. He was a scholar who loved peace, and had nothing of the religious enthusiast about him. But quite apart from his character, his whole intellectual position was incompatible with that of the Reformation, as the Protestants understand the meaning of the word. Erasmus belongs to that school of broad churchmen, who did not believe that the cure for the evils afoot was to be found in the assertion of new dogmas. In their view, too much dogma was insisted upon already. Much was at least not comprehensible to the multitude, and, if to be altered, should be altered by the slow dissolvent of learned criticism. Reform with them meant a gradual autumnal change, which might take place without violently breaking with the past, while the moral principles acknowledged by all should be enforced, and made more real. In short, Erasmus is the father of modern latitudinarianism, as well as of biblical criticism. His whole nature shrank from more violent methods, and he feared their results. He foresaw the extravagances, the controversies, and the schisms which would inevitably follow, and delay the triumph of rational theology. The Reformation of the sixteenth century could not be guided by him; but, as it has been well said, perhaps the Reformation that is to come will trace itself back to Erasmus.
Martin Luther, 1483–1546.
The final breach with Rome was not to come from scholars of world-wide reputation, but from the son of a Thuringian peasant who, although of robust mind, was an indifferent Greek scholar, and knew no Hebrew. In dealing with Martin Luther it is of importance to remember the various steps in his career.
Driven by the consciousness of sin and the desire of spiritual peace he had, at the age of twenty-two, entered the Order of the Augustinian Friars at Erfurt, much against the wish of his father (1505). Here he subjected himself to the severest discipline, but without avail. ‘If ever a monk had got to heaven by monkery, I should have been he,’ he said subsequently; ‘for all that a monk could do, I did.’ Repeated acts of penance did not save him from new temptations, and God remained in his eyes an inexorable judge, demanding obedience to an impossible law. From this condition of despair, Luther was delivered by Staupitz, the Vicar-General of his Order, who counselled a closer study of the Bible, especially of the writings of St. Paul, and of the Latin father, St. Augustine. Here, in the Augustinian doctrine of justification by faith, he at last found peace; in the text, ‘The just shall live by faith,’ appeared the solution of his difficulties. The sinner was not to be saved by his own efforts or work, but by throwing himself unreservedly on the mercies of a loving God; thus received into a state of grace, the faithful believer found penitence no longer painful, but a spontaneous act of love, while work and life for God alone became easy. In this view he was strengthened at a later date by discovering that the Greek word for penitentia was μετάνοια—in other words, that the efficacy of penance did not consist in the external ecclesiastical penalty, but in the inward change of heart. In thus asserting the Augustinian doctrine of justification by faith, Luther was only reviving what had been held by many Fathers of the early Church—a doctrine which had indeed of late been overclouded by the contrary one of the justification by works, but which had never been wholly discarded. It is no doubt true that these opposing and contradictory dogmas are incapable of entire reconciliation, nor must either of them be forced to their logical conclusion, for if we are justified by God’s grace alone, where is the necessity for works; and if by works alone we are saved, where is the need for a Redeemer? No doubt, once more, the doctrine of the justification by faith is, if it be carried to an extreme, apt to lead, and has in fact led, to fanatical fatalism and antinomianism. To Luther, however, it seemed that the evils which followed on the adoption of the contrary doctrine were worse; as if frail men could by their unaided efforts extort salvation from the Almighty. To hold this view was to nurse that very spiritual pride which was the cause of the existing corruption. The only hope for moral reformation lay in bringing man to believe in his utter unworthiness in the sight of God; thus alone could he attain that spirit of humility which was the essential preliminary to a godly life.
In 1508, Luther was summoned by Staupitz to teach at the university of Wittenberg, just founded by Frederick the Wise of Saxony. In 1510, he visited Rome, a visit which only served to strengthen him in his conviction that spiritual pride, the characteristic fault of the Renaissance, was the enemy to be withstood, and to deepen his dislike of those ceremonial observances of the Church which consecrated the belief in the efficacy of works. Luther had returned to Wittenberg to carry on his teaching, when the visit of Tetzel, a Dominican, to Germany, offering papal indulgences to those who would contribute money to the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, aroused him to immediate action. The doctrine of indulgences originated in the not unnatural view, that while penitence reconciled the sinner to God, the wrong done to man had yet to be punished, and that the punishment, like that for worldly offences, could be commuted by a fine. But the system had been shamefully abused. The Church declared that she held, in the works of supererogation of the faithful, a treasure from which she could draw for the remission of penalties, and, in her eager desire to gain money, granted indulgences carelessly and without insisting on the previous penitence of the offender. She even claimed the power of remitting the punishment of those in purgatory. Whatever may be said in defence of the primitive system of indulgences, it cannot be denied that in their exaggerated form they led to grievous abuse, and involved a flat denial of the necessity of grace. Accordingly Luther, in pursuance of academic custom, nailed on the door of the church at Wittenberg his famous ninety-five theses, in which he controverted the theory of indulgences, and challenged all comers to disprove the correctness of his statements (October 17, 1517).
The views of Luther were not original. Several theologians before him, even Cardinal Ximenes himself, had protested against the scandalous abuse of indulgences. Nor did Luther dream of rebelling against Mother Church. He did not deny the value of indulgences altogether, but declared that, in his opinion, the Pope could not thereby remit the guilt of sin nor abate the penalties of those who had already passed to their account. Further, he declared that the extravagant views he was combating were the invention of the schoolmen, not of the Church, which had never formally accepted them. He therefore demanded an expression of the mind of the Pope and Church thereon. Luther asked for discussion and for argument; he was met with assertion and denunciation. Tetzel in his answer disdained to discuss the question of indulgences at all, and he asserted the claim of the Pope to determine matters of opinion and to interpret Scripture. The Dominican Prierias declared that neither a Council presided over by the Pope, nor the Pope himself, could err when he gave an official decision, and branded all those as heretics who did not accept the doctrines of the Church and Popes, as the rule of faith. Cardinal Cajetan, who was sent as papal legate to the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, although he secretly agreed with Luther as to the abuse of indulgences, refused all disputation, and demanded a recantation and silence for the future. Luther’s subsequent promise to keep silence on his part, if it were adhered to on the other, could not possibly be kept, and the discussion soon broke out afresh.
Meanwhile, the ground of controversy had shifted. It was no longer a question of indulgences, but of papal power and the authority of tradition. The extravagant assertions of the papal advocates were met by more outspoken, more violent, and sometimes by unseemly language on the part of Luther. Wider reading now convinced him that his views were not novel, but had been anticipated by others, such as John Huss, John Wessel, and even by the humanist Laurentius Valla; while he was strengthened by the increasing support he met with in Germany. Ulrich von Hutten, a man whose love of satire outran his better taste, embittered the controversy by the biting epigrams of his Vadiscus (1519): ‘Three things maintain the dignity of Rome—the authority of the Pope, the relics of the saints, the sale of indulgences. Three things are feared at Rome—a General Council, a reform of the Church, the opening of the eyes of the Germans. Three things are excommunicated at Rome—indigence, the primitive Church, the preaching of truth.’ Finally, Luther, in his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (July, 1520), still more in his tractate on the Babylonish Captivity (October, 1520), was led on not only to deny the authority of the Pope, but to question the divine institution of the priesthood, and the authority of tradition, and to attack the mediæval doctrine of Transubstantiation. That Luther had now definitely put himself outside the Church, cannot be gainsaid. Yet at least it should be remembered that he was driven to his final position by the knowledge that he was already condemned, and that the Bull of excommunication had been issued as early as June 1520, although not published in Germany till later. Luther, therefore, throwing all hopes of conciliation to the winds, declared the Bull a forgery and the author of it Antichrist, and on December 10, 1520, burnt it publicly at Wittenberg.
Whether, considering the character of Luther, his earnestness, his bluntness, his fearlessness, his want of scholarly refinement, and his violence, he might have been checked by a more conciliatory attitude on the part of his opponents; or whether, again, had he been conciliated, another leader in the existing ferment of German feeling would not have arisen, may well be questioned. But at least the conduct of the papal court could not have been more indiscreet or less statesmanlike. Leo X. himself, with his cynical indifference to such matters, might very possibly have acted otherwise; but the attack on indulgences threatened the whole machinery of papal finance and administration, and the officials of the Curia drove him on. We cannot but deplore that a Church, which could treat with leniency unorthodoxy on such fundamental questions as the immortality of the soul, should have refused to listen to the criticism of her system of indulgences, especially as we know that the system, in its abuse at any rate, pricked the consciences of so many of her most loyal sons. That the conduct of Luther is open to blame must be allowed. That he too lightly cast away the traditions of the Church, and too confidently believed in the possibility of finding all that was necessary to salvation, and for the organisation of the Church in the Bible alone; that many of his doctrines have been exaggerated and have led to much evil; that the immediate results of the Reformation were neither to promote learning, nor to advance the spirit of toleration—all this cannot be denied. That the revolt which was thus inaugurated was to break the unity of the Church, to lead to endless schism, and verily to bring a sword on earth, we must all regret. But Rome, at least, determined that it should be so; and we may fairly doubt whether the reform of that corruption, which had eaten so deeply into her system, could have been effected at a less costly price.
Such was the position of affairs when the Diet of Worms met. The question was whether the Diet would enforce the Bull and place Luther under the ban of the Empire—a question fraught with momentous issues.Luther and the Diet. Leo X., without allowing Luther to be heard in self-defence, urged Charles to execute the Bull. But though the Emperor himself was in favour of such a course, and was supported by his confessor Glapion, many of his advisers, notably Chièvres, and Gattinara, his chancellor, were of a contrary opinion. They knew the support which Luther had already received in Germany from the poorer nobles, the poets, the lawyers, and the men of letters, and what that support was we may learn from the papal agent, Aleander: ‘Nine-tenths of Germany shouts for Luther; and the other one-tenth, if it does not care for Luther, at least cries, Down with the Roman court, and demands a Council to be held in Germany.’ It was not to be expected that the Diet would dare to disregard this popular feeling. Moreover, although the majority were wholly opposed to the doctrinal views held by Luther, many of its members sympathised with his desire for reform in matters of Church government and discipline. The Diet, therefore, demanded that Luther should be heard, declaring at the same time that, if he persisted in his heretical views, contrary to the doctrine and faith ‘which they, their fathers, and fathers’ fathers had held,’ they were ready to condemn him. Besides all this, the advisers of Charles were not blind to the political advantages which might be gained from the situation. Maximilian had once said: ‘Let the Wittenberg monk be taken good care of; we may want him some day,’—and the day had come. Leo was still hesitating between the alliance of Charles and Francis, and the threat of referring the whole question to a General Council might be used to force his hand.
Luther was accordingly summoned to Worms under promise of a safe-conduct. If now he had consented to retract his doctrines on matters of faith, and had confined himself to the question of internal reform, he would probably have received the hearty support of the Diet. But this was far from his intention, and his uncompromising conduct played for the moment into the hands of Rome. He had expected that he would be asked for a defence of his opinions; he was ordered to retract his heresies on points of doctrine. This he declined to do. To the demand that he would acknowledge the Emperor and the Diet as judges of his doctrines, he answered that he would not allow men to judge of God’s word. He even refused to submit to the decisions of a General Council ‘unless his views were refuted by Scripture or by cogent reason.’ Thus he became in the eyes of Charles not only a heretic, but, what was worse, a rebel; and the alliance of the Pope having now been secretly secured, Luther was no longer wanted for political purposes. Charles, therefore, was eager for the publication of the ban and for an order that the books of the heretic should be burnt. So great, however, was the repugnance of the Diet to face the unpopularity of this act that Charles only succeeded in gaining its assent at its last session (May 25), after Frederick of Saxony and the Elector Palatine had left. Luther meanwhile had fled to the Castle of the Wartburg in Saxony, where he lay hid under the protection of Frederick the Wise. He had now been excommunicated, and the excommunication had been ratified by the Diet. The future was to see whether the Emperor could enforce the decision of the Diet in Germany.