Part 4

From the first Luther's lectures in theology differed from those ordinarily given at the time. He had no opinions on theological subjects at variance with the theology taught at Erfurt and elsewhere. No one attributed any heretical views to the young Wittenberg professor. He differed from others because he looked at theology in a more practical way. He thought it ought to be made useful to guide men to the grace of God and to tell them how to persevere in a life of joyous obedience to God and His commandments. His teaching was "experimental" from the beginning. Besides he believed that he had been specially set apart to lecture on the Holy Scriptures, and he began by commenting on the Psalms and on the Epistles of St Paul. He never knew much Hebrew and was not specially strong in Greek; so he used the Vulgate in his prelections. He had a huge widely printed volume on his desk, and wrote the notes for his lectures on the margins and between the lines. Some of the pages survive. They contain in the germ the leading thoughts of what became Lutheran theology. At first he expressed himself in the phrases common to scholastic theology, when these were found to be inadequate in words borrowed from the mystical writers of the 14th and 15th centuries, and then in new phrases more appropriate to the circle of fresh thoughts. Those new thoughts at first simply pushed aside the ordinary theology taught in the schools without staying to criticize it. Gradually, however, Luther began to find that there was some real opposition between what he was teaching and the theology he had been taught in the Erfurt convent. It appeared characteristically enough on the practical and not on the speculative side of theology in a sermon on _Indulgences_ preached in July 1516. Once begun the breach widened, until Luther could contrast "our theology" with what was taught at Erfurt, and by September he began to write against the scholastic theology, to declare that it was Pelagian at heart, that it repudiated the Augustinian doctrines of grace, and neglected to teach the supreme value of that faith "which throws itself upon God."

These lectures and the teaching they contained soon made a great impression. Students began to flock to the small obscure university of Wittenberg, and the elector grew proud of the teacher who was making his university famous. It was at this interesting stage of his own religious career that he felt himself compelled to stand forth in opposition to what he believed to be a great religious scandal, and almost unconsciously to become a Reformer.

Luther began his work as a Reformer by proposing to discuss the true meaning of Indulgences. The occasion was an Indulgence proclaimed by Pope Leo X., farmed by the archbishop of Mainz, and preached by John Tetzel, a Dominican monk and a famed seller of Indulgences. Many of the German princes had no great love for Indulgence sellers, and Frederick of Saxony had prohibited Tetzel from entering his territories. But it was easy to reach most parts of Electoral Saxony without actually crossing the frontiers. The Red Cross of the Indulgence seller had been set up at Zerbst and at Jüterbogk, and people had gone from Wittenberg to buy the _Papal Tickets_. Luther believed that the sales were injurious to the morals of the townsmen; he had heard reports of Tetzel's sermons; he had become wrathful on reading the letter of recommendation of the archbishop; and friends had urged him to interfere. He protested with a characteristic combination of caution and courage. The church of All Saints (the castle church) was closely connected with the university of Wittenberg. Its doors were commonly used for university proclamations. The Elector Frederick was a great collector of relics and had stored them in his church. He had procured an Indulgence for all who attended its services on All Saints' Day, and crowds commonly gathered. Luther nailed ninety-five _theses_ on the church door on that day, the 1st of November 1517, when the crowd could see and read them.

The proceeding was strictly academic. The matter discussed, to judge by the writings of theologians, was somewhat obscure; and Luther offered his _theses_ as an attempt to make it clearer. No one was supposed to be committed to every opinion he advanced in such a way. But the _theses_ posted somehow touched heart and conscience in a way unusual in the common subjects of academic disputation. Every one wanted to read them. The University Press could not supply copies fast enough. They were translated into German, and were known throughout Germany in less than a fortnight. Within a month they had been heard of all over western and southern Europe. Luther himself was staggered at the way they were received. He said he had never meant to determine, but to debate.

The _theses_ were singularly unlike what might have been expected from a professor of theology. They made no attempt at theological definition, no pretence at logical arrangement; they were anything but a brief programme of reformation. They were simply ninety-five sledge-hammer blows directed against the most flagrant ecclesiastical abuse of the age. They were addressed to the "common" man and appealed to his common sense of spiritual things.

The practice of offering, selling and buying Indulgences (see INDULGENCE) was everywhere common in the beginning of the 16th century. The beginnings go back more than a thousand years before the time of Luther. In the earliest church life, when Christians fell into sin, they were required to make public confession before the congregation, to declare their sorrow, and to vow to perform certain acts which were regarded as evidence of the sincerity of their repentance. When the custom of public confession before the congregation had changed to private confession to the clergy, it became the confessor's duty to impose these satisfactions. It was thought only right that there should be some uniformity in dealing with repentant sinners, and books appeared giving lists of sins and what were supposed to be suitable satisfactions. When the sins confessed were very heinous the satisfactions were correspondingly severe and sometimes lasted over many years. About the 7th century arose a custom of commuting or relaxing these imposed satisfactions. A penance of several years fasting might be commuted into saying so many prayers, or giving an arranged amount in alms, or even into a money-fine. In the last case the analogy of the Wergeld of the German tribal codes was commonly followed. The usage generally took the form that any one who visited a church, to which the Indulgence had been attached, on a day named, and gave a contribution to its funds, had his penance shortened by one-seventh, one-third or one-half, as might be arranged. This was the origin of Indulgences properly so-called. They were always mitigations of satisfactions or penances which had been imposed by the church as outward signs of inward sorrow, tests of fitness for pardon, and the needful precedents of absolution. Luther uttered no protest against Indulgences of this kind. He held that what the church had imposed the church could remit.

This old and simple conception of Indulgences had been greatly altered since the beginning of the 13th century. The institution of penance had been raised to the dignity of a sacrament, and this had changed both the place and the character of satisfactions. Under the older conception the order had been Sorrow (_Contritio_), Confession, Satisfaction (or due manifestation of sorrow in ways prescribed) and Absolution. Under the newer theory the order was Sorrow, Confession, Absolution, Satisfaction, and both satisfaction and sorrow took new meanings. It was held that Absolution removed guilt and freed from eternal punishment, but that something had to be done to free the penitent from temporal punishment whether in this life or in purgatory. Satisfactions took the new meaning of the temporal punishments due in this life and the substitute for the pains of purgatory. The new thought of a treasury of merits (_thesaurus meritorum_) introduced further changes. It was held that the good deeds over and above what were needed for their own salvation by the living or by the saints in heaven, together with the inexhaustible merits of Christ, were all deposited in a treasury out of which they could be taken by the pope and given by him to the faithful. They could be added to the satisfactions actually done by penitents. Thus Satisfactions became not merely signs of sorrow but actual merits, which freed men from the need to undergo the temporal pains here and in purgatory which their sins had rendered them liable to. By an Indulgence merits could be transferred from the storehouse to those who required them. The change made in the character of Sorrow made Indulgences all the more necessary for the indifferent penitent. On the older theory Sorrow (_Contritio_) had for its one basis love to God; but on the newer theory the starting-point might be a less worthy king of sorrow (_Attritio_) which it was held would be changed into the more worthy kind in the Sacrament of Penance. The conclusion was naturally drawn that a process of penitence which began with sorrow of the more unworthy kind needed a larger amount of Satisfactions or penance than what began with Contrition. Hence for the indifferent Christian, _Attrition_, _Confession_ and _Indulgence_ became the three heads in the scheme of the church of the later middle ages for his salvation. The one thing which satisfied his conscience was the burdensome thing he had to do, and that was to procure an Indulgence--a matter made increasingly easy for him as time went on.

This doctrine of _Attrition_ had not the undivided support of the theologians of the later medieval church; but it was taught by the Scotists and was naturally a favourite theme with the sellers of Indulgences. Nor were all theologians at one upon the whole theory of Indulgences. The majority of the best theologians held that Indulgences had nothing to do with the pardoning of guilt, but only with freeing from temporal penalties in this life or in purgatory. But the common people did not discriminate, and believed that when they bought an Indulgence they were purchasing pardon from sin; and Luther placed himself in the position of the ordinary Christian uninstructed in the niceties of theological distinctions.

His _Ninety-five Theses_ made six different assertions about Indulgences and their efficacy:--

i. An Indulgence is and can only be the remission of a merely ecclesiastical penalty; the church can remit what the church has imposed; it cannot remit what God has imposed.

ii. An Indulgence can never remit guilt; the pope himself cannot do such a thing; God has kept that in His own hand.

iii. It cannot remit the divine punishment for sin; that also is in the hands of God alone.

iv. It can have no efficacy for souls in Purgatory; penalties imposed by the church can only refer to the living; death dissolves them; what the pope can do for souls in Purgatory is by prayer, not by jurisdiction or the power of the keys.

v. The Christian who has true repentance has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an Indulgence, and does not need one; Christ demands this true repentance from every one.

vi. The Treasury of Merits has never been properly defined; it is hard to say what it is, and it is not properly understood by the people; it cannot be the merits of Christ and of His saints, because these act of themselves and quite apart from the intervention of the pope; it can mean nothing more than that the pope, having the power of the keys, can remit ecclesiastical penalties imposed by the church; the true Treasure-house of merits is the Holy Ghost of the grace and glory of God.

The unexpected effect of the _Theses_ was that the sale of Indulgences began to decline rapidly, and the archbishop of Mainz, disappointed in his hopes of revenue, sent a copy to Rome. The pope thinking that the whole dispute was a monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking the general of the Augustinian Eremites to keep his monks quiet. This was not easy. Tetzel, in conjunction with a friend, Conrad Wimpina, had published a set of counter-theses. John Mayr of Eck, a noted controversialist and professor of theology in the university of Ingolstadt, scented the Hussite heresy in the _Theses_, and denounced them in a tract entitled _Obelisks_. Luther at once answered in his _Asterisks_. A controversy raged in Germany. Meanwhile, at Rome, Silvester Mazzolini of Prierio, a Dominican monk and Inquisitor, had been studying the _Theses_, was profoundly dissatisfied with them, and wrote a _Dialogue about the Power of the Pope, against the presumptuous conclusions of Martin Luther_. This book reached Germany about the middle of January 1518, and increased the tumult.

Luther's friends had been provokingly silent about the _Theses_; but in April 1518, at the annual chapter of the Augustinian Eremites held at Heidelberg, Luther heard his positions temperately discussed, and found somewhat to his astonishment that his views were not acceptable to all his fellow monks. On his return to Wittenberg he began an answer to his opponents. He carefully considered his positions, found them unassailable, and published his _Resolutions_, the most carefully written of all his works. The book practically discarded all the ideas and practices concerning Indulgences which had come into the medieval church since the beginning of the 13th century, and all the ingenious explanations of the scholastic theologians from Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas downwards. The effect of the controversy was a great decrease in the sale of Indulgences in Germany, and the Papal Curia saw with alarm a prolific source of revenue decaying. It was felt that Luther must be silenced. He was accordingly summoned to Rome. To obey would have meant death; to refuse in his own name would have been contumacy. But the peremptory summons could be construed as an attack on the university of Wittenberg, and both the elector of Saxony and the emperor Maximilian so regarded it. The result was that Pope Leo cancelled the summons, and it was arranged that Luther should appear before the papal Legate to the German Diet, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajedtan, at Augsburg. The interview was not very successful. At its conclusion Luther wrote two appeals--one from the pope ill-informed to the pope well-informed, and the other to a General Council. True to his habit of taking the German people into his confidence, he wrote an account of his interview with the Legate, and published it under the title of the _Acta Augustana_.

The publication greatly increased the sympathy of almost all classes in Germany for Luther. They saw in him a pious man, an esteemed professor, who had done nothing but propose a discussion on the notoriously intricate subject of Indulgences, peremptorily ordered to recant and to remain silent. The elector Frederick shared the common feelings and resolved to defend the man who had made his university so famous. His action compelled the Roman Curia to pause. Germany was on the eve, it was believed, of an election of a king of the Romans; it was possible that an imperial election was not far distant; Frederick was too important a personage to offend. So the condemnation by the Cardinal-Legate was withdrawn for the time, and the pope resolved to deal with the matter otherwise. He selected one of his chamberlains, Charles von Miltitz, the elector's private agent at Rome, and commissioned him to deal with the matter as he best could. Miltitz received the "golden rose" to give to Frederick, and was furnished with several letters in all of which the pope spoke of Luther as a "child of the devil." His holiness had probably forgotten the fact when he addressed Luther some months later as "his dear son."

When Miltitz arrived in Germany he discovered that the movement was much more important than the Roman Curia had imagined. He had not to deal with the opposition of a recalcitrant monk, but with the awakening of a nation. He resolved to meet with Tetzel and with Luther privately before he produced his credentials. Tetzel he could not see; the man was afraid to leave his convent; but he had lengthy interviews with Luther in the house of Spalatin the chaplain and private secretary of the elector Frederick. There he disowned the sermons of the pardon-sellers, let it be seen that he did not approve of the action of the Legate, and so prevailed with Luther that the latter promised to write a submissive letter to the pope, to exhort people to reverence the Roman See, to say that Indulgences were useful to remit canonical penances, and to promise to write no more on the matter unless he happened to be attacked. Luther did all this. A reconciliation might have taken place had the Roman Curia supported Miltitz. But the Curia did not support Miltitz, and placed more faith in Eck, who was eager to extinguish Luther in a public discussion.

Luther had been spending the time between his interview with the Legate at Augsburg (Oct. 1518) and the Leipzig Disputation (June 1519) in severe and disquieting studies. He had found that all his opponents had pursued one line of argument: the power to issue an Indulgence is simply one case of the universal papal jurisdiction; Indulgences are what the pope proclaims them to be, and to attack them is to attack the power of the pope; the pope represents the Roman church, which is actually the universal church, and to oppose the pope is to defy the whole church of Christ; whoever attacks such a long-established system as that of Indulgences is a heretic. Such was the argument. Luther felt himself confronted with the pope's absolute supremacy in all ecclesiastical matters. It was a plea whose full force he felt. The papal supremacy was one of his oldest inherited beliefs. He re-examined his convictions about justifying faith and whether they did lead to his declarations about Indulgences. He could come to no other conclusion. It then became necessary to examine the papal claims. He set himself to study the Decretals, and to his amazement and indignation he found that they were full of frauds. It is hard to say whether the discovery brought him more joy or more grief. His letters show him half-exultant and half-terrified. While he was in this state of mind he received Eck's challenge to dispute with him at Leipzig on the papal supremacy.

This Leipzig Disputation was perhaps the most important point in Luther's career. He met Eck in June 1519. It soon appeared that the intention of that practised debater was to force Luther into some admission which would justify opponents in accusing him of holding the opinions of Huss, who had been condemned by the great German Council of Constance. In this he was eminently successful. Eck left Leipzig triumphant, and Luther returned to Wittenberg much depressed. As usual he wrote out and published an account of the Disputation, which was an appeal to his fellow Germans. The result surpassed his expectations. The Disputation made him see that his protest against the abuses of Indulgences was no criticism of an excrescence on the medieval ecclesiastical system, but an attack on its centre of existence. He saw that he stood for the spiritual priesthood of all believers and that medievalism in religion meant that man cannot approach God without a priestly mediator. The people also saw his position and rallied round him; and the Humanists discerned in him a champion against the old intolerance against which they had been revolting in vain. Luther's depression fled. Sermons, pamphlets, letters from his tireless pen flooded the land, and Luther began to be the leader of a German revolt against Rome.

The year 1520 saw the publication of his three most important works, all written at a time when he was fully convinced that he had broken for ever with Rome. They were, _On the Liberty of a Christian Man_, _An Address to the Nobility of the German Nation_, and _On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God_--the three primary treatises, as they have been called.

Meanwhile at Rome the pope had entrusted Eck and Prierias with the preparation of a bull (_Exurge Domine_) against Luther--a bull which followed the line of Eck's charges at Leipzig. The reformer had been expecting it ever since the Disputation at Leipzig, and had resolved to answer it by one striking act which would impress the imagination of every man. He posted up a notice inviting the Wittenberg students to witness the burning of the bull (10th of December 1520). Rome had shot its last ecclesiastical bolt. Nothing remained but an appeal to the secular power, and this was at once prepared.

The emperor Maximilian had died suddenly (12th January 1519), and for long Germany was disturbed with intrigues about the succession--the papal policy being specially tortuous. The widely expressed desire for a German emperor secured the unanimous election of Charles, the grandson of Maximilian and the king of Spain. Never were a people more mistaken and disappointed. The veins of Charles were full of German blood, but he was his mother's son. It was the Spaniard, not the German, who faced Luther at Worms.

Charles was crowned at Aachen, 23rd of October 1520, and opened his first German diet at Worms, 22nd of January 1521. The pope had selected two envoys to wait on the young emperor, one of them, Jerome Aleander, being specially appointed to secure the outlawry of Luther. The agenda of the diet contained many things seriously affecting all Germany, but the one problem which every one was thinking about was how Luther would be dealt with. The Electoral College was divided. The archbishop of Cologne, the elector of Brandenburg and his brother the archbishop of Mainz were for instant outlawry, while the elector of Saxony, who was resolved to protect Luther, had great influence with the archbishop of Trier and the Count Palatine of the Rhine.