LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
of George Fabricius, who died in 1571. But Luther himself refers to the opposition excited in several quarters by a controversial sermon he preached there, and remarks, cynically: such fault-finders only speak from an idle desire for praise; these gossips want everything and are able to do nothing, they are a “serpent’s brood,” “masked faces” whom I despise.[869]
On his return to Wittenberg he devoted himself to finishing the Resolutions on the Indulgence theses. On August 21 he sent the first printed copy to Spalatin.
These Latin Resolutiones disputationis de virtute indulgentiarum, which dealt exclusively with the defence of the 95 theses, were more hostile in tone towards the whole system of Indulgences than any of his previous utterances. They show Luther’s fiery temper and his state of irritation even more plainly than the theses themselves. In them his new teaching on faith and grace was for the first time launched on the public in unmistakable outline. Even abroad the learned were drawn into the movement by the Latin publication which brought the matter within their range.
Together with his Resolutions, Luther published two letters, very submissive in tone, addressed, one to the Bishop of Brandenburg, as Ordinary of Wittenberg, and the other to Pope Leo X. To the Pope he said that he had ventured to address himself to him because he had learned that some persons at Rome were attempting to blacken his reputation, as though he were infringing the power of the Keys of the successor of St. Peter. He explained the reason of the controversy from his own point of view and declared: “I cannot recant.” In the same letter, however, he asserts his readiness to listen to Leo’s voice “as to the Voice of Christ, who presides in him and speaks through him”; one thing only he asks, viz. that the Pope will deal with him just as he pleases. “Enliven me, kill me, call me back, confirm me, reject me, just as it pleases you!”[870] In the Resolutions, on the other hand, we read: “It makes no impression on me what pleases or does not please the Pope. He is a man like other men. There have been many Popes to whom not only errors and vices, but even enormities (monstra) were pleasing. I attend to the Pope as Pope, i.e. as he speaks in the laws of the Church, or when he decides in accordance with them, or with a Council, but not when he speaks out of his own head.”[871]
At a later date he did not make any secret of the weakness of so ambiguous a position. On one occasion in later years when looking back upon the commencement of the struggle, he said he had begun the controversy “as an unreflecting and stupid Papist,” that he had been drawn into the business by “his own foolishness,” that his “weakness and inconsequence” had been deplorably exhibited, seeing that he then still worshipped the Pope; before this Lord of Heaven and Earth, he writes, everything still trembled, and he, the little monk, more like a corpse than a man, had only dared to advance with lamentable uncertainty and fear.[872]
In the same passage, he says: “I was certainly not glad and confident at the outset.” “What my heart suffered in the first and second years, how I lay on the ground, yea, almost despaired, of that they [my rivals, the fanatics] know nothing, though they were happy to fall upon the Pope after he had been severely wounded [by me]. They have sought to take this honour to themselves, and, for all I care, they are welcome to it.” “They are ignorant of the Cross and of Satan”; but I only attained “to strength and wisdom through death agonies and combats.”
While Luther was superintending the printing of the Resolutions at Wittenberg he was at the same time engaged on other works.
Johann Eck had replied to his Indulgence theses by the so-called “Obelisci,” which Luther met with the “Asterisci,” and as Tetzel, for his part, had issued a refutation of the sermon on Indulgence and Grace, Luther brought out a work in reply, entitled “Freedom of the Sermon on Indulgence and Grace.”
Fearing that the Pope would excommunicate him, Luther preached a sermon to the inhabitants of Wittenberg in the early summer of 1518, possibly on May 16, on the power of excommunication; what he there put forth excited widespread comment and irritation. This sermon he issued in print in August, but in an amended form. In it he says excommunication is invalid in the case of one who honestly asserts the truth; nevertheless, it must be obeyed. He blames the all too frequent use of excommunication, as many good Churchmen had done before him. It had been recognised and taught from Patristic times that unjust excommunication did not deprive the excommunicate of a part in the inward life of the Church (anima ecclesiæ). This Luther emphasises for his own party purposes, but without as yet setting up “a new view of the nature of the Church.”
He says, in a letter to his elderly friend Staupitz, that, owing to the action of his adversaries, “a new flame” would surely be kindled by this sermon, though he had extolled the power of the Pope in it, as was fitting; he declares that he is the persecuted party; “but Christ still lives and reigns yesterday, to-day and for ever. My conscience tells me I have taught the truth; but it is just this which is hated whenever its name is mentioned. Pray for me that I may not rejoice overmuch nor be over-confident in myself in this trouble.” He trusts to triumph, by printing the sermon referred to, over all those who had listened to it with jealousy, and maliciously misrepresented it. Yet his mood is by no means one of unmixed joy; he hints in the same letter to Staupitz at mysterious interior sufferings which weigh upon him “incomparably more heavily,” so he says, than the fear of any measures Rome may take. At the same time he is quite carried away by the idea that he must, at any cost, fight against the contempt which the Romanists are heaping upon the Kingdom of Christ.[873]
Meanwhile, in March, 1518, complaints had again been carried to Rome by some Dominicans. Towards the middle of June fresh official steps were taken by Rome against Luther’s person, this time without the intervention of the Order. The course of these proceedings has been made plain by recent research. The Papal Procurator Fiscal, Mario de Perusco, raised a formal charge against the monk on the suspicion of spreading heresy. By order of the Pope, the preliminary examination was conducted by the Bishop of Ascoli, Girolamo Ghinucci, as Auditor-General for suits in the Apostolic Camera, while Silvester Mazzolini of Prierio (Prierias), the Magister S. Palatii, who, like all Mayors of the Apostolic Palace, belonged to the Dominican Order, was entrusted with the task of penning a learned opinion on the questions involved.
As Prierias had already made a study of the Indulgence theses, he, as he himself says, took only three days to draw up the opinion, which, moreover, he did not intend to stand as an actual theological refutation. It was at once printed, being entitled “In præsumptuosas M. Lutheri conclusiones de potestate papæ dialogus.” The work was not free from exaggerations and gratuitous insults.
At the beginning of July, 1518, Luther was summoned to appear within sixty days at Rome to stand his trial. Ghinucci and Prierias sent the summons to Cardinal Cajetan, who was then stopping at Augsburg, in order that he might forward it to the Wittenberg Professor. Prierias’s pamphlet accompanied it, and Luther received both together on August 7. He said at a later date in his Table-Talk, alluding to the work of the Mayor of the Apostolic Palace, that the despatch from Rome had stirred his blood to the utmost, as he had then realised that the matter was deadly earnest, since Rome was inexorable.
The very next day, with many contemptuous and disaffected remarks on the citation, he set about inducing the Elector to use his influence with the Holy See in order that judges might be appointed to try the case in Germany; he hoped to be thereby spared the dreaded journey to Rome. It was at that time that he published the sermon on excommunication referred to above. On the day following the receipt of the summons he set to work on a pamphlet in reply to the Dialogus of Prierias, which appeared at the end of August.[874] This Latin Responsio he finished in two days, thus beating Prierias, as he triumphantly informs him. It is arrogant and insulting in tone, vindicates all the theses one by one, and asserts some of the errors contained in them in still stronger