Luther. Grisar Hartmann
his cause with a high hand, as ostensibly that of Jesus Christ. He becomes more and more convinced of his mission from above, a persuasion which takes possession of his soul with suggestive force.
In the fragment of a lost letter from Nuremberg we find him writing of his journey on October 3-4, 1518, to his Wittenberg friends whom he wishes to encourage to remain steadfast. Faint-hearted people, so he says, had tried to dissuade him from continuing his journey, “but I stand fast; let the Will of the Lord be done; even at Augsburg, even in the midst of His enemies, Christ still reigns ... Christ shall live though Martin and every other sinner perish; the God of my Salvation shall be exalted. Farewell and be steadfast, stand upright because it is necessary either to be rejected by man or by God, but God is true and every man a liar.”[918] He certainly did not treat the matter lightly. To attribute hypocrisy to him, as though he merely played a part, would be to do him an injustice. It is true there are recent writers who look upon him as a mere comedian, but it would be nearer the mark to compare him to John Hus on his journey to the Council of Constance. Like him, he looked forward to death without any inclination to recant. The thought passed through him, he once said later: “Now I must die,” and he pictured to himself “what a shame that would be for his parents.”[919]
The two letters he addressed to Spalatin and Melanchthon a few days after his arrival in Augsburg and before his first examination, gave proof of the strange mystical tendency which also appears in the fragment mentioned above; they show how he overcomes the inward voice which urges him to submit, and also the importunities of his anxious friends; they also show how, even then, he was prepared to take a certain step, should the demands appear to him too great: “I shall assuredly appeal to a General Council.”[920] He admits that he was “wavering between hope and fear” and, in order to stimulate his own courage, he draws a picture in these letters of two of the terrifying qualities of these “Italians” before whose representative (i.e. Cajetan) he is to defend himself.
We must try to place ourselves in his position and to appreciate his prejudices.
In the first place, he relentlessly accuses his adversaries of avarice and greed in everything; unfortunately his knowledge of the Indulgence business had furnished sufficient cause for reproaches and complaints against the Church authorities in that respect.[921] Secondly, he finds fault with the “ignorance” of his opponents, and here he undoubtedly excites himself quite wrongly and unnecessarily over their supposed senseless and one-sided Scholasticism. In his letter to Melanchthon he exclaims, as though to reassure himself: “Italy lies in Egyptian darkness, her animosity to learning and culture is unbounded. So greatly do they misapprehend Christ and all that is Christ’s. And yet these are our teachers and masters in faith and morals. The anger of God is thus fulfilled in us where He says: ‘I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’ Good-bye, my Philip, and turn aside God’s anger by holy prayers.” The supposed want of sympathy with learning and culture of which Luther accuses the Italians in this letter to Philip Melanchthon is surely most untrue, and was no doubt intended to strengthen Melanchthon, the weak and wavering Humanist, in his allegiance to Luther’s party, for Luther, notwithstanding his anxieties, had not lost his cunning. The reproach against Italy and Rome, where at that time Humanism was flourishing as nowhere else, can at most only apply to the stiffness of the old debased Scholasticism, and perhaps to a certain backwardness in biblical studies. Such blemishes afforded him a welcome handle. “I will rather perish,” he assures Melanchthon, the enthusiastic scholar, “than withdraw my true theses and help to destroy learning.” “I go, should it please the Lord, to be sacrificed for you and your young men.”
He still clings to the idea of being one with the Church in his theological views. “If they can prove to me that I have spoken differently from what the Holy Roman Church teaches, I will at once pronounce sentence against myself and beat a retreat, but,” he adds, “there lies the knot.”[922] A knot tied by himself. Strange, indeed, is the method he proposes for cutting it: “If that Cardinal [Cajetan] insists on the private opinions of St. Thomas more strongly than is compatible with the doctrine and authority of the Church, I shall not yield to him until the Church withdraws from her earlier standpoint upon which I have taken up my position.”
How greatly the applause with which he was meeting everywhere worked upon him psychologically, confirming him in his resistance, came out clearly at Augsburg.
It was only on this journey and at Augsburg itself that he became aware what a celebrity his action had made him. He alludes to this in the above-mentioned letter to Melanchthon, where he also reveals a flattering self-complacency: “The only thing that is new and wonderful here is, that the town rings with my name. All want to see the man who, like a new Herostratus, has kindled such a big blaze.”
Cardinal Cajetan, after making vain representations to Luther, finally demanded the withdrawal of two propositions which he had plainly taught and acknowledged as his. The first was his denial that the treasure of the merits of Christ and the saints was the foundation of Indulgences; the second was the statement which appeared in the “Resolutions,” that the sacraments of the Church owed their efficacy only to faith. These were points in which he had manifestly deviated from the Catholic teaching and, to boot, matters of supreme doctrinal importance; as a professor of theology Luther, moreover, had bound himself to submit to the teaching authority of the Church.
His final answer to the Papal legate was, that he could not recant unless he were convinced that he had said something against Holy Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, the Papal definitions, or sound reason.
Then followed his famous secret flight from Augsburg to Wittenberg. Staupitz, who had stood by him at Augsburg, dispensed him for the journey from any part of the Rule which might have proved to his disadvantage, even from the wearing of the Augustinian habit. This Superior had again shown himself at Augsburg as a man of half-measures who allowed his prejudice for Luther to outweigh the demands of the Church and of his Order.
Luther caused his Appeal to the Pope “better instructed” to be presented to the Cardinal at Augsburg. He intended, as almost at the same time he confided to Spalatin, to make an appeal to the future Council only after the Pope, “in the plenitude of his power, or rather of his tyranny,” had rejected his first appeal.[923] Meanwhile he does not know, and this makes him waver between hope and fear, whether he will be able to remain at the University of Wittenberg. Will the Elector have power to retain him in his office? Will it be possible for him to continue to lead a safe existence under his sovereign, and, above all, find protection in the present danger from imprisonment and the violent measures threatened? At this, the turning-point of his life, these were the most pressing questions.
The duty of providing for his safety and furthering his cause devolved principally on the Court Chaplain, Spalatin. Luther, in his letters to Spalatin, which duly reached the Elector either as they were written or in extracts, wisely avoids any unseasonable demands which could only have been prejudicial to his interests; on the contrary, he declares in well-chosen language, which was certain to please the Elector, that he is ready to take up the pilgrim’s staff should it be necessary for the good of the cause; the verbal commentary on his letters was undertaken at Court by his able clerical friend.
“I am filled with joy and peace,” he writes to the courtier in the letter above mentioned, “so that I can only wonder how my skirmish [the trial at Augsburg] appears as something great to many esteemed men.” If, however, joy and contentment reigned in him at that time, this was principally owing to his natural relief at his escape from the dreaded town of Augsburg.
In feverish haste, without awaiting the result of his first appeal, he published, November 28, 1518, a new appeal to a future General Council.
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