Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/88

Rh 74 impossible tilings. He saw the uselessness of the monastic life, with its vigils and fasts and scourgings. These things were not helps, he saw, but hindrances to the true religious life. The Leipsic disputation made Luther feel that he had finally broken with Rome, and it made all Germany see it too, and raised the popular enthusiasm to a white heat. The people of the towns declared their sympathy with the bold monk. Ulrich von Hutten and the German humanists saw that this was more than a monkish quarrel, and recognized Luther as their leader. Franz von Sickingen and the free knights hailed him as a useful ally. Even the poor down-trodden peasants hoped that he might be a luckier leader than Joss Fritz, and that he might help them to free themselves from the unbearable miseries of their lot. Luther became the leader of the German nation after the Leipsic disputation. During 1520 the first great political crisis occurred, on the occasion of the death of Maximilian, and ended fatally, in consequence of the want of patriotic and political wisdom among the German princes. Ranke has pointed out the political elements which then existed for creating a Germany as free and independent as France or England ; and Justus Moser of Osnabruck had long before truly declared, &quot; If the emperor at that time had destroyed the feudal system, the deed would have been, according to the spirit in which it was done, the grandest or the blackest in the history of the world.&quot; Moser means that if the emperor had embraced the Reformed faith, and placed himself at the head of the lower nobility and cities, united in one body as the lower house of a German parliament, this act would have saved Germany. Probably some such idea was in the mind of the archbishop of Treves when he proposed that Frederick, the elector of Saxony, should be chosen emperor. Frederick might have carried out this policy, just -because, if elected, he had nothing to rely upon except the German nation, then more numerous and powerful than it has been since ; but he had not the courage to accept a dignity which he supposed to require for its support a more powerful house than his own. Charles, the son of Maximilian, was elected emperor, and that election meant the continuation of a mediaeval policy in Germany. Meanwhile Luther was at Wittenberg continuing his course of preaching, lecturing, and writing. The number of matriculated students had increased from 232 in 1517 to 458 in 1519, and to 579 in 1520; but large numbsrs besides these came to hear Luther. The study of Greek and Hebrew was diligently carried on, and the university was in a most flourishing state. Some of the finest produc tions of Luther s pen belong to this period, his Sermons on the sacraments, on excommunication, on the priesthood, on good works, his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation on the Reformation of Christendom, and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. The address to the German nobles, published on June 26, 1520, created a great deal of excitement not only in Germany but beyond it. It was this appeal which first made Zwingli feel in sympathy with Luther, who showed in this little book that the Romish doctrine of two estates, one sscular and the other spiritual, was simply a wall raised round the church to prevent reform. All Christians are spiritual, he said, and there is no difference among them. The secular power is of God as well as the spiritual, and has rule over all Christians without exception, pope, bishops, monks, and nuns. He also appealed to the people to prevent so much money going out of the kingdom to Italy. &quot; Why,&quot; he said, &quot;should 300,000 florins be sent every year from Germany to Rome ? &quot; His address raised the cry of Germany for the Germans, civil government uncontrolled by ecclesiastics, a married clergy, while he called for a national system of education as the foundation of a better order of things. The most important work of the time, however, was the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God (October 1520), in which he boldy attacked the papacy in its principles. The main thought in the book is expressed in the title. The catholic church had been taken into bondage by the papacy, as the Jewish people were taken to Babylon, and ought to be brought back into freedom. Luther described the sacraments, real and pre tended, and showed how each had been carried into cap tivity and ought to be delivered. He concluded in a very characteristic fashion. &quot; I hear that bulls and other papis tical things have been prepared, in which I am urged to recant or be proclaimed a heretic. If that be true, I wish this little book to be part of my future recantation.&quot; The printing press sent thousands of these books through Germany, and the people awaited the bull, armed before hand against its arguments. The bull was published at Rome on July 15, 1520. It accused Luther of holding the opinions of Huss, and condemned him. Eck brought it to Leipsic, and published it there in October. It was posted up in various German towns, and usually the citizens and the students tore it down. At last it reached Luther. He answered it in a pamphlet, in which he called it the execrable bull of Antichrist, and at last he proclaimed at Wittenberg that he would publicly burn it. On December 10, 1520, at the head of a procession of professors and students, Luther passed out of the university gates to the market-place, where a bonfire had been laid. One of the professors lighted the fuel, and Luther threw the bull on the flames ; a companion flung after it a copy of the canon law. Germany was henceforth to be ruled by the law of the land, and not by the law of Rome. The news flashed over all Germany, kindling stern joy. Rome had shot its last bolt : if Luther was to be crushed, only the emperor could do it. On December 17th Luther drew up before a notary and five witnesses a solemn protest, in which he appealed from the pope to a general council. This protest, espscially when we take it along with other future acts of Luther, meant a great deal more than many historians have discerned. It was the declaration that the Christian community is wider than the Roman Church, and was an appeal from later mediaeval to earlier mediaeval ideas of catholicity. In the times immediately preceding the Reformation, the common description of Christian society was social life in communion with the bishop of Rome, but in the earlier Middle Ages Christian society had also been defined to be social life within the holy Roman empire. For the Roman empire had imposed on all its subjects a creed, and to that extent had made itself a Christian community. The oecumenical council was the ecclesiastical assembly and final court of appeal for this society, whose limits were determined by the boundaries of the mediaeval empire, and Luther by this appeal not only declared that he could be a catholic Christian without being in communion with Rome, but secured an ecclesia stical standing ground for himself and his followers which the law could not help recognizing. It was an appeal from the catholic church defined ecclesiastically to the catholic church defined politically, and foreshadowed the future political relations of the Lutheran Church. The pope had appealed to the emperor to crush heresy in Germany, and Charles V., with his Spanish training and his dreams of a restored mediaeval empire, where he might reign as vicar of God circa civilia, had promised his aid. He had declared, however, that he must pay some regard to the views of Frederick of Saxony, from whom he had received the imperial crown, and had in the end resolved to summon Luther before the diet to be held at Worms. Thu diet was opened by Charles in January 1521, and the LutLe: excom He l&amp;gt;ums
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