Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/345

Rh REFORMATION 327 Augsburg before the papal legate Cajetan and his subse- quent flight from the city. In the disputation at Leipsic he could go so far as to repudiate the divine institution of the papacy and even pronounce against the infallibility of councils. He was still further confirmed in his doctrinal divergence by the influence of Melanchthon, who now began to call in question the doctrine of transubstantiation ; and Valla's Treatise on the Donation of Constantine, with which he first became acquainted in February 1520, would seem to have dispelled the last vestige of doubt in his mind with respect to the essential falsity of the claims of the papacy to temporal power. The contrast now presented by the tone and language of his writings to that of his letter to Leo, written two years before, is startling. In the month of April 1520 appeared his discourse De Libertate Chris- tiana, inveighing against the abuses of the Curia and re- ferring to Leo himself in terms of open irony. To this succeeded in the following August his appeal, written in the vernacular German, " To the Christian nobility of the German nation," wherein he frankly confesses that his reliance is upon none of the ecclesiastical orders, but upon the newly -elected young emperor and the nobles ; and he reiterates his demand for a general council, one that shall be really free, bound by no arbitrary canons, and holding its deliberations free from papal control. This again was succeeded in the ensuing October by his treatise on The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, wherein he examines, and for the most part repudiates, the sacramental theories of the mediaeval church. The cause which he advocated now began to assume genuinely European proportions. From Nuremberg came an effective tribute from the youth- ful meistersanger Hans Sachs to the " Wittenberg Night- ingale," one of the earliest efforts of his genius. Ulrich von Hutten, at length perceiving the true character of the contest, followed up the address to the German nobility by translating into the vernacular his own treatise To Germans of every Class, and owing to his persuasions the powerful and chivalrous free knight Franz von Sickingen hastened to declare himself an uncompromising supporter of the Lutheran movement. Together they already dis- cussed plans which included nothing less than the estab- lishment of a national church altogether independent of Home, with the archbishop of Mainz as its primate. The danger that menaced the Roman see could now no longer be disguised; and in June 1520 Leo fulminated his bull of excommunication against Luther. On the 8th of the following July he addressed a letter to Frederick of Saxony in which he deplores that he can no longer speak of Luther as a son. He feels certain that the elector will prove loyal to the church, although he does not disguise the fact that he has heard of his friendship for the heretical leader and that the latter relies on his support. He has ordered the bull to be circulated among the nobility of Saxony, and he feels equally assured that he may reckon on their assistance in extinguishing this " incendiary conflagration." As for Luther himself, he denounces him as one who is seeking to revive the heresies of the Waldenses, the Hussites, and the Bohemians, and who, by the manner in which he has con- demned the burning of heretics, has clearly shown that he sympathizes with the Turks and aims at the destruction of the true church. 1 The bull of excommunication, along with numerous volumes of the decretals, was burnt by Luther himself at Wittenberg in the following December, a proceeding by 1 Balan, Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranse (1884), pp. 1-3. This letter, published for the first time in this collection, differs entirely from that given in the Jena edition of Luther's works ; and Cardinal Balan in his preface (pp. 5-10) adduces satisfactory reasons for con- cluding that the letter which he prints from an original in the archives of the Vatican is the true letter, and that the other, if not a forgery, is a reproduction from some untrustworthy source. which he formally intimated his repudiation of the decrees and canons of the church. Such a measure necessarily roused the opposition of those learned bodies by whom the canon law was taught and elaborated, and on 21st April 1521 the university of Paris condemned as "heretical, schismatical, impious, and blasphemous " more than a hun- dred propositions extracted from Luther's writings ; while, skilfully following up the line of attack indicated by the supreme pontiff, they enlarged upon the view that Luther- anism was little more than a specious reproduction of errors long ago proscribed and exploded. The university at the same time decreed that Luther's writings should be burnt ; and the sentence was subsequently carried into effect in most of the capitals of Europe. In London the ceremony was performed at Paul's Cross on the 12th May, and Bishop Fisher in his sermon on the occasion declared that Luther by burning the decretals had made it clear that he would not have hesitated to burn the pope himself had the latter been in his power. The Reformation in England had, however, already com- Reforma- menced, and its origin must be looked upon as in a great tion * n measure independent of the Lutheran movement ; as in En S land - Germany, it had been preceded by a kindred movement, an endeavour to bring about a reform of discipline. The nation was not compelled, as in Italy, to witness the cor- ruptions of the papal court, nor were the laity equally oppressed with the people of Germany by imposts and exactions of every kind. But the unsparing extortion practised by Wolsey's agents after his appointment as legatus a latere was severely resented, and appeared all the more grievous when contrasted with that immunity from arbitrary taxation which it was the Englishman's special boast to inherit as his birthright ; and the arbitrary pro- cedure of the ecclesiastical courts and the licentious lives of the clergy were the subjects of loud and continual com- plaint. In the year 1514 the notable case of Richard Hunne roused popular indignation to the highest pitch. He had been so bold as to resist what he regarded as an unjust exaction of mortuary fees, by pleading in the eccle- siastical court that the action brought against him was un- lawful by the Statute of Prsemunire, a plea which virtually raised the whole question of benefit of clergy. Hunne was committed to the Lollards' Tower and was shortly after found dead, murdered, as it was popularly believed, by the contrivance of the chancellor of the bishop of London. The case gave rise to a fierce legal controversy, in which the authority of an Act of Parliament was opposed by the precedents established by a decretal of the church. It was followed by the memorable trial of Dr Standish (1515), by which the question of the royal supremacy was dis- tinctly raised, and Henry himself not improbably led to conceive that theory of his legitimate authority in matters ecclesiastical which was afterwards attended with such important results. The state of discipline among the clergy at large was but little, if any, better than in Ger- many, and their addiction to secular pursuits and plea- sures, their covetousness, ambition, and licentiousness are attested not only by satirists like Roy and Skelton, but by grave and temperate censors such as Dean Colet, Arch- bishop Warham, Bishop Fisher, and Sir Thomas More, and form the subject of their earnest remonstrance and appeals for reform. Wolsey himself, than whom no states- man more clearly discerned the tendencies of the age, was especially anxious to raise the reputation of the whole body for learning and exemplary lives, and it was with this view that he founded Cardinal College (afterwards Christ Church) at Oxford, and invited some of the most promising young scholars at Cambridge to become instruc- tors within its walls. It is also in connexion with the two universities that