Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/9

 6 PREFACE

but passed over lightly by those present as being too familiar to need full description.

It is probable that Luther had behind him a more unani- mous public opinion in 1521 than at any later date. All the progressive forces, whether of social renovation or of reli- gious reform or of intellectual liberalism tended in his first years to rally to his banner. But in the subsequent years his party not only became more powerful and cohesive, but also, in its constituency, though not in its territorial sovereignty, more limited. The first element to separate from the Luth- erans was that of the ultra-radicals, at that time known as A nabg jptists. The least important thing about them was their rejection of infant baptism. Their character was far more determined by the fact that they were, from first to last, the representatives of the disinherited classes, the pole- tariat, the oppressed and the uneducated. In many ways their programs of social reform, sometimes including communism and sometimes violence, strikingly resemble those put forward by the socialists to-day. In their extreme variety they also resemble the socialists, for no two of their communities were alike. In those days of theological politics, it must be re- membered that each religious body was in addition a political party. The situation of Germany in those days, with Cath- olics, Lutherans and Anabaptists, was somewhat analogous to that in many countries to-day, in which there are Conser\'ative, Liberal or progressive, and Socialist or labor parties. Luther himself was decidedly repelled by the radicals from the first, He disliked their religious subjectivism, their social radicalism, the illiterate crudity of much of their work, and, above all, their propaganda of revolutionary violence. He returned from the Wartburg to suppress them, but only succeeded in ex- pelling their leaders from Wittenberg and scattering them throughout Germany. In 1524-5 the radical movement culmi- nated in the tragic catastrophe of the Peasants' War, in some ways the most melancholy event in German history. The proletariat, goaded by intolerable oppression and lured on by vast and vague promises of a golden age, rose with blind, almost animal fury, against their tyrants, only to be cut down by the swords of a pitiless aristocracy. But while our hearts

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