The booklet he dedicated to that zealous patron of the Reformation, Landgrave Philip of Hesse. In it his intention is to teach “how to fight with a good conscience.” He points out how the Emperor, as a secular ruler, must, agreeably with the office conferred on him by God, protect his subjects against the Turks, as against murderers and robbers, with the secular sword, which, however, has nothing to do with the faith. There were two who must wage the war, Christian and Charles; but Christian’s duty was merely that of the faithful everywhere who would pray for the success of the campaign; this was all that the believers, as such, had to do; Charles would fight, because the example of Charles the Great would encourage him to bear the sword bravely, but only against the Turks as robbers and disturbers of the peace; it would be no Crusade, such as had been undertaken against the infidel in the foolish days of old. Amongst the most powerful pages of the work are those in which, regardless of flattery, he impresses on the German Princes the need of union, of sacrifice of private interests and of obedience to the guidance of the Emperor, without which it was useless to hope for anything in the present critical condition of the Empire. He scourges with a like severity certain faults into which Germans were prone to fall when engaged in warfare, viz. to under-estimate the strength of the enemy, and to neglect following up their victories; instead of this, they would sit down and tipple until they again found themselves in straits.[206]
It does not, however, seem that these words of Luther’s on behalf of the war against the Turks raised any great enthusiasm among the people.
He again took up his pen, and this time more open-heartedly, when, on October 14, the hour of Vienna’s deliverance came and the last assault had been happily repulsed. The result was his “Heer-Predigt widder den Türcken” addressed to all the Germans. Here he sought to instruct them from Scripture concerning the Turks and the approaching Last Day. In stirring, homely words he exhorted them to rise and lend their assistance, pointing out that whoever fell in the struggle died a martyr. He fired the enthusiasm of his readers by even quoting the examples of the women and maidens in olden Germany. He also dwelt on the need of preserving the faith in captivity should it be the lot of any of the combatants to be taken prisoner, and even exhorted those who might be sold as slaves not to prove unfaithful by running away from their lawful masters. He consoled his readers at the same time with the thought, to which he ever attached such importance, that, after all, in Turkey the devil did not rage nearly so furiously against Christians as the devil at home, i.e. the Pope, who was forcing them to deny Christ.[207]
We likewise find attacks on the Catholic fraction of the German nation, mingled with exhortations to resist the Turks, in a Preface he composed in 1530, on the occasion of the republication of an older work dating from Catholic times, “On the Morals and Religion of the Turks.”[208]
The struggle raging in the heart of Germany, and the opposition of the Protestant Princes and Estates to the Emperor as head of the Realm, constituted the greatest obstacle to any scheme for united and vigorous action against the Turks. Hence to some extent Luther was indirectly responsible for the growth of the Ottoman Empire. On one occasion Luther gave vent to the following outburst: “Would that we Germans stood shoulder to shoulder, then it would be easy for us to resist the Turk. If we had 50,000 foot and 10,000 horse constantly in the field ... we could well withstand them and defend ourselves.”[209] The Sultan had, long before, taken into his calculations the dissensions created by Luther in the Empire.[210] On one occasion, about 1532, as we know from Luther’s “Talk Table,” Suleiman made enquiries of a German named Schmaltz, who was attached to an embassy, concerning Luther’s circumstances, and asked how old he was. To the answer that he was forty-eight years of age he replied: “I would he were still younger, for he would find a gracious master in me.” Luther, when this was reported to him, made the sign of the cross and said: “May God preserve me from such a gracious master.”[211]
Luther, as we shall see below, had occasion to write against the Turks even at a later date. His writings had, however, no widespread influence; they were read only by one portion of the German nation, being avoided by the rest as works of an arch-heretic. Many marvelled at his audacity in presuming to teach the whole nation, and at his speaking as though he had been the leader of the people. Catholics were inclined, as Luther himself complains, to regard the growth of the Turkish power as God’s chastisement for the apostasy of a part of Germany and for the Emperor’s remissness in the matter of heresy.
Even in his very tracts against the Turks, Luther did much to weaken the force of his call to arms. His aim should have been to inspire the people with enthusiasm and a readiness to sacrifice themselves, which might, in turn, have encouraged and fired the nobles; but, as the experience of earlier ages had already proved, religion alone was able to produce such a change in the temper of a nation. Protection for the common, spiritual heritage, defence of the religion and civilisation of the West, such was the only appeal which could have fired people’s minds. And it was this banner which the Church unfurled, both before and after Luther’s day, which had led to victory at the battle of Lepanto and again at the raising of the siege of Vienna. Luther, on the contrary, in his writing of 1529, repels so vehemently any idea of turning the contest with the infidel into a crusade, that he even has it that, “were I a soldier and descried on the field of battle a priestly banner, or one bearing a cross, or even a crucifix, I would turn and run as though the devil were at my heels; and, if, by God’s Providence, they nevertheless gained the victory, still I should take no share in the booty or the triumph.”[212]
To insure a favourable issue to the campaign it was also necessary that the position of the Emperor as head of Christendom should be recognised, and the feeling of common interest between the sovereigns and nations be kindled anew. Yet the progress of the innovations, and Luther’s own menacing attitude towards the Empire and the Catholic sovereigns, was contributing largely to shatter both the authority of the Empire and the old European unity, not to speak of the injury done to the Papal authority, to whose guidance the common welfare of Christendom had formerly been confided.
Luther allowed his polemics to blunt entirely the effect of his summons. As, however, what he says affords us an insight into the working of his mind, it is of interest to the psychologist.
In the second of the two writings referred to above, the “Heer-Predigt,” despite the general excellence of its contents, the constant harping on the nearness of the Last Day could not fail to exert an influence the reverse of that desired. At the very commencement he ventilates his views on the prophecies of Daniel; he likewise will have it that the prophecy concerning Gog and Magog in Ezechiel also refers to the Turks, and that we even read of them in the Apocalypse; their victories portended the end of all things. His last warnings run as follows: “In the end it will come about that the devil will attack Christendom with all his might and from every side.... Therefore let us watch and be valiant in a firm faith in Christ, and let each one be obedient to the authorities and see what God will do, leaving things to take their course; for there is nothing good to be hoped for any more.”[213] Such pessimism was scarcely calculated to awaken enthusiasm.
Nor does he conceal his fears lest a successful campaign against the Turks should lead the Emperor and the Catholic Princes to turn their arms against the Evangelicals, in order to carry out the Edict of Worms. He so frequently betrays this apprehension that we might almost be led to think that he regarded the Turkish peril as a welcome impediment, did we not know on the other hand how greatly he came to dread it as he advanced in years. This anxiety concerning possible intentions of the Catholics he felt so keenly in 1529 as to append to the second of his tracts on the Turkish War a peculiarly inappropriate monition, viz. that Germans “must not allow themselves to be made use of against the Evangel, or fight against or persecute Christians; for thus they would become guilty of innocent blood and be no better than the Turks.... In such a case no subject is in the least bound to obey the authorities, in fact, where this occurs, all authority is abrogated.”[214]
Injudicious considerations such as these are also to be found in the earlier tract; here, however, what is most astonishing is his obstinacy in re-affirming his earlier doctrine, already condemned by Rome, viz. that it was not becoming in Christians, as such, to resist the Turk by force of arms, seeing that God was using the Turks for the chastisement of Christendom. “As we refuse to learn from Scripture,” he says, speaking in his wonted mystical tone, “the Turk must teach us with the sword, until we learn by sad experience that Christians must not fight or resist evil. Fools’ backs must be dusted with the stick.”[215] He also expresses his misgivings because “Christians and Princes are so greatly urged, driven and incited to attack the Turks and fall upon them, before we have amended our own lives and begun to live as true Christians”; on this account “war was not to be recommended.”[216] Real amendment would have consisted in accepting the Lutheran Evangel. Yet, instead of embracing Lutheranism, “our Princes are negotiating how best to molest Luther and the Evangel; there, surely, is the real Turk.”[217] Because they had ordered fasts, and penitential practices, and Masses of the Holy Ghost, in order to implore God’s protection against the Turk, the Catholic Princes drew down upon themselves the following rebuke: “Shall God be gracious to you, faithless rulers of unfortunate subjects! What devil urges you to make such a fuss about spiritual matters, which are not your business, but concern God and the conscience alone, and to do the work God has committed to you and which does concern you and your poor people, so lazily and slothfully even in this time of the direst need, thus merely hindering those who would fain give you their help?”[218]
Here again he was promoting dissension, indeed, generally speaking, his exhortations were more a hindrance than a help; again and again he insists on entangling himself anew in his polemics against Popery, and this in spite of the urgent needs of Germany. Led by the Pope, the Catholic Princes have become “our tyrants,” who “imprison us, exercise compulsion, banish and burn us, behead and drown us and treat us worse than do the Turks.”[219]
“In short, wherever we go, the devil, our real landlord, is at home. If we visit the Turk, we find the devil; if we remain under the rule of the Pope, we fall into hell. There is nothing but devils on either side and everywhere.” Thus it must be with mankind, he says, referring to 2 Timothy iii. 1, when the world reaches its end.[220]
In “what manner I advise war on the Turk, this my booklet shall be witness.”[221]
Cochlæus, Luther’s opponent, collected the contradictions contained in the latter’s statements on the Turkish War, and published them in 1529 at Leipzig in the form of an amusing Dialogue. In this work one of the characters, Lutherus, attacks the war in Luther’s own words, the second, Palinodus, defends it, again with Lutheran phrases, whilst an ambassador of King Ferdinand plays the part of the interested enquirer. The work instances fifteen “contradictions.”[222]
Luther personally acted wisely, for it was of the utmost importance to him to destroy the impression that he stood in the way of united action against the Turks. This the Princes and Estates who protested at the Diet of Spires were far less willing to do. They cast aside all scruple and openly refused to lend their assistance against the Turks unless the enactment against the religious innovations were rescinded. It is true that Vienna was then not yet in any pressing danger, though, on the other hand, news had been received at Spires that the Turkish fleet was cruising off the coasts of Sicily. It was only later on in the year, when the danger of Austria and for the German Princes began to increase, that the Protesters showed signs of relenting. They also saw that, just then, their refusal to co-operate would be of no advantage to the new Church. Landgrave Philip of Hesse nevertheless persisted in his obstinate refusal to take any part in the defence of the Empire.
Philip made several attempts to induce Brück, the Chancellor of the Saxon Electorate, and Luther, to bring their influence to bear on the Elector Johann Frederick so that he might take a similar line. Brück was sufficiently astute to avoid making any promise. Luther did not venture openly to refuse, though his position as principal theological adviser would have qualified him to explain to the Landgrave the error of his way. In his reply he merely finds fault with the “Priesthood,” who “are so obstinate and defiant and trust in the Emperor and in human aid.” God’s assistance against the Turks may be reckoned on, but if it came to the point, and he were obliged to speak to the Elector, he would “advise for the best,” and, may God’s Will be done.[223]
When the Turks, in order to avenge the defeat they had suffered before the walls of Vienna, prepared for further attacks upon the West, frightful rumours began to spread throughout Germany, adding greatly to Luther’s trouble of mind. At the Coburg, where he then was, gloomy forebodings of the coming destruction of Germany at the hand of the Turk associated themselves with other disquieting considerations.
In one of his first letters from the Coburg he says to Melanchthon, Spalatin and Lindemann, who were then at the Diet of Augsburg: “My whole soul begins to revolt against the Turks and Mohammed, for I see the intolerable wrath of Satan who rages so proudly against the souls and bodies of men. I shall pray and weep and never rest until heaven hears my cry. You [at Augsburg] are suffering persecution from our monsters at home, but we have been chosen to witness and to suffer both woes [viz. Catholicism and the Turks] which are raging together and making their final onslaught. The onslaught itself proves and foretells their approaching end and our salvation.”[224]—“All we now await is the coming of Christ,” so he says on another occasion in one of his fits of fear; “verily, I fear the Turk will traverse it [Germany] from end to end.... How often do I think of the plight of our German land, how often do I sweat, because it will not hear me.”[225]
Lost in his eschatological dream and misled by his morbid apprehension, he wrote his Commentary on Ezechiel xxxviii.-xxxix., which was at once placed in the hands of the printer; here again he finds the mischief to be wrought by the Turks at the end of the world as plainly foretold as in the prophecy of Daniel, the Commentary on which he had published shortly before.[226]
Everywhere anxiety reigned supreme, for there were lacking both preparedness and unanimity. The Catholic Princes of the Empire were not much better than the rest. Petty interests and jealousies outweighed in many instances a sense of the common needs. At Spires, for instance, Duke George of Saxony stipulated, as a condition of any promise of assistance, that he should be given precedence over both the Dukes of Bavaria. While the Catholic Estates agreed, at the Diet of Augsburg, to the grants for the war against the Turks, the Protestant Estates were not to be induced to give a favourable decision until the Emperor had sanctioned the so-called religious Peace of Nuremberg in 1532.[227]
In the summer of that same year Suleiman passed Buda-Pesth with 300,000 men. Thence he continued his march along the Danube with the intention of taking Vienna, this time at any cost. The Emperor Charles V. hurried in person to command the great army which was collecting near Vienna; the Sultan was to be encountered and a decisive battle fought. Throughout the Empire the greatest enthusiasm for the cause prevailed. The Electoral Prince, Joachim of Brandenburg, was nominated by the Emperor to the command of the troops of the Saxon lowlands, since this country had not been unanimous in the choice of a Captain, probably owing to the religious dissensions.
The Protestant Prince Joachim requested a pious letter from Luther. This Luther sent him, promising him his prayers, and saying that “he would take the field in spirit with his dear Emperor Carol [as he now calls him], and fight under his banner against Satan and his members.” He prayed God to bestow on them all “a glad spirit,” granting them not to trust in their own strength, but to fight with the “fear of God, trusting in His Grace alone,” and to ascribe the honour to heaven only; hitherto there had been too much of the “spirit of defiance on both sides,” and each party had gone into the field “without God,” “which on every occasion had been worse for the people of God than for the enemy.” Luther was evidently quite incapable of writing on the subject without his polemical ideas casting their shadow over his field of vision.
The Turks did not venture to give battle, but, to the joy of the Christian army, retreated, laying waste Styria on their march. The Imperial troops were disbanded and an armistice was concluded between King Ferdinand and Suleiman. But in 1536 the hostilities were renewed by the Turks; Hungary was as good as lost, and in 1537 Ferdinand’s army suffered in Slavonia the worst reverse, so at least Luther was informed, since the battle of Mohacz in 1526. On the strength of a rumour he attributed the misfortune to the treason of the Christian generals. In his conversations he set down the defeat to the account of Ferdinand, his zealous Catholic opponent; he had permitted “such a great and powerful army to be led miserably into the jaws of the Turks.”[228] Ferdinand, the Emperor’s brother, was, of course, to blame for the unfortunate issue of the affair; “hitherto the Turk has been provoked by Ferdinand and has been victorious; when he comes unprovoked, then he will succumb and be defeated; if the Papists commence the war they will be beaten.”[229] “Luther saw in the misfortune of King Ferdinand a just punishment on him and his friends who angered God and worshipped lies.”[230] He believed the cause of the success of the Turks to be the “great blasphemy of the Papists against God and the abominable sin against one and the other Table of the Commandments of God”; also “the great contempt of God’s Word amongst our own people.”[231]
While the Protestant Princes and cities again showed a tendency to exploit the Turkish peril to the advantage of the religious innovations, Luther, in view of the needs of the time, pulled himself together and, when consulted, openly advised the Elector Johann Frederick to give his assistance against the Turks should this be asked of him. (May 29, 1538.[232])
He writes to the Elector: “‘Necessitas’ knows no ‘legem,’ and where there is necessity everything that is termed law, treaty or agreement ceases.... We must risk both good and evil with our brothers, like good comrades, as man and wife, father and children risk all things together.” “Because many pious and honest people will also have to suffer,” it was meet that the Prince should, “with a good conscience, render assistance in order to help and protect, not the tyrants, but the poor little flock.”
Yet, immediately after, he deprives his counsel of most of its weight by declaring in fatalistic language, that there was nevertheless little to be hoped for, since God “had fashioned the rod which they will not be able to resist.”
He tells him concerning King Ferdinand, “that there was nothing to be anticipated from him, but only trouble and inevitable misfortune”; of the Catholics in general he assures him, that their “blasphemy” against the Evangel and their resistance to “their conscience and the known truth” made it impossible for them to escape a “great chastisement,” since “God liveth and reigneth.”
Again, as though desirous of deterring the Elector on personal grounds, he reminds him that they (the “tyrants” as he calls the Princes of the Catholic party) “had not so far even requested assistance, and had not been willing to agree to peace though the need was so great.”[233] He also thoughtfully alludes to the danger lest the tyrants, after having secured a victory with the help of the Protestants, should make use of their arms to overthrow the Evangel by force: “We must be wary lest, should our adversaries vanquish the Turks—which I cannot believe they will—they then turn their arms against us,” “which they would gladly do”; but, he adds, “it rests in God’s hands not in their desire, what they do to us, or what we are to suffer, as we have experienced so far,” for instance after the retreat of the Turks from Vienna when, “after all, nothing was undertaken against us”; for the people would refuse to follow them in any attack upon the Evangel.
This letter, which has frequently been appealed to by Protestants as a proof of Luther’s pure, unselfish patriotism, is a strange mixture of contradictory thoughts and emotions, the product of a mind not entirely sure of its ground and influenced by all sorts of political considerations. Of one thing alone was the writer certain, viz. that the Turk at Rome must be fought against relentlessly.
Luther’s “Table-Talk” and occasional letters supply various traits to complete the above picture of his attitude towards the Turkish War. There we find polemical outbursts interspersed with excellent admonitions to prayer,[234] confutations of the errors of the Turks, and lamentations on the judgment of God as displayed in these wars.
“If Germany had a master,” he says very aptly on one occasion, “it would be easy for us to withstand the Turk”; but, he continues, “the Papists are our worst foes, and would prefer to see Germany laid waste, and this the Turk is desirous of doing.”[235] The Papists are actually trying to establish the domination of the Turk. “The Pope,” so he was informed, “refuses, like the King of France, to grant any assistance to the Emperor against the Turks. See the enormities of our day! And yet this is the money [which the Pope refused to give] that the Popes have been heaping up for so many long ages by means of their Indulgences.”[236] “I greatly fear,” he says to his friends, “the alliance between the Papists and the Turks by which they intend to bring us to ruin. God grant that my prophecy may prove false.... If this enters the heads of the Papists, they will do it, for the malice of the devil is incredible ... they will plot and scheme how to betray us and deliver us over into the hands of the Turk.”[237]
Meanwhile he believes that God is fighting for his cause by rendering the Turks victorious: “See how often the Papists with their hatred of the Evangel and their trust in the Emperor have been set at nought”; they had reckoned on the destruction of the Lutherans by means of Charles the Fifth’s victory over France, but, lo, “a great French army marches against the Emperor, Italy falls away and the Turk attacks Germany; this mean that God has dispersed the proud. Ah, my good God, it is Thou Who hast done this thing!”[238]—On one occasion he declared: “In order that it might be discerned and felt that God was not with us in the war against the Turks, He has never inspired our Princes with sufficient courage and spirit earnestly to set about the Turkish War.... Nowhere is anything determined upon or carried out.... Why is this? In order that my Article, which Pope Leo condemned, may remain ever true and uncondemned.”[239]
When, in the spring of 1532, Rome itself stood in fear of the Turk and many even took to flight, a letter reached Wittenberg announcing the consternation which prevailed there in the Eternal City. Then probably it was that Luther spoke the words which have been transmitted in both the Latin and German versions of the “Table-Talk”: “Should the Turk advance against Rome, I shall not regret it. For we read in the Prophet Daniel: ‘He shall fix his tabernacle between the seas upon a glorious and holy mountain.’” The two seas he imagined to be the Tyrrhenean and the Adriatic, whilst the holy mountain meant Rome, “for Rome is holy on account of the many Saints who are buried there. This is true, for the abomination which is the Pope, was [according to Daniel ix. 27] to take up its abode in the holy city. If the Turk reaches Rome, then the Last Day is certainly not far off.”[240]
It would even seem that it was his fervent desire to see Antichrist ousted by the Turk which allured him into the obscure region of biblical prophecy.
“Accordingly I hope for the end of the world. The Emperor Charles and Solimannus represent the last dregs of worldly domination. Christ will come, for Scripture knows nothing of any other monarchy, and the signs of the end of the world are already visible.”[241] “The rule of the Turk was foretold in Daniel and in the Apocalypse that the pious might not allow themselves to be terrified at his greatness. The prophecy of Daniel gives us a splendid account of what is to happen till the end of the world, and describes clearly the reign of Antichrist and of the Turk.”[242] Finally, Luther is of opinion that at the end of the world both must be united, viz. the Papal Antichrist and the Turk, because both had come into being together. About the time of the Emperor Phocas († 610) Mohammed appeared on the scene of history, and at that very time too the Bishops of Rome arrogated to themselves the primacy over the whole Church.[243]
His pseudo-mysticism and factious temper thus continued to play an unmistakable part in his ideas concerning the Turk.[244]
“Against such might and power [the Turkish] we Germans behave like pot-bellied pigs, we idle about, gorge, tipple and gamble, and commit all kinds of wantonness and roguery, heedless of all the great and pitiful slaughters and defeats which our poor German soldiery have suffered.”[245] “And, because our German people are a wild and unruly race, half diabolical and half human, some even desire the advent and rule of the Turk.”[246]
So scathing a description of the German people leads us to enquire into his attitude to German nationalism.
In spite of his outspoken criticism of their faults, Luther recognised and honoured the good qualities of the Germans. His denunciations at times were certainly rather severe: “We Germans,” he says, “remain Germans, i.e. pigs and brutes”;[247] and again, “We vile Germans are horrid swine”; “for the most part such shocking pigs are we hopeless Germans that neither modesty, discipline nor reason is to be found in us”;[248] we are a “nation of barbarians,” etc. Germans, according to him, abuse the gifts of God “worse than would hogs.”[249] He is fond of using such language when censuring the corruption of morals which had arisen owing to abuse and disregard of the Evangel which he preached. Even where he attempts to explain his manner of proceeding, where, for instance, he tries to justify the delay in forming the “Assembly of true Christians,” he knows how to display to the worst advantage the unpleasing side of the German character. “We Germans are a wild, savage, blustering people with whom it is not easy to do anything except in case of dire necessity.”[250]
By the side of such spiteful explosions must be set the many kindlier and not unmerited testimonies Luther gives to the good qualities peculiar to the nation.[251] In various passages, more particularly in his “Table-Talk,” he credits the Germans with perseverance and steadfastness in their undertakings, also with industry, contentment and disinterestedness; they had not indeed the grace of the Italians, nor the eloquence of the French, but they were more honest and straightforward, and had more homely affection for their good old customs. He also believes that they had formerly been distinguished for great fidelity, “particularly in marriage,” though unfortunately this was no longer the case.[252]
Much more instructive than any such expressions of opinion, favourable or unfavourable, is the attitude Luther adopted towards the political questions which concerned the existence, the unity and the greatness of his country.
Here his religious standpoint induced him to take steps which a true German could only regret. We have already shown how the defence against the Turks was hampered by his action. He also appreciably degraded the Empire in the eyes of the Christian nations.[253] He not merely attacked the authority of the Emperor and thereby the power which held together the Empire, by his criticism of the edicts of the Diets, by the spirit of discord and party feeling he aroused amongst those who shared his opinions, and by his unmeasured and incessant abuse of the authorities, but, as years went by, he also came even to approve, as we have seen above (p. 53 ff.), of armed resistance to the Emperor and the Empire as something lawful, nay, praiseworthy, if undertaken on behalf of the new Evangel.
“If it is lawful to defend ourselves against the Turk,” he writes, “then it is still more lawful to do so against the Pope, who is even worse. Since the Emperor has associated himself with the defenders of the Pope, he must expect to be treated as his wickedness deserves.” “Formerly I advised that we should yield to the Emperor [i.e. not undertake anything against him]; even now I still say that we should yield to these heathen tyrants when they—Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Emperor, etc.—cease to appeal to the name of Christ, but acknowledge themselves to be what they really are, viz. slaves of Satan; but if, in the name of Christ, they wish to stone Christians, then their stones will recoil on their own heads and they will incur the penalty attached to the Second Commandment.”[254]
He saw “no difference between an assassin and the Emperor,” should the latter proceed against his party—a course which, as a matter of fact, was imposed on the Emperor by the very laws of the Empire. How, he asks, “can a man sacrifice his body and this poor life in a higher and more praiseworthy cause” “than in such worship [resistance by violence] for the saving of God’s honour and the protection of poor Christendom, as David, Ezechias and other holy kings and princes did?”[255]
Countless examples from the Old Testament such as the above were always at his command for the purpose of illustrating his arguments.
In the “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” in 1531, he warns the Imperial power that God, “even though He Himself sit still, may well raise up a Judas Machabeus” should the Imperial forces have recourse to arms against the “Evangelicals”; their enemies would learn what their ancestors had learned in the war with Ziska and the Husites. Resistance to “bloodhounds” is, after all, mere self-defence. Whoever followed the Emperor against him and his party became guilty of all the Emperor’s own “godless abominations.” To instruct “his German people” on this matter was the object of the writing above referred to.[256]
“As I am the Prophet of the Germans—this high-sounding title I am obliged to assume to please my asinine Papists—I will act as a faithful teacher and warn my staunch Germans of the danger in which they stand.”[257]
By thus coming forward as the divinely commissioned spokesman of the Germans, as the representative and prophet of the nation, he implicitly denied to those who did not follow his banner the right of being styled Germans. He was fond of professing, in his war on Pope and Church, to be the champion of the Germans against Rome’s oppression. This enabled him to stir up the national feeling amongst those who followed him as his allies, and to win over the vacillating by means of the delusive watchword: “Germany against Italian tyranny.” But, apart from the absolute want of justification for any such appeal to national prejudices, the assumption that Germany was wholly on his side was entirely wrong. He spoke merely in the name of a fraction of the German nation. To those who remained faithful to the Church and who, often at great costs to themselves, defended the heritage of their pious German forefathers, it was a grievous insult that German nationalism should thus be identified with the new faith and Church.
Even at the present time in the German-speaking world Catholics stand to Protestants in the relation of two-fifths to three-fifths, and, if it would be a mistake to-day to regard Teutonism and Protestantism as synonymous—a mistake only to be met with where deepest prejudice prevails—still better founded were the complaints of Catholics in Luther’s own time, that he should identify the new Saxon doctrines with the German name and the interests of Germany as a whole.[258]
Even in the first years of his public career he appealed to his readers’ patriotism as against Rome. In 1518, before he had even thought of his aggressive pamphlet “To the German Nobility,” he commended the German Princes for coming forward to protect the German people against the extortions of the Roman Curia; “Prierias, Cajetan and Co. call us blockheads, simpletons, beasts and barbarians, and scoff at the patience with which we allow ourselves to be deceived.”[259] In the following year, when this charge had already become one of his stock complaints, he summed it up thus: “We Germans, through our emperors, bestowed power and prestige on the Popes in olden days and, now, in return, we are forced to submit to being fleeced and plundered.”[260] In the writing against Alveld, “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,” a year later, he declared in words calculated to excite the ire of every Teuton, that in Rome they were determined to suck the last farthing out of the “tipsy Germans,” as they termed them; unless Princes and nobles defended themselves to the utmost the Italians would make of Germany a wilderness. “At Rome they even have a saying about us, viz. ‘We must milk the German fools of their cash the best way we can.’”[261]
That Luther should have conducted his attacks on the Papacy on these lines was due in part to Ulrich von Hutten’s influence. Theodore Kolde has rightly pointed out, that his acquaintance with Hutten’s writings largely accounts for the utter virulence of Luther’s assault on “Romanism.”[262] There is no doubt that the sparks of hate which emanated from this frivolous and revolutionary humanist contributed to kindle the somewhat peculiar patriotism of the Wittenberg professor. All the good that Rome had brought to Germany in the shape of Christian culture was lost to sight in the whirlwind of revolt heralded by Hutten; the financial oppression exercised by the Curia, and the opposition between German and Italian, were grossly exaggerated by the knights.
Specifically German elements played, however, their part in Luther’s movement. The famous Gravamina Nationis Germanicæ had been formulated before Luther began to exploit them. Another German element was the peculiar mysticism, viz. that of Tauler and the “Theologia Deutsch,” on which, though he misapprehended much of it, Luther at the outset based his theories. German frankness and love of freedom also appeared to find their utterance in the plain and vigorous denunciations which the Monk of Wittenberg addressed to high and low alike; even his uncouth boldness found a strong echo in the national character. And yet it was not so much “national fellow-feeling,”[263] to quote the expression of a Protestant author, which insured him such success, but other far more deeply seated causes, some of which will be touched upon later, while others have already been discussed.
It is, however, noteworthy that this “Prophet of the Germans,” when speaking to the nation he was so fond of calling his own, did not scruple to predict for it the gloomiest future.
A dark pessimism broods over Luther’s spirit almost constantly whenever he speaks of the years awaiting Germany; he sees the people, owing to his innovations, confronted with disastrous civil wars, split up into endless and perpetually increasing sects and thus brought face to face with hopeless moral degradation. His cry is, Let the Empire dissolve, “Let Germany perish.” “Let the world fall into ruins.”[264] He consoles himself with the reflection that Christ, when founding His Church, had foreseen and sanctioned the inevitable destruction of all hostile powers, of Judaism and even of the Roman Empire. It was in the nature of the Gospel to triumph by the destruction of all that withstood it. It was certainly a misfortune, Luther admits, that the wickedness of the Germans, every day growing worse, should be the cause of this ruin. “I am very hopeless about Germany now that she has harboured within her walls those real Turks and devils, viz. avarice, usury, tyranny, dissensions and this Lernean serpent of envy and malice which has entangled the nobles, the Court, every Rathaus, town and village, to say nothing of the contempt for the Divine Word and unprecedented ingratitude [towards the new Evangel].” This is how he wrote to Lauterbach.[265] Writing to Jonas, he declared: “No improvement need be looked for in Germany whether the realm be in the hands of the Turk or in our own, for the only aim of the nobility and Princes is how they can enslave Germany and suck the people dry and make everything their very own.”[266]
The lack of any real national feeling among the Princes was another element which caused him anxiety. Yet he himself had done as much as any to further the spread of that “particularism” which to a great extent had replaced the national German ideal; he had unduly exalted the rights of the petty sovereigns by giving them the spiritual privileges and property of the Church, and he had confirmed them in their efforts to render themselves entirely independent of the Emperor and to establish themselves as despots within their own territories. Since the unhappy war of 1525 the peasantry and lower classes were convinced that no remedy was to be found in religion for the amelioration of their social condition, and had come to hate both Luther and the lords, because they believed both to have been instrumental in increasing their burdens. The other classes, instead of thanking him for furthering the German cause, also complained of having had to suffer on his account. In this connection we may mention the grievance of the mercantile community, Luther having deemed it necessary to denounce as morally dangerous any oversea trade.[267] It was also a grievous blow to education and learning in Germany, when, owing to the storm which Luther let loose, the Universities were condemned to a long period of enforced inactivity.[268] He himself professed that his particular mission was to awaken interest in the Bible, not to promote learning; yet Germans owe him small thanks for opposing as he did the discoveries of the famous German Canon of Frauenburg, Niklas Koppernigk (Copernicus), and for describing the founder of modern astronomy as a fool who wished to upset all the previous science of the heavens.[269]
Whilst showing himself ultra-conservative where good and useful progress in secular matters was concerned, he, on the other hand, scrupled not to sacrifice the real and vital interests of his nation in the question of public ecclesiastical conditions by his want of conservatism and his revolutionary innovations. True conservatism would have endeavoured to protect the German commonwealth and to preserve it from disaster by a strict guard over the good and tried elements on which it rested, more particularly over unchangeable dogma. The wilful destruction of the heritage, social, religious and learned, contributed to by countless generations of devout forebears ever since the time of St. Boniface, at the expense of untold toil and self-sacrifice, can certainly not be described as patriotic on the part of a German. At any rate, it can never have occurred to anyone seriously to expect that those Germans whose views on religion were not those of Luther should have taken his view of the duty of a patriot.
The main fact remains that Luther’s action drove a wedge into the unity of the German nation. Wherever his spirit prevailed—which was by no means the case in every place which to some extent came under his influence—there also prevailed prejudice, suspicion and mistrust against all non-Lutherans, rendering difficult any co-operation for the welfare of the fatherland.
In discussing a recent work which extols Luther as a “true German” a learned Protestant gives it as his opinion, that, however much one may be inclined to exalt his patriotism, it must, nevertheless, be allowed that Luther cherished a sort of indifference to the vital interests of his nation; his “religious concentration” made him less mindful of true patriotism; this our author excuses by the remark: “Justice and truth were more to him than home and people.” Luther, it is also said, “did not clearly point out the independent, ethical value of a national feeling, just as he omitted to insist at all clearly on the reaction of the ethical upon the religious.”[270]
On the other hand, however, his ways and feelings are often represented as the “very type and model of the true German.”[271] Nor is this view to be found among Protestants only, for Ignatius von Döllinger adopted it in later life, when he saw fit to abandon his previous position.