Amsdorf, the whilom Catholic priest, found little pleasure in his episcopal status and felt bitterly both his isolation and the contrast between a pomp that was irksome to him and the real emptiness of his position; Luther, accordingly, in the letters of consolation he wrote him, appealed to the Divine inspiration, which had led to his appointment as bishop. The consecration was surely undertaken at the express command of God which no man may oppose. “In these Divine matters,” he writes, “it is far safer to allow oneself to be carried away than to take any active part; this is what happened in your case, and yours is a noble and unusual example. We are never in worse case than when we fancy we are acting with discernment and understanding, because then self-complacency slinks in; but the blinder we are, the more God acts through us. He does more than we can think or understand.” We have here the same principle to which he had been so fond of appealing in the early days of his career so as to be able to attribute to God the unforeseen and far-going consequences of his deeds, and to reassure himself and urge himself on.
“We must never seek to know,” he said to Amsdorf, “what God wills to accomplish through us.” “The most foolish thing is the wisest.”[711] “God rules the world by means of fools and children, He will finish His work [in you] by our means, just as in the Book of Proverbs (xxx. 2), where we are called the greatest fools on earth.”[712]
“It is the counsel of a fool,” so Luther said in his “Exempel” of his intentions regarding the bishops’ sees, “and I am a fool. But because it is God’s counsel, therefore it is at least the counsel of a wise fool.”[713]
This pseudo-mystical bent though usual enough in Luther seems to have become very much stronger in him at that time. To this his sad experiences contributed. More than ever convinced, on the one hand, that everything in the world was of the devil and that “Satan and his whole kingdom, full of a terrible wrath, were harassing” the Elector, as he declares in a letter to Amsdorf,[714] he tends, on the other, to fall back with a fanatical enthusiasm on the Evangel “revealed” to him. More than one statement which is no mere empty form, shows that he was really anxious to find consolation in the Divine truths; again and again he strove to rouse himself to a firm confidence. He is also more diligent in his peculiar sort of prayer and strongly urges his friends, notably Amsdorf to whom he frankly imparts his fears and hopes, to seek for help in prayer. His words are really those of one who feels in need of assistance.
Amidst the trials of increasing bodily ailments and in other temporal hardships he knows how to encourage his life’s partner, Catharine Bora, whose anxiety distressed him: “You want to provide for your God,” he says to her in one of his letters, “just as though He were not all-powerful and able to create ten Dr. Martins should your old one get drowned in the Saale, or smothered in the coal-hole or elsewhere. Do not worry me with your cares; I have a better caretaker than even you or all the angels. He lies in the crib and sucks at a Virgin’s breast, but nevertheless is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Hence be at peace, Amen.”[715] “Do you pray,” he admonishes her not long after, “and leave God to provide, for it is written: ‘Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee,’ Ps. lv.”[716]
Such ready words of encouragement do not however prevent him, when dealing with other more stout-hearted friends who were aware of the precarious state of the cause, from giving full voice to the depression, nay despair, which overwhelmed him. The following example from his correspondence with the “bishop” of Naumburg is characteristic.
After an attempt to parry the charge brought against him of being responsible for the public misfortunes which had arisen through the religious revolt, and to reassure Amsdorf, and incidentally himself too, he goes on gloomily to predict the coming chastisement: “Were we the cause of all the evils that have befallen us [and others], how much blood should we have already shed!... It is, however, Christ’s business to see to this, since He Himself by His Word has called forth so much evil and such great hatred on the part of the devil. All this, so they fancy, is a scandal and a disgrace to our teaching! Nevertheless ingratitude for God’s proffered grace is so great, the contempt for the Word goes such lengths, vice, avarice, usury, luxury, hatred, perfidy, envy, pride, godlessness and blasphemy are increasing by such leaps and bounds that it is hard to believe God can much longer deal indulgently and patiently with Germany. Either the Turk will chastise us [‘while we brood full of hate over the wounds of our brethren’] or some inner misfortune [civil war] will break over us. It is true we feel the chastisement, we pay the penalty in grief and tears, but yet we remain sunk in terrible sins whereby we grieve the Holy Ghost and rouse the anger of God against us.”
What faithful Catholics feared for him owing to his obstinacy, this, in his sad blindness, he now predicts for the foes of his Evangel. “Who can wonder,” he cries, “should God, as Holy Scripture says, laugh at our destruction in spite of the weeping and sighing of the guilty.... The worst end awaits the impenitent.”
“Let none of us expect the least good of the future. Our sins cry aloud to heaven and on earth and there is no hope of any good. Now, in a time of peace, Germany affords the eye a terrible spectacle, seeing that God’s honour is outraged everywhere by so many wicked men and that the churches and schools are being destroyed.... Meanwhile, we at least [the despised preachers of the truth] will bewail our own sins and those of Germany; we will pray and humble our souls, devote ourselves to our office, teaching, exhorting and consoling. What else can we do? Germany has become blind and deaf and rises up in insolence; we cannot hope against hope.”
“But do you be brave and give thanks to the Lord for the holy calling He has deigned to bestow upon us; He has willed to sunder us from these reprobates, who are bent on ruining others too, to preserve us clean and blameless in His pure and holy Word, and will continue so to preserve us. Let us, however, weep for the foes of the cross of Christ, even though they mock at our tears. Though we be filled with grief on account of their misery still our grief will be assuaged by the holy joy which will attend the again-rising of the Lord on the day of our salvation, Amen.”
He concludes this curious letter, written on Easter Sunday, with the following benediction: “May the Lord be with you to support and comfort you together with us. Outside of Christ, in the kingdom of the raging devil, there is nothing but sadness to be seen or heard.” Thus, at the close, he returns to the opening thought suggested by the very object of the letter. Amsdorf had deplored the warlike acts undertaken by Duke Maurice of Saxony against the Elector. Luther, in turn, had informed him, that “here, we are quite certain that what the Duke is doing is the direct work of Satan.”[717]
The Elector of Saxony, after having been so successful in seizing the bishopric of Naumburg, sought to obtain control of that of Meissen also.
Here, however, there was another Protestant claimant in the field in the person of the young Duke Maurice of Saxony, successor of the late Duke Henry. As for the chartered rights, temporal and spiritual, of the bishop of Meissen they were simply ignored. The Elector, by a breach of the peace, sent a military force on March 22, 1542, to occupy the important town of Wurzen, where there was a collegiate Chapter depending on Meissen. The Chapter was “reformed” by compulsion, the prebendaries who were faithful to the Church being threatened with deposition and corporal penalties, and many sacred objects being flung out of their church. When eventually war threatened to break out between the two branches of the house of Saxony, Landgrave Philip of Hesse stepped in as mediator in the interests of the new Evangel. He twice sent express messengers to summon Luther to intervene. But, even before this, the latter, horrified at the prospect of the “dreadful disgrace” which civil war between two Evangelical princes would bring upon the Evangel, had addressed a long and earnest letter of admonition to both combatants: It was the devil who was seeking to kindle a great fire from such a spark; both sides should have recourse to law instead of falling upon each other over so insignificant a matter, like tipsy yokels fighting in a tap-room over a broken glass; if they refused to do this, he would take the part of the one who first suffered acts of violence at the hands of the other and would free all the latter’s followers from their duty and oath of obedience in the war.[718] The writing, which was intended for publication and to be forwarded “to both armies,” was only half-printed when the Landgrave intervened. The author withdrew it in order to be able to take up a different attitude in the struggle and to proceed at once to denounce Maurice.
Luther it is true admitted to Brück, the electoral chancellor, that certain people at Wittenberg did not consider the Elector’s claims at all well-founded.[719] At the Landgrave’s instigation he also addressed a friendly request to the Elector, “not to be too hard and stiff”; of the temporal rights of the case he was ignorant; seeing, however, that there was a dispute the question could not be clear; at any rate Duke Maurice was acting wrongfully in “pressing his rights by so bloodthirsty an undertaking. At times there may be a good reason for pulling one’s foot out of the tracks of a mad dog or for burning a couple of tapers at the devil’s altar.”[720] But on the whole he took the part of his Elector against Maurice, who, even before this, had appeared to him lax and wavering in his support of the new faith. In his history of Maurice of Saxony, G. Voigt gives as his opinion that: “In this matter Luther neither showed himself unbiased nor did he act uprightly and honourably.”[721]
To Amsdorf, who had helped to fan the flame of mutual hate, Luther speaks of Duke Maurice as “a proud and furious young fellow, in whom we undoubtedly see the direct work of Satan”; it is not he (Luther) or Amsdorf who have to reproach themselves with the conflagration; he is to be quite at rest on this score. Rather, it is Christ Who—by His Word—has given rise to the mischief and to all the hatred of the demons against us. His Word alone is to blame, not we, that so many confessors of our faith have been slain, drowned and burnt. “In vain do they impute to us the bloody deeds which have taken place owing to Münzer, Carlstadt, Zwingli and the [Anabaptist] King of Münster.”
“At first Maurice was not regarded by Luther, Melanchthon and most of their contemporaries as of such importance, whether for good or for evil, as he soon after showed himself to be; they fancied him far more dependent on his nobles and councillors than he really was.”[722] Luther thought he detected the evil influence of the councillors in the twin businesses of Wurzen and Meissen. In his reply to the Landgrave concerning the attempt to bring the matter to a peaceful issue, without having as yet examined the cause, he speaks of Duke Maurice as a “stupid bloodhound.”[723] To his own Court he wrote, on April 12, as though the Duke were without question in the wrong: “May God strengthen, console and preserve my most Gracious Lord and you all in His Grace and in a good conscience, and bring down on the heads of the hypocritical bloodhound of Meissen what Cain and Absalom, Judas and Herodes deserved. Amen and again Amen, to the glory of His name Whom Duke Maurice is outraging to the utmost by this abominable scandal, and singing meanwhile so blasphemous a hymn of praise to the devil and all the foes of God.”[724]
In the meantime, owing to Philip’s exertions, a compromise was effected between the two parties ready for the fray; by this it was agreed that each should have a free hand in one of the two portions of the diocese, the Elector retaining Wurzen; as for the defenceless bishop of Meissen, who was not even informed of this, he had simply to bow to his fate. Maurice, however, was so greatly angered that he soon after abandoned the League of Schmalkalden and began to make advances to the Emperor.
After the conclusion of peace “the Elector had all the images in the chief church of Wurzen destroyed, except those which were overlaid with gold or which represented ‘serious events,’ and the rest buried in the vaults.” The new teaching was then introduced throughout the diocese.[725] Maurice on his part carried off from the cathedral of Meissen, which had fallen to his share, all the gold and silver vessels richly studded with jewels and precious stones and all the treasures of art. He was taking them, he said, under his protection “because the times were so full of risk and danger.” After he had taken them into his “care” all trace of them disappeared for all time.
The fate of the treasures of Meissen Cathedral resembles that which befell the riches of many churches at that time.
We are still in possession of the inventory made by Blasius Kneusel of Meissen which gives us a glimpse of the wealth and magnificence of the treasures of mediæval German art and industry which perished in this way.
The list contains the following entries among others: “One gold cross valued by Duke George at 1300 florins; in it there is a diamond valued at 16,000 florins, besides other precious stones and pearls with which the cross is covered.” “A second gold cross, worth 6000 florins. A third is worth 1000 florins, besides the precious stones and pearls of which the cross is full. I value the gold table and the credence table, without the precious stones, at 1000 florins in gold. The large bust of St. Benno weighs 36-1/2 lbs.; it is set with valuable stones; it was made by order of the church and all the congregation contributed towards it. The small cross with the medallions of the Virgin Mary and St. John weighs about 50 lbs.”
The number of these treasures of art which fell a prey to the plunderer amounted to fifty-one.[726]
Two years later Luther wrote to Duke Ernest of Saxony to seek help on behalf of two fallen monks then studying theology at Wittenberg: in order to support men who “may eventually prove very useful” “the chalices and monstrances might well be melted down.”[727]
The ruthless handling of the Black Monastery at Wittenberg, which had been bestowed on Luther after the dissolution of the Augustinian community, was to set a bad example. The fittings of the church there were scattered and the mediæval images and vestments which, though perhaps only of small material value, would yet be carefully treasured by any museum to-day, were calmly devoted by Luther to destruction.
“Now at last,” he says, “I have sold the best of the pictures that still remained, but did not get much for them, fifty florins at the most, and with this I have clothed, fed and provided for the nuns and the monks—the thieves and rascals.” He had already remarked that the best of the “church ornaments and vessels” had gone; at the “beginning of the Evangel everything had been laid waste” and “even to this very day they do not cease from carrying off ... each man whatever he can lay hands on.”[728]
No one can adequately describe the material damage which the Catholic parsonages and benefices, convents and bishoprics had to suffer on their suppression. A simple list of the spoliations from the hundreds of cases on record, would give us a shocking picture of the temporal consequences involved in the ecclesiastical upheaval. Apart from the injustice of thus robbing the churches and, incidentally, the numberless poor who looked to the Church for help, it was regrettable that there was no other institution ready to take the place of the olden Church, and assume possession of the properties which fell vacant. The Catholic Church was a firmly knit and well-established community, capable of possessing property. The new Churches on the contrary did not constitute an independent and united body; the universal priesthood, the invisibility of the Church of Christ and its utter want of independence were ideas altogether at variance with the legal conception of ownership upon which, in the topsyturvydom of that age of transition it was more than ever necessary to insist.
Hence the secular element had necessarily to assume the guardianship of the property. But of the secular authorities, which was to take control? For these authorities, which all were looking forward expectantly to their share of the church property heaped up by their Catholic ancestors, were not one but many: There was the sovereign with his Court, the civil administration, the towns with their councils, not to speak of other local claimants; to make the confusion worse there were the church patrons, the trustees of monasteries, the founders of institutions, and their heirs, and also those endowed with certain privileges under letters patent. Moreover, the leaders of the religious innovations insisted that the property acquired was to be devoted to the support of the preachers, the schools and the poor. Hence to the above already lengthy list of claimants must be added the preachers, or the consistories representing them, likewise the administrators of the relief funds, the governors of the schools, and the senates of the universities which had to furnish the preachers.
The war-council of the town of Strasburg, in 1538, addressed a letter to Luther concerning their prospects or intention of securing a share of the church property there. On Nov. 20 of that year he replied, peremptorily telling them to do nothing of the sort; under the conditions then prevailing they must “de facto stand still.” Yet no less plain was his hint to them to warn Catholic owners “who hold church property but pay no heed to the cure of souls,” to amend and to accept the new Evangel; if they “wished to go,” i.e. preferred banishment, so much the better, otherwise they must once for all by some means be “at last brought to see that further persistence in their wantonness” was out of question.[729]
To add to the general chaos in many places the powerful nobles, as Luther frequently laments, without a shadow of a right, set violent hands on the tempting possessions, and, by entering into possession, frustrated all other claims.
The leading theologians of Wittenberg gradually gave up in despair their attempts to interfere, and contented themselves with exhortations to which nobody paid much heed.
They saw how the lion’s share fell to the strongest, i.e. to the Elector, and how everywhere the State took the pennies of the devout and the poor, using them for purposes of its own, which often enough had nothing whatever to do with the Church.
Nowhere do we find any evidence to show that the theologians made use of the authority on which on other occasions they laid so much stress, or made any serious attempt to check arbitrary action and to point out the way to a just distribution, or to lay down some clear and general rules in accordance with which the graduated claims of the different competitors might have been settled. They might at least have associated themselves with the lawyers in the Privy Council and formulated some rule whereby the rights of the State, of the towns and of the church patrons could have been protected against the worst attacks of the plunderers. But no check of this sort was imposed by the theologians on the prevailing avarice and greed of gain. It is plain that they despaired of the result, and, possibly, silence may not have been the worst policy. No one can be blind to the huge difficulties which attended interference, but who was after all to blame for these and so many other difficulties which had arisen in public order, and which could be solved only by the use of force?
When an exceptionally conscientious town-council sent a messenger to Luther in 1544 to ask for advice and instructions how to deal with the property of two monasteries which had been suppressed, the “honourable, prudent and beloved masters and friends” received from him only a short and evasive answer: “We theologians have nothing to do with this ... such things must be decided by the lawyers ... our theology teaches us to obey the worldly law, to protect the pious and to punish the wicked.”[730]
If, however, the lawyers were to follow the jurisprudence in which they had been trained, then they could but insist upon the property being restored to its rightful owners, who had never ceased to claim it for the Church, and had even appealed to the imperial authority. Luther’s reply constituted a formal retreat from the domain of moral questions, questions indeed which had become burning largely through the action of his theologians. It was an admission that their theology was of no avail to solve an eminently practical question of ethics coming well within its purview which was the safeguarding of the moral law, and for which, indeed, this theology was itself responsible. In this, however, as in so many other instances, they sowed the wind, but when the whirlwind came they ran for shelter to their theological cell.[731]
Still, the question of church property caused Luther so much heart-burning in his old age that his death was hastened thereby.
The lamentations wrung from him in 1538, his description of himself as “tormented” and the “unhappiest of all unhappy mortals,”[732] were due in no small measure to the rapacity he had seen in connection with the church lands. The bulwarks he strove to erect against this disorder were constantly being torn down afresh by the unevangelical disposition of the Evangelicals, and yet he refused to admit, even to himself, that he had been the first to open the way to such arbitrary action. As in his own house he had set an example of destruction of church property, so in his turn he met with bitter experiences even in his own dwelling and in the case of his own private concerns. His tenure of the Black Monastery at Wittenberg was uncertain, and, as already stated, hostile lawyers at Court even questioned his right to dispose of his possessions by Will on the ground that his marriage was null in law, whether canon or civil. The Monastery had been given him by the Prince, and Luther and Catherine Bora used it both as their residence and as a boarding-house for lodgers. It had not, however, been given to Luther’s family, and from this the difficulty arose. He was most careful to note down in his account books the things that were to be Katey’s inalienable property on his death, but, when he was no more, Katey and her children had in their turn to make acquaintance with the poverty and vicissitudes endured by so many churchmen whose means of livelihood had been filched from them.
Can the charge be brought against Luther’s teaching of being in part responsible for the outbreaks of iconoclastic violence which accompanied the spread of the Reformation in Germany? Did his writings contribute to the destruction of those countless, admirable and often costly creations of art and piety which fell a prey to the blind fury of the zealot, or to greed of gain?
Assuredly he would, had he seen them, have disapproved of many of the acts of vandalism which history tells us were perpetrated against Catholic churches, monasteries and institutions. Generally speaking the ideas of Carlstadt and Zwingli, wherever they gained the upper hand, proved far more destructive to ecclesiastical works of art than Luther’s gentler admonitions against the veneration of images. Nevertheless, his exhortations, though more guarded, made their way among both the mighty and the masses, and were productive of much harm.
He himself declared frankly, about the end of 1524, that “by his writings he had done more harm to the images than Carlstadt with all his storming and fanaticism will ever do.”[733] In the course of the next year he boasted of having “brought contempt” on the images even before Carlstadt’s time. He had repudiated the latter’s acts of violence and his ill-judged appeal to the law of Moses;[734] on the other hand, he had undermined the very foundations of image-worship by his Evangelical doctrines; this was a better kind of “storming,” for in this way those who once had bowed to images now “refused to have any made.” As much as the most fanatical of the iconoclasts, he too wished to see the images “torn out of men’s hearts, despised and abolished,” but he “destroyed them [the images] outwardly and also inwardly,”[735] and so went one better than Carlstadt, who attacked them only from the outside.
He had, so he continues, speaking to the German people, “consented” that the images should be “done away with outwardly so long as this took place without fanaticism and violence, and by the hand of the proper authorities.”[736] “We drive them out of men’s hearts until the time comes for them to be torn down by the hands of those whose duty it is to do this.”[737] Meanwhile, however, it was “every man’s duty” to “destroy them by the Evangel,” “especially the images of God and other idolatrous ones.”[738]
In his Church-sermons he makes his own the complaint, that, though these images which attracted a great “concourse of people” should be “overthrown,” the bishops were actually attaching indulgences to them and thus increasing the disorder.[739]
In his sermons against Carlstadt at Wittenberg he had said things, and afterwards disseminated them in print, little calculated to impose restraint on the zeal of the multitude: “It were better we had none of these images on account of the tiresome and execrable abuse and unbelief.”[740]
The iconoclasts at Wittenberg were anxious, he says, to set about hewing down the images. His reply was: “Not yet! For you will not eradicate the images in this way, indeed you will only establish them more firmly than ever.”[741]
Accordingly it was then his own opinion that they should be “abolished” and “overthrown,” particularly such images as were held in peculiar veneration; in 1528 he again admitted that this was his object, when once more proposing his own less noisy and more cautious policy as the more effectual; in his sermons on the Ten Commandments printed at this time he declared that the way to “hew down and stamp out the images was to tear and turn men’s hearts away from them.”[742] Then the “images would tumble down of their own accord and fall into disrepute; for they [the faithful] will say: If it is not a good work to make images, then it is the devil who makes them and the pictures. In future I shall keep my money in my pocket or lay it out to better advantage.”[743]—“The iconoclasts rush in and tear down the images outwardly. To this I do not object so much. But then they go on to say that it must be so, and that it is well pleasing to God”; this, however, is false; it is a mistake to say that such a Divine command exists to tear them down.[744]
The grounds on which he opposed the old-time use of images were the following: By erecting them people sought to gain merit in God’s sight and to perform good works; they also trusted in images and in the Saints instead of in Christ, Who is our only ground for confidence; finally—a reason alleged by him but seldom—people adored the images and thus became guilty of idolatry. Here it is plain how much his peculiar theology on good works and the worship of the saints contribute to his condemnation of the ancient Catholic practice. In his zeal against the existing abuses he overlooks the fact, that to invoke before their images the Saints’ intercession with Christ was not in the least opposed to belief in Christ as the one mediator. As for the charge of adoring the images to which he resorts exceptionally—more with the object of making an impression and shielding himself—it amounted to an act of injustice against all his forefathers to accuse them of having been so grossly stupid as to confuse the images with the divinity; even he himself had elsewhere sufficiently absolved them of the charge of adoring saints, let alone images.[745]
The real cause of this premature attack on images found in these sermons was the storm called forth by Carlstadt, which Luther hoped to divert and dominate[746] by the attitude he assumed; otherwise it is very likely he would have refrained from assailing the religious feelings of the people in so sensitive a spot for many years to come, or at any rate would not have done so in the manner he chose by way of reply to Carlstadt.
Nor assuredly would he have gone so far had he himself ever vividly realised the profoundly religious and morally stimulating character of the veneration of images, and its sympathetic and consoling side as exemplified at many of the regular places of pilgrimage at that time. Owing to the circumstances of his early years he had never enjoyed the opportunity of tasting the refreshment and the blessings to be found in those sacred resorts visited by thousands of the devout, where those suffering from any ill of soul or body were wont to seek solace from the cares and trials of life. Indeed it was particularly against such images as were the object of special devotion and to which the people “flocked” with a “false confidence” that his anger was directed.
His animosity to image-worship would also appear to have been psychologically bound up with two tendencies of his: first, with the desire to attack the hated Church of the Papists at those very spots where her influence with the people was most apparent; secondly, with his plan to bring everything down to a dead level, which led him on the specious pretext of serving the religion of the spirit to abolish, or to curtail, the most popular and cheering phenomena of outward worship.
It is a reprehensible thing, he says, even in his sermons against Carlstadt, to have an image set up in the church, because the believer fancies “he is doing God a service thereby and pleasing Him, and has thus performed a good work and gained merit in God’s sight, which is sheer idolatry.” In their zeal for their damnable good works the princes, bishops and big ones of the earth had “caused many costly images of silver and gold to be set up in the churches and cathedrals.” These were not indeed to be pulled down by force since many at least made a good use of them; but it was to be made clear to the people that if “they were not doing any service to God, or pleasing Him thereby,” then they would soon “tumble down of their own accord.”[747]
It was a mistake, so he declared in 1528 concerning the grounds of his verdict against the images, to “invoke them specially, as though I sought to give great honour or do a great service to God with the images, as has been the case hitherto.” The “trust” placed in the images has cost us the loss of our souls; the Christians whom he had instructed were now opposed to this “trust” and to the opinion “that they were thereby doing a special service to God.”[748] Amongst them memorial images might be permitted, i.e. such as “simply represent, as in a glass, past events and things” but “are not made into objects of devotion, trust or worship.”[749]—It is dreadful to make them a pretext for “idolatry” and to place our trust in anything but God. “Such images ought to be destroyed, just as we have already pulled down many images of the Saints; it were also to be wished,” he adds ironically, “that we had more such images of silver, for then we should know how to make a right Christian use of them.”[750]—“I will not pay court to such idols; the worship and adoration must cease.”[751] Whoever “with his whole heart has learnt to keep” the First Commandment would readily despise “all the idols of silver and gold.”[752]—Yet of the “adoration” of the images he had said in a letter of 1522 to Count Ludwig von Stolberg, that the motive of his opposition was not so much fear of adoration, because adoration of the Saints—so he hints—might well occur without any images; what urged him on was, on the contrary, the false confidence and the opinion of the Catholics that “they were thereby doing a good work and a service to God.”[753]
We have just quoted Luther’s reservation, viz. that he was willing to tolerate the use of images which “simply represent, as in a glass, past events and things.” Statements of this sort occur frequently in his writings. They go hand in hand with a radical insistence on inward disdain for image-worship, and a tendency to demand its entire suppression in the churches. It was on these lines that the Elector of Saxony acted when ordering the destruction of the images in the principal church of Wurzen (above, p. 202); images which represented “serious events” and those overlaid with gold were not to be hewn to pieces.
In the book “Against the Heavenly Prophets” Luther, in the same sense, writes: “Images used as a memorial or for a symbol, like the image of the Emperor” on the coins, were not objectionable; even in conversation images were employed by way of illustration; “memorial pictures or those which bear testimony to the faith, such as crucifixes and the images of the Saints,” are honest and praiseworthy, but the images venerated at places of pilgrimage are “utterly idolatrous and mere shelters of the devil.”[754] And in the “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis” (1528) he says: “Images, bells, mass vestments, church ornaments, altars, lights and such like I leave optional; whoever wishes may discard them, although pictures from Scripture and representations of sacred subjects I consider very useful, though I leave each one free to do as he pleases; for with the iconoclasts I do not hold.”[755]
In one passage of his Church-postils he entirely approves the use of the crucifix; we ought to contemplate the cross as the Israelites looked upon the serpent raised on high by Moses; we should “see Christ in such an image and believe in Him.”[756] “If it be no sin,” he says elsewhere, “to have Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it [His image] before my eyes?”[757]
But Catholics were saying much the same thing in defence of the veneration of images, though to this Luther paid no attention: If it be no sin to have in our hearts the saints who are Christ’s own friends or Mary who is His Mother, how then should it be sinful to have their images before our eyes and to honour them?
As years went by Luther became more and more liberal in recommending the use of historical and, in particular, biblical representations. In 1545, when he published his Passional with his little manual of prayers, he said in the preface, alluding to the woodcuts contained in the book: Such pictures ought to be in the hands of Christians, more particularly of children and of the simple, who can “better be moved by pictures and figures”; there was no harm “in painting such stories in rooms and apartments, together with the texts”; he was in favour of the “principal stories of the whole Bible” being pictorially shown, though he was opposed to all “abuse of and false confidence in” images.[758]
Such kindlier expressions did not, however, do full justice to the veneration of images as practised throughout the olden Church, nor did they counteract what he had said of the idols of silver and gold, of the uselessness and harmfulness of bestowing money on sacred pictures and religious works of art to be exposed for the devotion of the people. All was drowned in his incitement to “destroy,” “break in pieces,” “pull down” and “fall upon” the images, first by means of the Evangel, and, then through the action of the authorities. It is plain what fate was in store particularly for those religious works of art which served as symbols of, or to extol, those dogmas and institutions peculiarly odious to him, for instance, the sacrifice of the Mass, around which centred the ornaments of the altar, the fittings of the choir, and, more or less, all the decorations of the church. As for the sacred vessels, often of the most costly character, and all else that pertained to the dispensing of the sacraments, their destruction had already been decreed.
The account already given above of the squandering and destruction of ecclesiastical works of art, in particular of the valuable images of the Saints in the towns of Meissen and Wurzen,[759] may be supplemented by the reports from Erfurt of the damage done there at the coming of the religious innovations; we must also bear in mind, that the suppression of Catholic worship in this town which looms so large in Luther’s life, took place under his particular influence and with the co-operation of preachers receiving their instructions from Wittenberg.
Before the lawless peasants entered the town on April 28, 1525, the Council had already “taken into safe custody” the treasures of the churches and monasteries; chalices and other vessels of precious metal were on this occasion carried away in “tubs and trogs,” and eventually the public funds were enriched with the profit derived from their sale.[760]
Amongst the objects taken, were: a silver censer in the shape of a small boat, the silver caskets containing the heads of Saints Severus, Vincentia and Innocentia, the silver reliquary with the bones of SS. Eobanus and Adolarius in which they were carried in solemn procession every seven years. This art-treasure which belonged to St. Mary’s, was, not long after, melted down by the town-council when pressed for money, “and cast into bars which were taken to the mint at Weimar.” The silver pennies minted from them were later on called coffin pennies. Other valuables which the Council had taken in charge were put up for auction secretly, without their owners learning anything of the matter. “The prebendaries were well-justified in urging,” writes the Protestant historian who has collected these data, “as against these high-handed proceedings that the Council should first have laid hands on the valuables belonging to the burghers, or at the very least have summoned the rightful owners to be present at the sale of their property, in order that they might make a note of the prices obtained and thus be able to claim compensation later. The Council suffered a moral set-back, while at the same time reaping no appreciable material advantage.”[761]
Not only the Council but the peasants too, led by the Lutheran preachers, were greatly to blame for the destruction of art treasures wrought at Erfurt in that same year. When, in order to put an end to the rule over the town of the Elector, Albert of Brandenburg, they stormed the so-called Mainzer Hof at Erfurt, “all the jewels, gold, silver and valuable household stuff were carried off.” Shortly after “the peasants, thanks to their sharpness, managed to unearth a pastoral staff in silver, worth 300 florins [in the then currency], which had been concealed in the privy attached to the room of the master cook to save it from the greed of the robbers.”[762] At the Mainzer Hof they removed all monumental tablets, pictures and statues as well as the elaborate coats of arms bearing witness to the Archbishop’s sovereignty. A stone effigy of St. Martin which stood in front of the Rathaus and the ancient symbols of the sovereignty of Mayence were pulled down and smashed to bits. In place of these they scrawled on the new stone edifice which had been erected there another coat of arms in chalk and charcoal, having a plough, coulter and hoe in the shield and in the field a horse-shoe. “During all this Adolarius Huttner [with Eberlin of Günzburg, the apostate Franciscan] and other Lutheran preachers were going to and fro amongst them.” The whole row of priests’ houses standing alongside the torrent was searched and the valuables plundered.[763]
“The people of Erfurt did almost as much damage as the peasants.”[764]
As a matter of fact the citizens frequently outdid the agricultural population in this work of destruction. The chronicles of the times relate, that they broke down the walls of the vaults of the two collegiate churches in hopes of finding hidden treasure behind them, and, then, in their disappointment, sacrilegiously tore open the tabernacles, threw the holy oils to the dogs and treated the things in the churches in such a manner as is “heartrending beyond description.” The mob destroyed not merely the books and parchments in which their obligations were recorded, but a number of others of importance for literature and learning were also wantonly spoiled.
From another contemporary source we have the following on the destruction of the old writings: “And besides all this on St. Walpurgis Day in the Lauwengasse the peasants and those who were with them tore up more than two waggonloads of books, and threw them out of the houses into the street. These the burgher folk carried home in large baskets. While gathering up the torn books as best they could, putting them into baskets and binding them with ropes as one does straw, a whirlwind sprang up and lifted the torn books, letters and papers high into the air and over all the houses, so that many of them were afterwards found sticking to the poles in the vineyards.”[765]
In very many instances, particularly during the Peasant War, the destruction and scattering of ecclesiastical works of art went much beyond Luther’s injunctions. We shall hear him protest, that many were good Evangelicals only so long as there were still chalices, monstrances and monkish vessels to be had.[766] It was naturally a very difficult task to check the greed of gain and wanton love of destruction once this had broken loose, particularly after the civil authorities had tasted the sweets to be derived from the change of religion, and after the peasants in the intoxication of their newly found freedom of the Gospel, and in their lust for plunder, had begun to lay violent hands on property.
It was in accordance with Luther’s express injunctions that the “proper authorities” proceeded to destroy such images as were not a record of history. They went further, however, nor was the zeal confined solely to the authorities.