It were better that every bishop were murdered, every foundation or cloister rooted out, than that one soul should be destroyed, let alone that all souls should be lost for the sake of their worthless trumpery and idolatry. Of what use are they who thus live in lust, nourished by the sweat and labor of others?... If they accepted God’s Word, and sought the life of the soul, God would be with them.... . But if they will not hear God’s Word, but rage and rave with bannings and burnings, killings and every evil, what do they better deserve than a strong uprising which will sweep them from the earth? And we would smile did it happen. All who contribute body, goods, and honor that the rule of the bishops may be destroyed are God’s dear children and true Chirstians.146
He was at this time almost as critical of the state as of the Church. Stung by the prohibition of the sale or possession of his New Testament in regions under orthodox rulers, he wrote, in the fall of 1522, a treatise On Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed. He began amiably enough by approving St. Paul’s doctrine of civil obedience and the divine origin of the state. This apparently contradicted his own teaching as to the perfect freedom of the Christian man. Luther explained that though true Christians do not need law, and will not use law or force on one another, they must obey the law as good examples to the majority, who are not true Christians, for without law the sinful nature of man would tear a society to pieces. Nevertheless the authority of the state should end where the realm of the spirit begins. Who are these princes that assume to dictate what people shall read or believe?
You must know that from the beginning of the world a wise prince is a rare bird indeed; still more so a pious prince. They are usually the greatest fools or the worst knaves on earth. They are God’s jailers and hangmen, and His divine wrath needs them to punish the wicked and preserve outward peace.... I would, however, in all fidelity advise those blinded folk to take heed to the short saying in Psalm CVII: “He poureth contempt upon princes.” I swear to you by God that if through your fault this little text becomes effective against you, you are lost, though every one of you be as mighty as the Turk; and your snorting and raving will help you nothing. A large part has already come true. For .... the common man is learning to think, and... contempt of princes is gathering forces among the multitude and the common people.... . Men ought not, men cannot, men will not suffer your tyranny and presumption much longer. Dear princes and lords, be wise and guide yourselves accordingly. God will no longer tolerate you. The world is no longer what it was when you hunted and drove people like so much game.147
A Bavarian chancellor charged that this was a treasonable call to revolution. Duke George denounced it as scandalous, and urged Elector Frederick to suppress the publication. Frederick let it pass with his usual equanimity. What would the princes have said had they read Luther’s letter to Wenzel Link (March 19, 1522)?—“We are triumphing over the papal tyranny, which formerly crushed kings and princes; how much more easily, then, shall we not overcome and trample down the princes themselves!” 148 Or if they had seen his definition of the Church?—“I believe that there is on earth, wise as the world, but one holy, common Christian Church, which is no other than the community of the saints.... I believe that in this community or Christendom all things are in common, and each man’s goods are the other’s, and nothing is simply a man’s own.” 149
These were casual ebullitions, and should not have been taken too literally. Actually Luther was a conservative, even a reactionary, in politics and religion, in the sense that he wished to return to early medieval beliefs and ways. He considered himself a restorer, not an innovator. He would have been content to preserve and perpetuate the agricultural society that he had known in his childhood, with some humane improvements. He agreed with the medieval Church in condemning interest, merely adding, in his jovial way, that interest was an invention of Satan. He regretted the growth of foreign trade, called commerce a “nasty business,” 150 and despised those who lived by buying cheap and selling dear. He denounced as “manifest robbers” the monopolists who were conspiring to raise prices; “the authorities would do right if they took from such people everything they have, and drove them out of the country.”151 He thought it was high time to “put a bit in the mouth of the Fuggers.”152 And he concluded ominously, in a blast On Trade and Usury (1524):
Kings and princes ought to look into these things and forbid them by strict laws, but I hear that they have an interest in them, and the saying of Isaiah is fulfilled, “Thy princes have become companions of thieves.” They hang thieves who have stolen a gulden or half a gulden, but trade with those who rob the whole world.... . Big thieves hang the little ones; and as the Roman senator Cato said, “Simple thieves lie in prisons and in stocks; public thieves walk abroad in gold and silk.” But what will God say to this at last? He will do as he says by Ezekiel: princes and merchants, one thief with another, He will melt them together like lead and brass, as when a city burns, so that there shall be neither princes nor merchants any more. That time, I fear, is already at the door.153
It was.
CHAPTER XVII
The Social Revolution
1522–36
I. THE MOUNTING REVOLT: 1522–24
THE famished knights had waited impatiently for a chance to rise against princes, prelates, and financiers. In 1522 Charles V was far away in Spain; Sickingen’s troops were fretfully idle; rich Church lands lay open to easy seizure. Hutten was calling for action. Luther had invited the German people to sweep their oppressors from the earth.
On August 13 a number of knights signed at Landau a pledge of united action. Sickingen besieged Trier, and shot letters into it inviting the people to join him in overthrowing the ruling archbishop; they remained quiet. The archbishop gathered troops, played general, and beat back five assaults. Sickingen raised the siege and retired to his castle at Landstuhl. The archbishop, with help from neighboring princes, stormed the castle; Sickingen was mortally wounded in its defense; on May 6, 1523, he surrendered; on May 7 he died. The knights submitted to the princes, disbanded their private armies, and clung with desperate severity to the peasant feudal dues that were their main support.
Foreseeing this debacle, Luther had dissociated himself, none too soon (December 19, 1522), from the revolt. Otherwise his star continued to ascend. “The cause of Luther,” wrote Archduke Ferdinand to his brother the Emperor (1522), “is so deeply rooted in the whole Empire that not one person in a thousand is free from it.” 1 Monks and priests were flocking to the new altar of matrimony. At Nuremberg the Lorenzkirche and the Sebalduskirche resounded with “God’s Word”—the Reformers’ phrase for a faith based solely on the Bible. “Evangelical” preachers moved freely through northern Germany, capturing old pulpits and setting up new ones; and they denounced not only popes and bishops as “servants of Lucifer,” but secular lords as “iniquitous oppressors.” 2 However, secular lords were themselves converts: Philip of Hesse, Casimir of Brandenburg, Ulrich of Württemberg, Ernest of Lüneberg, John of Saxony. Even the Emperor’s sister Isabella was a Lutheran.
Charles’s old teacher had now become Pope Adrian VI (1521). To a Diet at Nuremberg (1522) he sent a demand for Luther’s arrest, and a candid confession of ecclesiastical faults:
We know well that for many years things deserving of abhorrence have gathered round the Holy See. Sacred things have been misused, ordinances transgressed, so that in everything there has been a change for the worse. Thus it is not surprising that the malady has crept down from the head to the members, from the popes to the hierarchy. We all, prelates and clergy, have gone astray from the right way, and for long there is no one that has done good, no, not one.... Therefore... we shall use all diligence to reform before all else the Roman Curia, whence perhaps all these evils have had their origin.... The whole world is longing for such reform.3
The assembly agreed to ask Elector Frederick to check Luther, but it asked why Luther should be condemned for pointing out clerical abuses now so auth
oritatively confirmed. Finding the Pope’s confession insufficiently detailed, it sent him its own list of one hundred gravamina of Germany against the Church, and proposed that these grievances should be considered and remedied by a national council to be held in Germany under the presidency of the Emperor.
The same Diet, dominated by the nobility, gave a sympathetic hearing to charges that monopolists were enriching themselves at the expense of the people. A committee wrote to the major cities of Germany asking their advice as to whether the monopolies were harmful, and should they be regulated or destroyed. Ulm replied that they were an evil, and that business firms should be limited to a father, his son, and his son-in-law. Augsburg home of the Fuggers, submitted a classic defense of “big business,” laissez faire, and widows and orphans:
Christendom (or shall we say the whole world?) is rich because of business. The more business a country does, the more prosperous are its people.... . Where there are many merchants there is plenty of work.... It is impossible to limit the size of the companies.... . The bigger and more numerous they are, the better for everybody. If a merchant is not perfectly free to do business in Germany he will go elsewhere, to Germany’s loss.... If he cannot do business above a certain amount, what is he to do with his surplus money?... It would be well to let the merchant alone, and put no restrictions on his ability or capital. Some people talk of limiting the earning capacity of investments. This would .... work great injustice and harm by taking away the livelihood of widows, orphans, and other sufferers... who derive their income from investments in these compames.4
The Diet legislated that companies should not be capitalized above 50,000 guilders; that profits must be distributed every two years, and public accounting made; that money should not be loaned at usurious rates; that no merchant should buy more than a stated maximum of any commodity in any quarter-year; and that prices should be fixed by law. The merchants appealed to Charles V; he supported them for reasons that have been stated; and as many city magistrates shared in the profits of the monopolies, the edicts of Nuremberg soon became a dead letter.
To a later session of the Diet (January 1524) a new pope, Clement VII, sent Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio with fresh demands for the arrest of Luther. Crowds jeered the nuncio in Augsburg; he had to enter Nuremberg secretly to avoid hostile demonstrations; and he had the humiliation of seeing 3,000 persons, including the Emperor’s sister, receive the Eucharist in both kinds from a Lutheran pastor. He warned the Diet that the religious revolt, if not soon suppressed, would soon undermine civil authority and order; but the Diet replied that any attempt to put down Lutheranism by force would result in “riot, disobedience, slaughter... and a general ruin.” 5 While the deliberations proceeded the social revolution began.
II. THE PEASANTS’ WAR: 1524–26
The religious revolt offered the tillers of the fields a captivating ideology in which to phrase their demands for a larger share in Germany’s growing prosperity. The hardships that had already spurred a dozen rural outbreaks still agitated the peasant mind, and indeed with feverish intensity now that Luther had defied the Church, berated the princes, broken the dams of discipline and awe, made every man a priest, and proclaimed the freedom of the Christian man. In the Germany of that age Church and state were so closely meshed—clergymen played so large a role in social order and civil administration—that the collapse of ecclesiastical prestige and power removed a main barrier to revolution. The Waldensians, Beghards, Brethren of the Common Life, had continued an old tradition of basing radical proposals upon Biblical texts. The circulation of the New Testament in print was a blow to political as well as to religious orthodoxy. It exposed the compromises that the secular clergy had made with the nature of man and the ways of the world; it revealed the communism of the Apostles, the sympathy of Christ for the poor and oppressed; in these respects the New Testament was for the radicals of this age a veritable Communist Manifesto. Peasant and proletarian alike found in it a divine warrant for dreaming of a utopia where private property would be abolished, and the poor would inherit the earth.
In 1521 a pamphlet circulated in Germany under the title of “Karsthans”—i.e., Pitchfork John. This “Man with the Hoe” and a pen pledged peasant protection to Luther; and a continuation published in the same year advocated a rural insurrection against the Catholic clergy.6 Another pamphlet of 1521, by Johannes Eberlin, demanded universal male suffrage, the subordination of every ruler and official to popularly elected councils, the abolition of all capitalist organizations, a return to medieval price-fixing for bread and wine, and the education of all children in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, astronomy, and medicine.7 In 1522 a pamphlet entitled “The Needs of the German Nation” (Teutscher Nation Notturft), and falsely ascribed to the dead Emperor Frederick III, called for the removal of “all tolls, duties, passports, and fines,” the abolition of Roman and canon law, the limitation of business organizations to a capital of 10,000 guilders, the exclusion of the clergy from civil government, the confiscation of monastic wealth, and the distribution of the proceeds among the poor.8 Otto Brunfels proclaimed (1524) that the payment of tithes to the clergy was contrary to the New Testament. Preachers mingled Protestant evangelism with utopian aspirations. One revealed that heaven was open to peasants but closed to nobles and clergymen; another counseled the peasants to give no more money to priests or monks; Münzer, Carlstadt, and Hubmaier advised their hearers that “farmers, miners, and cornthreshers understand the Gospel better, and can teach it better, than a whole village... of abbots and priests... or doctors of divinity”; Carlstadt added, “and better than Luther.” 9 Almanacs and astrologers, as if giving a cue to action, predicted an uprising for 1524. A Catholic humanist, Johannes Cochlaeus, warned Luther (1523) that “the populace in the towns, and the peasants in the provinces, will inevitably rise in rebellion.... . They are poisoned by the innumerable abusive pamphlets and speeches that are printed and declaimed among them against both papal and secular authority.” 10 Luther, the preachers, and the pamphleteers were not the cause of the revolt; the causes were the just grievances of the peasantry. But it could be argued that the gospel of Luther and his more radical followers “poured oil on the flames,” 11 and turned the resentment of the oppressed into utopian delusions, uncalculated violence, and passionate revenge.
Thomas Münzer’s career caught all the excitement of the time. Appointed preacher at Allstedt (1522), he demanded the extermination of the “godless”—i.e., the orthodox or the conservative—by the sword; “the godless have no right to live except in so far as they are permitted to do so by the elect.” 12 He proposed to the princes that they should lead the people in a communistic revolt against the clergy and the capitalists. When the princes did not rise to the opportunity, he called upon the people to overthrow the princes too, and “to establish a refined society such as was contemplated by Plato, . . and Apuleius of The Golden Ass.” 13 “All things are in common,” he wrote, “and should be distributed as occasion requires, according to the several necessities of all. Any prince, count, or baron who, after being earnestly reminded of this truth, shall be unwilling to accept it, is to be beheaded or hanged.” 14 Elector Frederick tolerated this gospel humorously, but his brother Duke John and his cousin Duke George joined with Luther in having Münzer expelled from his pastorate (1524). The irate apostle wandered from town to town, announcing the deliverance of “Israel,” and the imminent Kingdom of Heaven on earth.15
He found a congenial political climate in the free city of Mühlhausen in Thuringia, where the textile industry had gathered a numerous proletariat. Heinrich Pfeiffer, an ex-monk, had already begun there, with the support of the lower middle class, a movement to capture the municipal council from the patrician oligarchy. Münzer preached his radical program to the workingmen of the town and to the neighboring peasantry. On March 17, 1525, the armed followers of Pfeiffer and Münzer deposed the patricians and set up an “Eternal Council” to rule Mühlhausen. According to Melanchthon the victor
ious radicals drove out the monks, and appropriated all the property of the Church;16 however, no theologian in this age could be trusted to report impartially the activities or views of his opponents. No communist commonwealth was established; Pfeiffer proved abler in practice than Münzer, and tamed the revolt to the needs of the middle class. Anticipating attack by Imperial troops, Münzer organized workers and peasants into an army, and had heavy artillery cast for it in the monastery of the Barefoot Friars. “Forward!” was his call to his men; “forward while the fire is hot! Let your swords be ever warm with blood!” 17
About the same time peasant uprisings were convulsing South Germany. Perhaps a ruinous hailstorm (1524), which destroyed all hopes for a harvest in Stühlingen, served as the trigger of revolt. This district, near Schaffhausen, was not too far from Switzerland to feel the example of the sturdy peasants who had there freed themselves from all but the formalities of feudal power. On August 24, 1524, Hans Müller, acting on a suggestion from Münzer, gathered about him some Stühlingen peasants, and bound them into an “Evangelical Brotherhood” pledged to emancipate farmers throughout Germany. Soon they were joined by the discontented tenants of the abbot of Reichenau, the bishop of Constance, the counts of Werdenburg, Montfort, Lupfen, and Sulz. By the end of 1524 there were some 30,000 peasants in arms in South Germany refusing to pay state taxes, church tithes, or feudal dues, and sworn to emancipation or death. At Memmingen their delegates, under the guidance or influence of Zwinglian Protestants from Zurich, formulated (March 1525) the “Twelve Articles” that set half of Germany on fire.
To the Christian reader peace, and the grace of God through Christ.
There are many anti-Christians who have lately taken occasion of the assembly of the peasants to cast scorn upon the Gospel, saying, Is this the fruit of the new evangel? Is no one to be obedient, but all are to rebel... to overthrow, or perhaps to slay, the spiritual and temporal lords? To all these godless and wicked critics the following articles make answer, in order, first, to remove this reproach from the Word of God, and second, to justify in a Christian way the disobedience, nay the rebellion, of the peasants.