Q: Critically examine the principle features of German reformation.
Ans: The concept of Reformation as a significant and self-contained period, with characteristics and central event and perhaps a particular ethos of its own, has had a long life as historical categories go. It marks the beginning of modern times. The age marked the breakup of western Christendom. In the early sixteenth century a genuine Christian community stood embodied under the hegemony of Rome. The addition of the religious controversy changed the whole character of ancient troubles. Secularization, princely ascendancy over the church, religious diversity may all have been present before 1517, but thereafter they became effective, general and predominant. The character of European politics, thought, society and religion was made over by the great outburst against the powers of the papal monarchy and priesthood. Protestant reformation made a lasting division into the church that had looked to Rome.
The age of Reformation should be defined as the period during which the new churches were on the offensive. It therefore begins precisely with the date of Luther’s “Ninety Five thesis” (1517) and extends over to the 1550’s. About midday on 31 October 1517 Martin Luther walked the length of the town and fixed the large placard to the door on the castle church. They were not revolutionary and at points expressed, in the manner of disputations, only tentative opinions. The invention of printing coupled with the growth of awareness came of use at this point of time. Luther’s thesis to his consternation was printed and circulated everywhere. Though he wrote apologia for them and sent his copy to the Bishop of Brandenburg, but Albert of Mainz had forwarded the documents to Rome with a letter requesting Luther’s inhibition.
The entire event had a distinct backdrop. Christian repentance involves an ancient and difficult theological problem. Much depended on the inward motive and outward act, between theory and practice, between the theory of the church and the practice of the laity. By 16th century in Germany these delicate adjustments had been upset in relation to the system of indulgences, which were originally commutation to the act of satisfaction which belonged to the sacrament of penance. In the early middle ages German penitentials had introduced secular notions which exaggerated the possibilities of commuting moral offences by monetary payments. The system found its rationale in the communion of the saints, in the thought of a treasure of merits. By the beginning of the 16th century indulgences had become an important part of papal finances, under the care of the great banking house of Fugger, involving so many middlemen in all ecclesiastical level that the possibility of unsavoury scandal was never remote. In 1513 Prince Albert of Brandenburg became archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of the see of Halberstadt at the age of 23, and the following years the archbishop of Mainz and the primate of Germany. There was a financial crisis which he solved upon taking charge of the office Albert solved, which had transactions with the house of Fugger. The arrangement was not revealed until the Church struggle had well begun. The immediate controversy was the preaching in the neighbourhood of Wittenburg of the Dominican commissary, John Tetzel. Frederick the Wise had in his last years lavished money on the buildings in Wittenburg. In forbidding Tetzel access to the lands, Frederick’s motive was to keep Saxon money at home and to cut competition with his local shrine. It was an undoubted fact that Tetzel’s teachings must have been offensive to pious ears.
Luther on the other hand himself had long been exercised about indulgences, and was now exasperated when some of his parishioners returned with pardons which they brandished in his face, and the real meaning of which they had entirely misconceived. With Luther this touched on convictions about which he was hypersensitive- an awful cost of redemption and the catastrophic inward character of true repentance. Therefore, he chose the All-Saints Day to make his protest, when Wittenburg was thronged with prospective pilgrims.
In the next months Luther’s situation became perilous. In October 1518 Luther was summoned to Augsburg, to a memorable interview with the cardinal legate and the general of the Dominicans, Cajetan. As instructed he demanded from Luther present and instant revocation and future silence. The interviews terminated angrily and there followed a lull so ominous that Luther’s friends had to bring him back, pursued by an angry and contemptuous demand by Cajetan that this Fraterculus be surrendered. In the following days Frederick backed Luther and refused to hand him over without a fair hearing. The political turmoil in Germany at that point of time led to confused reactions from the pope and the monarch, and by the time they decided to act, they were faced with not only a single cleric but an ugly, swelling tide of national grievance against Rome. Gradually the University moved behind him.
Andrew Bodenstein von Carlstadt (1477-1541) was Luther’s academic senior, and professor in the ‘via antiqua’. He got entangled in a debate with John von Eck, 1489-1543, the redoubtable theologian from Ingolstadt. It led to the famous Leipzig deputation of July 1519. Primary skirmishing had again raised the question of papal power. Eck emerged victorious apparently having single handedly handled Carlstadt and Luther. The disputation had drawn attention to wider issues than indulgences and had accelerated the pamphlet war.
Luther now embarked on an immense literary activity. Thus in an inaccessible corner of the Christian world, protected by a powerful prince, his university enthusiastically behind him, the more learned opinion in Germany sympathetic, with powerful allies articulate on his side amongst princes, knights, merchants and peasants, Luther was no longer alone and was fast becoming the symbol of national anti-clerical resentment against Rome.
The German humanists were at first cordial towards Luther. The Leipzig debate, Luther’s impeachment and the Papal bull and Luther’s violent replies cause them to draw back. The changing temperature is discerned in the writings of Erasmus. In the summer of 1520 he composed three revolutionary manifestoes. The first, ‘An Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation’, had simple intensity and forthright boldness. Papal tyranny was entrenched between three buttressing walls of paper claims, the claim that spiritual power is superior than temporal power, the claim to have sole authority to interpret scripture, and the claim that only pope can call a general council. The second tract, ‘A Prelude concerning the Babylonish Captivity of the Church’ was written in Latin, addressed to the clergy and the general world. He attacked the liturgical and sacramental sources of the authority and the prestige of the clergy. The third writing ‘Of the Liberty of the Christian Man’, was entirely a different work of edification. These were great events in 120. The solemn burning in December by the Elster Gate of the works of the canon of law, and the adding to the flames by Luther of the Papal bull, were gestures symbolizing defiance more potently expressed already in the printed word. The pope published the final bull of excommunication, Decet, on 3 January 1521.
Intricate constitutional and financial problems faced by Charles V at the first imperial diet failed to prevent the appearance of Luther at the Diet of Worms. In front of Charles V he accepted and declined to revoke all his works thus far. Luther sharply answered and retorted all that was thrown against him and eventually emerged safely to the company of his German friends. Luther was then outlawed by the temporal and the spiritual powers. For a substantial period he went into exile. The achievements had to be set in motion while he was in exile. For Luther’s followers there were a number of practical problems like the question about Church abuses, religious, votive shrines and images, fasting, clerical celibacy and so on. A failed attempt of reformation in Denmark led Carlstadt to return home and try it in Wittenburg. To a certain extent, the moderate and radical programmes overlapped and the differences were of method and timing. A university commission began to study reform in October, but the leaders, the dean of the castle church had little gift for leadership. Carlstadt dominated the town council. Early in December there were iconoclastic riots and for 36 hours the students had the town in an uproar. They seriously alarmed the court and gave Duke George an excuse to enforce the Edict of Worms on Saxon lands. ‘The worthy Ordinance for the princely city of Wittenburg’ which now appeared was a joint act of town and gown. It attempted a moderate programme for the removal of the images. More importantly, it was the beginning of poor-law regulation, measures for the handling of sturdy beggars, the establishment of a common chest from which cheap loans can be available for the artisans.
The hostilities of the universities and the momentous return of Luther in 1522 ended Carlstadt campaign in Wittenburg. On his return, Luther started preaching in a parish Church decisive series of sermons. He won back the townsfolk from lay Puritanism to conservative reformation, and he did this by preaching. Luther refused to become entangled in the plans of the German knights for anti-clerical war and rejected the proffered help of their leaders.
In 1523 the emperor began the active persecution of reformers in his hereditary lands and the proto martyrs were two Dutch Augustinians. In Wittenburg the advent of Bugenhagen (Pomeranus) and his great abilities were employed and then in organizing the Churches in Northern Europe. By 1523-24 reformation had spread to all German cities by the agency of Luther’s disciples and friends. It spread to Erfurt, Altenburg, Gotha, Magdeburg, Nuremberg, Strassburg, Constance, Bangle and in Zurich by Zwingli. The correspondence and writings of Luther are preoccupied with emerging problems of evangelical churches. Not until in 1525 was a German mass celebrated in Wittenburg, and Luther’s German Rite was published in 1526. By this time there existed vernacular liturgies in many cities notably from Munzer in Allstedt and Zwingli from Zurich, while after the appearance of the rite of Theobald Schwartz in Strassburg in 1524 there was a whole set of liturgical experiments in the city under the direction of Martin Bucer.
Social unrest aggravated in Saxony between reformers and radicals. Between the princes and the peasants there was great inequalities and festering wrongs, while the machinery of amendment, cumbrous and often arbitrary, could ill keep pace with the economic revolution. The Reformation itself had undeniable effects on the common man, with the stress on fundamental Christian equality and the assertion of a common Christian priesthood.
It was a sign of times. Luther’s translation of the Bible in German was important, for unlike earlier vernacular versions, which were the preserve of the educated devout; it became itself a vehicle of proletarian education, a means whereby thus far silent and submerged social levels became religiously articulate and theologically competent. The German Bible put problems as well. It emanated from a university; it was a work of scholarship, a product a new guise of the teaching Church. But the radical appeal was to a simple gospel, hidden from the wisdom of scribes and Pharisees, revealed to the believing layman. The tension becomes apparent in the writings of Thomas Munzer, who from being an admirer of Luther became a bitter enemy of Luther. He accused Luther and papists of teaching a false doctrine of faith. Munzer was a much more skeptical person, truculent towards them, and played strongly to the gallery of ‘poor common man’ and the ‘elect friends of god’. He published a manifesto after the stormy ministry at Zwickau, and when the Czech nation failed to rally his summons he went to a little town called Allstedt which he dominated and his liturgical experiments drew thousands of visitors. It was one of the sad consequence of 1525 that later Lutheran visitations erased all trace of what is one of the most interesting liturgical experiments in the first ‘age of the Reformation’.
The crisis at Allstedt happened in July 1524 when in a sermon Munzer was asked to testify his fitness as the preacher of Allstedt. The eventuality was that Munzer had to face an audience after which he emerged ‘yellow with fear’ and he fled from the city.
There were two centers of ‘Schwarmertum’ in Saxony. At Orlamunde it was Carlstadt, and Luther on the other hand. Luther in his ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’ (1524), had profoundly diagnosed the theological differences between himself and the Extremists, mocking the latter. In the course of events, the elector decided that Carlstadt was incorrigible and he was sent to exile.
The next turn of events happened with the outbreak of the ‘Peasants War’ at Stuhlingen in the Black Forest, in June 1524. The revolts rapidly spread to Rhineland, Swabia, Franconia, and Thuringia. They were concerned with the medieval programme, specific liberties and the redress of particular ills, with the abolition of serfdom and the alleviation of feudal dues, with clerical exactions and tithe. The movement soon got out of hand. Actions of extremists like the Weisenberg massacre damaged the reputation of the whole. Munzer and his comrades were executed at one such confrontation with the Catholic Duke George and the evangelical Philip of Hesse.
The moderate reformers turned eagerly to the leading reformers, but Luther’s attitude remained firm and constant. For the past three years in a series of writings he had foretold, more than anyone in Germany that religious incendiarism must end in social revolt and political doom. He knew that civil disturbances would be laid at his door. He wrote blaming both the sides of their guilt and assented to the justice of the many peasant claims. He utterly condemned the sin of rebellion and fanaticism which could parade violence and murder in ‘Christian revolution’. He concluded by saying ‘you are both wrong and your fighting are wrong’. Luther’s ‘Against the murdering thieving Hordes of Peasants’, showed his complete dissociation from them and he turned to the Christian princes who turned to obey the will of god, and asked them to wield the swords against evil doers.
In the year 1525 he was engaged in a verbal battle with Erasmus. Erasmus had to cope with his own difficulties after 1521. There was a growing band of Catholic divines in Louvian, Italy and Spain. His friends and patrons including King Henry VIII and Pope Adrian VI, had long asked him to enter the controversial list against Luther. This he reluctantly agreed to do so. But Erasmus’ ‘Diatribe Concerning Free Will’ (1524) was not a great success.
The Eucharistic controversy which broke out among the reformers in 1524 is the most intricate theological debate in the first period of the Reformation. All the reformers agreed in attacking the doctrine against the mass, in rejecting the transubstantiation and the scholastic philosophy which expounded the orthodox philosophy of the real presence. Bit there had to be a debate, an examination of the doctrine in terms of scripture, of patristic evidence, and the attempt to expound Christian truth in Biblical rather than scholastic categories.
In his earlier writings Luther had in his mind his Catholic opponents and had stressed the need for faith and the fact that Eucharistic presence is given ‘in the use of the sacrament’. At the same time in 1520 he had rejected scholastic categories and so modified the substance that it is misleading to describe his own views as being that of ‘consubstantiation’. His unshakeable belief in a real presence is there shown to rest upon the view that all communion with God must be mediated for sinful men through a sensible vehicle, apprehended by faith.
The Marburg Colloquy of 1529 was brought about by Philip of Hesse’s conviction that evangelical unity was an overriding political necessity. It began with the positive achievement that most of the eminent reformers in Germany and Switzerland came under the same roof in the last days of September. Important articles were signed in the Marburg Articles, in which fundamental disagreement had to be registered only about the eucharist. But Lutherans were right to refuse the compromise convictions in the interest of a popular front. But it was political events in the end which prevented the Marburg Articles from becoming a political concordat.
The years 1524-29 saw the hardening division of Germany into catholic and evangelical princes. In Saxony important Church visitations were planned and carried out in 1527-28. The visitations became a model for the reforms in other parts of Germany. Their immediate effect was to reveal the appalling ignorance of clergy and people and the prime need for Christian education. The ‘Small Catechisms’ were probably Luther’s finest works, in its simple beauty unique amongst the Protestantism, and from which characteristically Luther made his devotions for the rest of his days.
The Diet of Speyer in 1529 abolished the recess of 1526 and evangelicals were forbidden to inaugurate innovations or secularize church property. This evoked the Protestation of the evangelical princes. Thus Protestantism found a local habitation and a name and its beginning as a political force.
Matters were brought to a head in the year 1530. Since 1521 the emperor’s purpose had never changed, he adhered to the Diet of Worms with its condemnation to the new doctrines. After political matters had been settled, for the first time in turned to the settlement in Germany and he called the diet to assemble at Augsburg in the following summer. But matter had gone too far. The new religion was entrenched too deep at this point of time, the emperor was too orthodox for himself, there was a problem of secularized church lands to keep the Lutheran princes upto the mark the Confession of Augsburg turned out to be moderate. The Augsburg Confession is regarded as the product of a particular situation became the firm and lasting basis of a separate Lutheran Church, despite its mild long windedness.
It was followed by a rash of confessions all over Europe. For another thirty years Christendom would walk in terms of reconciliation, the general council and the restoration of unity. From the Worms to Trent, Rome stood firm on its papal supremacy. With the best will of the world, the other side could not accept any of this without abandoning innermost convictions. The diet ended the Erasmian dream, the church would not return to unity, reformed from within with a spirit of reason and peace.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Elton, G.R (ed) : THE NEW CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY, Volume II, The Reformation, Cambridge University Press, 1958.