BRIEF HISTORY OF MARTIN LUTHER

(Concluded)

It is now necessary to draw the articles on Luther to a conclusion and summarize the history of the remainder of his life until his death in 1546. We finished our last article as he left the Diet of Worms. He set out from that city on 26th April 1521 to return to Wittenberg. On 4th May, as he passed through the Black Forest, he was ambushed by masked horsemen, friends of the Elector of Saxony, and taken secretly to a castle called the Wartburg, for protective custody. On 8th May his safe-conduct being ended, he was placed under the ban of the Empire by Charles V, which meant that he could be arrested on sight. So the enforced imprisonment was necessary to preserve his life since he was a fugitive from both the Pope and Emperor. The Pope had excommunicated him—the Emperor had issued his famous “Edict of Worms,” which condemned Luther and his heresy and ordered his arrest for trial. Only by thus disappearing from the scene did Luther avoid arrest and certain death.

Here he was to stay for some months at the Wartburg, near to Eisenach where he had spent some of his school days, and rest from the tension and anxieties of the past few years. He did not like the attitude of fleeing from danger, but he knew that for the moment it was the wisest course to take. He spent his time in writing—his special work in these months was to translate the New Testament into German. Beginning in September 1521 he completed it exactly a year later. In Wittenberg the leadership of the Reformation was taken over for the time by Carlstadt, who had spoken with Luther at Leipzig. He pressed on with reform so quickly, destroying images in churches and removing altars and changing the service of the Mass, that by December 1521 riots developed in many churches in Wittenberg, some resisting his reforms. This concerned Luther very much. He secretly visited Wittenberg on one occasion and finally the following March 1522, he felt he must take the risk and come out of his seclusion to deal with the disturbances. He saw that after so long a period of Catholic control, reforms must progress slowly; that sincere Catholics, who did not agree with the reforms, should not be rudely and roughly interfered with in their worship or the Reformation would get a bad name for using force. By now the Reformation teaching was so strong in the Elector of Saxony’s Kingdom, and the Elector favored it to such an extent, that Luther was comparatively safe, so long as he did not visit the state of a pro-Catholic ruler. Also there were now many states in Germany whose rulers favored the Reformation. This became clear at the Diet of Nuremberg held in March 1522, when the Diet refused to act on “the Edict of Worms,” and sent instead a list of grievances to the Pope which it wanted put right before it would act. While the Pope was considering them, the Diet gave permission for the gospel to be freely preached, in Germany by Luther and his followers.

In July 1523 the first martyrs of the Reformation were burned at Brussels in Belgium. This was within the territory ruled by Charles V, but outside Germany. It showed what could have happened to Luther had not Charles V been opposed by the German princes. In April 1522 the Reformation had started in Switzerland at Zurich, when Zwingli had spoken out against some of the practices of the Catholic Church. Between 1523-4 Luther completed the first part of his translation of the Old Testament. Then in 1524 trouble started in Germany. Held for so long under the firm grip of the Catholic Church the newly found religious freedom and spirit of inquiry brought to Germany a social revolution. In that year the peasants rebelled in large numbers and burned down many of the houses of the German nobility and captured several towns. There was much bloodshed before the rising was finally put down by the armies of the princes. The Catholic Church tried to make out that the rising was the direct outcome of the Reformation teaching. Luther roundly condemned the peasants for using force and disassociated the Reformation from the revolt. It was a very embarrassing position for him, for he agreed with many of the grievances of the peasants and their desire for freedom and knew that the sight of the weakening of the Catholic temporal supremacy in Germany had incited them to rebel against their feudal serfdom. But all his life except in his stay at the Wartburg castle, when he was known as Knight George, Luther had refused to wear a sword and always resisted the idea of defending the Reformation cause by force. After he died in 1546, the Protestant princes took up the sword and Germany was rent by the religious wars, which Luther had always dreamed and tried to avert, and the Protestant-Catholic struggle was not resolved finally in Germany for another century, until the Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648, by which both sides agreed to leave each other alone as neither could conquer the other.

In July 1524, a month after the start of the Peasants Revolt, the Catholic princes signed the Alliance of Regensberg with the intention of putting “the Edict of Worms” into practice and exterminating the Reformed ‘heresy’. But they were unable to enforce their views without going to war and this they were not ready to do. In the following year, the Elector Frederick of Saxony, who had always supported Luther’s cause, died and was succeeded as Elector by John the Steadfast. This man also took Luther’s side and gave him as much support as his predecessor. In June 1525 Luther was married to Katherine von Bora, a lady who had once been a nun. In December he published his well-known book against free-will, called “Of Unfree will,” or better known as “The Bondage of the Will.” In these years from 1525-9 the Emperor Charles V fought two wars against the French and so was not able to give much attention to the affairs of Germany. At the Diet of Speyer in 1526 it was agreed by the princes to adjourn the execution of “the Edict of Worms” until the matter could be more fully discussed. In 1529 when the Diet met again at Speyer it was decided that in the States which had originally accepted “the Edict of Worms,” i, e., the Catholic States, nothing should now be changed — the Mass could not be abolished, and no one could embrace Reformed truths. In other words, the Diet tried to halt the spread of Reformed views in pro-Catholic areas of Germany and so halt the Reformation from spreading any further. In face of this opposition, six of the princes and fourteen of the States and Cities of Germany, who supported the Reformed position, issued a solemn Protest and so in course of time, the followers of the Reformed Faith received the name Protestants.

In June 1530 the Imperial Diet opened at Augsburg and the two sides, Protestant and Catholic, representing the various States of Germany, confronted each other in the German Parliament. At the time of the opening ceremony, when the Pope’s delegate gave the benediction, the Emperor and Catholic Princes fell on their knees, but the Protestant Princes stood erect and refused to bow. The Elector of Saxony who was present refused to take Luther with him for the sake of Luther’s safety. He left him in the castle at Coburg from April to October while the Diet debated and kept in constant touch with him. Luther gave advice to his supporters from a safe distance. An order, was issued by the Diet that no Protestant preachers were to preach at Augsburg. On a protest from the Protestant princes it was agreed that no Catholic clergy should preach either. In the name of the Protestant princes, Melanchthon, Luther’s fellow Reformer, drew up a Confession of Faith which was read on 25th June before the Emperor and the whole Diet. When the reading of it started, the Protestant princes rose to signify their assent. The reading lasted two hours and was remarkable in that the Protestant cause was so fully and clearly stated in public. This statement of faith, since called “The Augsburg Confession,” was the equivalent, for the Lutheran Church in Germany, of the 39 Articles for the Church of England. It contained twenty-eight articles. Later the Catholics produced a Confession and it also was read before the Diet.

The differences were now crystal clear between the Catholics and Protestants and it was obvious to both sides that there could be no reconcilation. The Catholics in the Diet proceeded to pass a decree which almost amounted to a prohibition of religious liberty in Germany. This alarmed the Protestant princes and they met at Smalkalden in December 1530, after the Diet of Augsburg was over, to sign a treaty of mutual defense against all aggressors and called for help from the Kings of France and England. Luther was very hesitant about taking such action. He entirely disagreed with the use of force and felt it was wrong for the Protestant cause to depend for its existence on the use of force. Yet the fact remained that if it had not been for the support of these men and their armies the Protestant cause would have been subject to some very bitter persecution in Germany in Luther’s lifetime, whereas under this shield it was allowed to grow.

So the years passed by — in 1534 Luther completed his translation of the Old Testament and the first complete edition of the German Bible was published. In 1539 the first volume of Luther’s complete works, the Wittemberg Edition, was published. In 1543 printing started on Luther’s great work on Genesis, the result of lectures given between 1535–45. On 13th December 1545 the Council of Trent opened its discussions — this was the great Catholic Church Council which was to deal with the rift caused by the Reformation, examine the causes and produce what historians have since called “The Counter-Reformation.” Luther was not to live to see it accomplish its work. He died while staying at Eisleben, his birthplace, on 18th February 1546 and his body was taken back to Wittenberg and buried there on 22nd February. Thus died “the monk that shook the world.”

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