son.

the Christian Nobles of the German Nation was a ringing appeal to the German laity to take the work of reformation into their own hands, to protect the German people against the avarice and tyrannical intermeddling of the Roman ecclesiastics, to deprive the Pope of his rule in secular affairs, to abolish compulsory celibacy, to reform the convents and restrain the mendicant orders, to come to a reconciliation with the Bohemians, to foster education. In this harangue Luther strikes a blow at the distinction between layman and priest, on which the hierarchical system rested. "We have one baptism and one faith," he says, "and it is that which constitutes a spiritual perHe compares the Church to ten sons of a king who, having equal rights, choose one of their number to be the "minister of their common power." A company of pious laymen in a desert, having no ordained priest among them, would have the right to confer that office on one of themselves, whether he were married or not; and "the man so chosen would be as truly a priest as if all the bishops in the world had consecrated him." The priestly character of a layman and the importance of education are the leading topics in this stirring appeal. His treatise on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church followed, in which he handled the subject of the sacraments, attacked transubstantiation, and the statutes that violated Christian liberty, such as those which prescribed pilgrimages, fastings, and monasticism. He had discovered the close connection between the doctrinal and practical abuses of the Church.1 This discourse he sent to Leo X., with a letter containing expressions of personal respect, but comparing him to a lamb in the midst of wolves and to Daniel among the lions, and invoking him to set about a work of reformation in his corrupt court and in the Church.2

1 Waddington, i. 267.

2 Luther seems to have entertained, up to this time, a personal regard and

THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION.

101 In a sermon on "The Freedom of a Christian Man," Luther set forth in a noble and elevated strain the inwardness of true religion, the marriage of the soul to Christ through faith in the Word, and the vital connection of faith and works. In this treatise he rises above the atmosphere of controversy, and unfolds his idea of Christianity in the genial tone of devout feeling.

His course during the period between the posting of the theses and the final breach with Rome, can be judged correctly only when it is remembered that his mind was in a transition state. He was working his way by degrees to the light. This explains the seeming inconsistencies in his expressions relative to the Pope and the Church, which occasionally appear in his letters and publications during this interval. "I am one of those," he said, "among whom Augustine has classed himself of those who have gradually advanced by writing and teaching; not of those who at a single bound spring to perfection out of nothing." 1

The Bull which condemned forty-one propositions of Luther, and excommunicated him if he should not recant within sixty days, after which every Christian magistrate was to be required to arrest him and deliver him at Rome, was issued on the 16th of June, 1520. Luther put forth a pamphlet in response to this execrable bull of Antichrist, as he called it; and on the 10th of December, in the public place at Wittenberg, in the presence of an assembly of doctors of the university, students, and people, he threw it, together with the book of canon law, and a few other equally obnoxious writings, into the flames. By this act he completed his rupture with the

respect for Leo, but the intermingling of personal compliments with denunciations of his court and of the Roman Church (which is styled "a licentious den of robbers") was ill-adapted to conciliate the Pope's favor.

1 Præf. Operum: "Qui de nihilo repente fiunt summi, cum nihil sint, neque operati, neque tentati, neque experti."

Papal see: There was no longer room for retreat. had burned his ships behind him.1

He

This decisive step drew the attention of the whole German nation to Luther's cause, and tended to concentrate all the various elements of opposition to the Papacy.2 Luther found political support in the friendly disposition of the Elector, and from the jurists with whom the conflict of the spiritual with the civil courts was a standing grievance. The Papal Bull was extensively regarded as a new infringement of the rights of the civil power. The religious opposition to the Papacy, which had been quickened by Luther's theological writings, and which found an inspiring ground of union in his appeal to the Divine Word and in his arraignment of the Pope as an opposer of it, engaged the sympathy of a large portion of the inferior clergy and of the monastic orders. Luther also found zealous allies in the literary class. The Humanists were either quiet, laborious scholars, who applied their researches in philosophy and classical literature to the illustration of the Scriptures and the defense of Scriptural truth against human traditions, of whom Melancthon was a type; or they were poets, filled with a national spirit, eager to avenge the indignities suffered by Germany under Italian and Papal rule, and ready not only to vindicate their cause with invectives and satires, but also with their swords. These were the combatants for Reuchlin against the Dominican persecution; the authors of the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum." Luther, with his deeply religious feeling, had not liked the tone of these productions. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the writers, the most prominent representative of the youthful literati, to whom we have just referred, had not been interested at first in the affair of Luther, which he regarded as a monkish and theological dispute. But he soon divined its true character and wide-reaching scope, 1 Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, p. 397. 2 See Ranke, i. 307 seq.

POLITICAL CONDITION OF GERMANY.

103 and became one of the Reformer's most ardent supporters. He seconded Luther's religious appeals by scattering broadcast his own caustic philippics and satires, in which the Pope and his agents and abettors in Germany were lashed with unbridled severity. Abandoning the Latin, the proper tongue of the Humanists, he began to write in the vernacular. Hutten enlisted his friend Francis von Sickingen, another patriotic knight, and the most noted of the class who offered themselves to redress wrongs by exploits and incursions undertaken by their own authority, often to the terror of those who were thus assailed. Sickingen sent to Luther an invitation, in case he needed a place of refuge, to come to his strong castle of Ebernburg.1

We must pause here to look for a moment at the political condition of Germany. In the fifteenth century the central government had become so weakened, that the Empire existed more in name than in reality. Germany was an aggregate of numerous small states, each of which was, to a great extent, independent within its own bounds. The German king having held the imperial office for so many centuries, the two stations were practically regarded as inseparable; but neither as king of Germany nor as the head of the Holy Roman Empire, had he sufficient power to preserve order among the states or to combine them in common enterprises of defense or of aggression. By the golden bull of Charles IV., in 1356, the electoral constitution was defined and settled, by which the predominance of power was left in the hands of the seven leading princes to whom the choice of the Emperor was committed. No measures affecting the common welfare could be adopted except by the consent of the Diet, a body composed of the electors, the princes, and the cities. Private wars were of frequent occurrence

1 See the very interesting biography by D. F. Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten (2d ed., 1871).

between the component parts of the country. They might enter separately into foreign alliances. During the reign of Maximilian great efforts were made to establish a better constitution, but they mostly fell to the ground in consequence of the mutual unwillingness of the states and the Emperor that either party should exercise power. The Public Peace and the Imperial Chamber were constituted, the former for the prevention of intestine war, and the latter a supreme judicial tribunal; but neither of these measures was more than partially successful. The failure to create a better organization for the Empire increased the ferment, for which there were abundant causes prior to these abortive attempts. The efforts of the princes to increase their power within their several principalities brought on quarrels with bishops and knights, whose traditional privileges were curtailed. Especially among the knights a mutinous feeling was everywhere rife, which often broke forth in deeds of violence and even in open warfare. The cities complained of the oppression which they had to endure from the imperial government and of the wrongs inflicted upon them by the princes and by the knights. Thriving communities of tradesmen and artisans invited hostility from every quarter. The heavy burdens of taxation, the insecurity of travel and of commerce, were for them an intolerable grievance. At the same time, all over Germany, the rustic population, on account of the hardship of their situation, were in a state of disaffection which might at any moment burst forth in a formidable rebellion. In addition to all these troubles and grievances, the extortions of Rome had stirred up a general feeling of indignation.1 Vast sums of money, the fruit of taxation or the price of the virtual sale of Church offices, were carried out of the country to replenish the coffers of the Pope.

1 Ranke, i. 132 seq.