of the Church, was justified in interfering in the internal affairs of particular states. Unfortunately, most matters could be viewed from both a secular and religious standpoint; and even in purely secular affairs the claims of the pope to at least indirect control were practically unlimited. The specific nature of the abuses which flourished in the papal monarchy, the unsuccessful attempts to remedy them, and the measures taken by the chief European states to protect themselves will become apparent as we hastily review the principal events of the 14th and 15th centuries. The As one traces the vicissitudes of the papacy during the two centuries from Boniface VIII. to Leo X. one cannot fail to be impressed with the almost incredible strength of the papacy in ecclesiastical state which had been organized and the 14th fortified by Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III. century and Gregory IX. In spite of the perpetuation of all the old abuses and the continual appearance of new devices for increasing the papal revenue; in spite of the jealousy of kings and princes, the attacks of legists and the preaching of the heretics; in spite of seventy years of exile from the holy city, forty years of distracting schism and discord, and thirty years of conflict with stately œcumenical councils deliberating in the name of the Holy Spirit and intent upon permanently limiting the papal prerogatives; in spite of the unworthy conduct of some of those who ascended the papal throne, their flagrant political ambitions, and their greed; in spite of the spread of knowledge, old and new, the development of historical criticism, and philosophical speculation; in spite, in short, of every danger which could threaten the papal monarchy, it was still intact when Leo X. died in 1521. Nevertheless, permanent if partial dissolution was at hand, for no one of the perils which the popes had seemingly so successfully overcome had failed to weaken the constitution of their empire; and it is impossible to comprehend its comparatively sudden disintegration without reckoning with the varied hostile forces which were accumulating and combining strength during the 14th and 15th centuries. The first serious conflict that arose between the developing modern state and the papacy centred about the pope's claim that the property of the clergy was normally exempt from royal taxation. Boniface VIII. was forced to permit Edward I. and Philip the Fair to continue to demand and receive subsidies granted by the clergy of their realms. Shortly after the bitter humiliation of Boniface by the French government and his death in 1303, the bishop of Bordeaux was elected pope as Clement V. (1305). preferred to remain in France, and as the Italian cardinals died they were replaced by Frenchmen. The papal court was presently established at Avignon, on the confines of France, where it remained until 1377. While the successors of Clement V. were not so completely under the control of the French kings as has often been alleged, the very proximity of the curia to France served inevitably to intensify national jealousies. The claims of John XXII. (1316–1334) to control the election of the emperor called forth the first fundamental and critical attack on the papal monarchy, by Marsiglio of Padua, who declared in his Defensor pacis (1324) that the assumed supremacy of the bishop of Rome was without basis, since it was very doubtful if Peter was ever in Rome, and in any case there was no evidence that he had transmitted any exceptional prerogatives to succeeding bishops. But Marsiglio's logical and elaborate justification for a revolt against the medieval Church produced no perceptible effects. The removal of the papal court from Rome to Avignon, however, not only reduced its prestige but increased the pope's chronic financial embarrassments, by cutting off the income from his own dominions, which he could no longer control, while the unsuccessful wars waged by John XXII., the palace building and the notorious luxury of some of his successors, served enormously to augment the expenses. Various devices were resorted to, old and new, to fill the treasury. The fees of the Curia were raised for the numberless favours, dispensations, absolutions, and exemptions of all kinds which were sought by clerics and laymen. The right claimed by the He | pope to fill benefices of all kinds was extended, and the amount contributed to the pope by his nominees amounted to from a third to a half of the first year's revenue (see ANNATES). Boniface VIII. had discovered a rich source of revenue in the jubilee, and in the jubilee indulgences extended to those who could not come to Rome. Clement VI. reduced the period between these lucrative occasions from one hundred to fifty years, and Urban VI. determined in 1389 that they should recur at least once in a generation (every thirty-three years). Church offices, high and low, were regarded as investments from which the pope had his commission. century. England showed itself better able than other countries to defend itself against the papal control of church preferment. From 1343 onward, statutes were passed by parliament England forbidding any one to accept a papal provision, and and the cutting off all appeals to the papal curia or ecclesias- papacy in tical courts in cases involving benefices. Neverthe- the 14th less, as a statute of 1379 complains, benefices continued to be given "to divers people of another language and of strange lands and nations, and sometimes to actual enemies of the king and of his realm, which never made residence in this same, nor cannot, may not, nor will not in any wise bear and perform the charges of the same benefice in hearing confessions, preaching or teaching the people." When, in 1365, Innocent VI. demanded that the arrears of the tribute promised by King John to the pope should be paid up, parliament abrogated the whole contract on the ground that John had no right to enter into it. A species of anti-clerical movement, which found an unworthy leader in John of Gaunt, developed at this time. The Good Parliament of 1376 declared that, in spite of the laws restricting papal provisions, the popes at Avignon received five times as much revenue from England as the English kings themselves. Secularization was mentioned in parliament. Wycliffe began his public career in 1366 by proving that England was not bound to pay tribute to the pope. Twelve years later he was, like Marsiglio, attacking the very foundations of the papacy itself, as lacking all scriptural sanction. He denounced the papal government as utterly degraded, and urged that the vast property of the Church, which he held to be the chief cause of its degradation, should be secularized and that the clergy should consist of "poor priests," supported only by tithes and alms. They should preach the gospel and encourage the people to seek the truth in the Scriptures themselves, of which a translation into English was completed in 1382. During the later years of his life he attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and all the most popular institutions of the Church-indulgences, pilgrimages, invocation of the saints, relics, celibacy of the clergy, auricular confession, &c. His opinions were spread abroad by the hundreds of sermons and popular pamphlets written in English for the people (see WYCLIFFE). For some years after Wycliffe's death his followers, the Lollards, continued to carry on his work; but they roused the effective opposition of the conservative clergy, and were subjected to a persecution which put an end to their public agitation. They rapidly disappeared and, except in Bohemia, Wycliffe's teachings left no clearly traceable impressions. Yet the discussions he aroused, the attacks he made upon the institutions of the medieval Church, and especially the position he assigned to the Scriptures as the exclusive source of revealed truth, serve to make the development of Protestantism under Henry VIII. more explicable than it would otherwise be. Wycliffe's later attacks upon the papacy had been given point by the return of the popes to Rome in 1377 and the opening of the Great Schism which was to endure The Great for forty years. There had been many anti-popes in Schism the past, but never before had there been such pro- (1377longed and genuine doubt as to which of two lines 1417). of popes was legitimate, since in this case each was supported by a college of cardinals, the one at Rome, the other at Avignon. Italy, except Naples, took the side of the Italian pope; France, of the Avignon pope; England, in its hostility to France, sided with Urban VI. in Rome, Scotland with Clement VII., | had been raging between the Bohemians and Germans, was his rival; Flanders followed England; Urban secured Germany, Hungary and the northern kingdoms; while Spain, after remaining neutral for a time, went over to Clement. Western Christendom had now two papal courts to support. The schism extended down to the bishoprics, and even to the monasteries and parishes, where partisans of the rival popes struggled to obtain possession of sees and benefices. The urgent necessity for healing the schism, the difficulty of uniting the colleges of cardinals, and the prolonged and futile negotiations carried on between the rival popes inevitably raised the whole question of the papal supremacy, and led to the search for a still higher ecclesiastical authority, which, when the normal system of choosing the head of the Church broke down, might re-establish that ecclesiastical unity to which all Europe as yet clung. The idea of the supreme power on earth of a general council of Christendom, deliberating in the name of the Holy Spirit, convoked, if necessary, independently of the popes, was defended by many, and advocated by the university of Paris. The futile council of Pisa in 1509, however, only served to increase to three the number of rival representatives of God on earth. The considerable pamphlet literature of the time substantiates the conclusion of an eminent modern Catholic historian, Ludwig Pastor, who declares that the crisis through which the church passed in this terrible period of the schism was the most serious in all its history. It was at just this period, when the rival popes were engaged in a life-and-death struggle, that heretical movements appeared in England, France, Italy, Germany, and especially in Bohemia, which threatened the whole ecclesiastical order. The councils of Con The council of Constance assembled in 1414 under auspices hopeful not only for the extinction of the schism but for the general reform of the Church. Its members showed no patience with doctrinal innovations, even such moderate ones as John Huss represented. They stance turned him over to the secular arm for execution, and Basel. although they did not thereby succeed in checking the growth of heresy in Bohemia (see Huss). The healing of the schism proved no very difficult matter; but the council hoped not only to restore unity and suppress heresy, but to re-establish general councils as a regular element in the legislation of the Church. The decree Sacrosancta (April 1415) proclaimed that a general council assembled in the Holy Spirit and representing the Catholic Church militant had its power immediately from Christ, and was supreme over every one in the Church, not excluding the pope, in all matters pertaining to the faith and reformation of the Church of God in head and members. The decree Frequens (October 1417) provided for the regular convocation of councils in the future. As to ecclesiastical abuses the council could do very little, and finally satisfied itself with making out a list of those which the new pope was required to remedy in co-operation with the deputies chosen by the council. The list serves as an excellent summary of the evils of the papal monarchy as recognized by the unimpeachably orthodox. It included: the number, character and nationality of the cardinals, the abuse of the reservations" made by the apostolic see, the annates, the collation to benefices, expectative favours, cases to be brought before the papal Curia (including appeals), functions of the papal chancery and penitentiary, benefices in commendam, confirmation of elections, income during vacancies, indulgences, tenths, for what reasons and how is a pope to be corrected or deposed. The pope and the representatives of the council made no serious effert to remedy the abuses suggested under these several captions; but the idea of the superiority of a council over the pope, and the right of those who felt aggrieved by papal decisions to appeal to a future council, remained a serious menace to the theory of papal absolutism. The decree Frequens was not wholly neglected; though the next council, at Siena, came to naught, the council at Basel, whose chief business was to put an end to the terrible religious war that destined to cause Eugenius IV. much anxiety. It reaffirmed the decree Sacrosancta, and refused to recognize the validity of a bull Eugenius issued in December 1431 dissolving it. Two years later political reverses forced the pope to sanction the existence of the council, which not only concluded a treaty with the Bohemian heretics but abolished the papal fees for appointments, confirmation and consecration-above all, the annates-and greatly reduced papal reservations; it issued indulgences, imposed tenths, and established rules for the government of the papal states. France, however, withdrew its support from the council, and in 1438, under purely national auspices, by the famous Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, adjusted the relations of the Gallican Church to the papacy; and Eugenius soon found himself in a position to repudiate the council and summoned a new one to assemble in 1438 at Ferrara under his control to take up the important question of the pending union with the Greek Church. The higher clergy deserted the council of Basel, and left matters in the hands of the lower clergy, who chose an anti-pope; but the rump council gradually lost credit and its lingering members were finally dispersed. The various nations were left to make terms with a reviving papacy. England had already taken measures to check the papal claims. France in the Pragmatic Sanction reformulated the claim of the councils to be superior to the pope, as well as the decision of the council of Basel in regard to elections, annates and other dues, limitations on ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and appeals to the pope. While the canonical elections were re-established, the prerogatives of the crown were greatly increased, as in England. In short, the national ecclesiastical independence of the French Church was established. The German diet of Regensburg (1439) ratified in the main the decrees of the council of Basel, which clearly gratified the electors, princes and prelates; and Germany for the first time joined the ranks of the countries which subjected the decrees of the highest ecclesiastical instance to the placet or approval of the civil authorities. But there was no strong power, as in England and France, to attend to the execution of the provisions. century. In 1448 Eugenius's successor, Nicholas V., concluded a concordat with the emperor Frederick III. as representative of the German nation. This confined itself to papal Germany appointments and the annates. In practice it restored and the the former range of papal reservations, and extended papacy in the papal right of appointment to all benefices (except the 15th the higher offices in cathedrals and collegiate churches) which fell vacant during the odd months. It also accorded him the right to confirm all newly elected prelates and to receive the annates. Nothing was said in the concordat of a great part of the chief subjects of complaint. This gave the princes an excuse for the theory that the decrees of Constance and Basel were still in force, limiting the papal prerogatives in all respects not noticed in the concordat. It was Germany which gave the restored papacy the greatest amount of anxiety during the generation following the dissolution of the council of Basel. In the "recesses" or formal statements issued at the conclusion of the sessions of the diet one can follow the trend of opinion among the German princes, secular and ecclesiastical. The pope is constantly accused of violating the concordat, and constant demands are made for a general council, or at least a national one, which should undertake to remedy the abuses. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks afforded a new excuse for papal taxation. În 1453 a crusading bull was issued imposing a tenth on all benefices of the earth to equip an expedition against the infidel. The diet held at Frankfort in 1456 recalled the fact that the council of Constance had forbidden the pope to impose tenths without the consent of the clergy in the region affected, and that it was clear that he proposed to "pull the German sheep's fleece over its ears." A German correspondent of Aeneas Sylvius assures him in 1457 that "thousands of tricks are devised by the Roman see which enables it to extract the money from our pockets very 66 neatly, as if we were mere barbarians. Our nation, once so famous, is a slave now, who must pay tribute, and has lain in the dust these many years bemoaning her fate." Aeneas Sylvius issued, immediately after his accession to the papacy as Pius II. the bull Execrabilis forbidding all appeals to a future council. This seemed to Germany to cut off its last hope. It found a spokesman in the vigorous Gregory of Heimburg, who accused the pope of issuing the bull so that he and his cardinals might conveniently pillage Germany unhampered by the threat of a council. By forbidding appeals to a council the pope treats us like slaves, and wishes to take for his own pleasures all that we and our ancestors have accumulated by honest labour. He calls me a chatterer, although he himself is more talkative than a magpie." Heimburg's denunciations of the pope were widely circulated, and in spite of the major excommunication he was taken into the service of the archbishop of Mainz and was his representative at the diet of Nuremberg in 1462. It is thus clear that motives which might ultimately lead to the withdrawal of a certain number of German princes from the papal ecclesiastical state were accumulating and intensifying during the latter half of the 15th century. at the It is impossible to review here the complicated political history of the opening years of the 16th century. The Con- names of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. of France, of ditions in Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, of Henry VII. and Germany Henry VIII. of England, of Maximilian the German opening of king, of Popes Alexander VI., Julius II. and Leo X., the 16th stand for better organized civil governments, with century. growing powerful despotic heads; for a perfectly worldly papacy absorbed in the interests of an Italian principality, engaged in constant political negotiations with the European powers which are beginning to regard Italy as their chief field of rivalry, and are using its little states as convenient counters in their game of diplomacy and war. It was in Germany, however, seemingly the weakest and least aggressive of the European states, that the first permanent and successful revolts against the papal monarchy occurred. Nothing came of the lists of German gravamina, or of the demands for a council, so long as the incompetent Frederick III. continued to reign. His successor, Maximilian, who was elected emperor in 1493, was mainly preoccupied with his wars and attempts to reform the constitution of the empire; but the diet gave some attention to ecclesiastical reform. For instance, in 1501 it took measures to prevent money raised by the granting of a papal indulgence from leaving the country. After the disruption of the league of Cambray, Maximilian, like Louis XII., was thrown into a violent anti-curial reaction, and in 1510 he sent to the well-known humanist, Joseph Wimpheling, a copy of the French Pragmatic Sanction, asking his advice and stating that he had determined to free Germany from the yoke of the Curia and prevent the great sums of money from going to Rome. Wimpheling in his reply rehearsed the old grievances and complained that the contributions made to the pope by the archbishops on receiving the pallium was a great burden on the people. He stated that that of the archbishop of Mainz had been raised from ten to twenty-five thousand gulden, and that there had been seven vacancies within a generation, and consequently the subjects of the elector had been forced to pay that amount seven times. But Wimpheling had only some timid suggestions to make, and, since Maximilian was once more on happy terms with the pope, political considerations served to cool completely his momentary ardour for ecclesiastical reform. In 1514 the archbishopric of Mainz fell vacant again, and Albert of Brandenburg, already archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of Halberstadt, longing to add it to his possessions, was elected. After some scandalous negotiations with Leo X. it was arranged that Albert should pay 14,000 ducats for the papal confirmation and 10,000 as a "composition " for permission to continue to hold, against the rules of the Church, his two former archbishoprics. Moreover, in order to permit him to pay the sums, he was to have half the proceeds in his provinces from an indulgence granted to forward the rebuilding of St. Peter's. A Dominican monk, Johann Tetzel, was selected to proclaim the indulgence (together with certain supplementary graces) in the three provinces of the elector. This suggestion came from the curia, not the elector, whose representatives could not suppress the fear that the plan would arouse opposition and perhaps worse. Tetzel's preaching and the exaggerated claims that he was reported to be making for the indulgences attracted the attention of an Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, who had for some years been lecturing on theology at the university of Wittenberg. He found it impossible to reconcile Tetzel's views of indulgences with his own fundamental theory of salvation. He accordingly hastily drafted ninety-five propositions relating to indulgences, and posted an invitation to those who wished to attend a disputation in Wittenberg on the matter, under his presidency. He points out the equivocal character of the word poenitentia, which meant both "penance " and "penitence"; he declared that "true contrition seeks punishment, while the ampleness of pardons relaxes it and causes men to hate it." Christians ought to be taught that he who gives to a poor man or lends to the needy does better than if he bought pardons. He concludes with certain "keen questionings of the laity," as, Why does not the pope empty purgatory forthwith for charity's sake, instead of cautiously for money? Why does he not, since he is rich as Croesus, build St Peter's with his own money instead of taking that of poor believers? It was probably these closing reflections which led to the translation of the theses from Latin into German, and their surprising circulation. It must not be assumed that Luther's ninety-five theses produced any considerable direct results. They awakened the author himself to a consciousness that his doctrines were after all incompatible with some of the Church's teachings, and led him to consider the nature of the papal power which issued the indulgence. Two or three years elapsed before Luther began to be generally known and to exercise a perceptible influence upon affairs. In July 1518 a diet assembled in Augsburg to consider the new danger from the Turks, who were making rapid conquests under Sultan Selim I. The pope's representative, The diet of Cardinal Cajetan, made it clear that the only safety Augsburg lay in the collection of a tenth from the clergy of 1518. and a twentieth from laymen; but the diet appointed a committee to consider the matter and explain why they proposed to refuse the pope's demands. Protests urging the diet not to weaken came in from all sides. There was an especially bitter denunciation of the Curia by some unknown writer. He claims that "the pope bids his collectors go into the whole world, saying, 'He that believeth, and payeth the tenths, shall be saved.' But it is not necessary to stand in such fear of the thunder of Christ's vicar, but rather to fear Christ Himself, for it is the Florentine's business, not Christ's, that is at issue." The report of the committee of the diet was completed on the 27th of August 1518. It reviews all the abuses, declares that the German people are the victims of war, devastation and dearth, and that the common man is beginning to comment on the vast amount of wealth that is collected for expeditions against the Turk through indulgences or otherwise, and yet no expedition takes place. This is the first recognition in the official gravamina of the importance of the people. Shortly after the committee submitted its report the clergy of Liége presented a memorial which, as the ambassador from Frankfort observed, set forth in the best Latin all the various forms of rascality of which the curtizanen (i.e. curiales, officials of the curia) were guilty. From this time on three new streams begin to reinforce the rather feeble current of official efforts for reform. The common man, to whom the diet of Augsburg alludes, had long been raising his voice against the "parsons (Pfaffen); the men of letters, Brand, Erasmus, Reuchlin, and above all Ulrich von Hutten, contributed, each in their way, to discredit the Roman Curia; and lastly, a new type of theology, represented chiefly by Martin Luther, threatened to sweep away the very foundations of the papal monarchy. XXIII. I a of the masses to the clergy in Germany. "1 66 the Italian type, furnishes a good illustration. He believed The growing discontent of the poor people, whether in country | the German humanist who perhaps approached most nearly or town, is clearly traceable in Germany during the 15th century, and revolutionary agitation was chronic in southern Hostility Germany at least during the first two decades of the 16th. The clergy were satirized and denounced in popular pamphlets and songs. The tithe was an oppressive form of taxation, as were the various fees demanded for the performance of the sacraments. The so-called "Reformation of Sigismund," drawn up in 1438, had demanded that the celibacy of the clergy should be abandoned and their excessive wealth reduced. "It is a shame which cries to heaven, this oppression by tithes, dues, penalties, excommunication, and tolls of the peasant, on whose labour all men depend for their existence." In 1476 a poor young shepherd drew thousands to Nicklashausen to hear him denounce the emperor as a rascal and the pope as a worthless fellow, and urge the division of the Church's property among the members of the community. The "parsons" must be killed, and the lords reduced to earn their bread by daily labour. An apocalyptic pamphlet of 1508 shows on its cover the Church upside down, with the peasant performing the services, while the priest guides the plough outside and a monk drives the horses. Doubtless the free peasants of Switzerland contributed to stimulate disorder and discontent, especially in southern Germany. The conspiracies were repeatedly betrayed and the guilty parties terribly punished. That discovered in 1517 made a deep impression on the authorities by reason of its vast extent, and doubtless led the diet of Augsburg to allude to the danger which lay in the refusal of the common man to pay the ecclesiastical taxes. "It was into this mass of seething discontent that the spark of religious protest fell-the one thing needed to fire the train and kindle the social conflagration. This was the society to which Luther spoke, and its discontent was the sounding board which made his words reverberate." On turning from the attitude of the peasants and poorer townspeople to that of the scholars, we find in their writings a good deal of harsh criticism of the scholastic theology, satirical allusions to the friars, and, in Germany, sharp denunciations of the practices of the Curia. But there are many reasons for believing that the older estimate of the influence of the so-called Renaissance, or new learning," in promoting the Protestant revolt was an exaggerated one. The class of humanists which had grown up in Italy during the 15th century, and whose influence had been spreading into Germany, France and England during the generation immediately preceding the opening of the Protestant revolt, represented every phase of religious feeling from mystic piety to cynical indifference, but there were very few anti-clericals among them. The revival of Greek from the time of Chrysoloras onward, instead of begetting a Hellenistic spirit, transported the more serious-minded to the nebulous shores of NeoPlatonism, while the less devout became absorbed in scholarly or literary ambitions, translations, elegantly phrased letters, clever epigrams or indiscriminate invective. It is true that Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457) showed the Donation of Constantine to be a forgery, denied that Dionysius the Areopagite wrote the works ascribed to him, and refuted the commonly accepted notion that each of the apostles had contributed a sentence to the Apostles' Creed. But such attacks were rare and isolated and were not intended to effect a breach in the solid ramparts of the medieval Church, but rather to exhibit the ingenuity of the critic. In the libraries collected under humanistic influences the patristic writers, both Latin and Greek, and the scholastic doctors are conspicuous. Then most of the humanists were clerics, and in Italy they enjoyed the patronage of the popes. They not unnaturally showed a tolerant spirit on the whole toward existing institutions, including the ecclesiastical abuses, and, in general, cared little how long the vulgar herd was left in the superstitious darkness which befitted their estate, so long as the superior man was permitted to hold discreetly any views he pleased. Of this attitude Mutian (1471-1526), Attitude of the humanists. 1 Lindsay. The new A new type of theology made its appearance at the opening of the 16th century, in sharp contrast with the Aristotelian scholasticism of the Thomists and Scotists. This was due to the renewed enthusiasm for, and appreciation of, theology St Paul with which Erasmus sympathized, and which and found an able exponent in England in John Colet and Martin in France in Lefèvre of Étaples (Faber Stapulensis). Luther was reaching somewhat similar views at the same time, Luther. 66 hitherto protected them against reform; and thereby is although in a strikingly different manner and with far more | dexterity built themselves about with three walls, which have momentous results for the western world. Martin Luther was beyond doubt the most important single figure in the Protestant revolt. His influence was indeed by no means so decisive and so pervasive as has commonly been supposed, and his attacks on the evils in the Church were no bolder or more comprehensive than those of Marsiglio and Wycliffe, or of several among his contemporaries who owed nothing to his example. Had the German princes not found it to their interests to enforce his principles, he might never have been more than the leader of an obscure mystic sect. He was, moreover, no statesman. He was recklessly impetuous in his temperament, coarse and grossly superstitious according to modern standards. Yet in spite of all these allowances he remains one of the great heroes of all history. Few come in contact with his writings without feeling his deep spiritual nature and an absolute genuineness and marvellous individuality which seem never to sink into mere routine or affectation. In his more important works almost every sentence is alive with that autochthonic quality which makes it unmistakably his. His fundamental religious conception was his own hard-found answer to his own agonized question as to the nature and assurance of salvation. Even if others before him had reached the conviction that the Vulgate's word justitia in Romans i. 16-17 meant righteousness rather than "justice" in a juridical sense, Luther exhibited supreme religious genius in his interpretation of "God's righteousness" (Gerechtigkeit) as over against the "good works" of man, and in the overwhelming importance he attached to the promise that the just shall live by faith. It was his anxiety to remove everything that obscured this central idea which led him to revolt against the ancient Church, and this conception of faith served, when he became leader of the German Protestants, as a touchstone to test the expediency of every innovation. But only gradually did he come to realize that his source of spiritual consolation might undermine altogether the artfully constructed fabric of the medieval Church. As late as 1516 he declared that the life of a monk was never a more enviable one than at that day. He had, however, already begun to look sourly upon Aristotle and the current scholastic theology, which he believed hid the simple truth of the gospel and the desperate state of mankind, who were taught a vain reliance upon outward works and ceremonies, when the only safety lay in throwing oneself on God's mercy. He was suddenly forced to take up the consideration of some of the most fundamental points in the orthodox theology by the appearance of Tetzel in 1517. In his hastily drafted Ninety-five Theses he sought to limit the potency of indulgences, and so indirectly raised the question as to the power of the pope. He was astonished to observe the wide circulation of the theses both in the Latin and German versions. They soon reached Rome, and a Dominican monk, Prierius, wrote a reply in defence of the papal power, in an insolent tone which first served to rouse Luther's suspicion of the theology of the papal Curia. He was summoned to Rome, but, out of consideration for his patron, the important elector of Saxony, he was permitted to appear before the papal legate during the diet of Augsburg in 1518. He boldly contradicted the legate's theological statements, refused to revoke anything and appealed to a future council. On returning to Wittenberg, he turned to the canon law, and was shocked to find it so completely at variance with his notions of Christianity. He reached the conclusion that the papacy was but four hundred years old. Yet, although of human origin, it was established by common consent and with God's sanction, so that no one might withdraw his obedience without offence. It was not, however, until 1520 that Luther became in a sense the leader of the German people by issuing his three great pamphlets, all of which were published in German as well as in Latin-his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, and his Freedom of the Christian. In the first he urged that, since the Church had failed to reform itself, the secular government should come to the rescue. "The Romanists have with great Apart from fundamental rejection of the papal supremacy, there was little novel in Luther's appeal. It had all been said before in the various protests of which we have spoken, and very recently by Ulrich von Hutten in his Dialogues, but no one had put the case so strongly, or so clearly, before. In addressing the German nobility Luther had refrained from taking up theological or religious doctrines; but in September 1520 he attacked the whole sacramental system of the medieval Church in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church. Many reformers, like Glapion, the Franciscan confessor of Charles V., who had read the Address with equanimity if not approval, were shocked by Luther's audacity in rejecting the prevailing fundamental religious conceptions. Luther says: I must begin by denying that there are seven sacraments, and must lay down for the time being that there are only threebaptism, penance and the bread, and that by the court of Rome all these have been brought into miserable bondage, and the Church despoiled of her liberty." It is, however, in the Freedom of the Christian that the essence of Luther's religion is to be found. Man cannot save himself, but is saved then and there so soon as he believes God's promises, and to doubt these is the supreme crime. So salvation was to him not a painful progress toward a goal to be reached by the sacraments and by right conduct, but a state in which man found himself so soon as he despaired absolutely of his own efforts, and threw himself on God's assurances. Man's utter incapacity to do anything to please God, and his utter personal dependence on God's grace seemed to render the whole system of the Church well-nigh gratuitous even if it were purged of all the "sophistry" which to Luther seemed to bury out of sight all that was essential in religion. Luther's gospel was one of love and confidence, not of fear and trembling, and came as an overwhelming revelation to those who understood and accepted it. The old question of Church reform inevitably reappeared |