is enhanced by that of determining how far it was really a revolutionary movement and how far reactionary. Was it the last and greatest of the medieval peasant revolts, or was it a premature birth of modern democracy? It was probably a combination of both. The hardships of the peasants and town proletariate were undoubtedly aggravated by the economic revolution, the substitution of a world-market for local markets, the consequent growth of capitalism and of the relative poverty of the poorest classes; and, in so far as they saw no remedy except in a return to the worn-out medieval system, their objects were reactionary, and would have failed ultimately, even if they had achieved a temporary success. On the other hand, the ideas which their leaders developed during the course of the movement, such as the abolition of serfdom, the participation of peasants in politics, the universal application of the principle of election, were undeniably revolutionary and premature. Many of these ideas have been since successfully put into practice, but in 1525 the classes which formulated them had not acquired the faculties necessary for the proper exercise of political power; and the movement was an abortion.
The effect of its suppression upon the religious development of Germany was none the less disastrous. In its religious aspect the Peasants' Revolt was an appeal of the poor and oppressed to " divine justice " against the oppressor. They had eagerly applied to their lords the biblical anathemas against the rich, and interpreted the beatitudes as a promise of redress for the wrongs of the poor. They were naturally unconvinced by Luther's declarations that the Gospel only guaranteed a spiritual and not a temporal emancipation, and that spiritual liberty was the only kind of freedom to which they had a right. They felt that such a doctrine might suit Luther and his knightly and bourgeois supporters, who already enjoyed an excessive temporal franchise, but that in certain depths of material misery the cultivation of spiritual and moral welfare was impossible. It was a counsel of perfection to advise them to be content with spiritual solace when they complained that they could not feed their bodies. They did not regard poverty as compatible with the "divine justice" to which they appealed; and when their appeal was met by the slaughter of a hundred thousand of their numbers their faith in the new Gospel received a fatal blow. Their aspirations, which had been so vividly expressed in the popular literature of the last five years, were turned into despair, and they relapsed into a state of mind which was not far removed from materialistic atheism. Who knows, they asked, what God is, or whether there is a God? And the minor questions at issue between Luther and the Pope they viewed with profound indifference.
Such was the result of the Peasants' Revolt and of Luther's intervention. His conduct will always remain a matter of controversy, because its interpretation depends not so much upon what he said or
