when the young emperor Charles V. opened his first imperial
diet at Worms early in 1521, and a committee of German
princes drafted a list of gravamina, longer and bitterer than
preceding one. While the resolute papal nuncio
Aleander was indefatigable in his efforts to induce theThe edict of Worms, 1521.
diet to condemn Luther’s teachings, his curious and
instructive dispatches to the Roman Curia complain constantly
of the ill-treatment and insults he encountered, of the readiness
of the printers to issue innumerable copies of Luther’s pamphlets
and of their reluctance to print anything in the pope’s favour.
Charles apparently made up his mind immediately and once for
all. He approved the gravamina, for he believed a thorough
reform of the Church essential. This reform he thought should
be carried out by a council, even against the pope’s will; and
he was destined to engage in many fruitless negotiations to this
end before the council of Trent at last assembled a score of years
later. But he had no patience with a single monk who, led
astray by his private judgment, set himself against the faith
held by all Christians for a thousand years. “What my forefathers
established at the council of Constance and other
councils it is my privilege to maintain,” he exclaims. Although,
to Aleander’s chagrin, the emperor consented to summon
Luther to Worms, where he received a species of ovation,
Charles readily approved the edict drafted by the papal nuncio,
in which Luther is accused of having “brought together all
previous heresies in one stinking mass,” rejecting all law,
teaching a life wholly brutish, and urging the lay people to
bathe their hands in the blood of priests. He and his adherents
were outlawed; no one was to print, sell or read any of his
writings, “since they are foul, harmful, suspected, and come
from a notorious and stiff-necked heretic.” The edict of
Worms was entirely in harmony with the laws of Western
Christendom, and there were few among the governing classes
in Germany at that time who really understood or approved
Luther’s fundamental ideas; nevertheless—if we except the
elector of Brandenburg, George of Saxony, the dukes of Bavaria,
and Charles V.’s brother Ferdinand—the princes, including the
ecclesiastical rulers and the towns, commonly neglected to
publish the edict, much less to enforce it. They were glad to
leave Luther unmolested in order to spite the “Curtizanen,”
as the adherents of the papal Curia were called. The emperor
was forced to leave Germany immediately after the diet had
dissolved, and was prevented by a succession of wars from
returning for nearly ten years. The governing council, which
had been organized to represent him in Germany, fell rapidly
into disrepute, and exercised no restraining influence on those
princes who might desire to act on Luther’s theory that the
civil government was supreme in matters of Church reform.
The records of printing indicate that religious, social and
economic betterment was the subject of an ever-increasing
number of pamphlets. The range of opinion was
wide. Men like Thomas Murner, for instance, heartily
denounced “the great Lutheran fool,” but at the sameWide divergence
of opinion in Germany.
time bitterly attacked monks and priests, and popularized
the conception of the simple man with the hoe
(Karsthans). Hans Sachs, on the other hand, sang the praises
of the “Wittenberg Nightingale,” and a considerable number
of prominent men of letters accepted Luther as their guide—Zell
and Bucer, in Strassburg, Eberlin in Ulm, Oecolampadius
in Augsburg, Osiander and others in Nuremberg, Pellicanus
in Nordlingen. Moreover, there gradually developed a group
of radicals who were convinced that Luther had not the courage
of his convictions. They proposed to abolish the “idolatry”
of the Mass and all other outward signs of what they deemed
the old superstitious. Luther’s colleague at Wittenberg,
Carlstadt (q.v.), began denouncing the monastic life, the celibacy
of the clergy, the veneration of images; and before the
end of 1521 we find the first characteristic outward symptoms
of Protestantism. Luther had meanwhile been concealed
by his friends in the Wartburg, near Eisenach, where he busied
himself with a new German translation of the New Testament,
to be followed in a few years by the Old Testament. The
Bible had long been available in the language of the people,
and there are indications that the numerous early editions of
the Scriptures were widely read. Luther, however, possessed
resources of style which served to render his version far superior
to the older one, and to give it an important place in the development
of German literature, as well as in the history of the
Protestant churches. During his absence two priests from
parishes near Wittenberg married; while several monks,
throwing aside their cowls, left their cloisters. Melanchthon,
who was for a moment carried away by the movement, partook,
with several of his students, of the communion under both
kinds, and on Christmas Eve a crowd invaded the church of
All Saints, broke the lamps, threatened the priests and made
sport of the venerable ritual. Next day, Carlstadt, who had
laid aside his clerical robes, dispensed the Lord’s Supper in
the “evangelical fashion.” At this time three prophets arrived
from Zwickau, eager to hasten the movement of emancipation.
They were Weavers who had been associated with Thomas
Münzer, and like him looked forward to a very radical reform
of society. They rejected infant baptism, and were among the
forerunners of the Anabaptists.
In January 1522, Carlstadt induced the authorities of Wittenberg to publish the first evangelical church ordinance. The revenues from ecclesiastical foundations, as well as those from the industrial gilds, were to be placed in common chest, to be in charge of the townsmen and theThe Protestant Revolt begins in Saxony, 1522. magistrates. The priests were to receive fixed salaries; begging, even by monks and poor students, was prohibited; the poor, including the monks, were to be supported from the common chest. The service of the Mass was modified, and the laity were to receive the elements in both kinds. Reminders of the old religious usages were to be done away with, and fast days were to be no longer observed. These measures, and the excitement which followed the arrival of the radicals from Zwickau, led Luther to return to Wittenberg in March 1522, Where he preached a series of sermons attacking the impatience of the radical party, and setting forth clearly his own views of what the progress of the Reformation should be. “The Word created heaven and earth and all things; the same Word will also create now, and not we poor sinners. Faith must be unconstrained and must be accepted without compulsion. To marry, to do away with images, to become monks and nuns, or for monks and nuns to leave their convent, to eat meat on Friday or not to eat it, and other like things—all these are open questions, and should not be forbidden by any man . . . . What we want is the heart, and to win that we must preach the gospel. Then the Word will drop into one heart to-day and to-morrow into another, and so will work that each will forsake the Mass.” Luther succeeded in quieting the people both in Wittenberg and the neighbouring towns, and in preventing the excesses which had threatened to discredit the whole movement.
In January 1522, Leo X. had been succeeded by a new pope, Adrian VI., a devout Dominican theologian, bent on reforming the Church, in which, as he injudiciously confessed through his legate to the diet at Nuremberg, Roman Curia had perhaps been the chief sourceAdrian VI. 1522–1523. of “that corruption which had spread from the head to the members.” The Lutheran heresy he held to be God’s terrible judgment on the sins of the clergy. The diet refused to accede to the pope’s demand' that the edict of Worms should be enforced, and recommended that a Christian council should be summoned in January, to include not only ecclesiastics but laymen, who should be permitted freely to express their opinions. While the diet approved the list of abuses drawn up at Worms, it ordered that Luther’s books should no longer be published, and that Luther himself should hold his peace, while learned men were to admonish the erring preachers. The decisions of this diet are noteworthy, since they probably give a very fair idea of the prevailing opinion of the ruling classes in Germany. They refused to regard Luther as in any way their leader, or even to recognize him as a discreet
