because, as will appear later, he found in them the expression of that annihilation of the human by means of Grace, of which the idea was floating before his mind, and because he also discovered in them an “inwardness” which agreed with his own feelings at that time.
From Erasmus and his compeers he undoubtedly borrowed, in addition to a spirit of justifiable criticism, an exaggerated sentiment of independence towards ecclesiastical antiquity. The contact with their humanistic views assuredly strengthened in him the modern tendency to individualism. Not long after a change in the nature of his friendship necessarily took place. His antagonism to Erasmus in the matter of his doctrine of Grace led to a bitter dispute between the two, to which Luther’s contribution was his work on “The Servitude of the Will” (De servo arbitrio); at the same time his alliance with the Humanists remained of value to him in the subversive movement which he had inaugurated.
Mighty indeed were the forces, heralds of a spiritual upheaval, which, since the fifteenth century, had streamed through the Western world in closer or more distant connection with the great revival of the study of classical antiquity. They proclaimed the advent of a new cycle in the history of mankind. This excited world could not fail to impart its impulse to the youthful Luther.
The recently discovered art of printing had, as it were at one blow, created a world-wide community of intellectual productions and literary ideas such as the Middle Ages had never dreamed of. The nations were drawn closer together at that period by the interchange of the most varied and far-reaching discoveries. The spirit of worldly enterprise awoke as from a long slumber as a result of the astonishing discovery of great and wealthy countries overseas.
With the greater facilities for intellectual intercourse and the increase of means of study, criticism set to work on all branches of learning with greater results than ever before. The greater States now did what they had been willing but unable to do before; they freed themselves more and more from the former tutelage of the Church; they aimed at securing freedom and shaking off that priestly influence to which, in part at least, they owed their stability and their growth; nor was this movement confined to the greater States, for, in Germany, at any rate, the wealthy cities, the great landed proprietors and princes were all alike intent on ridding themselves of the oppression under which they had hitherto laboured and on securing for themselves an increase of power. In brief, everywhere the old restraints were breaking down, everywhere a forward movement of individualism was in progress at the expense of the commonweal and the traditional order of the Middle Ages; but, above all, at the expense of the Church’s religious authority, which, alone till then, had kept individualism in check to the profit of humanity.
It would indeed have been well had at least the Catholic Church at that critical period been free from weakness and abuse. Her Divine power of blessing the nations, it is true, still survived, her preaching of the truth, her treasure of the Sacraments, in short, her soul, was unchanged; but, because she was suffering from many lamentable imperfections, the disruptive forces were able to come into play with fatal results. The complaints of eloquent men full of zeal for souls, both at that time and during the preceding decades, particularly in Germany, over the decline of religious life among the Faithful and the corruption in the clergy, were only too well founded, and deserved to have met with a much more effectual reception than they did. What the monk of Wittenberg, with unbridled passion and glaring exaggeration, was about to thunder forth over the world in his mighty call for reform, had already for the most part been urged by others, yea, by great Saints of the Church who attacked the abuses with the high-minded zeal of ripe experience. Strict, earnest and experienced men had set to work on a Catholic reform in many parts of the Church, not excepting Germany, in the only profitable way, viz. not by doctrinal innovation, but by raising the standard of morality among both people and clergy. But progress was slow, very slow, for reasons which cannot be dealt with here. The life-work of the pious founder of his own Congregation might well have served Luther as an admirable example of moral regeneration and efficiency; for the aim of Andreas Proles was, as a Protestant writer remarks: “A strong and mighty Reformation”; he lived in hopes that God would shortly raise up a hero capable of bringing it about with strength and determination, though the Reformation he had in his mind, as our historian allows, could only have been a Reformation in the Catholic sense.[92] Another attractive example of reforming zeal was also given under Luther’s very eyes by the Windesheim Congregation of the Brethren of the Common Life, with whom he had been in friendly intercourse from his boyish days.
The disorders in Germany had an all too powerful stronghold in the higher ranks of ecclesiastical authority. Not until after the Council of Trent did it become apparent how much the breaking down of this bulwark of corruption would cost. The bishops were for the most part incapable or worldly. Abbots, provosts, wealthy canons and dignitaries vied with and even excelled the episcopate in their neglect of the duties of their clerical state. In the filling of Church offices worldly influence was paramount, and in its wake followed forced nominations, selfishness, incompetence and a general retrograde movement; the moral disorders among the clergy and the people accumulated under lazy and incompetent superiors. The system of indulgences, pilgrimages, sodalities and numerous practices connected with the veneration of the Saints, as well as many other details of worship, showed lamentable excesses.
Of the above-mentioned evils within the German Church, two will be examined more closely: the interference of the Government and the worldly-minded nobility in Church matters, and the evil ways of the higher and lower grades of the clergy.
Not merely were the clerical dues frequently seized by the princes and lesser authorities, but positions in the Cathedral chapters and episcopal sees were, in many cases, handed over arbitrarily to members of the nobility or ruling houses, so that in many places the most important posts were held by men without a vocation and utterly unworthy of the office. “When the ecclesiastical storm broke out at the end of the second decade of the sixteenth century the following archbishoprics and bishoprics were filled by the sons of princes: Bremen, Freising, Halberstadt, Hildesheim, Magdeburg, Mayence, Merseburg, Metz, Minden, Münster, Naumburg, Osnabrück, Paderborn, Passau, Ratisbon, Spires, Verden and Verdun.”[93] The bishops drawn from the princely houses were, as a rule, involved in worldly business or in Court intrigues, even where, as was the case, for instance, with the powerful Archbishop of Mayence, Albrecht of Brandenburg, their early education had not been entirely anti-ecclesiastical.
Another evil was the uniting of several important bishoprics in the hands of one individual. “The Archbishop of Bremen was at the same time Bishop of Verden, the Bishop of Osnabrück also Bishop of Paderborn, the Archbishop of Mayence also Archbishop of Magdeburg and Bishop of Halberstadt. George, Palsgrave of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria, had already in his thirteenth year been made Cathedral Provost of Mayence and afterwards became a Canon of Cologne and Treves, Provost of St. Donatian’s at Bruges, patron of the livings of Hochheim and Lorch on the Rhine and finally, in 1513, Bishop of Spires. By special privilege of Pope Leo X, granted June 22, 1513, he, an otherwise earnest and pious man, was permitted to hold all these benefices in addition to his bishopric of Spires.”[94] A contemporary, reviewing the condition of the worldly-minded bishops, complains “that the higher clergy are chiefly to blame for the careless way in which the cure of souls is exercised. They place unsuitable shepherds over the people, while they themselves draw the tithes. Many seek to unite in their grasp the greatest possible number of livings without fulfilling the duties they entail and waste the revenues of the Church in luxury, on servants, pages, dogs and horses. One seeks to outvie the other in ostentation and luxury.”[95] One of the most important explanations of the fact, that, at the very outset of the religious innovation, the falling away from the Church took place with such astonishing celerity, is to be found in the corruption and apathy of the episcopate.[96]
Bertold Pirstinger, Bishop of Chiemsee and author of the lament “Onus ecclesiæ,” wrote sadly in 1519: “Where does the choice