outbreak of the revolt. (See below, p. 200 f.)
“What wonder,” the same historian says, “that when the social revolution broke out in the spring, Luther’s persecuted followers thought they recognised the beginning of the change, and in many instances made common cause with the peasants and the lower classes of the towns. Luther himself had no wish to carry through his religious enterprise with the help either of the knights or of the peasants, but his followers were not equal to making the necessary distinction between the spiritual and the temporal.”[528]
Luther and his preachers had so frequently brought forward such disparaging and degrading charges against the secular, and still more against the spiritual authorities,[529] that clear-sighted contemporaries, such as Bartholomew von Usingen, foretold a revolution[530] as the result of such discourses and writings. The destruction of the episcopal power, which, under the conditions then prevailing, was so closely bound up with the secular, meant a radical revolution in the law of property obtaining in the German Empire.
The “Christian freedom” of all, the equality of high and low in the common priesthood, was proclaimed in the most incautious and seductive terms. The peasants were taught by itinerant and often fanatical preachers, concerning their real or alleged rights as vouched for by Holy Scripture. Thus the esteemed Strasburg preacher, Caspar Hedio, of the Rhinegau, in a sermon which he delivered on the Wachholder Heide, near Erbach, explained to the people his views on the customary payment of tithes; his words acting like a charm: He thought the peasants should pay tithes only under protest, though they were nevertheless not to attempt to abrogate the payment by force. Once roused, however, who was to keep the crowd within these limits? In 1524 Hedio had two sermons, preached on this subject in Strasburg, printed together with a circular letter addressed to the inhabitants of the Rhinegau, “which, there can be no doubt, exercised a certain influence upon the rising there.”[531] In the circular he proposed, that the people themselves should go in search of capable preachers if the ecclesiastical authorities did not send such.[532]
A far-reaching social movement had been at work among the peasants, more particularly in many districts of the south-west of Germany, even previous to the rise of Lutheranism. They raised protests, which in many instances were justifiable, against the oppression under which they laboured. A crisis seemed imminent there as early as 1513 and 1514, and the feeling was general that a settlement of the difficulties could only be brought about by violence. The ferment in many places assumed an anticlerical character, which was all the more natural seeing that the landowners and gentry who were the chief cause of the dissatisfaction were either clergymen, like the Prince-Bishops, or closely allied with the Church and her multifarious secular institutions. The ill-feeling against the clergy was even then being stirred up by exaggerated descriptions of their idle life, their luxury and their unworthy conduct.
To seek to represent the movement, as has been done, as an exclusively social one, is, even for the period before Luther, not quite correct, although it certainly was mainly social. Yet it was, as a matter of fact, the new ideas scattered among the people by Luther and Zwingli, and the preaching of the apostasy, which brought the unrest so quickly to a head. The anticlerical ideas of the religious innovators, combined with social class antagonism, lent an irresistible force to the rising. Hence the Peasant War has recently been described on the Protestant side as a “religious movement,” called forth by the discussion of first principles to which the Reformation gave rise, and which owed its violent character to the religious contrast which it brought out.[533] The expert on this period who writes thus, proves and justifies his opinion, showing that Zwingli and Luther “were the primary cause” of the War, not indeed directly, but because once the peasants had become familiar with the new “biblical” ideas, which were so favourable to their cause, they refused to stand by and see such doctrines suppressed by violence, and preferred to take up arms against the Catholic rulers and their energetic anti-Reformation measures.[534] According to the same writer it is necessary to distinguish carefully between what the peasants themselves represented in the course of the revolt as the moving cause, i.e. the social disabilities of which they complained (for instance in the Twelve Articles), and that which actually produced the rising.
Nor must it be overlooked that, at the moment when passions were already stirred up to their highest pitch, many attempts were made on the Lutheran side to pacify the people. The catastrophe foreseen affrighted those who were on the spot, and who feared lest the responsibility might fall upon their shoulders. Quite recently a forgotten pamphlet, written by an anonymous Lutheran preacher and dating from the commencement of the movement, has been republished, in which, after some pious exhortations, the author expresses his firm hope that the fear of God would succeed in triumphing over the excited passions; even biblical quotations against misuse of the new evangelical freedom are to be found in this well-intentioned booklet.[535] Then as now attention was drawn to Luther’s doctrine concerning obedience to the powers that be, which required of “the true Christian” that he should even “allow himself to be flayed,” and out of love of the cross renounce all desire for revenge (xiv. 4).
Notwithstanding all this, the great responsibility which Lutheranism shares in the matter remains. “It is no purely historical and objective view,” says another Protestant historian, “but rather an apologetic and false assumption, which attempts to deny the fact, that Luther’s evangelical preaching most strongly encouraged and brought to a crisis the social excitement which had been simmering among the lowest classes since the fifteenth century. The agitation stirred up by the preachers who followed in Luther’s footsteps contributed in a still greater degree towards this result.”[536]
Special research in the different parts of the wide area covered by the rising has to-day confirmed even more completely the opinion that the accusations urged against Lutheranism by the olden supporters of the Church were, after all, not so unjust in this particular. The much-abused Johann Cochlæus, who made such charges, is rightly spoken of by the last-mentioned historian as being “more suited” to depict that revolutionary period than the diplomatic and cautious Sleidanus, or the Protestant theological admirers and worshippers of Luther.[537] The learned Hieronymus Emser wrote, in the stormy year 1525, a work “Against Luther’s abominations,” a large part of which is devoted to proving what is already explained in the sub-title of the book, “How, and why, and in what words, Luther, in his books, urges and exhorts to rebellion.” Emser also gave indignant expression to his conviction in some verses intended for general circulation.
Luther was directly implicated in the beginning of the rising when the “Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia” was forwarded to him by the insurgents. The peasants invited him, with confidence, “to declare what was of Divine right.”[538] Luther’s honoured name came first in the list of learned men who were to be consulted. The Wittenberg professor grasped the full importance of the moment; he felt that the direction of German affairs had been placed in his hands. Naturally he did not wish to be the one to let loose the terrible storm, nor did he, as the representative and “deliverer” of the people, wish to repulse the movement which had been so long favourable to him, and the demands of which were, in part at least, perfectly justifiable. He found himself in a position exactly similar to that which he had occupied formerly in regard to the Knights, who were anxious to take up arms, and with whom he had, up to a certain point, made common cause, but whose project afterwards appeared to him too dangerous and compromising to the cause of the evangel. In the question of the Twelve Articles it was difficult, nay, impossible, for him not to give offence either to the gentry or to the populace, or to avoid barring the way for the new evangel in one direction or the other. He determined to seek a middle course. But the tragic consequences of the position he had always assumed, the circumstances of the day and his unrestrained temper, caused him to give mortal offence to both sides, to the lords as well as to the peasants.
First, he flung his “Exhortation to Peace” on the field of battle—no mere figure of speech, as, at the time of writing, the tumult had already broken out and the horrors of Weinsberg been enacted (April 16, 1525), though of this Luther was ignorant when he composed the pamphlet. Formerly this writing was thought to have been written in May, but as a matter of fact it belongs to the period just after April 18.[539]
In this writing, as well as in the two following which treat of the rising, certain sides of Luther’s character are displayed