following pages. The history of Luther’s development has passed into the foreground of literary interest by reason of the works which have appeared within the last few years, and, owing to the numerous sources and particular studies recently published, the historian is now in the fortunate position of being able to offer a sure solution of much that has hitherto been doubtful on a subject which has always exercised, and doubtless will continue to exercise, people’s minds.
CHAPTER III
THE STARTING-POINT
1. Former Inaccurate Views
The views formerly current with regard to the origin of Luther’s struggle against the old Church were due to an insufficient knowledge of history, and might be ignored were it not that their after effects still remain in literature.
It will be sufficient to mention three of these views. It was said that the Church’s teaching on Indulgences, and the practices of the Quæstors or Indulgence-preachers, first brought Luther into antagonism with the Church authorities and then gradually entangled him more and more in the great struggle regarding other erroneous teachings and usages. As a matter of fact, the question of Indulgences was raised only subsequent to Luther’s first great departures from the Church’s doctrine.
Then it was said that the far-seeing teacher of Wittenberg had from the very first directed his attention to the reformation of the whole Church, which he found sunk in abuses, and had therefore commenced with a doctrinal reform as a necessary preliminary. As though Luther—this is what this childish view presupposes—had before him from the beginning the plan of his whole momentous work, or sat down to draw up a general programme for the reformation of doctrine, commencing with the fall of Adam. We are to believe that the Monk at once severed all connecting ties with the whole of the past, in faith as well as in the practical conception of the Church’s life; that he went through no previous long inward process, attended for him by a weary conflict of soul; that, in fact, such a world-stirring revolution had been dependent on the will of one man, and was not the result of the simultaneous action of many factors which had, at the outset, been ignored and not taken into consideration. The whole struggle for the “betterment of the Church” was a gradual development, and the co-operating elements led their originator, both in his teaching and his practical changes, far beyond what he had originally aimed at. When Luther, brooding over original sin, grace and justification, first began to set up his new ideas against the so-called self-righteous and “little Saints” of his immediate surroundings, he did, it is true, now and again speak excitedly of the reforms necessary to meet certain phases of the great decline in the public life of the Church; but the Doctor of Holy Scripture was, as a matter of fact, far more preoccupied with the question of the theology of Paul and Augustine than with the abuses in the Church and outer world, which were, to tell the truth, very remote from the Monk’s cell and lecture-room.
The third view is also incorrect which has it that it was rivalry between two Orders, viz. dissatisfaction and envy on the part of the Augustinians against the Dominicans, which set the Monk on his career. The Augustinians, it was said,[245] were annoyed with the rival Order because the preaching of the Indulgence had been entrusted to its members and not rather to so capable a man as Luther. Notwithstanding the early date at which this charge was made, even by Luther’s own contemporaries, the fact remains, that not only were there Augustinian Indulgence-preachers, as, for instance, Johann Paltz, but that Luther’s erroneous teaching had already made its appearance before he had as yet commenced his struggle with Tetzel, and before he had even thought of the Dominicans Prierias and Cardinal Cajetan. Jealousy against his adversaries, the Dominicans, afterwards added fuel to the flame, but it was not the starting-point.
Moreover, in treating here of Luther’s starting-point, we are not seeking to determine, as was the case with the three views mentioned above, the origin and points of contact of the whole movement comprised under the name of the Reformation, but only of the first rise of Luther’s new opinions on doctrine. These originated quite apart from any attempt at external reform of the Church, and were equally remote from the idea of breaking away from the Pope or of proclaiming freedom of belief or unbelief, though many have fancied that these were Luther’s first aims.
Points of contact have been sought for not only in Humanism and its criticism of Church doctrine, but more particularly in the teaching and tenets of Hus, Luther’s starting-point being traced back to his deep study of the writings of John Hus, which had ultimately led him to revive his errors; most of Luther’s theses, so we are told, were merely a revival of Hus’s teaching. This view calls for a closer examination than the others.
A priori we might easily fancy that he had been led to his teaching on the Church by means of the writings of Wiclif and Hus, for here we do find a great similarity. But it is precisely this teaching on the Church which is not to be found amongst his earlier errors; he reached his views on this subject only as a result of the conflict he had to wage, and, moreover, even then he brought them forward under varying aspects. Erasmus, it is true, thought it fair to say, not merely of his teaching on the Church, but of his teaching in general, that if “what he has in common with Wiclif and Hus be removed, there would not be much left.”[246] Erasmus does not analyse Luther’s assertions, otherwise he would certainly have experienced some difficulty in bringing out in detail his supposed dependence. We do not, however, deny that there may be some connection on certain points.
Luther himself is absolutely silent as regards having arrived at his ideas through Wiclif and Hus. He evidently considers himself quite independent. In his earlier years he even speaks very strongly against the Bohemian heretics and the Picards, as he frequently calls the Husites. In his Commentary on the Psalms he regards them simply as heretics,[247] and in his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans he once instances the “hæresis Pighardorum” as an example of the wilful destruction of what is holy.[248] Later, however, at and after his public apostasy, and even shortly after the Leipzig Disputation, he defends some of Hus’s doctrines, and the result of his perusal of Hus’s work, “De ecclesia,” was to make him more audacious in upholding the views it contains.[249] This quite explains the great sympathy with which he afterwards speaks of Hus and his writings in general, and the passionate way in which he blames the Catholic Church for having condemned him. He says in 1520: “In many parts of the German land there still survives the memory of John Hus, and, as it did not fade, I also took it up, and discovered that he was a worthy, highly enlightened man.... See, all ye Papists and Romanists,” he cries, “whether you are able to undo one page of John Hus with all your writings.”[250] That book of Hus’s sermons which he found as a young student of theology in the monastery library at Erfurt (p. 25), he declares that he laid aside because it was by an arch-heretic, though he had found much good in it, and had been horrified that such a man had suffered death as a heretic; as he had at that time convinced himself, Hus interpreted Scripture powerfully and in a Christian manner.[251] We also know that Luther relates that Staupitz had told him of Proles, his predecessor, how he disapproved of Johann Zachariæ, one of the most capable opponents of Hus, and that Staupitz had agreed: the latter also held that “Zachariæ had gone to the devil, but that Hus had been unfairly treated.”[252] This opinion reinforces that of Grefenstein, mentioned above.