A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [84]
In Luther’s homeland Sebastian Brandt’s Das Narrenschiff was a lonely masterpiece; even so, Brandt was no humanist and his work no triumph of the Renaissance; it was instead the last embodiment of medieval thought. The Germans had developed a vernacular literature, but the books published by Gutenberg’s successors were light entertainment—folktales, epics of ancient kings, the fantasies of Brunhilde—old wine, of poor vintage, rebottled for a people who could not even fathom the sermons read by their parish priests, let alone the tremendous issues raised in Wittenberg three years earlier and now keeping the new Holy Roman emperor awake nights.
Furthermore, and this was decisive for Luther, most Saxon, Austrian, Hessian, Pomeranian, Bavarian, Silesian, Brandenburg, and Westphalian nobles—the minor princes who would determine his fate during the coming winter—were equally handicapped. Only the wealthy could afford Latin teachers for their heirs. There were rich men in central Europe now, but they were in commerce; and trade, by tradition, was barred to the aristocracy. Von Hutten’s vitriolic leaflets were as meaningless to them as to their peasants. But like the peasantry, they could be reached through the tongue they had learned as children. Latin was precise, balanced, logical; a feast for scholars. But Luther knew he could be more effective, more eloquent, more moving —and would possess a far larger megaphone—if he addressed his people in simple German, einfach Deutsch.
HIS FIRST APPEAL in German, Sermon von den guten Werken, was issued in June 1520, a few days after the pontiff’s Exsurge Domine bull was proclaimed in Rome. It was followed by three defiant tracts, beginning with An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation—in full, An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate—and ending with Von der Freiheit eines Christenmanschen (Of the Freedom of a Christian Man). In sum, they constituted an untempered (and often intemperate) assault on the Roman Catholic Church in all its guises, sacraments, theological interpretations, and conduct of Christian affairs on earth.
Each vehemently assaulted the papacy (“Hearest thou this, O pope, not most holy of men but most sinful? Oh, that God from heaven would soon destroy thy throne, and sink it in the abyss of hell!”), and all constituted naked appeals to German patriotism. Rome’s greatest crime, if we are to judge it by these indictments, was neither scriptural nor theological; it was the exploitation of Germans, and particularly their economy, by Italian imperialists. Each year, Luther estimated, over 300,000 gulden found their way from Germany to Rome. He wrote: “We here come to the heart of the matter.”
Earlier, when he had posted his theses on the Castle Church bulletin board, readers left with the impression that indulgences had been the heart of the matter. Since then he had attacked four of the seven sacraments, defending baptism, communion, and, usually, contrition, but rejecting the others along with the doctrine of transubstantiation. Now his grievances were more comprehensible to Fuggers than theologians. “How comes it that we Germans must put up with such robbery and such extortion of our property at the hands of the pope? … If we justly hang thieves and behead robbers, why should we let Roman avarice go free? For he is the greatest thief and robber that has come or can come into the world, and all in the holy name of Christ and St. Peter! Who can longer endure it or keep silence?”
Not Martin Luther. He wanted papal legatees to be expelled from the land, German clergymen to renounce their loyalty to the Vatican, and a national church established, with the archbishop of Mainz as its leader. His thoughts were now ranging far beyond the pale, into territory never before explored by theologians, or at least theologians outside Rome. On October 6, 1520, while Aleandro and Eck were making