A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [91]
It was these disorders which had flushed Luther out of his sanctuary in the Thuringian Forest. His attitude toward violence had always been ambivalent. No Protestant, not even Hutten, had published prose as incendiary as Adel deutscher Nation, but now, confronted with the consequences, he drew back. It proved to be only the temporary lapse of a revolutionary. Nevertheless it was impressive. He preached: “Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women; shall we then prohibit wine and ban women? The sun, the moon, the stars, have been worshipped; shall we then pluck them out of the sky?”
Under his direction, both old and new communion rites were made available to Wittenbergers, and worshipers who cherished crucifixes, religious images, and holy music were left alone; as a composer of hymns, he himself approved of such solace. The Ratsversammlung, reversing itself, drove Karlstadt out of town. Unchastised, he took a pulpit in nearby Orlamünde to condemn Luther as a “gluttonous ecclesiastic … the new Wittenberg pope.” His congregation was swayed. Frederick the Wise, fearing an uprising—and it was coming—asked Luther to make the burghers of Orlamünde see reason. He tried, but nothing was sacred anymore, not even the man who, more than any other, had inspired them; the Orlamünders, refusing to listen to him, stoned him and pasted him with mud until he withdrew.
Hearing of the incident, Thomas Müntzer, another former Lutheran turned radical Anabaptist, published a pamphlet calling his former idol “Dr. Liar [Dr. Lügner],” a “shameless monk” who spent his time “whoring and drinking.” Müntzer was openly calling on the serfs to revolt; in a leaflet, Ermahnung zum Frieden (Admonition to Peace), Luther begged them to be patient. They rose anyway, and when their rebellion collapsed—nearly 100,000 peasant deaths later—Karlstadt was threatened with prosecution as an instigator. Ironically, he turned to Luther for refuge. It was quickly granted, and Karlstadt, weary of struggle, hoarse from his polemics, and exhausted by the demands of his teenaged bride, returned to teaching. He died, an obscure professor in Basel, fifteen years later. Müntzer was less fortunate. He led rebellious peasants against seasoned troops in Saxony. The defeat of the rebels was followed by an orgy of medieval brutality; five thousand men were put to the sword. Some three hundred were spared when their women agreed to beat out the brains of two priests suspected of encouraging the uprising. Then Müntzer himself was tortured to the point of death and beheaded.
LUTHER had been among the captivated readers of Erasmus’s Encomium moriae. The eminent humanist was now busy at the University of Louvain’s Collegium Trilingue, with professorships in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and on March 18, 1519, Luther had written him there, humbly soliciting his support. It was a curious appeal, revealing a total misunderstanding of everything Erasmus represented. Replying on May 30, the scholar suggested that it “might be wiser of you to denounce those who misuse the Pope’s authority than to censure the Pope himself. … Old institutions cannot be uprooted in an instant. Quiet argument may do more than wholesale condemnation. Avoid all appearance of sedition. Keep cool. Do not get angry. Do not hate anybody.”
Erasmus continued to defend