Europe in the Age of the Reformation

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Luther

The Protestant Reformation can be dated to a specific event sparked by a single individual. This is rare in great historical events and partially explains why Martin Luther has received so much attention.

Luther is doubly important because his own writings and work are the source of the major religion that bears his name. Not all Protestants are Lutheran, but Lutherans were the first of the Protestant churches and remain one of the largest.

Luther occupies most of this narrative. The progress of his break with the Roman Catholic Church, and what developed as a result of the break, will serve not only to tell the story but also to illustrate the issues involved.

Early Years

Martin Luther was born in Saxony in 1483. His father decided young Martin would become a lawyer and had him educated for the law, but Martin did not want to become a lawyer. The two argued over this with neither side yielding much.

Then, in his early 20s, Martin Luther experienced a religious conversion. While crossing an open field during a storm, he was nearly struck by lightning. He vowed to his patron saint, Anne, that if his life should be spared he would become a monk.

True to his word, Luther quit school and entered a monastery. His father was furious, but Luther would not budge. He quickly discovered that the religious life suited him best and he threw himself into it with all his energies.

Luther the Monk

Luther was an excellent monk, or at least a most devoted one. He was deeply troubled by a pervasive sense of religious guilt; he felt the weight of his own sins painfully and sincerely wished to find some way to be cleansed. The rigors of monasticism seemed to offer what he sought.

He out-did all the other monks in devotion and study. He put himself through every rigor and test, including frequent fasting, long prayer vigils, and self-flagellation. He went to confession constantly, to the point where his confessor warned him that excessive confession was itself a sin of pride.

But for all the vigils and fasts and penances, he never really believes that he is holy, even after he is ordained. All the outward rituals of the Church assured him that he was a good Christian, yet when he looked within his heart he saw nothing that was worthy of God's mercy. And the terrors of Hell were quite real to Luther.

Professor Luther

Partly as a result of his scholarship, and partly to put his great energies to work, his abbot assigned Luther in 1508 to the faculty of Wittenberg University. This was a new university, founded by the Elector of Saxony, and it was in need of teachers.

At Wittenberg, Luther entered ever deeper into his study of Scriptures. His erudition won him respect from his peers, and his occasional sermons were well received, but still in his heart he was troubled. How could he know that he was saved? The question tormented him, despite all the reassurances of the Church. And the Bible was if anything even more troubling, with its many details of what it meant not to be saved.

Luther himself tells us about the dramatic turning-point in his life. He was sitting alone in his study at Wittenberg, thinking as he did so often of God's terrible justice. His Bible lay open before him and his eyes fell on a passage from the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans.

Verse 17 says, in part, that "the just shall live by his faith." He must have read this passage many times before, but at this moment a light kindled in Luther. As he read the passage, he saw that all of his fasting and penance counted for nothing, and that the only thing that would save him was simple faith.

This became one of the foundation-stones of Protestantism, and often goes by the catch-phrase of "justification by faith." That is, individuals are justified, are made able to meet God's justice, by faith alone. Good works, penances, priests, the whole system developed during the Middle Ages, all of it was irrelevant. In Latin the phrase was "sola fide."

Luther began preaching his ideas, which were not really all that original. Wycliff and Hus, in particular, but many others besides, had said much the same. But larger events now caught Luther up, and his own temperment ensured that he would not shrink from them. The first of these was the visit of Johann Tetzel to a nearby town.

Luther and the Penance-Dealer

The year was 1517, and Tetzel, a Dominican monk, was selling papal indulgences near Wittenberg. Tetzel was offering total remission of all sins forever - whoever bought his indulgence would go to Heaven immediately upon death.

This practice was not uncommon. In theory, the person purchasing the indulgence was to repent his or her sins prior to the purchase, so that it was clear that God was doing the forgiving of the sin while the Church was merely remitting the punishment that went with it. But Tetzel did not demand repentance. You paid your money and you got your indulgence and good day to you.

Tetzel was a born publicist. He set up his table in the town square, had lovely banners all around, and even distributed announcements complete with a little jingle to make it memorable:

"Another penny in the coffer rings, another soul to Heaven springs."

This sort of marketing was repellant to Luther, as indeed it was to many pious Christians. Most merely wrinkled their noses in disgust and turned away. Luther, being a university professor, instead wrote a paper.

Specifically, a list of 95 theses, or propositions, challenging the sale of indulgences in theory and practice. He nailed the document to the door of the Wittenberg Church, which was the usual place for posting public notices, and offered to debate the theses with any churchman.

This was a common practice. University professors, who were all clerics, would debate various propositions in a public forum. Such events were a form of entertainment in a college town, attended by the public with factions favoring this or that side. The issues debated, and which side came out the better, would be then argued among the attendees at taverns and on the streets for days or even weeks after.

This debate shaped up to be a doozy. In the first place, Luther was an Augustinian monk and Tetzel was a Dominican. There was a natural rivalry between the two orders that caused defenders to spring to both sides.

But, and this was characteristic of the man, Luther had raised the stakes considerably; some would say unnecessarily. Not only did he challenge the practice of indulgences, he challenged the right of popes to issue them, the entire theory of the Treasury of the Saints, and for good measure challenged the authority of the pope in several other areas as well.

The Dominicans came, the Augustinians came, and the debate was held. By all accounts it was both lively and inconclusive, with both sides going away claiming victory.

Luther continued his attacks of indulgences and papal privileges and powers of all sorts. His public sermons became immensely popular. When the business was brought to the attention of the pope, Leo X, he is famous for dismissing the whole affair as nothing more than "a monks' quarrel." Leo is not the most admirable of popes, but he can perhaps be forgiven for this, for various monastic orders did quarrel, often and violently, and sometimes grew extreme in their arguments. It rarely signified much. Leo thought the current flap was another in a long line of flaps.

But rivalry between orders was one thing, and it soon became clear that Martin Luther was another matter altogether. As his arguments were attacked by the Dominicans, Luther defended himself in a flurry of pamphlets. Over the next few years (1517- 1520) we can see him elaborating his ideas and growing increasingly radical in them.

The Break with Rome

By 1520 he was arguing that the pope held no special powers whatsoever, and that the entire doctrine of apostolic succession was false. He claimed that only a Council could decide matters of faith, and that the Church consisted of all Christians, including laymen. This, in turn, led him to the position that the nobility of Europe were as much leaders of the church as clergymen. He said the Emperor had an obligation to call a General Council. He was even attacking the system of the seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, matrimony, eucharist, ordination, penance, extreme unction); he would eventually argue that there were only two true sacraments (baptism and marriage).

But it was his attack on papal authority that finally drew official attention to Luther. The things he was saying would render virtually the entire structure of the Church meaningless, and this monk was not being at all circumspect. He proclaimed his ideas from the pulpit and in pamphlets that the printing press made available far and wide.

Leo and others wrote to Luther, urging him to go slowly. Some of his ideas had merit, they said, but they were subtle ideas and liable to be misinterpreted by the untrained. It was dangerous to say these things to the common people. He should be quiet. He should come to Rome.

Luther ignored the advice. The truth was plain enough and God's truth could never be dangerous or withheld. He went on preaching and thousands came to hear him. He went on writing and thousands more read him.

Luther crossed the line when his attacks became personal and vitriolic. He called the pope terrible names and claimed he had no authority to tell anyone what to do. He took to referring to Rome as the Whore of Babylon. Luther could be quite colorful when impassioned.

Leo warned Luther that if he did not desist, excommunication was the next step. Luther was to come to Rome to explain himself. Instead, Luther feigned illness and refused to budge.

So, in 1520, Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther. An excommunication arrives like a summons: an official document delivered personally into the hands of the recipient. From that moment on, the one excommunicated is outside the Church. No Christian is to share bread with him. He may not attend Mass and may not confess his sins. Should he die, he may not be buried in consecrated ground.

Luther received the document, invited his friends over, and publicly burned it. He wrote of the event, calling Leo X the anti-Christ. This again is pure Martin Luther. Others had been excommunicated and had ignored it. Some had even done so successfully. But few had flung the order back in the face of the pope, taking public action that would allow neither side any room to back down gracefully. Luther's friends called it courage and admired him; his enemies called it madness or worse, and feared him.

The Diet of Worms

Having excommunicated him, the Church was now done with Luther. All that remained was for the civil authorities to arrest him and deal with him appropriately. For the Emperor, too, had demanded Luther desist, and had been equally defied.

The emperor was a young Charles V. Charles was not keen on the idea of an Italian pope meddling in the affairs of the German church, and he was not about to have Luther condemned out of hand, merely because Leo was demanding it. So he summoned Luther to an imperial Diet at Worms in 1521 to defend himself. Charles would hear this monk speak with his own words.

Luther's friends urged him not to go. The whole business was too reminiscent of events just over a century old: Jan Hus condemned by the Church as a heretic, called by the Emperor and promised safe conduct, but in fact immediately arrested and eventually burned at the stake. Surely the same would happen again. Charles was not even a German!

But strong as Luther was on disobeying the pope, he was equally strong on obeying his sovereign. He went to Worms from Wittenberg openly, and his trip soon turned into a triumphal progress. As he went, he was invited to preach at one church after another, for everyone was eager to hear him, even if they did not agree with all he said. He was viewed as a German being persecuted by foreigners, worth defending no matter how radical his ideas.

Moreover, he preached well, and won doubters to his side. By the time he reached Worms, he was something of a national hero. At Worms, however, his reception was rather different.

There he encountered the Emperor himself, attending by two cardinals and a cloud of ecclesiastics. Scholars abounded, and Luther admitted that he was overwhelmed and dismayed by the prestige of those arrayed against him.

Time and again the Emperor urged Luther to reconsider, to moderate, to retract. Time and again, Luther stated what he believed to be true and would not back down. In the end, Charles made it plain: recant on certain key points or be arrested and condemned for heresy. Luther asked time to consider; Charles gave him the evening. The next day, Luther again appeared before the emperor and gave a short speech. At the end of it he uttered his famous statement: "I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is unsafe and wrong to go against my conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen."

Charles condemned him the next day and issued an edict calling for his arrest.

But Luther was already gone. His friends had spirited him out of Worms in disguise. Imperial agents combed the countryside, but no one knew anything. Luther had vanished.

Soon, though, those pamphlets and letters began appearing, attacking the papacy and signed by Martin Luther. Charles could not track them down, but he had his suspicions. He wrote several times to the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise. The Elector politely wrote back that he had no knowledge of the whereabouts of one Martin Luther.

Nor did he. Frederick had given careful instructions that his people were to hide Luther and were not to tell him where he was. Thus he was able to reply to his emperor with perfect honesty.

Frederick was a curious but crucial player in this drama. He himself remained Catholic and unconverted to Luther's position. Yet he protected Luther consistently, running a very real risk of war. We have no documents that let us look into Frederick's innermost thoughts, but it appears that in this instance political considerations took precedence over religious. Frederick would not allow an emperor and a pope to come in and arrest one of his own citizens when the elector believed the man had done no wrong. He was not strong enough to defy Charles openly, so he did the next best thing.

Luther had been hidden at one of Frederick's castles called Wartburg. Although Frederick remained a loyal Catholic throughout his life, he regarded Luther as one of his own citizens and sought to protect him not so much on religious as on political grounds. This gave Martin Luther a refuge that earlier reformers like John Hus lacked.

From Wartburg, freed from the demands of teaching, Luther launched a blizzard of pamphlets and letters. He was working at a time when the printing industry had boomed, so presses all over Germany and beyond spread Luther's ideas widely with a speed that authorities found impossible to control. In addition to his treatises and letters, Luther now undertook to translate the Bible into German, a task he finished in 1534.

Luther at Home

In April 1523 Luther helped twelve nuns escape from a convent in a nearby town. It was rather an extraordinary stunt and included having the ladies smuggled out by hiding in herring barrels. Every effort was made to find a suitable home for each of the women, and this was done for eleven out of the twelve. Katharina von Bora, however, had neither family connections nor a likely prospect in town. Over the next year a she considered two or three possibilities, but none worked out. She made it plain that she wanted to marry Martin Luther himself.

For his part, Luther at first resisted because he'd been excommunicated from the Church. This has always struck me and I consider it evidence that despite the reformer's vitriolic condemnation of the papacy, despite having clearly broken with the Catholic Church by 1524, and despite having been declared an enemy of the Empire as well, Luther still took his excommunication seriously enough to consider it an impediment to marriage. Or, at least, that he recognized that in society at large it would be a negative. Eventually, however, he was persuaded and evidently came to look forward to the event.

Luther and Katharina were married on 13 June 1525. They had a long and happy marriage and Luther many times praised his wife's virtues. They seem to have formed a good partnership, with each spouse taking on certain duties. "Katy," as he affectionately called her, ran the Luther household and was an active participant in the famous "table talk" discussions that took place among friends and visitors after an evening meal at the Luther home. They had six children, two of whom died in childhood.

Not only Luther's act of marriage, but also the way his household ran, was a model to many other reformers. As for the Catholic Church, it was one more lurid example of how badly astray people could go when they left the guiding hand of Mother Church. After all, smuggling nuns out of a convent and then marrying them? Scandalous!

Luther and the Peasants' War

The same year Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, the Peasants' War in Germany came to a bloody end. The rebellion badly spooked many reformers because it gave secular rulers a reason to mistrust evangelical reform. I've written elsewhere about the causes and course of the revolt. Here I will address only Luther's reaction to it, mainly because it often gets mentioned by modern writers.

What gets written about is a tract Luther published in early 1525 with the engaging title of "Against the Rebelling Peasants." He wrote this after going on a preaching tour in the spring of 1525, when he saw the unrest first-hand. The tract was re-published elsewhere with the more colorful title "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants," and similar variations, without his approval. It's this version of the title that is often used, and Luther gets condemned by modern writers for being unsympathetic to the plight of the common folk. We moderns tend to think that people of earlier centuries are required to share our social sensibilities. Indeed, though, he received some criticism along those lines even from contemporaries. It was, however, entirely in keeping with his understanding of the proper relationship between Christians and their government. The simple rule for Luther was: rebellion against established authority was never justified. He re-stated his position in a follow-up essay in the summer of 1525, in response to some of the criticisms. You can judge the tone of his original essay for yourself if you want. Excerpts are available at the History Guide.

He was troubled by the revolt, but he was furious that evangelical preachers not only joined but in some cases led various peasant groups. Moreover, one of these leaders was Thomas Müntzer, of whom Luther already disapproved.

After 1525, Luther's life changed dramatically. He married Katy von Bora with whom he had six children. He also took in students (he was still professor at Wittenberg) and occasional relatives, and his household was at times as large as twenty-five. He also preached, undertook pastoral duties, and continued is Biblical researches and writings. He published a commentary on Galatians in 1531 and on Genesis in 1535. He participated in visitations, and his experiences there in 1528 led directly to his writing of the Large and Small Catechisms, which were to serve as a virtual handbook for Lutheranism.

He continued, too, to participate in the Reformation at large, most notably in efforts at bridging the gap between different Protestant sects. He was at the famous Colloquy of Marburg in 1529 and helped Melanchthon with drafting the Augsburg Confession in 1530. He wrote the Schmalkald Articles, which formed the theological statement for the League of Schmalkalden.

In the 1540s Luther was increasingly troubled with ill health, including a bad heart and bad kidneys. He continued to write and even to travel, and indeed he had gone to Eisleben in the dead of winter when he died there on 18 February 1546.

Luther's Theology

The foundations of Luther's theology can be stated very simply: sola scriptura, sola fide; that is, by Scripture alone and by faith alone. Luther's theology was radical because it radically stripped away centuries of Church doctrine and practice, placing Christianity squarely within the confines of the Bible and of the individual.

There's more, of course.

On Papal Authority

This was one of Luther's earliest criticisms, present in the Ninety-Five Theses. It is important to understand the nature of his criticism. He did not attack the papacy because it did wrong things, or because there were corrupt or wicked popes. Instead, he criticized, condemned and utterly rejected even the best of the popes, for he condemned and utterly rejected the very notion of papacy. The whole thing was a lie, from the very beginning. The papacy was, as he stated in an essay from late in his life, an institution of the Devil.

This was typical Luther: radical, sweeping, confrontational. There was in his mind never a question of whether the pope had the authority to do this or that; the pope had no authority whatsoever. Indeed, Luther did not hesitate to call the pope the Antichrist.

As in other areas, Luther took a position that permitted no compromise, no discussion, no reconciliation. For all that he declared that he never intended to found his own church, from the very beginning he made statements that guaranteed there could be no retreat. Here are samples from that 1545 essay:

"… doctrinal agreement … is utterly impossible unless the pope has his papacy abolished. Therefore avoid and flee those who seek the middle of the road. … There can be no compromise."

It naturally followed that everything created by the papacy as an institution was likewise execrable, to be rejected by all good Christians. The College of Cardinals, the whole system of penances, papal courts, the Papal States, all of it should go. It was an extraordinary thing to say, that the leader of Western Christianity for the past millenium and a half, along with the whole structure of Church government, should simply be abolished. But for Luther, there was never any question. It had to go, or at least the faithful should abandon it. There could be no compromise.

On Sacraments in General

If it was clear what to do about the papacy, the matter of the sacraments was more difficult. Some, Luther rejected almost at once: the sacrament of ordination was out because by 1521 he was arguing that there should be no priests. Or, to be more accurate, he was arguing in favor of the notion of the priesthood of all believers. Everyone was a priest; any Christian could perform the rites of the faith, and beyond these no Christian held any special religious station.

Extreme Unction was rejected out of hand because there was no foundation for it in Scripture. Penance was likewise rejected for like reasons. Luther retained confirmation as a rite, but denied that it was a sacrament. He held similar views on marriage: it was a part of life and even a part of Christian life, but it was not a sacrament.

That left two: baptism and communion. Both these Luther did indeed view as sacramental, and on both there were bitter disputes among the reformers. Each deserves specific treatment regarding Luther's particular position.

On Communion

Luther regarded the Mass as an abomination, all the worse because at its heart was the most important of all Christian ceremonies: the re-enactment of the Last Supper. Luther stripped away all the extra rituals but left the core event, the taking of bread and wine. You will notice that both wine and bread were part of the Lutheran communion. He, like the Hussites, could find no Biblical justification for excluding the faithful from the full commemoration.

Very early on, however, the question was raised as to the nature of what transpired at communion. The Catholics taught that the bread and wine were, at the moment of the elevation of the Host, miraculously transformed by the Holy Ghost into the actual body and blood of Christ. This transformed substance retained the appearance of bread and wine, but its essence was truly changed. It was no longer bread and wine.

Luther rejected this, but he had some difficulty describing what exactly did happen. His position by about 1524 was that of consubstantiation: that the bread remained bread, the wine remained wine, and the body and blood of Christ were present. Both were there together. Other reformers (e.g., Zwingli) argued that the bread remained only bread, the wine only wine, and that communion was only a commemoration and nothing more. Luther would not go that far. For him, the communion meal had to retain its essentially miraculous nature.

On Baptism

The other sacrament Luther retained was baptism. He made almost no changes here. He recognized the legitimacy of infant baptism and rejected the notion of adult re-baptism. There were no priests and no holy water, but the ceremony of baptism remained sacred and central.

On Idols

Luther rejected and condemned icons, but he never went as far as the Zwinglians or the Calvinists in urging the destruction of the outward trappings of Catholicism. Luther wasn't a destructive man. He retained music in church ritual (even writing hymns himself), and never called for simple church architecture or the destruction of religious art. Some of his followers did, but not Luther himself. This was not so much because he saw them as valuable; on the contrary, because he saw them as being without value, without importance, he regarded it as a matter of indifference. Christians had better things to do with their days than to smash church organs.

On Church Government

Luther made tremendous contributions in this area. From the moment he more or less abolished the Catholic Church, even while he was still hiding in the Wartburg, he found he had to make rulings regarding behavior, or to settle disputes. Because he had rejected so much of the the Catholic Church, he had to feel his way toward a new church, which he did reluctantly but without flinching from the task. Later reformers could look at what Luther had done and use it as a starting point, but Luther himself had to find his way in the dark. It was quite an accomplishment.

One of the key innovations was his creation of the visitation. This was where a committee of pastors travelled to other churches to see how they were doing. This was akin to what bishops did within their sees, so it's not like Luther thought it up whole cloth, but by not only instituting it but also by writing out a whole set of rules for the visitors, he created one of the foundation stones for the governance of the Lutheran Church. The first visitations were in 1527, and Luther himelf was among the visitors.

On Church and State

Luther and the Bible

Luther and Other Reformers

Later Years

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He was aided in his efforts by his close friend Philip Melanchthon, a profound thinker in his own right. Between the two they developed the core of what would become a separate religion that relied on two core principles: that faith alone was necessary and sufficient for salvation, and that the Bible was the sole source of religious authority.

Although Luther had launched a revolution, he lost control of it almost from the beginning. From early on he found himself in conflict with other reformers with whom he disagreed. He witnessed events, such as the Peasants Revolt, and the bloodshed at MÜnster, that distressed him deeply. But he worked diligently to explain his beliefs, to offer guidance and counsel to the many who sought his advice, and to set an example of the Christian life.

He wrote books on pastoral care, on the proper conduct and mode of life for a Christian, on the Lutheran liturgy, and countless other topics. He wrote hymns and prayers. As Lutheran churches grew in number, there were naturally some preachers who were slack and even cynically exploitative, and Luther wrote guidelines for evaluating ministers and their conduct. These were later turned into formal visitations that helped ensure a measure of quality among the Lutheran ministry.

Luther followed his own advice in his peronal life. He married, and raised a family, and wrote about the business of family life. He preached at churches, serving as the exemplar of a Lutheran minister. He and his wife, Katharine, entertained many guests and visitors, and their dinner table became famous as a center of lively conversation.

Martin Luther died in 1546. By that time, although his prestige among reformers was great, his actual influence had much declined. His greater influence, however, can hardly be underestimated. His translation of the Bible was so influential that Luther's particular dialect of German (Hochdeutsche) became the official version of German. Lutheranism became and remains to this day the dominant religion not only of Germany, but of the Scandinavian countries as well. And he set the spark to the tinderbox of Europe that led to a century of religious reform and religious warfare that profoundly shaped every aspect of European history.