History of the reformation in Germany

Front matter

y.is

:4^;:

«sr

Preface

From the first ten years of the fifteenth century, to the beginning of the thirty years' war, the constitution and political condition of Germany were determined by ♦he periodical diets anu tue measures there resolved on.

The time was long past in which the public affairs of the country were determined by one supreme will ; but its political life had not yet (as at a later period) retreated within the circle of the several constituent members of the empire. The imperial assemblies exercised rights and powers which, though not accurately defined, were yet the comprehensive and absolute powers of sovereignty. They made war and peace ; levied taxes ; exercised a supreme ^per vision, and were even invested with executive power. Together with the deputie? from the cities, and the representatives of the counts and lords, appeared the emperor and the sovereign princes in person. It is true they discussed the most important affairs of their respective countries in their several colleges, or in committees chosen from the whole body, and the questions were decided by the majority of voices. The unity of the nation was represented by these assemblies. Within the wide borders of the empire nothing of importance could occur which did not here come under deliberation, nothing new arise, which mu not await its final decision and execution here.

Spite of all these considerations, the history of the diets of the empire has not yet received the attention it deserves. The Recesses* of the diets are sufficiently well known ; but who would judge a deliberative assembly by the final results of its deliberations ? Projects of a systematic collection of its transactions have occasionally beeii entertained, and the work has even been taken in hand ; but all that has hitherto been done has remained in a fragmentary and incomplete state.

* The Recess {Abschied — Recessus), the document wherewith the labours of a deliberative assembly are closed, and in which they are summed up. All the resolutions of the assembly, or the decisions of their sovereign on their proposals or petitions, were collected into one whole, and the session, or, according to the German expression, day ( Tag) was thus closed, with the publication of the Recess. Each separate law, after having passed the two colleges, that of the electors and that of the princes, received the emperor's assent or ratification, and had then the force of law. It was called Resolution of the Empire (Reichscluss of Reicksconclusum). The older recesses of the empire (Reicksabschiede) are lost. Since the year 1663, as the diet remained constantly sitting down to 1806, no recess, properly so called, could be published. The sum of all the decisions or acts of a diet was called Reichsabsckied. The correspondence of this with the English term Statute will be seen in the following extract : " For all the acts of one session of parliament taken together make properly but one statute ; and therefore when two sessions have been held in one year we usually mention stat. 1 or 2. Thus the Bill of Rights is cited as 1 W. & M. st. 2, c. 2 ; signifying that it is the second chapter or act of the second statute, or the laws made in the second session of parliament in the first year of King William and Queen M-^ry.""— Blackstone' s Comment, vol. i. p. 85, 15th ed.

The speech with which the emperor opened the diet was called the Proposition.

iv PREFACE.

As it is the natural ambition of every man to leave behind him some useful record of his existence, I have long cherished the project of devoting my industry and my powers to this most important work. Not that I flattered myself that I was competent to supply so large a deficiency ; to exhaust the mass of materials in its manifold juridical bearings ; my idea was only to trace with accuracy the rise and developmt;nt of the constitution of the empire, through a series (if possible unbroken) of the A: is of the Diets.

Fortune was so propitious to my wishes, that, in the autumn of 1836, 1 found in the Archives of the city of Frankfurt a collection of the very kind I wanted, and was permitted to use these precious documents with all the facility I could desire.

The collection consists of ninety-six folio volumes, which contain the Acts of the Imperial Diets from 1414 to 1613. In the earlier part it is very imperfect, but step by step, in proportion as the constitution of the empire acquires form and development, the documents rise in interest. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, from which time the practice of reducing public proceedings to writing was introduced, it becomes so rich in new and important documents, that it lays the strongest hold on the attention. There are not only the acts, but the reports of the deputies from the cities — the Rathsfreünde, which generally charm by their frankness and simplicity, and often s irprise by their sagacity. I profited by the opportunity to make myself master of The contents of the first sixty-four of these volumes, extending down to the year 1551. A collection of Imperial Rescripts occasionally afibrded me valuable contributions.

But I could not stop here. A single town was not in a condition to know all that passed. It is evident that the labours of the electoral and princely colleges were not to be sought for in the records of a city.

In the beginning of the year 1837, I received permission to explore the Royal Archives of the kingdom of Prussia at Berlin, and in the April of the same year, the State Archives of the kingdom of Saxony at Dresden, for the affairs of the empire during the times of Maximilian I. and Charles V. The former were of great value to me, as containing the records of an electorate ; the latter, down to the end of that epoch, those of a sovereign principality. It is true that I came upon many documents which I had already seen at Frankfurt ; but, at the same time, I found a great number of new ones, which gave me an insight into parts of the subject hitherto obscure. None of these collections is, indeed, complete, and many a question which suggests itself remains unanswered ; yet they are in a high degree instructive. They throw u completely new light on the character and conduct of such influential princes as Joachim II. of Brandenburg, and still more, Maurice of Saxony.

Let no one pity a man who devotes himself to studies apparently so dry, and neglects for them the delights of many a joyous day. It is true the companions of his solitary hours are but lifeless paper, but they are the remnants of the life of past ages, which gradually assume form and substance to the eye occupied in the study of them.' For me (in a preface an author is bound to speak of himself — a subject he elsewhere gladly avoids) they had a peculiar interest.

When I wrote the first part of my History of the Popes, I designedly treated the origin and progress of the Reformation with as much brevity as the subject permitted. I cherished the hope of dedicating more extensive and profound research to this most important event of the history of our country.

This hope was now abundantly satisfied. Of the new matter which I found, the greater part related directly or indirectly to the epoch of the Reformation. At evei v step I acquired nev/ information as to the circumstances which prepared the politic *» rehgious movement of that time; the phases of our national life, by which it wjs accelerated ; the origin and working of the resistance it encountered.

PREFACE. V

It Is impossible to approach a matter originating in such intense mental energy, and exercising so vast an influence on the destinies of the world, without being profoundly interested and absorbed by it. I was fully sensible that if I executed the work I proposed to myself, the Refornmation would be the centre on which all other incidents and circumstances would turn.

But to accomplish this, more accurate information as to the progress of opinion in the evangelical* or reforming party, especially in a polhical point of view, antecedent to the crisis of th^ Reformation, was necessary than any that could be gathered from printed sources. The Archives common to the whole Ernestine line of Saxony, deposited at Weimar, which I visited in August, 1837, afforded me what I desired. Nor can any spot be more full of information on the marked epochs at which this house played so important a part, than the vault in which its archives are preserved. The walls and the whole interior space are covered with the rolls of documents relating to the actions and events of that period. Every note, every draft of an answer, is here preserved. The correspondence between the Elector John Frederic and the Landgrave Philip of Hessen would alone fill a long series of printed volumes. I endeavoured, above all, to make myself master of the two registers, which include the affairs of the empire and the Schmalkaldic League. As to the former, I found, as was to be expected from the nature of the subject, many valuable details ; as to the latter, I hence first drew information which is, I hope, in some degree calculated to satisfy the curiosity of the public.

I feel bound here publicly to express my thanks to the authorities to whom the guardianship of all these Archives is entrusted for the liberal aid — often not unattended with personal trouble — which I received from them all. How much more easy are existence and study become than they formerly were !

At length, I conceived the idea of undertaking a more extensive research into the Archives of Germany. I repaired to the Communal Archives of the house of Anhalt at Dessau, which at the epoch in question shared the opinions and followed the example of that of Saxony ; but I soon saw that I should here be in danger of encumbering myself with too much matter of a merely local character. I remembered how many other documents relating to this period, had been explored and employed by the industry of German inquirers. The work of Bucholz on Ferdinand L contains a most copious treasure of important matter from those of Austria, of which too little use is made in that state. The instructive writings of Stumpf and Winter are founded on those of Bavaria. The Archives of Würtenberg were formerly explored by Sattler ; the Hessian, recently, by Rommel and Neudecker. For the more exclusively ecclesiastical view of the period, the public is in possession of a rich mass of authentic documents in the collections of Walch, and the recent editions of Luther's Letters by De Wette, and still more in those of Älelanchthon by Bretschneider. The letters of the deputies from Strasburg and Nürnberg, which have been published, throw light on the history of particular diets. It is hardly necessary for me to mention how much has lately been brought together by Förstemann respecting the Diet of Augsburg of 1530, so long the subject of earnest research and labour.

Recent publications', especially in Italy and England, lead us to hope for the possi-

* It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remark, that I have retained this word throughout the following work in its original acceptation ; viz. as denoting the party which, at the time of the Reformation, adhered to the Confession of Augsburg. In our own age and country it has been adopted by a party which stands in nearly the same relation to the Church of England as the party called pietistigal {pieiistisch) to the Lutheran Church of Germany. But this did not seem to me a sufHcient reason for removing it from its proper and authorised place in German history. — Transl.

vi PREFACE.

bility of a thorough and satisfactory -explanation of the foreign relations of the empire.*

I see the time approach in which we shall no longer have to found modern history on the reports even of contemporaneous historians, except in so far as they were in possession of personal and immediate knowledge of facts ; still less, on works yet more remote from the source ; but on the narratives of eye-witnesses, and the genuine and original documents. For the epoch treated in the following work, this prospect is no distant one. I myself have made use of a number of records which I had found when in the pursuit of another subject, in the Archives of Vienna, Venice, Rome, and especially Florence. Had I gone into further detail, I should have run the risk of losing sight of the subject as a whole ; or, in the necessary lapse of time, of breaking the unity of the conception which arose before my mind in the course of my past researches.

And thus I proceeded boldly to the completion of this work ; persuaded that when an inquirer has made researches of some extent in the authentic records, with an earnest spirit and a genuine ardour for truth, later discoveries may throw clearer and more certain light on details, but can only strengthen his fundamental conceptions of the subject : — for truth can be but one.

* Researches and publications of this kind have been going on ever since the first edition of the two first volumes of this work were published ; I have availed myself of them as far as was possible in the second. Nor have I neglected to introduce the additional matter which presented itself to me in Brussels and in Paris. (Note to the second edition.') ,

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

In the Preface to the first volume of this work, I said that, according to the view of the Author, it might be divided into three epochs : the first comprehended in the first two volumes ; the next, in the third ; and the last, in the two concluding volumes.

The second of these historical divisions I now, after a considerable and unwilling delay, offer to the English reader.

If, in the volumes already translated, he watched the early struggles, the partial and doubtful triumphs of the church founded by Luther, he will here accompany it, through the various stages of growing strength, to maturity. At the close of this volume, we leave it in possession of all the attributes of a regularly constituted Church ; we leave it protected by the civil power, and yielding in return cordial obedience and firm support.

We leave it also (such is the infirmity, and such the presumption of man) already laying claim to the possession of absolute truth; already forging instruments for restraining the inquiry it had so ardently promoted, and so largely used; and for establishing an authority akin to that which it had risen to overthrow.

In their ardour to overthrow the authority of the ancient church, the Reformers had not measured the aberrations of which undisciplined minds, suddenly freed from habitual restraint, are capable : and now, alarmed at the frightful and apparently boundless extent of the moral disorder, they felt the necessity of fixing certain limits, beyond which the extravagance of man should not pass.

But if they had not calculated the amount of evil they had let loose on the world, neither had they understood all the value and potency of the great conservative and corrective principle to which they were the first to give a general and systematic application. It is in the promptitude, the energy, the inflexible perseverance, with which Luther seized and pursued the idea of the connexion between the Church and the School (i. e. the joint and inseparable culture of translator's preface.

the religioTis affections and the intellectual faculties), and of the duty incumbent on a Christian State to provide with equal care for both, that we recognize the pre-eminent genius of the first German Reformer. This idea was adopted by most of his successors ; but none of them — nor, indeed, even the great author of it himself — was as yet sufficiently secure of its results, to dare to intrust religion to the guardianship of enlightened reason, or the order of the world to the slow but sure operation of moral discipline.

The experience of three centuries has shown that religion and morality have, at best, a precarious hold on minds too gross to understand their foundations or their value ; that all modes of governing men which take no account of their reason are inefficacious or depraving, and, in either case, fraught with danger; and thus the political expediency (as well as the Christian duty) of educating the people, which the dauntless innovator was the first to proclaim, has come to be admitted, even by the selfish and the timorous. Nor is the recognition of this great necessity confined to the countries which adopted his ecclesiastical reforms. In many of those where the Catholic Church retains her authority, the State has provided (more or less amply) for the instruction of all its subjects.

The origin and course of the Keformation in England sufficiently explain the absence of any such presiding thought among its authors and leaders. Exactly three hundred years have passed since Luther's death (1546) : are we too sanguine in believing the time to be at hand, when, in a country calling herself the champion of Protestantism, some attempt may be made to act up to that sublime conception of the duties of a Reformed Church and a Protestant State, which he bequeathed to the world ?

S. A.

December, 1846.

HISTORY

REFORMATION IN GERMANY

Introduction

VIEW OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF GERMANY.

For purposes of discussion or of instruction, it may be possible to sever ecclesiastical from political history ; in actual life, they are indissolubly connected, or rather fused into one indivisible whole.

As indeed there is nothing of real importance in the moral and intellectual business of human life, the source of which does not lie in a profound and more or less conscious relation of man and his concerns to God and divine things, it is injipossible to conceive a nation worthy of the name, or entitled to be called, in any sense, great, whose political existence is not constantly elevated and guided by religious ideas. To cultivate, purify and exalt these, — to give them an expression intelligible to all and profitaWe to all,— to embody them in outward forms and public acts, is its necessary as well as its noblest task.

It is not to be denied that this process inevitably brings into action two great principles wiiich seem to place a nation at variance with itself. Nationality (i. e. the sum of the peculiar qualities, habits, and sentiments of a nation) is necessarily restricted within the bounds marked out by neighbouring nationalities ; whereas religion, ever since it was revealed to the world in a form which claims and deserves universality, constantly strives after sole and absolute supremacy.

In the foundation or constitution of a State, some particular moral or intellectual principle predominates ; a principle prescribed by an inherent necessity, expressed in determinate forms and giving birth to a peculiar condition of society, or character of civilisation. But no sooner has a Church, with its forms of wider application, embracing different nations, arisen, than it grasps at the project of absorbing the State, and of reducing the principle on which civil society is founded to complete subjection : the original underived authority of that principle is, indeed, rarely acknowledged by the Church.

At length the universal religion appears, and, after it has incorporated itself w-ith the consciousness of mankind, assumes the cha- 4 c

I racter of a great and growing tradition, handed I down from people to people, and communi- I cated in rigid dogmas. But nations cannot suffer themselves to be debarred from exercising the understanding bestowed on them by nature, or the knowledge acquired hj study, on an investigation of its truth. In every age, therefore, we see diversities in the views of religion arise, in different nations, and these again react in various ways on the character and condition of the State. It is evident, from the nature of this struggle, how mighty is the crisis w^hich it involves for the destinies of the human race. Religious truth must have an outward and visible representation, in order that the State may be perpetually reminded of the origin and the end of our earthly existence ; of the rights of our neighbours, and the kindred of all the nations of the earth ; it would otherwise be in danger of degenerating into tyranny, or of hardening into inveterate prejudice, — into intolerant conceit of self, and hatred of all that is foreign. On the other hand, a free development of the national character and culture is necessary to the interests of religion. Without this, its doctrines can never be truly understood nor profoundly accepted : without incessant alternations of doubt and conviction, of assent and dissent, of seeking and finding, no error could be removed, no deeper understanding of truth attained. Thus, then, independence of thought and political freedom are indispensable to the Church herself; she' needs them to remind her of the, varying intellectual wants of men, of the changing nature of her own forms ; she needs them to preserve her from the lifeless iteration of misunderstood doctrines and rites, which kill the soul.

It has been said, the State is itself the Church, but the Church has thought herself authorised to usurp the place of the State. The truth is, that the spiritual or intellectual life of man — in its intensest depth and energy unquestionably one — yet manifests itself in these two institutions, which come into contact under the most varied fo?ms ; which are continually striving to pervade each other, yet

INTRODUCTION, never entirely coincide ; to exclude each other, yet neither has ever been permanently victor or vanquished. In the nations of the West, at least, such a result has never been obtained. The Califate may unite ecclesiastical and political power in one hand; but the whole life and character of western Christendom consists of the incessant action and counter-action of Church and State ; hence arises the freer, more comprehensive, more profound activity of mind, which must, on the whole, be admitted 10 characterise that portion of the globe. The aspect of the public life of Europe is always determined by the mutual relations of these two great principles.

Kence it happens that ecclesiastical history is not to be understood without political, nor the latter without the former. The combination of both is necessary to present either in its true light ; and if ever we are able to fathom the depths of that profounder life where both have their common source and origin, it must be by a complete knowledge of this combination.

But if this is the case with all nations, it is most pre-eminently so with the German, w^hich has bestowed more persevering and original thought on ecclesiastical and religious subjects than any other. The events of ten centuries turn upon the struggles between the Empire and the Papacy, between Catholicism and Protestantism. We, in our days, stand midway between them.

My design is" to relate the history of an epoch in which the politico-religious energy of the German nation was most conspicuous for its. growth and most prolific in its results. I do not conceal from myself the great difficulty of this undertaking ; but, with God's help, I will endeavour to accomplish it. I sjiall first attempt to trace my way through a retrospect of earlier times.

CAROLINGIAN TIMES.

One of the most important epochs in the history of the world was the commenceijient of the eighth century ; when, on the one side Mahommedanism threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other, the ancient idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the Rhine. In this peril of Christian institutions a youthful prince of Germanic 'race, Karl Martell, arose as their champion ; maintained them with all the energy which the necessity for self-defence calls forth, and finally extended them into new regions. For, as the possessor of the sole power which still remained erect in the nations of Roman origin — the Pope of Rome — allied himself with this prince and his successors; as he received assistance from them, and bestowed in return the favour and protection of the spiritual authority, the compound of military and sacerdotal government v/hich forms the basis of all European civilisation from that moment arose into being. From that time conquest and conversion went hand in hand. " As soon," says the author of the life of St.

Boniface, "as the authority of the glorious Prince Charles over the Frisians was confirmed, the trumpet of the sacred word was heard." It would be difficult to say whether the Frankic domination contributed more to the conversion of the Hessians and Thuringians, or Christianity to the incorporation of tl^^ose races with the Frankic empire. The war of Charlemagne against the Saxons was a war not only of conquest but of religion. Charlemagne opened it with an attack on the old Saxon sanctuary, the Irminsul ; the Saxons retorted by the destruction of the church at Fritzlar. Charlemagne marched to battle bearing the relics of saints ; missionaries accompanied the divisions of his army ; his victories were celebrated by the establishment of bishoprics ; baptism was the seal of subjection and allegiance ; relapse into heathenism was also a crime against the state. The consummation of all these incidents is to be found in the investiture of the aged conqueror with the imperial crown. A German, in the natural course of events and in the exercise of regular legitimate power, occupied the place of the Caesars as chief of a great part of the Romanz world; he also assumed a lofty station at the side of the Roman pontiff in spiritual affairs; a Frankic synod saluted him, as "Regent of the true religion." The entire state of which he was the chief now assumed a colour and form wherein the spiritual and temporal elements were completely blended. The union between emperor and pope served as a model for that between count and bishop. The archdeaconries into which the bishoprics were divided, generally, if not universally, coincided with the Gauen, or political divisions of the country. As the counties were divided into hundreds, so were the archdeaconries into deaneries. The seat of them was different; but, in respect of the territory over which their jurisdiction extended, there was a striking correspondence.* According to the view of the lor,d and ruler, not only was the secular power to lend its arm to the spiritual, but the spiritual to aid the temporal by its excommunications. The great empire reminds us of a vast neutral ground in the midst of a world filled with carnage and devastation ; where an iron will imposes peace on forces generally in a state of mutual hostility and destruction, and fosters and shelters the germ of civilisation ; so guarded was it on all sides by impregnable marches.

But every age could not produce a man so formed to subdue and to command ; and for the development of the world which Charlemagne founded, it remained to be seen what would be the mutual bearing of the different elements of which it was composed ; whether they would blend with or repel each other, agree or conflict : for there can be no true and enduring vitality without the free motion of natural and innate pov/ers and propensities.

It was inevitable that the clergy would first feel its own strength. This body formed a corporation independent even of the emperor :

CAROLINGIAN TIMES.

originating and developed in the Romanz nations, whose most remarkable product it had been in the preceding century, it now extended over those of Germanic race; in which, through the medium of a common language, it continually made new proselytes and gained strength and consistency.

Even under Charlemagne the spiritual element was already bestirring itself wdth activity and vigour. . One of the most remarkable of his capitularies is that wherein he expresses his astonishment that his spiritual and temporal officers so often thwart, instead of supporting each other, as it is their duty to do. He does not disguise that it was the clergy more especially who exceeded their powers : to them he addresses the question, fraught with reproach and displeasure, which has been so often repeated by succeeding ages — how far tliey are justified in interfering in purely secular affairs] He tells them they must explain what is meant by renouncing the world; whether that is consistent with large and costly retinues, with attempts to persuade the ignorant to make donations of their goods and to disinherit their children ; whether it were not better to foster good morals than to build churches, and the like.*

But the clergy soon evinced a much stronger propensity to ambitious encroachment.

We need not here inquire w^hether the pseudo-Isidorian decretals were invented as early as the reign of Charlemagne, or somewhat later ; in the F^ankic church, or in Italy : at all events, they belong to that period, are connected with a most extensive project, and form a great epoch in our history. The project was to overthrow the existing constitution of the church, which, in every country, still essentially rested on the authority of the metropolitan ; to place the whole church in immediate subjection to the pope of Rome, and to establish a unity of the spiritual power, by means of which it must necessarily emancipate itself from the temporal. Such was the plan which the clergy had even then the boldness to avow. A series of names of the earlier popes v/ere pressed into the service, in order to append to them forged documents, to which a colour of legality was thus given.f