Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/343

REFORMATION 325 to Rome which could be as satisfactorily and far more promptly decided before the national tribunals. 1 'ide While the popular feeling in Germany was being thus G- effectually alienated from the papal see, the learning of lD Germany was also pursuing that ominous track, first delineated by Gregory of Heimburg, which marks its com- plete divergence from the Italian humanism. The names of Johann von Goch (d. 1475), Johann Wessel (d. 1489), Johann Reuchlin (d. 1522), and Erasmus stand associated, although in different ways, with a great movement which, by attacking at once the doctrine and the discipline of the church, opened up the way for Luther. Goch and Wessel were among the first to give systematic form to the opposi- tion to the existing ecclesiastical system, and their criticism included both popes and councils as ultimate authorities in matters of faith. They inveighed with especial force against the doctrines of indulgences, veneration of saints, and purgatory, and they denied that confession, the Lord's Supper, and extreme unction were to be regarded as sacraments of divine institution. During the years 1511 to 1516 Reuchlin carried on a memorable struggle against the monks of Cologne in defence of the New Learning and of improved canons of textual criticism. In the year 1516 Erasmus put forth the first edition of his Novum Instrumentum. Side by side with these more elaborate efforts there was going on another literary movement which in its influence on the popular mind was not less consider- able. Ever since the days of the early Lollards satire had been found a not altogether ineffectual weapon in assailing those abuses in the church which argument and remon- strance seemed powerless to reform. The Praise of Folly, from the pen of Erasmus, which appeared in 151"1, seconded the graver efforts of Reuchlin, and successfully held up to ridicule those monastic orders of whose greed and dull obstructive activity Germany was already so weary. But even this brilliant effort paled in its effects when compared with the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, which appeared in 1515-16. These letters, of which Ulrich von Hutten and his friend Crotus Rubianus were the principal authors, were a series of broadly humorous fabrications, purporting to be written by members of the obscurantist party them- selves. A more skilful mode of exposing the ignorance and imbecility of thought which characterized the average intelligence of the monks of those days could hardly have been devised ; and the success of the artifice appeared complete when it became known that certain stolid monks had been led to approve the volume and even aid in its circulation as a genuine and valid defence of the views which they upheld. These effective demonstrations, it is to be noted, were not merely the outcome of that widespread discontent above described, but resemble rather a series of sparks elicited by immediate contact between the German mind and Rome ; and it is of no little interest to mark the effect produced on three of the most eminent representa- tives of the new movement by their visit, within a few years of each other, to the capital and by the contempla- tion of the splendour of the Curia and the moral degrada- i; to tion of its members. Of these three observers the first ^ was Erasmus, who visited the capital in 1506. His lively ' sense of the incongruous was not a little excited by the spectacle of the warlike pontiff, Julius II., whom, in his Praise of Folly, written a few years later, he describes as 1 See "Gravamina Germanics Nationis cum Remediis et Avisa- mentis ad Coesarem Maximilianum," in Freherus, Gernianicariim Rerum Scriptores, ii. 313. The existence of siich grievances and their non- redress may serve partly to explain the obduracy with which the subjects of the empire received the simultaneous proposals of Maxi- milian in the direction of state - reform. See Jaussen, Gesch. d. deulschen Volkes, i. 557-561. Jaussen, it may be observed, makes no reference to the document above cited. subverting alike the laws, peace, and religion. But Erasmus himself does not appear to have been greatly scandalized. He affects, indeed, to be somewhat uncertain whether it is Germany that has copied Rome or whether Rome has not rather copied a certain class of German prelates, who seem to look upon the battlefield as the fitting place where to render up their souls to God. Somewhat later, writing in a graver mood, he declares that nothing will ever efface his more pleasing recollections of the great city, its freedom of discourse, its intellectual illumination, its works of art, its libraries, and its scholars. Four years of after Erasmus came an Augustinian monk from Erfurt, Luther ; full of reverence for the traditions, the grandeur, and the sanctity of Rome. Martin Luther appears to have been less struck than was Erasmus by the unpriestly character of Julius II., who, as he admits, maintained order and watched over the sanitary condition of the Sacred City. But he was shocked beyond measure by the corruption, the profanity, and the immoral lives of the Roman clergy. The fond illusion of his monastic life was at an end ; and he returned to Germany not only prepared to counsel resistance to papal extortion but shaken in his whole allegiance to the holy see. A few months after Luther of came Ulrich von Hutten. It would be difficult to select a better representative of the temper and feeling of the higher classes in Germany at that time. To pride of birth and devotion to the New Learning he united a love of adventure which no physical suffering or misfortune seemed able to subdue, and a chivalrous spirit which could but impatiently brook the assertion of even legitimate authority. Already burning with resentment at the sys- tematic extortion to which his countrymen were subjected, his feelings were still further intensified as he listened to the contemptuous language and observed the supercilious demeanour which marked the Roman estimate of those who bore the German name. He heard from an eye-wit- ness a description of Julius II. as that pontiff had presented himself to the world at the siege of Mirandola, with "wild eye, brazen front, and threatening mien." On his return to his fatherland Hutten condensed into epigrammatic Latin verse, beside the suppressed fury of which the polished satire of Erasmus seems to pale, a description of what he had seen and heard, and denounced with terrible effect the whole system of bulls, indulgences, and other devices whereby an avaricious prelate was wringing dis- honest gains from a long-suffering nation. Few literary assailants have ever possessed a greater power of irritating an antagonist than did Ulrich von Hutten, and considera- tions of generosity or expediency rarely deterred him. It was generally expected when Leo X. ascended the pontifical throne that he would be anxious to sheathe the sword which his predecessor had wielded so vigorously, and his countrymen already hailed him as the " restorer of peace." By that epithet Hutten too vouchsafed to address him, but it was in a dedication to the pontiff of a reprint of Laurentius Valla's Treatise on the Donation of Constantine, and the seeming act of homage was thus artfully appended to pages exceptionally calculated to wound the papal susceptibilities. It must, however, be admitted that the character of the Char- German episcopate at this time was such that it scarcely acter appeared to advantage even when compared with that the ecclesiastics of the Roman Curia. Its members were p a t e . generally scions of princely houses, caring little for the spiritual interests of their dioceses, but delighting in field sports and martial exercises, given to building palaces for their own residence rather than to the erection of churches, and often without the slightest tincture of learning. Their primate at this time was Albert, brother of the elector of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz and Magde-