Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/733

LUTHER 727 Magdeburg, beseeching that prelate to put a stop to Tetzel's scandalous practices. These theses, although submitting the entire contro- versy to the decision of the pope, contained nevertheless the germ of the Protestant doc- trines. They spread with the velocity of lightning through the press, now for the first time turned to account in a popular agita- tion, and kindled a fire throughout the Cath- olic world of Europe. A sharp controversy followed ; the attempts of ecclesiastical diplo- macy to compromise the difficulty through Cajetan and Miltitz failed ; the Leipsic dispu- tation (June-July, 1519), between Dr. Eck on the one hand and Oarlstadt and Luther on the other, soon rekindled the fire and widened the breach. Luther hurled several violent and most effective pamphlets against Rome, especially his address to the German nobility (1520), and henceforth he hated and abhorred the whole system of Roman Catholicism as an anti- Christian despotism that held the church of God in captivity and obstructed the access of the believer to Christ. Thus he was led step by step, against his original intention, to a complete emancipation from the system in which he was educated. In all this crusade he was encouraged and supported by his uni- versity, his prince, and a large amount of growing popular sympathy, especially in the north of Germany. Leo X. was disposed at first to treat the whole controversy lightly, as a mere monkish quarrel between the Augus- tinians and Dominicans; but he felt himself compelled at last to issue, June 15, 1520, a bull of excommunication (if he should not recant within 100 days) against the dangerous German heretic, who by his pen had shaken the church and the empire to the very base. Luther, sur- rounded by his students and colleagues, com- mitted' the papal bull, together with the canon law and several books of Eck and Emser, to the flames (Dec. 10, 1520) before the Elster gate of Wittenberg, exclaiming : " As thou (the pope) hast troubled the Holy One of the Lord, may the eternal fire trouble and consume thee." This bold act was the fiery signal of an irre- vocable separation from the Roman hierarchy. A few months afterward he was summoned by the young German emperor Charles V. be- fore the diet of Worms; and in spite of the remonstrances of timid friends, he resolved to go, though " there were as many devils there as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses." On entering the city (where a magnificent monument to his memory was completed in 1868), more than 2,000 persons accompanied him to his quarters. When confronted with the brilliant assembly of the emperor, the princes and nobles of the empire, the digni- taries of the church, and an immense concourse of spectators, and called upon to recant, he boldly defended his doctrines, and made the memorable declaration (April 18, 1521) : " Un- less I shall be refuted and convinced by tes- timonies of the Holy Scriptures, or by pub- lic, clear, and evident arguments and reasons, I cannot and will not retract anything, since I believe neither the pope nor the councils alone, both of them having evidently often erred and contradicted themselves, and since it is neither safe nor advisable to do anything against the conscience. Here I stand, I cannot otherwise ; God help me ! Amen." Thus the Bible, his conscience, and private judgment were the three powers to which he appealed against tradition, the pope, and the councils. When the solitary monk entered the hall of the diet, Freundsberg, an able military com- mander, tapped him on the shoulder and just- ly said : " Monk, monk, thou art on a passage more perilous than any which I and many other commanders ever knew in the bloodiest battle fields. If thou art right, fear not ; God will sustain thee." The diet subsequently pro- nounced the ban of the empire against Luther, and he was now an outlaw before church and state. With Luther's appearance at Worms culminates his opposition to Rome, or the first and negative act of the reformation. The third period of Luther's life, which reaches from the diet of Worms to the diet of Augs- burg (1530), embraces his positive labors in constructing and organizing the new church on the Scriptural basis, in opposition not only to papal authority, but also to ultra Protestant radicalism and fanaticism. On his return to Wittenberg he was protected by the agents of Frederick the Wise, and lodged in the castle of the Wartburg, near Eisenach in Thurin- gia. In this romantic solitude, which he called his Patmos, he spent ten months under the assumed name of "Master George," hunting, praying, issuing tracts, and translating the New Testament, until the outbreak of serious disturbances among his own followers induced him to return to Wittenberg (March, 1522), in spite of the remonstrance of his prince. He preached a series of sermons in favor of order, authority, moderation, and charitable forbear- ance, and thus allayed the radical movement, headed by his older colleague, the earnest but fanatical Carlstadt, which threatened to defeat the cause of the reformation by turning it into a chaotic revolution. He took a similar con- servative stand against the Anabaptists and the political ultra Protestantism in the peasants' war, which rose like a dark pillar of smoke from the flame of the reformation, and ended in the more complete subjugation of the Ger- man peasantry by their temporal and spiritual masters. The cruel advice attributed to Lu- ther to kill the rebellious peasants " without mercy like mad dogs " was at any rate exe- cuted, and the premature movement in favor of political freedom was suppressed in 1525. Since that time Protestantism in Germany has been strongly conservative and monarchical in politics, while in Switzerland, France, Holland, and England it has favored and promoted po- litical liberty. In the midst of these distur- bances Luther suddenly married, in his 42d