THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION Bavarian dukes, who were as anti-Hapsburg as they were anti-Luther. But Ferdinand, regent of the Austrian dynastic lands, could do little more than recommend the plan to his brother the emperor. Yet from faraway Burgos in Spain Charles issued a curt instruction forbidding the proposed council.
The road to a united German church was closed.
As in the case of the earlier imperial election, there were two reasons why Charles had no alternative. For one thing a national solution would have undercut the strength of the house of Hapsburg, and—the crucial point—the policy of dynastic power served the idea of a universal empire. As emperor
Charles had to override particularist interests in order to maintain and protect the unity of Church and empire in the Western Christian world.
The prohibition of the German national council was a direct result of the imperial election of 1519. Of course the German princes could not have predicted the precise implications of their vote for Charles, but in all likelihood they suspected or feared the worst. The decision to swear in the emperor on a German constitution, the "Electoral Covenant," was not based simply on the vested interests of narrow-minded territorial dignitaries.
Charles not only had to confirm the princes' rights, their "sovereignty, liberties, privileges," he also had to swear to appoint "none but native-born Germans" to imperial offices and himself to take up "royal residence, pretence, and court in the Holy Roman Empire." *
But such a legal commitment could not possibly negate historical reality as created by the imperial election. A French-speaking, Spanish monarch had been chosen. Though a Hapsburg, he was no German. The extension of Hapsburg power from the Turkish border in the East to the New World in the West led to a subordination of German interests to the demands of dynastic politics, which would of necessity degrade the old empire to a province at the edge of a world empire. In his effort to achieve universal rule
Charles could ascribe to the Reformation only as much importance as to any other German event. It was an irritating obstacle on the imperial high road, and thus only the remedies against it varied, ranging from patient attention to brusque rebuffs, from temporary ceasefires to open warfare. Whatever the means, Charles doggedly pursued his goal: the extirpation of the Reformation, on the imperial agenda since the Diet of Worms in 1521, was going to stay there.
In fact, the evolution of Hapsburg policies did more to further the Evangelical cause than the political future of Germany. In France, England,
Switzerland, and then the Netherlands, national identities began to burgeon.
But Germany's development into a nation lagged behind, not as is often arA GERMAN EVENT gued, because territorial factionalism forestalled the emergence of a common identity, but because all resources for national cohesion were sacrificed to a medieval imperial dream. And that process had already been going on for three generations of Hapsburg emperors—from Frederick III through his son Maximilian I to the latter's grandson Charles V.
And yet another point must be considered. A national council might have meant the end of Luther's cause. If a German church assembly had actually taken place in Speyer in 1524, the explosive force of reformation would in all probability have been channeled into a reform program and thus defused.
Priests would have been granted permission to marry and laymen to receive the chalice. Church taxes would have been nationalized, and Rome most likely excluded from ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Germany. Of course all this would have been no more than the treatment of symptoms, in the Erasmian spirit of peaceful piety and communal concord. The Gospel of the Cross, which Luther had discovered for a Church persecuted, would have been silenced in the ensuing atmosphere of reasonable compromise and pious reform zeal. Yet it was the emperor's religious policy that—contrary to its own objectives—enabled the powers Luther had unleashed to bring about radical change in theology, the Church, and the balance of power in Europe.
An exclusively German view of the early years of the Reformation confines the historical perspective. These were the years when Emperor Charles was devoting himself to Italy, Spain, or Burgundy. Yet the imperial diets from which the emperor absented himself were not the only important ones; there were also those that owed their results to his presence. This is certainly true for the Diet of Worms, which Luther made famous and which made him famous. In the face of the Wittenberg theologian's courageous words—"I cannot and will not recant.... God help me. Amen." '*—the emperor's equally momentous declaration has unjustifiably been forgotten: "I have decided to mobilize everything against Luther: my kingdoms and dominions, my friends, my body, my blood and my soul."
Nine years later, in 1530, Charles once again presided over a diet, this time in Augsburg. And once again it was the emperor who lent this diet its significance beyond Germany's borders. It was he who had invited the opposing religious factions to express their views in Augsburg; it was to him that the Confessio Augustana, the Lutheran confession of faith, was adTHE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION dressed; and it was in his name, not the pope's, that the Confutatio, the decisive theological rejection of Reformational doctrine, was issued.
It is not true that Germany was left to its own devices without Charles' political leadership, thus permitting the Reformation to spread unrestricted.
Of course, the "German nation" was no longer in a position to determine the Roman emperor's goals, nor had it been even in Maximilian's time. But for Charles not even a European view was encompassing enough to grasp his policies.
Even a brief glance at Spanish accounts of that time demonstrates how very differently political events look from that perspective. For them the national rise of Spain under Charles placed the country center-stage in the battle against the enemies of the Church. Spain broke the ground for Christian renewal and spearheaded the Crusades—against the Turks in the Mediterranean, the pagans in the West Indies, and the heretics in Germany.
For two hundred years Spanish literature was shaped by this myth of crusade and mission, a myth which, however fabricated it might have been, clearly brings out the other political perspective. Martin Luther and Hernando Cortes, it was recounted again and again, were born on the same day of the same year; one a terrible German monster who led astray thousands of souls, the other the great Conquistador, who converted an incomparably larger number of Indians.'* In reality Luther's and Cortes' birthdates are one or even several years apart, but the legend illustrates an awareness of the shifting geopolitical balance during Charles' reign. Evaluating the Reformation in the light of world politics means giving up the German, even the Western European perspective: from the vantage point of the Hapsburg world empire, losses in the Old World were more than compensated for by conquests in the New.
When Charles was elected in 1519 the conquests of Mexico and Peru still lay in the future; he could not know the extent to which the interests of Spanish politics would be changed by the growth of an American empire.
Born in Ghent on February 24, 1500, Charles grew up in the tradition of the illustrious Burgundian empire. There was not so much as a hint that the young duke would transcend the late medieval role of a Burgundian knight to gain the stature of a Spanish world ruler. He was christened Charles after his great-grandfather Duke Charles "the Bold." When the imperial chancellor Mercurio Gattinara congratulated the newly elected German king on June 28, 1519, on having acquired a basis of power hitherto "possessed only by Your predecessor Charlemagne," '' he was not indulging in flattery; he was formulating a political program. His reference to Charles the Great—
Barend van Orley, Emperor Charles V, ca. 1520.
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION a rather than Charles the Bold—stemmed from a very realistic appraisal of Spain's future and shows the political farsightedness with which the election of the emperor was pursued. Europe was on the way to modern times and the development of sovereign states just as the medieval dream of a universal empire seemed to be becoming reality. And Charles I of Spain was just the ruler to dedicate himself to the vision of such a Christian world monarchy.
World Monarchy and Reformation According to nationally oriented German historians, Charles' only rival, the French king Francis I, was so much a foreigner to the country that he could count only on those who were fickle, bribable, or had succumbed to the enticements of the pope. Among France's partisans—originally Trier, the Palatinate, and Brandenburg—Joachim, elector of Brandenburg, was considered particularly contemptible because his monetary demands were so exorbitant. Even Charles' offer to marry his sister Catherine to the elector was only accepted on condition that the emperor guarantee him thirty thousand gulden. Here, too, the Fuggers were to act as financiers.
Historians of every stripe have found only one statesman thoroughly praiseworthy: Frederick the Wise. A German and a man of integrity, he is considered to have been a staunch representative of the interests of the empire in a sea of corruptibility and national betrayal.
The dismal picture of an empire in decline is correct in so far as the centralist state realized by the French king was difficult to reconcile with the German ideal of a federation of relatively independent states. The very suggestion that a French monarch might accede to the throne of the empire made most of the imperial estates fear for the continued survival of "German liberty." But the historical construction of the French "foreigner" as antagonist to a "native" Hapsburg presupposes cultural and political ties to Germany that Charles never possessed. On the contrary, since succeeding to the Spanish throne he had turned even further away from the old empire and devoted himself increasingly to the new one. There were only two suitable candidates for a "German" solution: Ferdinand, the Spanish king's brother, and Frederick the Wise, who was unencumbered by rivalries and quarrels over Hapsburg lands in southern and southwestern Germany. The one possibility was blocked by Charles, the other failed because the Saxon
OAV AORLLRRRAML_°»RAMC« Foie 19249 162 2E8 ich Her taco hiqqex Fam: whey) Jentor 4<ty.'neellgribey took At the Fugger banking house in Ausgsburg:
Jakob Fugger and his bookkeeper Matthaus Schwarz THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION —————————————————————————————— house was not strong enough. Frederick would by necessity have become too dependent upon the other princes and their support.
When six electors and an emissary of the seventh, the king of Bohemia, met in Frankfurt on June 27, 1519, on the eve of the election, only Saxony's vote appeared to be unsold. A later report goes even so far as to claim that Frederick had been able to obtain four votes including his own and had thus de facto been elected Holy Roman Emperor—but only for three hours, until the Hapsburg election commissioners forced him to abdicate. This is pure speculation. The official record of the election proceedings reports a "briefly deliberated" and unanimous election: the electors had "all and unanimously agreed and approved, named and elected His Most Serene
Highness, most powerful Prince and Lord, Carolum, Archduke of Austria, King of Spain and Naples, etc. Roman King and future Emperor in the name of Almighty God." *
Herewith had been reached a momentous decision which would profoundly shape the course of the Reformation. Frederick kept his preference secret to the very last, and so his vote was courted to the end. Although the result was certain on the eve of the election, and one opposing vote would have made no legal difference, Charles evidently had the emphatic wish to be elected unanimously and particularly to receive Frederick's vote. This interest in Saxon support cannot simply be inferred from the fact that money flowed into the coffers of the Saxon state treasury. Money did change hands in 1523, but it may well have been in repayment of a debt still owed by the Hapsburgs for loans made to Emperor Maximilian.
It was probably not money that prompted Frederick to cast his vote for the king of Spain, especially since Saxony's flourishing silver-mining industry made it one of Germany's richest territories. What did matter were marital
© plans, even if Frederick officially dismissed the implication of any such connection with his electoral vote. The case in point was the engagement of Charles' sister, the Infanta Catherine, who had previously been offered to the Brandenburgs but was now to be married to John Frederick, nephew of Fredrick the Wise, prince of Saxony, and heir apparent to the electoral dignity. Only in May 1524 did Charles annul the marriage contract that had been negotiated secretly before the imperial election and had become legally binding only after-the election, with the signatures of both sides."
The marriage was notarially validated at the beginning of the Diet of Worms, on February 3, 1521, in the presence of the elector and Gattinara, the imperial chancellor. That it made the emperor and the prince in-laws is of great importance with regard to Luther. Charles confirmed that, having returned to Spain, he would immediately send the infanta, who was now eighteen, to her groom in Germany for the consummation of the marriage."°
To the regret of Frederick the Wise and his brother Duke John, father of the groom, this never happened. Nevertheless, the alliance did have full legal validity for almost four years. (Only in 1525, after the contract had been abrogated, could Catherine—yet again in the service of her brother's European — strategy—marry King John III of Portugal.) There is no need to speculate about the course Reformation history might have taken had this marriage become a physical reality, forming a dynastic bond between the emperor and the elector. The two were allied by the unconsummated legal marriage when imperial and canon law should by all rights have long made them opponents.
The Luther Issue in Worms The imperial election continued to affect the Hapsburg relation with Saxony until cancelation of the marriage in May 1524. The Roman curia, on the other hand, saw no reason to show further consideration for Frederick after the election. Now there was nothing more in the way of a quick end to the Roman trial of Luther. In the summer of 1520 the time had come: Luther was condemned as a heretic. But once again things took an unexpected turn.
Instead of being handed over to the secular authorities for execution of the death penalty, Luther was summoned to the diet in Worms. The emperor had been most reluctant to agree to such a public interrogation, but on March 6, 1521, the invitation was issued, personally signed by "Carolus":
"Honorable, beloved, and devoted [Luther]. Since we [the Emperor] and the estates of the Holy Empire .
. . have proposed and decided, to obtain information from you about your doctrines and books, we give you safeconduct .
. with the desire that you should set out, and that under our protection you will appear here among us and not stay away.""' It does not sound as if a heretic were being summoned but an "honored, beloved, devoted" man; an invitation was being extended to the professor from Wittenberg, and his safe-conduct to the diet and back was being guaranteed. The emperor would never have made this concession without Frederick, who had once again exercised his influence to keep the Luther question from being settled too quickly.
Contemporaries did not know that only one month earlier Frederick had THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION collected on the electoral debt of the emperor through the notarial validation of the Hapsburg-Saxon marriage. Luther's protector in Worms was not a minor sovereign or insignificant prince: Frederick was a monarch with whom Charles sought to establish dynastic ties, to whom he was indebted— for more than financial reasons. This cannot have been clear to most of those assembled in Worms. What a majority of the imperial estates knew and did not doubt, however, was the legal basis for the summons, namely the emperor's electoral oath, by virtue of which no citizen was allowed to be placed under imperial ban without a hearing. For the Germans the legal situation was clear; what the emperor had signed in July 1519 had to be applied to Luther: "We shall and wish to .
. under no circumstances permit anyone, whether of high estate or low, elector, prince, or otherwise, to be placed under ban and double ban for any reason without a hearing." "
Hieronymus Aleander, the resolute and initially successful papal legate, held the contrary legal view: from January 3, 1521 on, the last day for submission, Luther was to be considered an incorrigible, notorious heretic and to be placed under ban automatically, according to canon and imperial law.
After the wild merriment of Carnival, Aleander used Ash Wednesday (February 13) as a day of reflection to remind the estates assembled in Worms with all eloquence of this bond between Church and empire, which had been held sacred for centuries. His speech made so great an impression that Gregor Briick, chancellor of Electoral Saxony, personally translated it into German and the Saxon elector's delegation carefully inserted it among the official documents.
The well-informed nuncio seems to have realized that time was pressing and that the situation was becoming increasingly critical: "How much evil and harm Martini Luther's agitation and rebellion has caused, how much misery he has brought upon the Christian people, what further damage he daily inflicts, is as clear as day; that is why it is necessary and crucial to see to it that his subversive sect be wiped out forthwith, and without any further postponement."
As early as 1520, well before the public debate in Worms, Luther's call to Reformation could no longer be treated as just any case to be tried in a papal, imperial, or local court and thereby nipped in the bud. So many people had become familiar with his theology and recognized their own criticisms of pope and Church in his writings that the name Luther had taken on an unmistakably public profile all the way down to the so-called common man.
Luther was undoubtedly right to view the protective custody provided by the elector two weeks after Worms as unnecessary solicitude, for if he had had to Hieronymus Aleander, papal nuncio at the Diet of Worms
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION Fi bear witness to and pay for his beliefs with his life, the Evangelical movement would not have been stopped, but rather have gained ground even faster.
Worms: for contemporaries and future generations alike it was a German event, the triumph of spirit over force, of German character over Latin cunning. For Luther, too, Worms was a German event, but in the worst sense of the word: the emperor "should have assembled one doctor or fifty and defeated this monk with arguments."
Instead of searching for the truth, they had ordered him to recant.
What had happened to make Luther report so bitterly to his friend, the famous painter Lucas Cranach, in Wittenberg?.On April 16, 1521, Luther arrived in Worms; only one day later, the first hearing took place in the "Bishop's Court." There, in the presence of his imperial majesty, the electors and princes—all the estates of the empire—Johann von der Ecken, chancellor of the bishop of Trier, asked Luther two questions:
Do you, Martin Luther, recognize the books published under your name as your own?
Are you prepared to recant what you have written in these books?
The Saxon delegation had taken the precaution of providing Luther— who was, after all, a monk and professor of theology—with an experienced lawyer, his friend and colleague from Wittenberg, Hieronymus Schurff, professor of canon and imperial law. Schurff immediately objected to the first question: "The titles of the books must be named."" When this had been done, Luther acknowledged each of the works mentioned as his own. For Aleander this was already confirmation enough of the heretic's mendacity: the "stupid monk" could not possibly have written all those books and obviously was covering up for the clever men behind the scenes.
Now everyone waited with bated breath for the reply to the second question: Would the monk recant? Those who expected a clear "no" were disappointed. Luther requested time to think. He was granted one day, until
April 18, but not without the justified rebuke that he should have been prepared for after a question of this sort.
The following day promised to be an exciting one, and it was. Luther once again refused to give a direct answer. Some of my books, he said, are neither sharp nor polemical; they deal with nothing but faith and the Christian life in accordance with the Gospel. Even my opponents will be able to find nothing objectionable in them. Other writings are directed against the papacy, which is ruining the Church, weighing down the human conscience, and oppressA GERMAN EVENT ing the empire. "If I now recant these, then, I would be doing nothing but strengthening tyranny." * He admitted that some of his tracts were polemical and sometimes "un-Christian" in tone, but even there he must remain firm unless errors could be pointed out.
Luther was permitted to finish his speech, but he had been asked for a response "without loops and holes." And that is what emperor and empire got: "Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason—for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves—I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound.
God help me. Amen." * After Luther's appearance before the diet, it became clear that the courteously formulated imperial summons had been deceptive. The diet was not to obtain "information" but to accept a recantation or impose a ban. This was the emperor's plan, and Johann von der Ecken was there to see that it was carried out. Luther did not need many words to summarize the events of Worms for Lucas Cranach: "Are the books yours? Yes. Do you want to reLuther before the emperor and the electors in Worms. At Luther' side stands Hieronymus
Schurff, professor of law in Wittenberg, here as his legal advisor. In handwriting on the woodcut: "Intitulentur libri" (The titles of Luther's books must be named) and "Hie stehe ich, ich kan nicht anderst, Got helffe mir Amen" (Here I stand, I can do no other, Amen).
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION cant or not? No. Get thee hence! O, we blind Germans, how childishly we act and allow ourselves to be mocked and fooled by the Romanists."" As so often before, the empire had let itself become the lackey of Rome—this too was a German event.
Historical distance shows that Luther's evaluation of the interrogation at Worms must be amended and at the same time upheld, though not on his grounds. Worms was indeed a German event, but this time it was not the Germans who had been made fools of. Where else in Western Christendom would it have been politically viable to protect a rebellious monk from being extradited to Rome—as in the autumn of 1518—and to obtain a public hearing for a notorious heretic—as now in the spirit of 1521?
The media of the time, the pamphlets and "private" letters written for publication, saw to it that Luther's speech to the diet was circulated far and wide. In the Bishop's Court in Worms sat the whole of Germany, not just the emperor and the imperial estates. In fact, the nation heard even more than its rulers—namely the impressive final statement that can be found only in the published version of Luther's confession: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen." *
The German "follies" at Worms and before had kept the Luther issue alive too long for a ban from above to stifle it.
"Wake up, wake up, 0 German nation"
After the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 the patriotism that had accompanied the Reformation movement in Germany was suddenly shrouded in silence. Understandably so, since a perusal of the Luther literature produced during the years of Nazi terror leaves the distinct impression that the Reformation was Luther's gift to his beloved Germans: I, the "German prophet," seek not my own but German redemption and salvation." Not a word is said about the fact that Luther presented his prophecy as an accusation: "Every
German will come to regret that he was born a German and is recognized as one everywhere." *° One aspect of the nationalistic interpretation is correct: Luther was no European, not even of the Hapsburg variety of his time. He saw himself as a German and was courted by the new national mood that was to confront and vex Emperor Charles everywhere—from Alsace to the Burgundian Netherlands, wherever hometown and homeland sought to shake off foreign rule.
Although discredited by the abuses of nationalism, the national-patriotic features of Luther's thinking and their influence on his conception of a reformation should not be obscured. The connection between Reformation and national consciousness cannot be overlooked and should in fact be kept in mind, if only to enable us to resist the legends of a "German Luther" and a "German soul" that have distorted and still distort Germany's view of itself to the present day. Indeed, in this respect the Reformation was to become a A year before the Diet of Worms the professor from Wittenberg had made an unmistakable appeal for national solidarity: "The time for silence is over, the time to speak has come"! With this allusion to Ecclesiastes (3.7), Luther began the dedication of his first political pamphlet, Address to the Christian
Nobility of the German Nation.*' At first he only intended to write a brief, onepage handbill printed as an open letter to "Charles and the Nobility of All
Germany," directed against the tyranny and wiles of the Roman curia. But by June 1520 the letter had developed into a full-length, fiery manifesto.
Though it was ninety-six pages long, four thousand copies were printed and virtually torn out of the hands of the Wittenberg publisher Melchior Lotter.
Only a few days later a second edition had to be printed in Wittenberg, and editions of the tract were soon published in Leipzig, Strasbourg, and Basel.
Even the usually reticent Elector Frederick expressed his approval in his very own way, by sending Luther a splendid piece of game."
But Luther's friend Georg Spalatin, Frederick's privy councilor, and the loyal Augustinian friars Johannes Lang and Wenzeslaus Linck were worried; after so virulent an attack on the foundations of the papal system, any attempt at a compromise with Rome was pointless. The diatribe had been written in great agitation; its feverish prose, disjointed thoughts, and repetitions trembled with outrage and concern over the future of the aberrant
Church and the oppressed empire. In this pamphlet Luther's voice has echoed through the centuries. Here is the speech he would like to have given in Worms half a year later, had he been allowed.
"The time for silence is over"'—when had Luther had such a time? Not lately! Particularly in the first half of 1520, he had assailed the abuses of his time so frequently and so stridently that his best friends had become alarmed.
Nonetheless, the biblical paraphrase at the beginning of the tract accurately does justice to a new situation. The audience Luther was addressing had changed. The earlier German writings were pastoral works for laymen, advising them what to do and expect in the confessional, in prayer, as godparents at a christening, at mass, and not least when in mortal danger. The Latin treatises, on the other hand, with their scholarly style of argumentaTHE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION tion and detailed exegetical proofs, were aimed at a specialized audience, for colleagues a chance to change, for students a chance to learn. But the official, academic world had not wanted to listen to him. By February 1520 the universities of Cologne and Louvain launched their condemnations of Luther's theology. Oh, wrongheaded academics!
It was not, however, just out of a sense of disappointment at the attitude of the universities that Luther turned to the general public. His reform manifesto for the German nation is not the continuation of the academic debate via other means; it is the result of his shattering realization that the Antichrist had made deep inroads into the Church.
There are two events which, taken together, reveal the new dimensions of what was probably Luther's most effective polemic tract. In February 1520 he was deeply shocked to read Ulrich von Hutten's edition of Valla's (¢1 457) treatise, which showed the famous Donation of Constantine to be a forgery.
This very document had been invoked for centuries to prove the transfer of sovereignty over the Western world from the Roman Emperor Constantine to the pope; the so-called Donation of Constantine had been the Roman claim to supremacy over the Western world. Lies—all of it, nothing but Roman cunning! No longer could Luther suppress the conclusion that the Antichrist, the final adversary traditionally expected to appear during the Last Days, had already started his attack on the Church.**
WHILE LUTHER still hesitated to air publicly this awful sense of foreboding, a second event made it plain that his premonition was based on fact. In early June 1520 a tract written in 1519—the Epitoma responsionis ad
Lutherum—claiming to be a concise refutation of all Luther's fundamental errors, reached Wittenberg. Luther was well acquainted with the author of this Refutation, the Dominican and highest-ranking curial theologian Silvester Prierias, for it was his expert opinion that had served as grounds for Luther's trial and had been enclosed with the official summons to Rome in The crucial theological argument upon which Prierias' 1519 response to Luther hinged was the same as in 1518: the Church means the Church of Rome, headed by the pope, who is infallible and thus more authoritative than councils and even the Holy Scriptures themselves. There is no authority higher than the pope; and he cannot be deposed, "even if he were to give so much offense as to cause people in multitudes . .
. to go to the Devil in Hell," *° as Prierias quoted from canon law. t Throughout the text dagger precedes a death date.
Luther was appalled at this papal doctrine: "I think," he wrote to his friend Spalatin, "that everyone in Rome has gone crazy; they are ravingly mad, and have become inane fools and devils." *" Lies are passed off as truth and, as in the case of the Donation of Constantine, even codified into law, and Scripture subordinated to papal authority—this is the ultimate antiChristian perversion of the teachings of the Church.
This discovery left Luther no choice but to address the general public:
The time of silence was over! Now he had to proclaim the state of emergency. In his response to Prierias, published in June 1520 "for the information of all Christians," he warned of the god-awful consequences that would arise from Rome's suppression of the Gospel. His every word vibrates with fear and trembling before this gaping threat of the final perversion of all order and virtue. No later Protestant will ever be able to imagine the full intensity of Luther's anguish: "So farewell, ill-fated, doomed, blasphemous
Rome; the wrath of God has come over you." * In the greatest of haste he completed his political manifesto, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. The empire had to be roused; its assistance was needed if reforms were finally to be carried out so that the people's pent-up rage would not vent itself in the form of an unbridled, bloody uprising. Rome, it must be remembered, has a dual function here: firstly, it is the usurper of temporal rights, in particular with respect to the Holy Roman Empire. The horrid consequences of the Donation of Constantine® are sarcastically spelled out: "In name the empire belongs to us, but in reality to the pope. .
. We Germans are given a clear German lesson.
Just as we thought we had achieved independence, we became the slaves of the craftiest of tyrants; we have the name, title, and coat of arms of the empire, but the pope has the wealth, power, the courts, and the laws. Thus the pope devours the fruit and we play with the peels." "
But Rome is also the gateway through which the Devil forces his way into the Church to launch his last campaign against Christ. The truth is turned against Christ, the office of the pope as the servant of servants is changed into the power of a ruler over rulers. However, the victorious Christ at God's right hand needs no vicar, for the ruler of the world in Heaven "sees, does, knows and is capable of all things"—without the pope. It is the suffering
Christ who seeks representation on earth through "working, preaching, suffering, and dying"; *' this kind of vicar is called for. Where these two offices, sovereignty in Heaven and service on Earth, are interchanged, all Hell breaks loose, and the vicar of Christ is transformed into the Antichrist.
The worldly usurper is to be contained and combatted, if necessary by force. It is for this purpose that the temporal ruler is armed with the sword.
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION But only prayer and penance can overcome the Antichrist. Only God can protect the Church now, for the Last Days have begun. We can kill and wash our hands "in blood," but we will no longer be able to achieve anything trusting in our own strength. The introductory sentences of the Address to the Christian Nobility are the political consequence of this vision of history, a view which had to be thoroughly repugnant if not totally incomprehensible to the German nationalists among Luther's early supporters:
Our first concern must be that we fully realize the seriousness of the situation: we should not undertake anything trusting in our strength or inventiveness—even if all the power in the world were ours. For God does not desire nor tolerate good works when begun through trust in one's own strength and reason. He strikes them down, there is nothing to be done, as Psalm 33(:16) says: "A king is not saved by his great army; a mighty man is not delivered by his great strength." For this very reason, as the historical record shows, our beloved Emperors Frederick
I and II and many other German emperors feared around the world were so pitifully trampled on and forced down by the popes; they may well have relied on their own power more than on God: that is why they had to fall. And I am afraid that in our time that bloodthirsty warrior
Julius II could get away with murder, because France, the Germans, and Venice relied upon themselves. The children of Benjamin destroyed twenty-two thousand Israelites because these had relied on their own strength (Judges 20-21).
If this is not to happen to the noble blood of Charles, we must realize that we are not dealing here with mere men but with the prince of Hell, who likes to fill the world with war and bloodshed but can not be overcome by them."
Thus Luther censures the very German emperors who were hailed by the young humanist movement as symbols of national identity. It is no coincidence that at this time the Hohenstaufens Frederick I and Frederick II receive particular attention. Barbarossa, who in thirty-five years of imperial rule unified the empire as was never to happen again, was especially popular.
The spread of the Renaissance to Germany had strengthened its national fervor. Now medieval historical sources were being scrutinized so that Roman-lItalian arrogance could be matched by pride in Germany's own history. Had Luther taken control of this national movement, he would have become the personal symbol of the struggle for freedom from Roman exploitation and oppression. And the Reformer did in fact awaken such expectaA GERMAN EVENT tions: "The liberation of the Germans is in Luther's hands!" Or so thought
Ulrich von Hutten, champion of the national movement, as he strove to mobilize town and country. The strident tone of his commentary on the papal bull against Luther is unmistakably nationalistic:
Here, you Germans, is the Bull of Leo X, with which he attempts to hide the Christian truth that has now come to light again. He wants to restrict and stay our freedom, so that it cannot recover and be revived in all its strength—our freedom, which after a long period of oppression is finally showing signs of life again. We will resist anyone who undertakes such a thing. Yes, we will publicly take steps long in advance to keep that person from succeeding and accomplishing anything in his restless passion and waywardness. By Immortal Christ, when was the time ever riper, when was there a better opportunity to do something worthy of a German? Everything indicates that there is more hope today than ever before of stifling this tyranny, of curing this disease. Pluck up your courage and you will achieve it! After all, it is not a question of Luther but of everyone; the sword is not raised against this one man alone, we are all of us under attack. They do not want their tyranny opposed, they do not want their deceit exposed, their strategy uncovered, their fury defied, and limits set to their wicked dealings.'
Luther did not go Hutten's way of German liberation through national mobilization. Exactly the same reason which later would make him reject the knight's revolt (1522) and the Peasants' War (1525) made him in 1520 already a critic of the young patriotic movement: non vi, sed verbo—not by force but by the power of the Gospel!
Later interpreters have concentrated on Luther's assault on the "walls of the Romanists" in the preface, and thus turned attention away from the national program in the main body of the pamphlet. Luther's primary concern, however, was his German manifesto; challenged to answer Prierias, he prefaced his treatise at the last moment with a program of theological principles, to show that the "Romanism" of Prierias blocked all reform of Church and empire.
The Romanists have skillfully drawn three walls around themselves with which they have thus far protected themselves so that no one can reform them. Through this, the whole of Christendom has fallen into misery. The first: whenever pressed by worldly power, they raised the claim that worldly power has no legal hold over them, but that the spiriTHE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION tual is above the worldly. The second: if one tries to call them to reform on the basis of Holy Scripture, they counter that no one but the pope has the right to interpret the Scriptures. The third: if one threatens them with a council, they pretend that no one but the pope may convene a council. Thus they managed to steal the three rods of discipline so that they could stay unpunished within the secure fortifications of these three'walls, at liberty to indulge in all manner of knavery and evil, as we see today. . .. May God help us and hand us one of the trumpets with which the walls of Jericho were toppled; thus we can blow down these straw and paper walls and loose the Christian weapons to punish sins, to expose the Devil's deceit, so that through punishment we may straighten out and regain His favor.**
Though the language of Luther's programmatic Address to the Christian Nobility is belligerent, its militancy is that of biblical truth which, once revealed, will bring down the walls of Rome. Here is not a hero speaking, but a prophet of repentance, leading the nation not to victory but to the confessional, to see to it that through chastisement we are "reformed." * Punishment leads to the expiation of sins, and reform means the reestablishment of justice in Church and world—in a Church that listens obediently to the Word of God, in a body politic that casts aside "what is against God and harmful to man's body and soul." *
The German event is not the achievement of national glory, but rather repentance and reform. Could so radical a Reformation have any hope of succeeding, could it ever prevail politically? Without any undertone of resignation, Luther's answer was "no." His concern was not the possible, but the necessary. And necessary is now, above all, sober enlightenment through the Scriptures, "and for the Christian nobility of the German nation, true spiritual courage to succor the poor Church." For "this is what the Scriptures are all about, that in spiritual matters concerning Christians and Christendom, the only thing that counts is God's judgment; never has any Christian concern been approved and supported by the world, but its resistance has always been too great and strong." "' This is certainly not the inspiring manifesto of a national hero, nor that of a prophet promising success.
The Reformer has two reasons for keeping his distance from the national movement. Weapons cannot liberate Germany! The great emperors did not achieve their goals and failed to accomplish their historical duties because they trusted in their armies and not in God. And furthermore: the national future is already past! History has progressed so far that the Last Days are quickly approaching and the future can thus bring victories only in the form of blood and tears. To the end of his life, Luther clung to this view; his national program for "his beloved Germans" was one of repentance, repair, and reform, with no prospect of a golden age until after the Second Coming.
Like innumerable contemporaries, Ulrich von Hutten had above all heard Luther's call to liberation and did everything in his power to make it come true. He thought he had virtually reached his goal when he was able to report to Luther in late 1520 that the weapons were at the ready to support and advance their common cause.* The effect of Luther's rejection of the German movement can hardly be overestimated. The national cause had united so many patriots; Hutten, a highly original thinker and well-informed writer and poet with a talent to rouse people from their political apathy, was only one of many distinguished men.
The patriotic movement was not a child of Luther's time. At the beginning of the century, the "German arch-humanist" Konrad Celtis (+1508) had already extolled the Roman historian Tacitus as a farsighted visionary who had created a monument to the Germans with his Germania. Hence
Italy was not alone in possessing an ancient history, Germany had one too!
By discovering the German Middle Ages and trying to link the virtues of the ancient Germans with the illustrious history of the German emperors, the humanists tried to lay the foundations for a historically based sense of national pride. All that was missing was a war of independence and a rousing national hero to personify the ideals of unity and freedom for a burgeoning nation. Martin Luther could have become a German William Tell, Joan of Arc, or George Washington had he only chosen to. How momentous the welding of national uprising with religious war in a single figure could be is well demonstrated by William of Orange, the Netherlands' champion of independence and autonomy.
It is impossible to tell whether Luther as a hero of national liberation could have provided and preserved the necessary sense of national cohesion in the face of such powerful counterforces. There were indeed massive obstacles in the way of the German cause: even in the sixteenth century it was clear that a German national state with the ambitions of a medieval empire was a danger to European stability. Moreover, the Hapsburg imperium lived by the grace of a loose federation of many different peoples and would not have stood for the homogeneity of one nation at its center. And further, the federal structure of an empire demands from those dedicated to a national vision greater education, farsightedness, and patience than is required in a centralized monarchy like France.
Ulrich von Hutten, champion of the German patriotic liberation movement. Woodcut.
Decisive for Luther's long-range influence was his refusal to accept the widely desired alliance of St. Paul with Tacitus, of a renewal of faith with the birth of a nation. Programmatically and prophetically, he tried to urge his
"beloved Germans" into a unity of faith and purge them of that nationalism. which dreams of the union of religion and blood. With his catechism and Bible, he taught the people to pray and write in German, not to propagate the uniqueness of the "German spirit" but to set an example for the many nations of Christendom to imitate. The national council Luther demanded in 1520 would have assembled in Speyer in 1524—on November 11, the day of his baptism—had the emperor not explicitly forbidden it. Never had a German national church been so close to realization. The Reformer would, however, have condemned any identification of Church and nation as running counter to the will of God: equating God's people with a state or nation, be it Germany or Rome, not only perverts the Gospel, it also threatens world peace. For us Luther is "modern" insofar as he promoted an ecumenical pluralism and warned against resolving spiritual questions by government pressure, let alone by armed force.
In his own time there were many who thought him outdated. And indeed: as a political prophet in the war council of the rebellious knights or in the camp of the revolutionary peasants, he would have become a national leader.
In the short term, imperial unification under this kind of national hero would have benefited Germany most at the dawn of the modern era. But it would have been a betrayal of the Reformation. Luther as a German was a hindrance and burden for a nation trying to find its identity. He refused to become a folk hero, and by refusing became himself a German event.
Reformation and No End in Sight he word reformation was as popular in the Middle Ages as democracy is today—and it meant as many things to as many people. Everyone was for it, as all the sources attest.
But that did not explain how reformations—today we would speak of reforms—were to look and how they could be implemented. Nonetheless reformation was not a cliché.
It was more of an irritant and an admonition, often accompanied by ire and indignation but also filled with hope and longing. It could challenge the Church as such or seek to stir up a religious order. Then reformation meant return to original ideals. The Church was to emulate the model of the early
Christian community, to be united again in love; or a monastic community was to regain sight of the original, authentic principles of the founder of their order.
With regard to the individual reformatio stood for the renewal of man and woman; they were to wake from the coma of sin and, once in peace with God, regain the original innocence. Mysticism understood this peace as the indescribable experience unique to the union with God: the person loses himself in God, or the desires of the mystic become identical with the will of the Lord. Hence reformation touched the Christian in his very innermost self; it was an expression of the yearning for lost ideals and a proclamation of the hope that Church and society were moving toward a better future. In the Middle Ages those who demanded reformation never considered a "return" to the origins and "progress" toward a better future as mutually exclusive.
Thus the opposite of reformation was not "restoration" but "deformation": corruption, estrangement from God, going astray en route to the Last
Like many other cultural phenomena, reform movements spread across Europe in waves, from the Mediterranean to Germany and Scandinavia. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries Italy and southern France were moved by the ideal of "apostolic poverty" and the attendant criticism of S51 the wealthy established Church. In this case reformation meant repentance and a return to Christ's way of life. Though such protest groups as the Albigensians and Waldensians were persecuted by fire and sword, they could only be effectively subdued after the mendicant orders were approved by the pope and allowed to live a life of poverty within the Church—vicariously for rich prelates and laymen.
The year 1329 was one of critical decision. Pope John XXII condemned the ideal of radical poverty by denying the biblical foundations of the mendicant movement—the thesis that Christ and his apostles had lived in absolute poverty, devoid of possessions. This not only meant censure of the left wing of the Franciscan order, a group particularly critical of the rich Church, it also discredited a deeply rooted European conviction, for even those who knew only little of the Christian faith were at least acquainted with Jesus' call to poverty: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven" (Matt. 19.21).
In those days, poverty and perfection belonged together. Shunning the things of this world was an outward characteristic of monastic life, and the imitation of Christ in poverty was the sure way to Heaven. Of the three monastic vows—obedience, poverty, and chastity—it was especially poverty which demonstrated that to remain in the world meant making un-Christian compromises. Outside the monastery one was very far from fulfilling the "evangelical counsels" the Lord had given his disciples to enable them to lead a truly perfect life.
All Christians had an obligation to obey the Ten Commandments. That was difficult enough. But the three monastic vows were even more exacting.
Whoever fulfilled the "evangelical counsels" belonged to the religious elite and could pray and intercede for the common Church Christian, giving him spiritual support to at least keep the commandments. It was therefore in the vital interest of all Christians that the elite, under whose protection the simple believer lived, really meet the standards set by Christ. Consequently, the reformation of the monasteries concerned the whole of society.
It therefore stood to reason that Pope John XXII's condemnation of the mendicant movement would cause a greater stir than many of his other provocative decisions. Here was confirmation of the long-harbored suspicion that the Church had forsaken its Lord, the Christ of poverty. It gave sad evidence that the courage of the persecuted Christians in the Roman Empire had led not to the collapse of paganism, as had been believed for centuries, but rather to the Constantinian Church. The martyrs had sacrificed their possessions and their lives while the prelates acquired wealth and power!
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION ee ec ae The clever solution of the canon lawyers was morally less than convincing.
They sought to eradicate the problem by drawing a subtle distinction: The followers of St. Francis, the Franciscans, are legally poor because they have no property but only possessions: they possess only the right to use the effects of their monasteries, whereas the Church as a whole, not bound by Christ's injunction to poverty, owns these effects, not the order.
Some of the Friars Minor agitated against this legal distinction and insisted on absolute poverty as demanded by St. Francis. Though the radical friars were unsuccessful even among their own order, their ideal was never forgotten and remained influential in the time to come.
The Struggle for Monastic Reform One of the important consequences of the fourteenth-century poverty dispute was the emergence of the Observant Movement in all of the mendicant orders. They strove for reformation as a return to the original rule of their respective orders. Later criticized as rigorists, Observants regarded themselves as the green branches on the languishing tree of the Church, for Observantism means religious obedience in strict accordance with the rules.
Thus, the youngest of the three major mendicant orders, the Augustinian Hermits, founded in 1256, had no alternative but to accept a series of reformed monasteries in Italy and Germany uniting in the fifteenth century to form a "congregatio reformata," in total disregard for the boundaries of the official provinces of either Church or order. The Observant congregations succeeded in securing more and more privileges, the most important of which was the right to elect their own representative, who as vicar general was subordinated to the general of the order in Rome yet was increasingly able to gain complete independence from him. These constitutional aspects of monastic reform are so important because this chain of command in the congregation began to make conceivable an ecclesiastical organization that, though not independent of the pope, could gain a measure of independence from Rome.
The vicar general of the reformed German Augustinian congregation, to which the Erfurt monastery of Luther belonged, had already in the fifteenth century acquired considerable independence and was no longer receiving his instructions from the general of the order in Rome. In this light it is readily understandable that sovereigns and cities—like Frederick the Wise and the city council of Nuremberg—urged monasteries in their territories to accept "Observantine reformation"; it was in their interest to eliminate external ecclesiastical interference.
At the same time, public demand for temporal authorities to introduce monastic reform stemmed from a genuine desire to guarantee that the monastic orders—the religious and moral elite of society—would lead a life of true perfection and holiness. This "guarantee" was a serious issue for society at large, because monastic reform involved more than the implementation of administrative measures. Monasteries were being promoted and protected as sites of intercession and precious resources for the social community, where reliable priests celebrated the endowed masses for the salvation of the souls of the dead, and where guidance could be found with wise pastors, and where, through special fraternities, the laymen could share in the fruits of monastic life.
In the late Middle Ages increasingly sharp criticism was leveled against the wealthy Church, and was directed with particular gusto at the impudent arrogance of the monks, especially the mendicants. Countless colorfully embellished tales of their easy, sumptuous life were spread angrily all across the country; the Observants, on the other hand, were conspicuously spared.
Luther's development is closely linked with his reformed Saxon Augustinian congregation and its excellent chain of communication—an important factor in the rapid spread of Luther's writings in the early years.
Three Observant monasteries deeply influenced the course of the young monk's life. In Erfurt he joined the Observant Augustinians; in Wittenberg the monastery became the decisive sphere of his activity, a place for study and learning and later even a home for himself and his family. The monastery at Nuremberg became the spiritual headquarters of the nascent Reformation when it first started to spread to the cities of southern and southwestern Germany. Most likely Luther himself would have acknowledged that a fourth Augustinian monastery, the one in Antwerp, deserved pride of place as the cradle of the Reformation's first martyrs. But by that time, 1523, the word reformation had already taken on new meaning. A look at the late
Middle Ages will help us to understand the crucial stages in this development.
The Hierarchical Church under Fire Only in Germany and Italy had the Observant movement succeeded in curbing the poverty dispute, at least for a time. But for a long while in England and Bohemia there was to be no peace. It was above all two men who accelTHE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION i erated the process of fermentation and who stood at the forefront of events: the Englishman Wyclif and the Czech Hus. Both had been baptized "John," and were later, in allusion to John the Baptist, either praised or condemned as Luther's precursors.
Wyclif (+1384) was a professor at Oxford. Hus (+1415), in many respects Wyclif's pupil, was a professor in Prague. Both of them exerted influence far beyond' the walls of their universities; and both were condemned by the Council of Constance in 1415—the one, Jan Hus, to death at the stake, and the other, who had already been dead for nearly thirty years, to posthumous excommunication.
Wyclif and Hus found their common theme in the contradiction between the Church of faith, which served the whole world, and the Church of prelates, which wanted to be served. Wyclif's theological convictions are in every respect an effort to think through and respond to the pope's doctrinal decision of 1323. His De Dominio Divino (Of the True Dominion) deals with the claims of the Church to power and possession of property. Only the true
Church of Christ, which lives in the state of grace, is entitled to property and dominion. As the Church has quite obviously fallen from grace, it has therefore forfeited all claims to worldly power, thus giving the state the right to confiscate Church property.
Wyclif's contemporaries as well as later generations attributed the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 to the impact of these ideas. But Wyclif's adversaries were as wrong as his historians: there had been far too little time for his ideas to be assimilated, spread, and translated into action. Nonetheless,
Wyclif remained a force to be reckoned with in England. By advocating the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, rejecting celibacy, and attacking the doctrine of transubstantiation, his followers, the Lollards, kept his memory alive well into the time of the English Reformation.
But it was on the Continent that Wyclif's reform proposals were most influential. In 1382 Anne, sister of Wenceslaus, king of Germany and Bohemia, married King Richard II of England. This alliance of Continent and island had unpredictable consequences: numerous Bohemians went to England, where they became acquainted with Wyclif's ideas and then returned to disseminate them in their own homeland. The first ten chapters of Jan
Hus's major treatise on the Church—De Ecclesia—read very much like an anthology from Wyclif's work of the same title.
Yet Hus lent his own special and dramatic emphasis to the Englishman's program. The theological doctrine that God determines every person's acA MEDIEVAL EVENT tion and direction in advance—usually referred to as predestination—is the instrument with which the true and the false Church can be clearly separated. St. Augustine, one of the most influential Western Church Fathers
(+430), had already given much thought to predestination as the biblical way to articulate the doctrine of undeserved grace: through God's election to grace, the sinner is summoned and saved; long before his birth, his name has been written into the "Book of Life." Amid the conflicts and rival claims of his time, Hus draws the following sharp conclusion: It is not obedience to Rome, but rather obedience to God which is the decisive mark of the true
Church. To her belong those whom God through His eternal predestination has chosen as the obedient. With its hunger for power and property, the papal hierarchy has forfeited any right to be regarded as part of the true
Church, which can be recognized by the imitation of Christ and the apostles.
OFFERING Hus A safe-conduct, Emperor Sigismund invited the Prague professor to Constance to justify his position before the council. Despite the emperor's promise, Hus was soon arrested and, after seven months in prison, burned at the stake as a heretic on July 6, 1415. He fell, yet he did not fail. As a martyr he took on a new life and remained a living memory into the Reformation period. For Luther St. Hus-the-martyr was very much alive; Luther was convinced that the prophecy Hus had made before his execution applied to the Reformation: "Holy Johannes Hus prophesied about me when he wrote from his Bohemian prison that they might now be roasting a goose (for Hus means goose), but in a hundred years they will hear a swan sing, which they will not be able to silence." '
Although Reformation thought and Hussite theology were not identical, Luther totally rejected the verdict of heresy brought in by the Council of Constance: "If he is supposed to be a heretic, no real Christian has ever been born on earth."? Luther, however, did not try to conceal the differences between himself and Hus, but sought instead to point them out by distinguishing between life and doctrine: "Life is as evil among us as among the papists, thus we do not argue about life but about doctrine.
Whereas Wyclif and Hus attacked the immoral lifestyle of the papacy, I challenge primarily its doctrine." '
Certainly this assessment is not completely accurate, though true in its decisive aspects. It is not correct insofar as doctrine was of the utmost importance to both Wyclif and Hus—the doctrine of the dominion and property of the hierarchy: the Church has a right to property only as a gift temporarily a THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION
On October 31, 1517, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, had a dream foreshadowing Luther's posting of the ninety-five theses granted by God's grace. Such a gift is not automatically placed in the hands of priests and prelates because of their office, but is given only to those who practice obedience according to God's providence. This is undoubtedly an explosive theological doctrine, with a cutting edge aimed at a Church that for a long time—and quite apart from the Papal State—had been one of Europe's largest property owners.
Wyclif, Hus, and their followers in England and Bohemia carried on the old poverty controversy, though by new means. God had predestined the obedient for salvation, and it was they who constituted the Church. The hierarchy, on the other hand, had turned against Christ and was therefore reprobate and no longer part of the Church.
Luther's view of the Bohemian reformation as being restricted to "life" is not accurate. Both Wyclif and Hus sent shock waves through the Church, challenging its power structure and attacking its doctrines. And yet there was a fundamental difference between the Bohemian and the Wittenberg reformations. Because of the public moral scandal the Church flaunted, Wyclif called upon the secular authorities to confiscate all ecclesiastical property and administer it themselves. Hus urged taking the sacraments—confession and communion—only from priests who did not openly live in sin. Luther was by no means indifferent to the general decline of morals, but moral rearmament is not the primary goal of his reformation. Luther had precisely this difference in mind when he formulated the statement found so objectionable through the ages—to his contemporaries and today's Catholics and Protestants alike: "Life is as evil among us as among the papists." The heart of the Reformation is the recovery of sound doctrine—only true faith will lead to the renewal of life.* Here Luther reveals his own vision of "reformation" — as unusual in his own day as it is troublesome for modern times.
The Pursuit of the Millennium Luther's disconcerting view of reformation can be clarified when seen against the backdrop of the poverty dispute. The principal issue in the great debate over the true intentions of St. Francis of Assisi was the interpretation of the saint's first rule and his last will. Pope John XXII initially questioned, then rejected and condemned a strict interpretation of the rule of poverty laid down in both documents. From that point on, not only was the Church's proper Christian way of life at issue, but also the much further-reaching question of papal authority and the foundations of a hierarchically structured Church. Thus the storm of indignation caused by the pope's condemnation in 1323 did not solely concern his repudiation of the strict ideal of poverty.
In his testament of 1226, St. Francis had unmistakably precluded any relaxation of the principle of strict poverty: "The Brothers must beware not to accept church buildings, or poor dwellings, or anything else else built for them when not in accordance with holy poverty ..
. ; they should occupy these places only as strangers and pilgrims."* The pope's refusal to respect this last will corresponded precisely with the "new" wav the uncompromising wing of the order, known as Fraticelli or Spirituales, read history. The "depraved" papacy is soon to be replaced because the great reformation, the millennium of peace, is about to begin. The fact that Pope John XXII is battling St. Francis and his devoted followers is not surprising at all; it is the final desperate attempt to delay by any means the inevitable fall from power.
The struggle for poverty was connected with the hope for the millennium.
More than a century before Pope John XXII's condemnation, the Cistercian abbot Joachim of Fiore had already interpreted chapter 20 of the Book of a er
THE LONGED-FOR REFORMATION Revelation to mean that the promise of the millennium would come true within the course of history and not just at the end of time, after the world had ended.
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth...
According to Joachim's calculations, history ran on a trinitarian scheme: the age of the Father, the history of the Old Testament, was followed by a second era, the age of the Son and the clerical Church, which began with the birth of Christ. The middle of the thirteenth century would mark the dawn of a new epoch, the age of the Spirit and the spiritual Church—the "ecclesia spiritualis." This third age would last a thousand years and put an end to the rule of laymen and priests, to pretended celibacy, to hierarchy and papal rule. The Church would be governed by those who dedicate their lives to meditating on the mysteries of God—in short, the time of the friars would come.
From the outset the implied subversion of the hierarchy was bound to evoke resistance. That priests were ranked higher than laymen was generally accepted, but the view of monks as the ruling estate of the spiritual Church could only be offensive. Up to now the reverse had been true: the hierarchy of priests, the bishops, and the popes had securely held the reins of ecclesiastical power. The very expectation of a time when the ruling hierarchy would no longer exist was a basic challenge to the papacy. This dream spoke loud and clear: contrary to all claims, Rome is not the foundation of the Church for all times. The New Age of the Spirit will build upon new foundations and put an end to the rule of the successor to Peter!
"Spirituales," the honorary title of the strict Franciscans, points to the heritage of the abbot of Fiore. Their critical stance toward the hierarchy is obvious, though surprising considering that it was the Franciscans who accorded Pope Clement V (+1314), John XXII's successor, the attribute of infallibility when he supported the implementation of the ideal of poverty. The doctrine of papal infallibility was their contribution to Christian thought, even though it remained a controversial point in the Roman Catholic Church until declared dogma by the First Vatican Council (1870—71).° Only when the defenders of the poverty ideal realized that they had been deserted by the pope was the legacy of Joachim of Fiore recovered. In the tradition of Joachim, Petrus Johannes Olivi (+1298), a Frenchman from the Languedoc and one of the most important Franciscan Bible scholars, composed a loaded commentary on the Revelation of St. John. In 1326 it also was condemned— by Pope John XXII—with lasting success.
Olivi was blotted so totally from memory that his commentary, the Postilla super Apokalypsim, could not be reconstructed until a few years ago. The manuscripts that have survived tell an eventful tale. In the course of the later
Middle Ages Olivi's commentary on the Apocalypse was often copied but constantly modified in accordance with the respective faction in power, or depending on the stance of the scribe toward the papacy.
Olivi's hope for a new age is based on his conviction that Francis of Assisi had ushered in the era of the Spirit just as John the Baptist had prepared the era of Christ. As Christ's authentic successor St. Francis had received the eternal Gospel, the "Evangelium aeternum," from God and proclaimed it to all men of good will. The pope, curia, and prelates of the now obsolete part of the plan of salvation were trying to outstay the time God had allotted them, but their opposition to the prophets of the Spirit transformed them for all to see from servants into enemies of Christ. It was equally obvious that the Friars Minor were the harbingers of a new "reformation," preparing for the new millennium, the thousand years of peace. This was the unique mission of the Franciscan order: to serve as vanguard of the third kingdom, the kingdom of the Spirit.
Chiliasm—the idea of a thousand-year kingdom of peace (from the Greek chilia eté, "a thousand years")—became a major factor in medieval criticism of the Church and Rome. Alien to Joachim of Fiore, speculation about a prospective crisis was to become crucial: the kingdom of the Spirit does not develop organically out of the kingdom of the Son but against powerful resistance; it is accompanied by severe upheavals and will break out as a catastrophe. The expectation Olivi had in common with Joachim, on the other hand, that monks would be the inaugurators of the new age, fell victim to the growing criticism directed at monasteries and the monastic life.
Where chiliasm could ally itself with the ideas of the two condemned "heretics," Wyclif and Hus, it was able to reach large parts of Europe. But the recipients of the Spirit were, in chiliastic Wycliffism or Hussitism, no