ple, and the papal finances were correspondingly in chronie disorder. Every means was resorted to to increase the revenues, from tithes for crusades in which the sword was never drawn to tariffs on every step of ecclesiastical advancement and dispensations from all kinds of canonical prohibitions. Complaints against the extortions of the curia were never louder or more universal than at the beginning of the sixteenth century. France and England had long ago found means to protect themselves in considerable part from these exactions; but on Germany, which for want of national unity and national spirit had no such defence, they fell with double weight. The resentment thus created was easily turned into sympathy with Luther in his attacks upon the hierarchy among classes to whom his theological innovations were of no concern.

Beyond the Alps, the Renaissance, which in Italy, amid the monuments and memories of the ancient civilisation, had the ambition to be a resurrection of the culture of pagan Rome, took the soberer form of a revival of learning through the study of the classic literatures, to which was soon added the study of the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek and of the early Christian authors. The presses poured out not only editions of the classics and of the Fathers, but, far outnumbering them all, of the Bible, in Latin, in Hebrew, in Greek, and in translations into modern languages. Between 1450 and 1520 not less than 156 editions of the Latin Bible appeared; there were seventeen editions of the whole Bible in German (from Latin), besides many more of the church lessons; eleven in Italian, ten in French. The first Greek New Testament, edited by Erasmus, was published in 1516; the first polyglot Bible, the great plan of a Spanish humanist, Cardinal Ximenes, containing the Old Testament in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in parallel columns, with the Targum on the Pentateuch, and the New Testament in Greek and Latin-six volumes in folio was issued in 1520.1

1 1 The printing of the New Testament was finished in 1514,

CHAPTER XI

CHRISTIANITY

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

The Situation at the Beginning of the 16th Century-Indulgences for St. Peter's-Luther's Theses-Effect of the Theses in Germany-Condemnation at Rome-Luther's Three Treatises of 1520-Excommunication-The Diet of Worms-Political Complications-The Augsburg Confession-The Peace of Augsburg— Reformation in Switzerland-Zwingli-Humanism and Reform in France Calvin at Geneva-Scandinavian Kingdoms-Lutheranism in England-Henry VIII-Reformation and ReactionElizabeth-Knox in Scotland-A Half-Century of Reform-Characteristics of the Movement-Rejection of the Authority of the Church-The Scriptures and the Right of Interpretation-Justification by Faith-Influence of Luther's Theological EducationLaw and Gospel-Predestination-The Sacraments-The Canon of Scripture The Mass and the Ministry-More Radical Reformers The Peasants' Revolt and the Anabaptists-Consequences-Luther and the Creeds-Melancthon.

THERE was nothing in the state of the church at the beginning of the sixteenth century that foreboded the great Western schism, the Protestant Reformation. The flood of heresies which in the twelfth and following centuries had spread over Europe had subsided. The crisis of the conciliar age was past, and the power and prestige of the papacy had been restored. The need of reform in the church and of a revival of the religious life was recognised not only by the humanists but in the high places of the church itself. In Spain notable and lasting reforms had been achieved; in Italy the Oratory of Divine Love, which counted among its members some of the most eminent churchmen of the age, including several who became cardinals, set the example of sincere piety and pure life in the midst of the surrounding

ecclesiastical worldliness, and exerted a leavening influence in a wide circle. Revival and reform in those countries were alike animated by a thoroughly churchly spirit. There was no similar movement in Germany, though the influence of the mysticism of Eckhart and Tauler had not wholly died out. Theology there was in the depths of its nominalist decadence, and the presumptuous ignorance of the obscurantist monks was a mark for the satire of the humanists, whose pens had been sharpened in the conflict between Reuchlin and the Dominicans of Cologne. Erasmus had written the Praise of Folly, and the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum were being read with immense merriment by the friends of the new learning. The exactions of the papal fiscal system gave occasion to frequent recitals of grievances which remained fruitless, but the fidelity of Germany to the church appeared unimpeachable.

The occasion of the outbreak, also, was accidental, and in itself commonplace. Pope Julius II, who had undertaken the rebuilding of the Church of St. Peter in Rome, issued in 1510 a bull offering indulgences in forma jubilæi, with various benefits, to those who should contribute to the funds for this work. His successor, Leo X, in 1515, made the Archbishop of Mainz commissioner for these collections in the provinces of Mainz and Magdeburg and the diocese of Halberstadt. The archbishop intrusted the preaching of the indulgences to a Dominican friar named Tetzel, who had had much experience and success in similar business.

According to the instructions issued by the archbishop, four distinct benefits (gratia) were offered, any of which might be purchased separately. The two which concern us here are, first, a plenary remission of all sins, availing also to cancel the pains to be suffered in purgatory, to such as, being contrite and confessed, visited at least seven churches on which the papal arms were set up, reciting in each five

1 In Spain, France, and England, the pope did not venture to offer these indulgences at all; but three commissioners were appointed for Germany, and one for Poland.

Paters and five Aves, and made a contribution rated according to the status, occupation, and income of the giver, from twenty-five gold florins down to one; and, second, for souls now in purgatory, a plenary remission of all sins, which the pope bestows and grants per modum suffragii (i. e., not by the power of the keys), on condition that the living put into the collection-box a contribution according to their ability.

The doctrine of indulgences, even in the carefully guarded form in which it is stated by the authoritative theologians of the church, is exposed to only too facile misunderstandings by the lay mind, unaccustomed to refined distinctions; and when proclaimed by popular preachers with a strong interest in the size of the contribution, was sure to be misleading, particularly in regard to the remission of sins to souls in purgatory. The elector of Saxony did not permit the sale of indulgences in his territory, but the preachers marketed them just over the border. Their doings and the reports of their sayings provoked a young professor in the University of Wittenberg to dispute their teaching and practice. He accordingly posted on the door of the castle church, the usual place for university notices, ninety-five theses, which he undertook to defend against all comers in a public discussion by word of mouth or in writing. It was a challenge to an open debate, a kind of academic tournament much in fashion in those days.

The theses do not sound very revolutionary. In the main they rest on the ground of the accepted Catholic doctrine. Several of them are directed against the perversions and abuses attributed to the venders of indulgences, which the author assumes that the pope cannot be cognisant of. Others, however, contradict the principles upon which the indulgences were granted. He asserts, for example, that it is not the pope's intention, nor in his power, to remit any penalties except those which are imposed by his own authority or that of the canons; that penalties imposed by the church come to an end with death and are not carried over

into purgatory;1 he denies the doctrine of the treasury of merits on which the pope draws for indulgences. On the other hand, he affirms that the whole life of the faithful should be penitence, inward and outward, and that the words of Christ, "agite pœnitentiam," refer to this, not to the sacrament of penance; that a Christian man who feels true compunction for his sins has plenary remission from penalty and guilt even without letters of indulgence; that the pope's remission of guilt is merely declaratory; and that works of mercy are of much higher worth in the eyes of God than the pope's letters of pardon.

What concerned him most in the whole matter was that by the preaching of indulgences men were encouraged to a false security of salvation. He was incensed, also, at the exploiting of the people by the venders of indulgences. "Christians ought to be taught that if the pope knew of the extortions of the mercenary preachers, he would rather see the Church of St. Peter in ashes than that it should be built with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep." "Why does not the pope, who is richer to-day than the richest Crassuses, build the single church of St. Peter out of his own money, instead of out of the poor believers?"

He was

The author of these theses was Martin Luther. born November 10, 1483, at Eisleben in Thuringia. His father's ambition to make a lawyer of him sent him to the University of Erfurt, where he graduated Master of Arts in 1505. Erfurt, like most of the German universities, was still in the medieval rut, and was one of the strongholds of the modernist (nominalist) philosophy and theology. With the group of young Erfurt humanists-some of them only too human-Luther seems to have had no contact. Hardly had he taken his degree, when he disappeared into an Augus

1 The extension of the benefits of indulgences to purgatory was still contested in the fifteenth century; the first formal grant of indulgences for the dead was in a bull of Sixtus IV in 1476. The treasury of merits had papal authority in a bull of Clement VI, in 1343. See above, pp. 244 ƒ.