A World Lit Only by Fire (30 page)

B
URNING A PAPAL BULL
was, of course, a capital offense, but Luther had broken no law, because this bull was illegal. In the turmoil at the Vatican
the Curia had been betrayed from within. The sixty day countdown had begun June 15, the day of the
Exsurge Domine
, and damned Luther on August 14. But under their own laws, this period of grace did not start to run until he had been handed
the bull. And there the saboteurs had been particularly effective.

He should have received it before the end of July. Summer had been dry; even a slow courier could have accomplished the journey
from Rome to Wittenberg in less than seven weeks. Yet it did not reach him until Octorber 10. In itself the injustice was
slight; Luther was burning bridges as well as decrees. The significance of the delay lies in the identity of the obstructionists.
German archbishops, serving in Rome, had held up the bull for nearly four months. In so intervening, they were representing
the will of their countrymen. Luther was to be saved, not by the justice of his cause, but because in his fatherland, as all
over Europe, the political vacuum being left by the ebbing Holy Roman Empire was being filled by a new phenomenon: the rising
nation-states.

The tension between the peoples living on either side of the Alps was greater than the rivalry dividing Spain and Portugal.
It was also much older. Piety and hostility toward the papacy had coexisted among central Europeans since the fifth century,
when, they remembered with pride, Alaric had led their ancestors in sacking Rome. They also recalled—and this memory was
bitter—how Pope Gregory VII had humiliated their leader six centuries later, forcing him to kneel in the snows of Canossa
for three days before granting him absolution. Though Teutonic
Obrigkeit
, authority, remained in the hands of some three hundred independent princes, the
Volk
shared one language, one culture, and, increasingly, a sense of common identity. Their unanimity in the period may be overstated,
but now that they were beginning to feel like Germans, Canossa and other old wounds were opened and nursed.

After the Church’s jubilee of 1500, when Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI, was pope, German pilgrims recrossing the Brenner Pass
had returned with wild stories of Vatican orgies, the poisoning of pontiffs, homicidal cardinals, pagan rites in the Curia,
and nuns practicing prostitution in the streets of Rome. But the roots of Germany’s burgeoning anticlericalism lay deeper
than gossip. To a people united by a flickering new national spirit, the imperiousness of the Vatican had become intolerable.
Rome had decreed that no sovereign was legitimate until he had been confirmed by the pope. In theory, a pontiff could dismiss
any emperor, king, or prince if displeased with him. He wasn’t even obliged to cite a reason. Clergymen, like later diplomats,
were immune from civil law. No officer of the law could lay a hand on a priest guilty of rape or murder, and conflicts between
civil and episcopal courts could be settled, by pontifical fiat, in favor of the clerics.

Maximilian had nearly broken with the Vatican. In 1508 he had been barred from attending his own coronation in Rome by hostile
Venetians. The schismatic Council of Pisa offered him the papacy. He declined then, but a year later he briefly considered
separating the German church from Rome. In the end he was persuaded that he couldn’t rely on the support of German princes,
but he went so far as to direct Jakob Wimpheling, the humanist, to draw up a list of Germany’s grievances against the papacy.

Heading Wimpheling’s complaints were protests against the Vatican’s systematic looting of German taxpayers, industries, and
the vaults of noblemen. Maximilian himself calculated that the papacy reaped a hundred times more in German revenues than
he did himself—an exaggeration, of course; nevertheless, businessmen, the most vigorous men in the new German society, did
find themselves competing with monastic industries whose profits, Rome had ruled, were exempt from taxation. Long before Luther
arrived to lead his disgruntled countrymen, the chancellor to an archbishop of Mainz had angrily written an Italian cardinal
that “taxes are collected harshly, and no delay is granted … and war tithes imposed without consulting the German prelates.
Lawsuits that ought to have been dealt with at home have been hastily transferred to the apostolic tribunal. The Germans have
been treated as if they were rich and stupid barbarians, and drained of their money by a thousand cunning devices. … For many
years Germany has lain in the dust, bemoaning her poverty and her sad fate.
But now her nobles have awakened as from sleep; now they have resolved to shake off the yoke, and to win back their ancient
freedom
.”

Among his countrymen, pastors and even prelates agreed. Archbishop Berthold von Henneberg wrote: “The Italians ought to reward
the Germans for their services, and not drain the sacerdotal body with frequent extortions of gold.” He was ignored. Relationships
between pious churchgoers and the ecclesiastical hierarchy worsened. When Karl von Miltitz had journeyed to Altenburg to meet
Luther, he had been astounded to find that half Germany seemed critical of the Vatican. So strong was antipapal feeling in
Saxony that Miltitz evaded questions from natives, denied holding the pontiff’s commission, and assumed a false identity.

A Catholic historian notes that “a revolutionary spirit of hatred for the Church and the clergy had taken hold of the masses
in various parts of Germany. … The cry ‘Death to the priests!’ which had long been whispered in secret, was now the watchword
of the day.” Although the pope had remained ignorant of this festering discontent, the Curia knew of it. Rather than kindle
an uprising there, the hierarchy had decided to exempt Germany from the Inquisition, and in 1516, the year before Luther posted
his theses on the Castle Church door, one of the ablest men around the pontiff had warned him of imminent revolt in the heart
of Europe.

H
IS NAME WAS
G
IROLAMO
A
LEANDRO
, Latinized to Hieronymus Aleander. Then just forty, he was a handsome Venetian whose arched brows, penetrating eyes, and
thoughtful, pursed mouth suggested a professorial life. In part this was justified. Aleandro was an ecclesiastic of commanding
intellect. A humanist and future cardinal, he was a celebrated member of Europe’s intelligentsia—rector of the University
of Paris, a colleague of Erasmus, fluent in all classical tongues, and honored lecturer at Venice and Orleans. He was also
a man of action, however, and as such he would become Luther’s first formidable Catholic adversary. Aleandro had anticipated
the coming mutiny during an official visit to Austria. There, he told Pope Leo, he had repeatedly overheard men muttering
that they yearned for the emergence of a man brave enough to lead them against Rome.

When the papacy issued a bull significant to one part of the Church’s vast realm, it was customary to dispatch eminent nuncios
from Rome with bales of copies, which they would post in major population centers. Leo’s
Exsurge Domine
was such a document, and the dignitaries entrusted to inform all Germany of Luther’s shame were Aleandro and Johann Eck.
To be chosen was regarded as an honor, and Eck, remembering his triumph over Luther in Leipzig the year before, set out with
zest.

Aleandro, remembering his premonition, was less enthusiastic. Earlier in the week word had reached the Vatican that their
reception would be, at best, mixed; Luther had been degraded in Rome, but he was no pariah to the north. Among his supporters
were Franz von Sickingen, imperial chamberlain and one of the Holy Roman Empire’s seven electors; Philipp Melanchthon, the
theologian; Lazaras Spengler, poet, and
Stadtrat
(councillor) of Nuremberg; and Willibald Pirkheimer, the translator of Greek classics into Latin. Albrecht Dürer was praying
for Luther. Karlstadt, rallying to his cause, had published
De canonicis scripturis libellus
, a slender volume commending the Bible and derogating pontiffs, the Epistles, traditions, and ecumenical councils. In Mainz
even Archbishop Albrecht was flirting with the rebels.

These were prominent, conservative Germans. Ulrich von Hutten was prominent, but no conservative; he was writing with the
slashing, polemical pen of the new Lutherans. Calling for Germans to free themselves from Rome, he published an ancient German
manuscript and noted pointedly: “While our forefathers”—the Goths and Huns—“thought it unworthy of them to submit to the
Romans when Rome was the most martial nation in the world, we not only submit to these effeminate slaves of lust and luxury,
but suffer ourselves to be plundered to minister to their sensuality.” Erasmus begged Hutten to mute his trumpet, but the
poet laureate’s notes grew harder and harsher; that spring of 1520, demanding independence from Rome in
Gespräche
, a verse dialogue, he called the Vatican a “gigantic, bloodsucking worm,” adding: “The pope is a bandit chief, and his gang
bears the name of the Church. … Rome is a sea of impurity, a mire of filth, a bottomless sink of iniquity. Should we not flock
from all quarters to compass the destruction of this common curse of humanity?”

Eck and Aleandro began to move warily. At Döbeln, Turgau, and Leipzig the papal posters, with the distinctive red-letter imprint
on each seal, were torn down. Eck was stunned. How could this happen in
Leipzig?
Debating Luther in this Catholic stronghold only a year earlier, he had scored a great triumph. By all the rules as he knew
them, he should have been entitled to deference. But the Wittenberg heresy defied precedents. Humbling Luther in the great
tapestried hall of Pleissenburg Castle had actually been a blunder. In Erfurt many professors, and even clergymen, scorned
Eck and Aleandro and their pontifical proclamation; then a mob of students arrived and tossed all the remaining copies in
the river. Eck panicked and fled.
^*

Aleandro was calmer—then. But less than six months later he too was appalled, writing the Curia from Hesse: “All Germany
is up in arms against Rome. … Papal bulls of excommunication are laughed at. Numbers of people have ceased to receive the
sacraments of penance. … Martin is pictured with a halo above his head. The people kiss these pictures. Such a quantity have
been sold that I am unable to obtain one. … I cannot go out in the streets but the Germans put their hands to their swords and
gnash their teeth at me. I hope the Pope will give me a plenary indulgence and look after my brothers and sisters if anything
happens to me.”

In Wittenberg Luther was content. On June 11, 1520—four days before the promulgation of
Exsurge Domine
in Rome—he had written Spalatin: “I have cast the die. I now despise the rage of the Romans as much as I do their favor.
I will not reconcile myself to them for all eternity. … Let them condemn and burn all that belongs to me; in return I will
do as much for them. … Now I no longer fear, and I am publishing a book in the German tongue about Christian reform, directed
against the pope, in language as violent as if I were addressing Antichrist.”

I
AM PUBLISHING
a book in the German tongue
. … Although Martin Luther was a riddle of quirks and eccentricities, many wildly contradictory and some less than admirable,
he was never a fool. At the outset he had been taken for one, but throughout 1520 events moved his way, partly because of
the pope’s dawdling but also because Luther possessed intuitive political skills. He not only grasped the powerful
Herrenvolk
spirit rising throughout the fatherland; he had conceived an ingenious way to exploit it.

As noted, the medieval elect, like imperial Rome, had kept the masses ignorant by a kind of linguistic elitism. Upper-class
Romans had embraced Greek forms and grammatical laws, despite the fact that these clashed with the natural rhythms of the
Latin language; as a consequence, serious texts had been unreadable to the vast majority of the empire’s inhabitants. Their
successors had followed the same pattern, adopting Latin as the tongue of men in power.