Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town Into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--And Started the Protestant Reformation (27 page)

The next five years would test the solidarity of these early companions to the limit. The years between 1522, when Luther returned to assert his authority over the Wittenberg movement, and 1526 were a time of decision for both individuals and communities. Many admired Luther, but would they follow him out of the church? Princes and city
councils also had to weigh the attractions of reform on the Wittenberg model against the dangers of defying imperial law and putting themselves at the mercy of ambitious neighbors. Thus far the cities had been the center of evangelical agitation. But it was one thing to thrill to the excitement caused by Luther’s defiance of the pope, or to crowd the churches to hear their own ministers lambast the corruptions of the clerical order; quite another to contemplate the creation of an institutional framework of an entirely new church adhering to Luther’s Gospel teaching. Inevitably this was a process stretching over several years, with halting steps and many misgivings. But by the end of the 1520s many German cities, including powerful regional centers such as Hamburg, Strasbourg, and Nuremberg, had taken the essential measures to institute a state-led Reformation.
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Sometimes (as in Hamburg) they looked to Wittenberg for help; elsewhere the Reformation depended on powerful local figures.

This stage in the development of an institutionalized church in turn inspired a significant backlash: from those who had always viewed with horror Luther’s assault on familiar institutions and authority, and from others who had initially followed his leadership, sometimes passionately, but now fell by the wayside. This trauma of separation from once-faithful friends and supporters was particularly acute in the middle years of this difficult decade, when a revolt among the peasantry (1524–1525) faced the movement with its first existential crisis: the more so because many of its leaders, to Wittenberg’s great embarrassment, claimed to be inspired to their gospel of social justice by Luther’s teaching. This was the decade when the Reformation took institutional root, but also a time of a painful and damaging parting of ways with valued former friends.
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These were testing times, but crucial if Luther’s movement was to develop beyond the initial cry for reform and fervent denunciation of the papacy to present its own positive vision of a reformed Christian life. In these moments of decision, often the occasion for lonely and stark choices, Luther’s movement relied very heavily on the gifts of those who pledged their eloquence and authority to his cause. The making of the Reformation depended during these years on radiating circles of
adherents, often considerable figures in their own right, who lent their expertise and reputation to making tangible the fruits of Luther’s teaching in their own locality. Luther understood this clearly. He placed himself at the heart of this movement, nurturing and cajoling, offering encouragement and advice. This was simultaneously a collective and a very personal achievement.

THE FOUR EVANGELISTS

Among the Catholic theologians who entered the lists against Luther, none was more doggedly persistent than Johannes Cochlaeus. A Catholic priest well connected in humanist circles, Cochlaeus had initially been attracted to Luther. He witnessed Luther’s defiance at the Diet of Worms, and subsequently sought him out for a personal audience. But Cochlaeus became convinced that Luther’s teachings, and in particular his promotion of a vernacular Bible, would break the sacred bond that preserved the special status of the priesthood. He became an implacable opponent: the two hundred or more writings that flowed from his pen included a cascade of anti-Lutheran polemics. Among them was the exotically titled
Fascicule of Calumnies, Ravings and Illusions of Martin Luther,
carefully classifying dozens of Luther’s statements into these three categories. Cochlaeus was also the inventor of the famous seven-headed Luther, the seven personalities that in Cochlaeus’s ingenious representation Luther exhibited in his work: doctor, fanatic, fool, church visitor, churchman, criminal, and Barabbas. Cochlaeus, who outlived his antagonist by the best part of a decade, was also the first to attempt a full biography of Luther. This painstaking chronological reconstruction of Luther’s career was often bitterly personal in tone. But Cochlaeus was also very shrewd. He recognized that Luther did not stand alone. Increasingly, especially in his treatment of Luther’s mature career, he recognized the contribution of those who worked with Luther
to build his church, singling out for special opprobrium those whom he characterized as “the four evangelists of Wittenberg”: Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Justus Jonas.
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Though intending no compliments, Cochlaeus thus provides a useful point of entry to the community that sustained Luther in Wittenberg from 1518 to the end of his life. These companions were all in their different ways essential to the success of the Reformation.

Of all Luther’s Wittenberg colleagues none was more important or forged such a close emotional bond with Luther than Philip Melanchthon, the towering intellectual force of Wittenberg’s Reformation. Melanchthon had been recognized as a scholarly prodigy from an early age. In this he was undoubtedly helped by his family connection to Johann Reuchlin, his great uncle, whose defense of Hebrew scholarship had been such a fashionable cause in the mid-1510s.
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As a result young Philip’s early career was followed with approval by leading humanist scholars across Europe, many of whom had also rallied to Reuchlin’s defense. Philip obtained his BA from Heidelberg at the age of thirteen, and an MA from Tübingen three years later. By the time he was summoned to the new chair in Greek at Wittenberg University in 1518, at the age of twenty-one, he was already a published author. He had also gained valuable experience of the printing press working as a proofreader in the Tübingen print shop of Thomas Anselm. Even as he made his way from Tübingen to take up his new responsibilities, universities in two of the cities along his route, Ingolstadt and Leipzig, attempted to poach him. On this occasion his escort, the reliable Spalatin, was able to steer him past these temptations, but it remained a constant fear for Luther that Melanchthon might flee to a more prestigious university or be lured away by a higher salary.

That said, Luther’s first impressions of his new colleague were not particularly favorable. On first acquaintance he found it hard to match the towering reputation to the shy, stammering, and frankly puny youth who stood before him. He was diminutive and frail, and even Lucas Cranach’s artistry could do little to make Philip handsome. Luther’s misgivings lasted only until his inaugural lecture four days later. This was universally recognized as a tour de force, a rousing defense of curriculum reform in Wittenberg shaped around a call for the study of the ancient languages as the necessary basis for theological study. Here, along with his own discipline of Greek, Melanchthon offered a robust recommendation of the study of Hebrew, a deft acknowledgment of his famous relative, his great-uncle Reuchlin. This lecture, published by Rhau-Grunenberg under the title
De Corrigensis Adolescentium Studiis
(
On Improving the Studies of Youth
), was immediately reprinted in the citadel
of humanist scholarship, Basel, by Johann Froben, Erasmus’s own printer.
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There could be no higher accolade for what would normally have been a routine academic exercise.

P
HILIP
M
ELANCHTHON

A delicate rendering of Luther’s chief lieutenant by Cranach. In real life Melanchthon was slightly built and intense, and never an imposing physical presence.

Luther was ecstatic.
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From this point on he regarded Melanchthon as the principal, essential collaborator of his life’s work. Melanchthon, in his turn, would offer Luther a patient loyalty, even when Luther’s tempestuous outbursts clearly went against the grain of his more cautious and temperate personality. The partnership would remain intact, through all the strains and stresses of the coming years, until Luther’s death in 1546, at which point Melanchthon reluctantly assumed the mantle of leadership as his anointed heir. There remained, however, a curious dualism about Luther’s attitude to his younger colleague. On the one side he loved him dearly, fretting about his welfare and offering him solicitous advice on such matters as marriage and diet. For a proud and increasingly imperious patriarch, Luther was also always endearingly frank about the fact that with Philip he knew himself to be in the presence of a superior intellect; he relied upon him to correct and improve his own work, just as he was always eager to see Philip’s writings in proof sheets before publication. In later life Luther would always name Melanchthon’s systematic statement of the new Reformation theology, the
Loci Communes,
as the one indispensable text alongside the German Bible, ahead of any of his own works. His letters from the Wartburg ask continuously when it might be published. On the other hand he could easily become impatient at what he saw as Philip’s timidity and reluctance to assert himself. This was particularly acute when Luther was cooped up at the Wartburg, fretting that Melanchthon could not deal with Karlstadt and the Zwickau prophets, three self-taught laymen who arrived in Wittenberg claiming divine inspiration for their advocacy of radical reform. In this he was not incorrect. At the height of the crisis Melanchthon came close to panic, asking Spalatin if it would not be possible to send the prophets to Luther so he could put them straight.

The relationship worked as it did partly because both men
recognized their own limitations, and the corresponding strengths of the other. The difference was encapsulated rather charmingly in a dedicatory preface Luther provided for one of Philip’s works in 1529:

I was born for this purpose: to fight with the rebels and the devils and to lead the charge. Therefore my books are very stormy and warlike. I have to uproot trunks and stumps, hack at thorns and hedges, and fill in the potholes. So I am the crude woodsman, who has to clear and make the path. But Master Philip comes after me meticulously and quietly, builds and plants, sows and waters happily, according to the talents God has richly given him.
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Of course, Luther was here playing up the contrast for effect. He was no crude woodsman, and Melanchthon was not always sweet tempered. Philip could be sharp and impatient, particularly with students, more so indeed than Luther. But this elegant, generous tribute does capture something of why this partnership of opposites worked so well. It was sustained, also, because Melanchthon was from the beginning utterly, unflinchingly committed to Luther’s Reformation, a consideration that came before all others in his relationship with other scholars. When Erasmus broke definitively with Luther, it was to Melanchthon that he sent a copy of his challenge to Luther’s teachings on justification,
On Free Will,
hoping, quite correctly, for a more friendly reception than had he sent it to Luther. Philip wrote back encouragingly, and he never ceased to hope that the two great lodestars of his life could remain in civil communication. But when that hope was blighted, his first loyalty was always to Luther and Wittenberg. Without Melanchthon, his forensic intelligence and powerful capacity for methodological theological thought, his lifelong commitment to the reform of the university curriculum and the education of the young, and his calm, restraining presence at Luther’s side, the Reformation would have been immeasurably diminished.

None of Luther’s other Wittenberg colleagues, protégés, and disciples ever came close to matching Melanchthon in importance, but many
played an important role in building his movement and defending his teachings in public and in print. This was especially true of the other two who made up Cochlaeus’s four evangelists, Johannes Bugenhagen and Justus Jonas. Justus Jonas was part of the Erfurt humanist connection.
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Although he was a student at Wittenberg, and must have made Luther’s acquaintance there, it was at Erfurt, the senior university, that he chose to make his career. By 1518 he was a professor in the Faculty of Arts and a leading light in the university’s modernizing faction. In 1519 Jonas made the ultimate humanist pilgrimage, a visit to Erasmus in Louvain. He carried with him letters from both Frederick the Wise and Luther: this was, in fact, the first time that Luther had addressed himself directly to the great humanist. Jonas returned to find that he had been elected rector of Erfurt University, a post that he held throughout the period of the Leipzig Disputation. At this point Jonas saw the Reformation very much through a humanist perspective. He condemned Johann Eck’s performance at the Leipzig Disputation, not so much for his attack on Luther but for his criticism of Erasmus. When he published his preface to a course of lectures on Corinthians in 1520, it was accompanied by a letter from his friend Petrus Mosellanus, another humanist; curiously he chose not to include a similar letter he had received from Martin Luther.