-- 5. A superst.i.tious Religion based on Fear.
When sensitive, religiously disposed boys left pious homes, they could not fail to come in contact with a very different kind of religion. Many did not need to quit the family circle in order to meet it. Near Mansfeld, Luther"s home, were noted pilgrimage places. Pilgrims, singly or in great bands, pa.s.sed to make their devotions before the wooden cross at Kyffhauser, which was supposed to effect miraculous cures. The Bruno Quertfort Chapel and the old chapel at Welfesholz were pilgrimage places.
Sick people were carried to spots near the cloister church at Wimmelberg, where they could best hear the sound of the cloister bells, which were believed to have a healing virtue.
The latter half of the fifteenth century witnessed a great and widespreading religious revival, which prolonged itself into the earlier decades of the sixteenth, though the year 1475 may perhaps be taken as its high-water mark. Its most characteristic feature was the impulse to make pilgrimages to favoured shrines; and these pilgrimages were always considered to be something in the nature of satisfactions made to G.o.d for sins. With some of the earlier phenomena we have nothing here to do.
The impetus to pilgrimages given after the great Schism by the celebration in 1456 of the first Jubilee "after healing the wounds of the Church"; the relation of these pilgrimages to the doctrines of Indulgences which, formulated by the great Schoolmen of the thirteenth century, had changed the whole penitential system of the mediaeval Church, must be pa.s.sed over; the curious socialist, anti-clerical, and yet deeply superst.i.tious movement led by the cowherd and village piper, Hans Bohm, has been described. But one movement is so characteristic of the times, that it must be noticed. In the years 1455-1459 all the chroniclers describe great gatherings of children from every part of Germany, from town and village, who, with crosses and banners, went on pilgrimage to St. Michael in Normandy. The chronicler of Lubeck compares the spread of the movement to the advance of the plague, and wonders whether the prompting arose from the inspiration of G.o.d or from the instigation of the devil. When a band of these child-pilgrims reached a town, carrying aloft crosses and banners blazoned with a rude image of St. Michael, singing their special pilgrim song,(78) the town"s children were impelled to join them. How this strange epidemic arose, and what put an end to it, seems altogether doubtful; but the chronicles of almost every important town in Germany attest the facts, and the contemporary records of North France describe the bands of youthful pilgrims who traversed the country to go to St. Michael"s Mount.
During these last decades of the fifteenth century, a great fear seems to have brooded over Central Europe. The countries were scourged by incessant visits of the plague; new diseases, never before heard of, came to swell the terror of the people. The alarm of a Turkish invasion was always before their eyes. Bells tolled at midday in hundreds of German parishes, calling the parishioners together for prayer against the incoming of the Turks, and served to keep the dread always present to their minds. Mothers threatened their disobedient children by calling on the Turk to come and take them. It was fear that lay at the basis of this crude revival of religion which marks the closing decades of the fifteenth century. It gave rise to an urgent restlessness. Prophecies of evil were easily believed in. Astrologers a.s.sumed a place and wielded a power which was as new as it was strange. The credulous people welcomed all kinds of revelations and proclamations of miraculous signs. At Wilsnack, a village in one of the divisions of Brandenburg (Priegnitz), it had been alleged since 1383 that a consecrated wafer secreted the Blood of Christ. Suddenly, in 1475, people were seized with a desire to make a pilgrimage to this shrine.
Swarms of child-pilgrims again filled the roads-boys and girls, from eight to eighteen years of age, bareheaded, clad only in their shirts, shouting, "O Lord, have mercy upon us"-going to Wilsnack. Sometimes schoolmasters headed a crowd of pilgrims; mothers deserted their younger children; country lads and maids left their work in the fields to join the processions. These pilgrims came mostly from Central Germany (1100 from Eisleben alone), but the contagion spread to Austria and Hungary, and great bands of youthful pilgrims appeared from these countries. They travelled without provisions, and depended on the charity of the peasants for food. Large numbers of these child-pilgrims did not know why they had joined the throng; they had never heard of the _Bleeding Host_ towards which they were journeying; when asked why they had set out, they could only answer that they could not help it, that they saw the red cross at the head of their little band, and had to follow it. Many of them could not speak, all went weeping and groaning, shivering as if they had a fit of ague. An unnatural strength supported them. Little boys and girls, some of them not eight years old, from a small village near Bamberg, were said to have marched, on their first setting forth, all day and the first night the incredible distance of not less than eighty miles! Some towns tried to put a stop to these pilgrimages. Erfurt shut its gates against the youthful companies. The pilgrimages ended as suddenly as they had begun.(79)
Succeeding years witnessed similar astonishing pilgrimages-in 1489, to the "black Mother of G.o.d" in Altotting; in 1492, to the "Holy Blood" at Sternberg; in the same year, to the "pitiful Bone" at Dornach; in 1499, to the picture of the Blessed Virgin at Grimmenthal; in 1500, to the head of St. Anna at Duren; and in 1519, to the "Beautiful Mary" at Regensburg.
Apart altogether from these sporadic movements, the last decades of the fifteenth century were pre-eminently a time of pilgrimages. German princes and wealthy merchants made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, visited the sacred places there, and returned with numerous relics, which they stored in favourite churches. Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, to be known afterwards as the protector of Luther, made such a pilgrimage, and placed the relics he had acquired in the Castle Church (the Church of All Saints) in Wittenberg. He became an a.s.siduous collector of relics, and had commissioners on the Rhine, in the Netherlands, and at Venice, with orders to procure him any sacred novelties they met with for sale.(80) He procured from the Pope an Indulgence for all who visited the collection and took part in the services of the church on All Saints" Day; for it is one of the ironies of history that the church on whose door Luther nailed his theses against Indulgences was one of the sacred edifices on which an Indulgence had been bestowed, and that the day selected by Luther was the yearly anniversary, which drew crowds to benefit by it.(81)
A pilgrimage to the Holy Land was too costly and dangerous to be indulged in by many. The richer Germans made pilgrimages to Rome, and the great pilgrimage place for the middle-cla.s.s or poorer Germans was Compostella in Spain. Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, also attracted yearly swarms of pilgrims.
Guide-books were written for the benefit of these pious travellers, and two of them, the most popular, have recently been reprinted. They are the _Mirabilia Romae_ for Roman pilgrims, and the _Walfart und Stra.s.se zu Sant Jacob_ for travellers to Compostella. These little books had a wonderful popularity. The _Mirabilia Romae_ went through nineteen Latin and at least twelve German editions before the year 1500; it was also translated into Italian and Dutch. It describes the various shrines at Rome where pilgrims may win special gifts of grace by visiting and worshipping at them. Who goes to the Lateran Church and worships there has "forgiveness of all sins, both guilt and penalty." There is "a lovely little chapel" (probably what is now called the Lateran Baptistry) near the Lateran, where the same privileges may be won. The pilgrim who goes with good intention to the High Altar of St. Peter"s Church, "even if he has murdered his father or his mother," is freed from all sin, "guilt as well as penalty," provided he repents. The virtues of St. Croce seem to have been rated even higher.
If a man leaves his house with the intention of going to the shrine, even if he die by the way, all his sins are forgiven him; and if he visits the church he wins a thousand years" relief from Purgatory.(82)
Compostella in Spain was the people"s pilgrimage place. Before the invention of printing we find traces of ma.n.u.script guides to travellers, which were no doubt circulated among intending pilgrims, and afterwards the services of the printing-press were early called in to a.s.sist. In the Spanish archives at Simancas there are two single sheets, one of which states the numerous Indulgences for the benefit of visitors at the shrine of St. James, while the other enumerates the relics which are to be seen and visited there. It mentions thirty-nine great relics-from the bones of St. James, which lay under the great altar of the cathedral, to those of St. Susanna, which were interred in a church outside the walls of the town.(83) These leaflets were sold to the pilgrims, and were carried back by them to Germany, where they stimulated the zeal and devotion of those who intended to make the pilgrimage. Our pilgrim"s guide-book, the _Walfart und Stra.s.se zu Sant Jacob_,(84) deals almost exclusively with the road. The author was a certain Hermann Kunig of Vach, who calls himself a _Mergen-knecht_, or servant of the Virgin Mary. The well-known pilgrim song, "Of Saint James" (_Von Sant Jacob_), told how those who reached the end of their journey got, through the intercession of St. James, forgiveness from the guilt and penalty (_von Pein und Schuldt_) of all their sins; it tells the pilgrims to provide themselves with two pairs of shoes, a water-bottle and spoon, a satchel and staff, a broad-brimmed hat and a cloak, both trimmed with leather in the places likeliest to be frayed, and both needed as a protection against wind and rain and snow.(85) It charges them to take permits from their parish priests to dispense with confession, for they were going to foreign lands where they would not find priests who spoke German. It warns them that they might die far from home and find a grave on the pilgrimage route. Our guide-book omits all these things. It is written by a man who has made the pilgrimage on foot; who had observed minutely all the turns of the road, and could warn fellow-pilgrims of the difficulties of the way. He gives the itinerary from town to town; where to turn to the right and where to the left; what conspicuous buildings mark the proper path; where the traveller will find people who are generous to poor pilgrims, and where the inhabitants are uncharitable and food and drink must be paid for; where hostels abound, and those parts of the road on which there are few, and where the pilgrims must buy their provisions beforehand and carry them in their satchels; where sick pilgrims can find hospitals on the way, and what treatment they may expect there;(86) at what hostels they must change their money into French and Spanish coin. In brief, the booklet is a mediaeval "Baedeker," compiled with German accuracy for the benefit of German pilgrims to the renowned shrine of St. James of Compostella. This little book went through several editions between 1495 and 1521, and is of itself a proof of the popularity of this pilgrimage place. In the last decades of the fifteenth century there arose a body of men and women who might be called professional pilgrims, and who were continually on the road between Germany and Spain. A pilgrimage was one of the earliest so-called "satisfactions" which might be done vicariously, and the Brethren of St. James (_Jacobs-Brueder_) made the pilgrimage regularly, either on behalf of themselves or of others.
Many of these pilgrims were men and women of indifferent character,(87) who had been sent on a pilgrimage as an ecclesiastical punishment for their sins. The _Chronicles of the Zimmer Family_(88) gives several cases of criminals, who had committed murder or theft or other serious crimes between 1490 and 1520, who were sent to Santiago as a punishment. Even in the last decades of the fifteenth century, when the greater part of the pilgrims were devout in their way, it was known only too well that pilgrimages were not helpful to a moral life. Stern preachers of righteousness like Geiler of Keysersberg and Berchtold of Regensburg denounced pilgrimages, and said that they created more sins than they yielded pardons.(89) Parish priests continually forbade their women penitents, especially if they were unmarried, from going on a pilgrimage.
But these warnings and rebukes were in vain. The prevailing terror had possessed the people, and they journeyed from shrine to shrine seeking some relief for their stricken consciences.
A marked characteristic of this revival which found such striking outcome in these pilgrimages was the thought that Jesus was to be looked upon as the Judge who was to come to punish the wicked. His saving and intercessory work was thrust into the background. Men forgot that He was the Saviour and the Intercessor; and as the human heart craves for someone to intercede for it, another intercessor had to be found. This gracious personality was discovered in the Virgin Mother, who was to be entreated to intercede with her Son on behalf of poor sinning human creatures. The last half of the fifteenth century saw a deep-seated and widely-spread craving to cling to the protection of the Virgin Mother with a strength and intensity hitherto unknown in mediaeval religion. It witnessed the furthest advance that had yet been made towards what must be called Mariolatry. This devotion expressed itself, as religious emotion continually does, in hymns; a very large proportion of the mediaeval hymns in praise of the Virgin were written in the second half of the fifteenth century-the period of this strange revival based upon fear. Dread of the Son as Judge gave rise to the devotion to the Mother as the intercessor.
Little books for private and family devotion were printed, bearing such t.i.tles as the _Pearl of the Pa.s.sion_ and the _Little Gospel_, containing, with long comments, the words of our Lord on the cross to John and to Mary. She became the ideal woman, the ideal mother, the "Mother of G.o.d,"
the _mater dolorosa_, with her heart pierced by the sword, the sharer in the redemptive sufferings of her Son, retaining her sensitive woman"s heart, ready to listen to the appeals of a suffering, sorrowful humanity.
We can see this devotion to the Virgin Mother impregnating the social revolts from Hans Bohm to Joss Fritz. The theology of the schools followed in the wake of the popular sentiment, and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was more strictly defined and found its most strenuous supporters during the later decades of this fifteenth century.
The thought of motherly intercession went further; the Virgin herself had to be interceded with to induce her to plead with her Son for men sunk in sin, and _her_ mother (St. Anna) became the object of a cult which may almost be said to be quite new. Hymns were written in her praise.(90) Confraternities, modelled on the confraternities dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, were formed in order to bring the power of the prayers of numbers to bear upon her. These confraternities spread all over Germany and beyond it.(91) It is almost possible to trace the widening area of the cult from the chronicles of the period. The special cult of the Virgin seems to have begun, at least in its extravagant popular form, in North France, and to have spread from France through Germany and Spain; but so far as it can be traced, this cult of St. Anna, "the Grandmother," had a German origin, and the devotion manifested itself most deeply on German soil. Even the Humanist poets sang her praises with enthusiasm, and such collectors of relics as Frederick of Saxony and the Cardinal Archbishop of Mainz rejoiced when they were able to add a thumb of St. Anna to their store.
Luther himself tells us that "St. Anna was his idol"; and Calvin speaks of his mother"s devotion to the saint. Her name was graven on many a parish church bell, and every pull at the ropes and clang of the bell was supposed to be a prayer to her to intercede. The Virgin and St. Anna brought in their train other saints who were also believed to be the true intercessors. The three bells of the church in which Luther was baptized bore the following inscriptions carved deeply in the bra.s.s:-"G.o.d help us; Mary have mercy. 1499." "Help us Anna, also St. Peter, St. Paul. 1509."
"Help us G.o.d, Mary, Anna, St. Peter, Paul, Arnold, Stephan, Simon. 1509."
The popular religion always represented Jesus, Mec.u.m (Myconius) tells us, as the stern Judge who would convict and punish all those who had not secured righteousness by the intercession of the saints or by their own good works.
This revival of religion, crude as it was, and based on fear, had a distinct effect for good on a portion of the clergy, and led to a great reformation of morals among those who came under its influence. The papal Schism, which had lasted till 1449, had for one of its results the weakening of all ecclesiastical discipline, and its consequences were seen in the growing immorality which pervaded all cla.s.ses of the clergy. So far as one can judge, the revival of religion described above had not very much effect on the secular clergy. Whether we take the evidence from the chronicles of the time or from visitations of the bishops, the morals of the parish priests were extremely low, and the private lives of the higher clergy in Germany notoriously corrupt. The occupants of episcopal sees were for the most part the younger brothers of the great princes, and had been placed in the religious life for the sake of the ecclesiastical revenues. The author of the _Chronicles of the Zimmer Family_ tells us that at the festive gatherings which accompanied the meetings of the Diet, the young n.o.bles, lay and clerical, spent most of their time at dice and cards. As he pa.s.sed through the halls, picking his way among groups of young n.o.bles lying on the floor (for tables and chairs were rare in these days), he continually heard the young count call out to the young bishop, "Play up, parson; it is your turn." The same writer describes the retinue of a great prelate, who was always accompanied to the Diet by a concubine dressed in man"s clothes. Nor were the older Orders of monks, the Benedictines and their offshoots, greatly influenced by the revival. It was different, however, with those Orders of monks who came into close contact with the people, and caught from them the new fervour. The Dominicans, the great preaching Order, were permeated by reform. The Franciscans, who had degenerated sadly from their earlier lives of self-denial, partook of a new life. Convent after convent reformed itself, and the inmates began to lead again the lives their founder had contemplated. The fire of the revival, however, burnt brightest among the Augustinian Eremites, the Order which Luther joined, and they represented, as none of the others did, all the characteristics of the new movement.
These Augustinian Eremites had a somewhat curious history. They had nothing in common with St. Augustine save the name, and the fact that a Pope had given them the rule of St. Augustine as a basis for their monastic const.i.tution. They had originally been hermits, living solitary lives in mountainous parts of Italy and of Germany. Many Popes had desired to bring them under conventual rule, and this was at last successfully done. They shared as no other Order had done in the revival of the second half of the fifteenth century, and exhibited in their lives all its religious characteristics. No Order of monks contained such devoted servants of the Virgin Mother. She was the patron along with St.
Augustine. Her image stood in the chapter-house of every convent. The theologians of the Augustinian Eremites vied with those of the Franciscans in spreading the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. They did much to spread the cult of the "Blessed Anna." They were devoted to the Papacy.
One of their learned men, John of Palz, one of the two professors of theology in the Erfurt Convent when Luther entered it as a novice, was the most strenuous defender of the doctrine of Attrition and of the religious value of Indulgences. With all this their lives were more self-denying than those of most monks. They cultivated theological learning, and few Universities in Germany were without an Augustinian Eremite who acted as professor of philosophy or of theology. They also paid great attention to the art of preaching, and every large monastery had a special preacher who attracted crowds of the laity to the convent chapel. Their monasteries were usually placed in large towns; and their devout lives, their learning, and the popular gifts of their preachers, made them favourites with the townspeople. They were the most esteemed Order in Germany.
These last decades of the fifteenth century were the days of the resuscitation of the mendicant Orders and the revival of their power over the people. The better disposed among the princes and among the wealthier burghers invariably selected their confessors from the monks of the mendicant Orders, and especially from the Augustinian Eremites. The chapels of the Franciscans and of the Eremites were thronged, and those of the parish clergy were deserted. The common people took for their religious guides men who shared the new revival, and who proved their sincerity by self-denying labours. It was in vain that the Roman Curia published regulations insisting that every parishioner must confess to the priest of the parish at least once a year, and that it explained again and again that the personal character of the ministrant did not affect the efficacy of the sacraments administered by him. So long as poorly clad, emaciated, clean-living Franciscan or Eremite priests could be found to act as confessors, priests, or preachers, the people deserted the parish clergy, flocked to their confessionals, waited on their serving the Ma.s.s, and thronged their chapels to listen to their sermons. These decades were the time of the last revival of the mendicant monks, who were the religious guides in this flamboyant popular religion which is so much in evidence during our period.
-- 6. A non-Ecclesiastical Religion.
The third religious movement which belongs to the last decades of the fifteenth and the earlier decades of the sixteenth century was of a kind so different from, and even contrary to, what has just been described, that it is with some surprise that the student finds he must recognise its presence alongside of the other. It was the silent spread of a quiet, sincere, but non-ecclesiastical religion. Historians usually say nothing about this movement, and it is only a minute study of the town chronicles and of the records of provincial and munic.i.p.al legislation that reveals its power and extent. It has always been recognised that Luther"s father was a man of a deeply religious turn of mind, although he commonly despised the clergy, and thought that most monks were rogues or fools; but what is not recognised is that in this he represented thousands of quiet and pious Germans in all cla.s.ses of society. We find traces of the silent, widespreading movement in the ecclesiastical legislation of German princes, in the police regulations, and in the provisions for the support of the poor among the burghers; in the const.i.tutions and practices of the confraternities among the lower cla.s.ses, and especially among the artisans in the towns; and in the numerous translations of the Vulgate into the vernacular.
The reforms sketched by the Councils of Constance and of Basel had been utterly neglected by the Roman Curia, and in consequence several German princes, while they felt the hopelessness of insisting on a general purification of the Church, resolved that these reforms should be carried out within their own dominions. As early as 1446, Duke William of Saxony had published decrees which interfered with the pretensions of the Church to be quite independent of the State. His regulations about the observance of the Sunday, his forbidding ecclesiastical courts to interfere with Saxon laymen, his stern refusal to allow any Saxon to appeal to a foreign jurisdiction, were all more or less instances of the interference of the secular power within what had been supposed to be the exclusive province of the ecclesiastical. He went much further, however. He enacted that it belonged to the secular power to see that parish priests and their superiors within his dominions lived lives befitting their vocation-a conception which was entirely at variance with the ecclesiastical pretensions of the Middle Ages. He also declared it to be within the province of the secular power to visit officially and to reform all the convents within his dominions. So far as proofs go, it is probable that these declarations about the rights of the civil authorities to exercise discipline over the parish priests and their superiors remained a dead letter. We hear of no such reformation being carried out. But the visitation of the Saxon monasteries was put in force in spite of the protests of the ecclesiastical powers. Andreas Proles would never have been able to carry out his proposals of reform in the convents of the Augustinian Eremites but for the support he received from the secular princes against his ecclesiastical superiors in Rome. The Dukes Ernest and Albrecht carried out Duke William"s conceptions about the relation of the civil to the ecclesiastical authorities in their ordinances of 1483, and the Elector Frederick the Wise was heir to this ecclesiastical policy of his family.
The records of the Electorate of Brandenburg, investigated by Priebatsch and described by him in the _Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte_(92) testify to the same ideas at work there. A pious prince like Frederick II.
of Brandenburg removed unworthy Church dignitaries and reinst.i.tuted them, thus taking upon himself the oversight of the Church. Appeals to Rome were forbidden under penalties. Gradually under Frederick and his successors there arose what was practically a national Church of Brandenburg, which was almost completely under the control of the civil power, and almost entirely separated from Roman control.
The towns also interfered in what had hitherto been believed to be within the exclusive domain of the ecclesiastical authorities. They recognised the harm which the numerous Church festivals and saints" days were doing to the people, and pa.s.sed regulations about their observance, all of them tending to lessen the number of the days on which men were compelled by ecclesiastical law to be idle. When Luther pleaded in his _Address to the n.o.bility of the German Nation_ for the abolition of the ecclesiastical laws enforcing idleness on the numerous ecclesiastical holy days, he only suggested an extension and wider application of the police regulations which were in force within his native district of Mansfeld.
This non-ecclesiastical feeling appears strongly in the change of view about Christian charity which marks the close of the fifteenth century.
Nothing shows how the Church of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had instilled the mind of Jesus into the peoples of Europe like the zeal with which they tried to do their duty by the poor, the sick, and the helpless. Inst.i.tutions, founded by individuals or by corporations, for the purpose of housing the dest.i.tute abounded, and men and women willingly dedicated themselves to the service of the unfortunate.
"The Beguins crowned with flapping hats, O"er long-drawn bloodless faces blank, And gowns unwashed to wrap their lank Lean figures,"(93)
were sisters of mercy in every mediaeval town. Unfortunately the lessons of the Church included the thought that begging was a Christian virtue; while the idea that because charity is taught by the law of Christ, its exercise must be everywhere superintended by ecclesiastics, was elevated to a definite principle of action, if not to something directly commanded by the law of G.o.d. The Reformation protested against these two ideas, and the silent antic.i.p.ation of this protest is to be found in the non-ecclesiastical piety of the close of the fifteenth century.
The practice of begging, its toleration and even encouragement, was almost universal. In some of the benevolent inst.i.tutions the sick and the pensioners were provided from the endowment with all the necessaries of life, but it was generally thought becoming that they should beg them from the charitable. The very fact of begging seemed to raise those who shared in it to the level of members of a religious a.s.sociation. St. Francis, the "imitator of Christ," had taught his followers to beg, and this great example sanctified the practice. It is true that the begging friars were always the b.u.t.t of the satirists of the close of the fifteenth century.
They delighted to portray the mendicant monk, with his sack, into which he seemed able to stuff everything: honey and spice, nutmegs, pepper, and preserved ginger, cabbage and eggs, poultry, fish, and new clothes, milk, b.u.t.ter, and cheese; cheese especially, and of all kinds-ewe"s milk and goat"s milk, hard cheese and soft cheese, large cheeses and small cheeses-were greedily demanded by these "cheese hunters," as they were satirically called. On their heels tramped a host of semi-ecclesiastical beggars, all of them with professional names-men who begged for a church that was building, or for an altar-cloth, or to hansel a young priest at his first Ma.s.s; men who carried relics about for the charitable to kiss-some straw from the manger of Bethlehem, or a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel; the Brethren of St. James, who performed continual and vicarious pilgrimages to Compostella, and sometimes robbed and murdered on the road; the Brethren of St. Anthony, who had the special privilege of wearing a cross and carrying a bell on their begging visits.
These were all ecclesiastical beggars. The ordinary beggars did their best to obtain some share of the sanct.i.ty which surrounded the profession; they carried with them the picture of some saint, or placed the c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l, the badge of a pilgrim, in their hats, and secured a quasi-ecclesiastical standing.(94) Luther expressed not merely his own opinion on this plague of beggars in his _Address to the n.o.bility of the German Nation_, but what had been thought and partially practised by quiet laymen for several decades. Some towns began to make regulations against promiscuous begging by able-bodied persons, provided work for them, seized their children, and taught them trades-all of which sensible doings were against the spirit of the mediaeval Church.
The non-ecclesiastical religious feeling, however, appears much more clearly when the history of the charitable foundations is examined. The invariable custom during the earlier Middle Ages was that charitable bequests were left to the management of the Church and the clergy. At the close of the fifteenth century the custom began to alter. The change from clerical to lay management was at first probably due mainly to the degeneracy of the clergy, and to the belief that the funds set apart for the poor were not properly administered. The evidences of this are to be found in numerous instances of the civic authorities attempting, and successfully, to take the management of charitable foundations out of the hands of ecclesiastical authorities, and to vest them in lay management.
But this cannot have been the case always. We should rather say that it began to dawn upon men that although charity was part of the law of Christ, this did not necessarily mean that all charities must be placed under the control of the clergy or other ecclesiastical administrators.
Hence we find during the later years of the fifteenth century continual instances of bequests for the poor placed in the hands of the town council or of boards of laymen. That this was done without any animus against the Church is proved by the fact that the same testator is found giving benefactions to foundations which are under clerical and to others under lay management. Out of the funds thus acc.u.mulated the town councils began a system of caring for the poor of the city, which consisted in giving tokens which could be exchanged for so much bread or woollen cloth, or shoes, or wood for firing, at the shops of dealers who were engaged for the purpose. How far this new and previously unheard of lay management, in what had hitherto been the peculiar possession of the clergy, had spread before the close of the fifteenth century, it is impossible to say. No archaeologist has yet made an exhaustive study of the evidence lying buried in archives of the mediaeval towns of Germany; but enough has been collected by Kriegk(95) and others to show that it had become very extensive. The laity saw that they were quite able to perform this peculiarly Christian work apart from any clerical direction.
Another interesting series of facts serves also to show the growth of a non-ecclesiastical religious sentiment. The later decades of the fifteenth century saw the rise of innumerable a.s.sociations, some of them definitely religious, and all of them with a religious side, which are unlike what we meet with earlier. They did not aim to be, like the praying circles of the Mystics or of the _Gottesfreunde, ecclesiolae in ecclesia_, strictly non-clerical or even anti-clerical. They had no difficulty in placing themselves under the protection of the Church, in selecting the ordinary ecclesiastical buildings for their special services, and in employing priests to conduct their devotions; but they were distinctively lay a.s.sociations, and lived a religious life in their own way, without any regard to the conceptions of the higher Christian life which the Church was accustomed to present to its devout disciples. Some were a.s.sociations for prayer; others for the promotion of the "cult" of a special saint, like the confraternities dedicated to the Virgin Mother or the a.s.sociations which spread the "cult" of the Blessed Anna; but by far the largest number were combinations of artisans, and resembled the workmen"s "gilds" of the Roman Empire.
Perhaps one of the best known of these a.s.sociations formed for the purpose of encouraging prayer was the "Brotherhood of the Eleven Thousand Virgins," commonly known under the quaint name of _St. Ursula"s Little Ship_. The a.s.sociation was conceived by a Carthusian monk of Cologne, and it speedily became popular. Frederick the Wise was one of its patrons, his secretary, Dr. Pfeffinger, one of its supporters; it numbered its a.s.sociates by the thousand; its praises were sung in a quaint old German hymn.(96) No money dues were exacted from its members. The only duty exacted was to pray regularly, and to learn to better one"s life through the power of prayer. This was one type of the pious brotherhoods of the fifteenth century. It was the best known of its kind, and there were many others. But among the brotherhoods which bear testimony to the spread of a non-ecclesiastical piety none are more important than the confraternities which went by the names of _Kalands_ or _Kalandsgilden_ in North Germany and _Zechen_ in Austria. These a.s.sociations were useful in a variety of ways. They were unions for the practice of religion; for mutual aid in times of sickness; for defence in attack; and they also served the purpose of insurance societies and of burial clubs. It is with their religious side that we have here to do. It was part of the bond of a.s.sociation that all the brethren and sisters (for women were commonly admitted) should meet together at stated times for a common religious service. The brotherhood selected the church in which this was held, and so far as we can see the chapels of the Franciscans or of the Augustinian Eremites were generally chosen. Sometimes an altar was relegated to their exclusive use; sometimes, if the church was a large one, a special chapel. The interesting thing to be noticed is that the rules and the modes of conducting the religious services of the a.s.sociation were entirely in the hands of the brotherhood itself, and that these laymen insisted on regulating them in their own way. Luther has a very interesting sermon, ent.i.tled _Sermon upon the venerable Sacrament of the holy true Body of Christ and of the Brotherhoods_, the latter half of which is devoted to a contrast between good brotherhoods and evil ones. Those brotherhoods are evil, says Luther, in which the religion of the brethren is expressed in hearing a Ma.s.s on one or two days of the year, while by guzzling and drinking continually at the meetings of the brotherhood, they contrive to serve the devil the greater part of their time. A true brotherhood spreads its table for its poorer members, it aids those who are sick or infirm, it provides marriage portions for worthy young members of the a.s.sociation. He ends with a comparison between the true brotherhood and the Church of Christ. Theodore Kolde remarks that a careful monograph on the brotherhoods of the end of the fifteenth century in the light of this sermon of Luther"s would afford great information about the popular religion of the period. Unfortunately, no one has yet attempted the task, but German archaeologists are slowly preparing the way by printing, chiefly from MS. sources, accounts of the const.i.tution and practices of many of these Kalands.
From all this it may be seen that there was in these last decades of the fifteenth and in the earlier of the sixteenth centuries the growth of what may be called a non-ecclesiastical piety, which was quietly determined to bring within the sphere of the laity very much that had been supposed to belong exclusively to the clergy. The _jus episcopale_ which Luther claimed for the civil authorities in his tract on the _Liberty of the Christian Man_, had, in part at least, been claimed and exercised in several of the German princ.i.p.alities and munic.i.p.alities; the practice of Christian charity and its management were being taken out of the hands of the clergy and entrusted to the laity; and the brotherhoods were making it apparent that men could mark out their religious duties in a way deemed most suitable for themselves without asking any aid from the Church, further than to engage a priest whom they trusted to conduct divine service and say the Ma.s.ses they had arranged for.
The appearance of numerous translations of the Scriptures into the vernacular, unauthorised by the officials of the mediaeval Church, and jealously suspected by them, appears to confirm the growth and spread of this non-ecclesiastical piety. The relation of the Church of the Middle Ages, earlier and later, to vernacular translations of the Vulgate is a complex question. The Scriptures were always declared to be the supreme source and authority for all questions of doctrines and morals, and in the earlier stages of the Reformation controversy the supreme authority of the Holy Scriptures was not supposed to be one of the matters in dispute between the contending parties. This is evident when we remember that the _Augsburg __ Confession_, unlike the later confessions of the Reformed Churches, does not contain any article affirming the supreme authority of Scripture. That was not supposed to be a matter of debate. It was reserved for the Council of Trent, for the first time, to place _traditiones sine Scripto_ on the same level of authority with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Hence, many of the small books, issued from convent presses for the instruction of the people during the decades preceding the Reformation, frequently declare that the whole teaching of the Church is to be found within the books of the Holy Scriptures.
It is, of course, undoubted that the mediaeval Church forbade over and over again the reading of the Scriptures in the Vulgate and especially in the vernacular, but it may be a.s.serted that these prohibitions were almost always connected with attempts to suppress heretical or schismatic revolts.(97)
On the other hand, no official encouragement of the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular by the people can be found during the whole of the Middle Ages, nor any official patronage of vernacular translations.
The utmost that was done in the way of tolerating, it can scarcely be said of encouraging, a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures was the issue of Psalters in the vernacular, of Service-Books, and, in the fifteenth century, of the _Plenaria_-little books which contained translations of some of the paragraphs of the Gospels and Epistles read in the Church service accompanied with legends and popular tales. Translations of the Scriptures were continually reprobated by Popes and primates for various reasons.(98) It is also unquestionable that a knowledge of the Scriptures in the vernacular, especially by uneducated men and women, was almost always deemed a sign of heretical tendency. "The third cause of heresy,"
says an Austrian inquisitor, writing about the end of the thirteenth century, "is that they translate the Old and New Testaments into the vulgar tongue; and so they learn and teach. I have heard and seen a certain country clown who repeated the Book of Job word for word, and several who knew the New Testament perfectly."(99) A survey of the evidence seems to lead to the conclusion that the rulers of the mediaeval Church regarded a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures with grave suspicion, but that they did not go the length of condemning entirely their possession by persons esteemed trustworthy, whether clergy, monks, nuns, or distinguished laymen.
Yet we have in the later Middle Ages, ever since Wiclif produced his English version, the gradual publication of the Scriptures in the vernaculars of Europe. This was specially so in Germany; and when the invention of printing had made the diffusion of literature easy, it is noteworthy that the earliest presses in Germany printed many more books for family and private devotion, many more _Plenaria_, and many more editions of the Bible than of the cla.s.sics. Twenty-two editions of the Psalter in German appeared before 1509, and twenty-five of the Gospels and Epistles before 1518. No less than fourteen (some say seventeen) versions of the whole Bible were printed in High-German and three in Low-German during the last decades of the fifteenth and the earlier decades of the sixteenth century-all translations from the Vulgate. The first was issued by John Metzel in Stra.s.sburg in 1466. Then followed another Stra.s.sburg edition in 1470, two Augsburg editions in 1473, one in the Swiss dialect in 1474, two in Augsburg in 1477, one in Augsburg in 1480, one in Nurnberg in 1483, one in Stra.s.sburg in 1485, and editions in Augsburg in 1487, 1490, 1507, and 1518. A careful comparison of these printed vernacular Bibles proves that the earlier editions were independent productions; but as edition succeeded edition the text became gradually a.s.similated until there came into existence a German Vulgate, which was used indiscriminately by those who adhered to the mediaeval Church and those who were dissenters from it. These German versions were largely, but by no means completely, displaced by Luther"s translation. The Anabaptists, for example, retained this German Vulgate long after the publication of Luther"s version, and these pre-Reformation German Bibles were to be found in use almost two hundred years after the Reformation.(100)
Whence sprang the demand for these vernacular versions of the Holy Scriptures? That the leaders of the mediaeval Church viewed their existence with alarm is evident from the proclamation of the Primate of Germany, Berthold of Mainz, issued in 1486, ordering a censorship of books with special reference to vernacular translations of the Scriptures.(101) On the other hand, there is no evidence that these versions were either wholly or in great part the work of enemies of the mediaeval Church. The mediaeval _Brethren_, as they called themselves (Waldenses, Picards, Wiclifites, Hussites, etc., were names given to them very indiscriminately by the ecclesiastical authorities), had translations of the Scriptures both in the Romance and in the Teutonic languages as early as the close of the thirteenth century. The records of inquisitors and of councils prove it. But there is no evidence to connect any of these German versions, save, perhaps, one at Augsburg, and that issued by the Koburgers in Nurnberg, with these earlier translations. The growing spread of education in the fifteenth century, and, above all, the growth of a non-ecclesiastical piety which claimed to examine and to judge for itself, demanded and received these numerous versions of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.(102) The "common man" had the word of G.o.d in his hands, could read, meditate, and judge for himself. The effect of the presence of these vernacular Scriptures is apt to be exaggerated.(103) The Humanist, Conrad Celtes, might threaten the priests that the Bible would soon be seen in every village tavern; but we know that in these days of early printing a complete Bible must have been too expensive to be purchased by a poor man. Still he could get the Gospels or the Epistles, or the Psalter; and there is evidence, apart from the number of editions, that the people were buying and were studying the Scriptures. Preachers were exhorted to give the meaning of the pa.s.sages of Scripture read in Church to prevent the people being confused by the different ways in which the text was translated in the Bibles in their possession. Stories were told of peasants, like Hans Werner, who worsted their parish priests in arguments drawn from Scripture. The ecclesiastical authorities were undoubtedly anxious, and their anxiety was shared by many who desired a reformation in life and manners, but dreaded any revolutionary movement.
It was right that the children should be fed with the Bread of Life, but Mother Church ought to keep the bread-knife in her hands lest the children cut their fingers. Some publishers of the translations inserted prefaces saying that the contents of the volumes should be understood in the way taught by the Church, as was done in the _Book of the Gospels_, published at Basel in 1514. But in spite of all a lay religion had come into being, and laymen were beginning to think for themselves in matters where ecclesiastics had hitherto been considered the sole judges.
-- 7. The "Brethren."