§ 59. STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION. 327
Nicolas Manuel, a poet and painter (died 1530), in a carnival play which was enacted at Berne, 1522, introduces first the whole hierarchy, confessing one after another their sins, and expressing regret that they now are to be stopped by the rising opposition of the people; then the various classes of laymen attack the priests, expose their vices, and refute their sophistries ; and at last Peter and Paul decide in favor of the laity, and charge the clergy with flatly contradicting the teaching of Christ and the Apostles.
These pamphlets and fugitive papers were illustrated by rude woodcuts and caricatures of obnoxious persons, which added much to their popular effect. Popes, cardinals, and bishops are represented in their clerical costume, but with faces of wolves or foxes, and surrounded by geese praying a Paternoster or Ave Maria. The “ Passion of Christ and Antichrist” has twenty-six woodcuts, from the elder Lucas Cranach or his school, which exhibit the contrast between Christ and his pretended vicar in parallel pictures: in one Christ declines the crown of this world, in the other the Pope refuses to open the gate to the Emperor (at Canossa); in one Christ wears the crown of thorns, in the other the Pope the triple crown of gold and jewels; in one Christ washes the feet of his disciples, in the other the Pope suffers emperors and kings to kiss his toe ; in one Christ preaches the glad tidings to the poor, in the other the Pope feasts with his cardinals at a rich banquet; in one Christ expels the profane traffickers, in the other the Pope sits in the temple of God; in one Christ rides meekly on an ass into Jerusalem, in the other the Pope and his cardinals ride on fiery steeds into hell.?
The controversial literature of the Roman-Catholic Church was far behind the Protestant in ability and fertility. The most popular and effective writer on the Roman side was the — Franciscan monk and crowned poet, Thomas Murner. He
1 See Griineisen’s Nicolaus Manuels Leben und Werke (1837), pp. 389-392. 2 Passional Christi und Antichristi, mit Luther’s Nachrede, 1521, in the Frankf. ed., LXIII., 240-248. Luther accompanied the pictures with texts.
828 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
was an Alsatian, and lived in Strassburg, afterwards at Luzern, and died at Heidelberg (1537). He had formerly, in his Warrenbeschwérung (1512) and other writings, unmercifully chastised the vices of all classes, including clergy and monks, and had sided with Reuchlin in his controversy with the Dominicans, but in 1520 he turned against Luther, and assailed his cause in a poetical satire: ““ Vom grossen lutherischen Narren wie thn Doctor Murner beschworen hat, 1522.” 4
1 Newly edited by H. Kurz, Ziirich, 1848. Janssen makes much use of this poem (II. 123-128, 190, 415, 416). Murner thus describes the Protestant attack on the sacraments: —
‘* Die Mess, die sol nim gelten Im Leben noch im Tod. Die Sacrament sie schelten,
Die seien uns nit Not. Fiinf hont sie gar vernichtet,
Die andern lon sie ston, Dermassen zugerichtet,
Dass sie auch bald zergon.”’
Of Luther’s doctrine of the general priesthood of the laity he says: —
“‘ Wir sein all Pfaffen worden,
Beid Weiber und die Man,
Wiewol wir hant kein Orden Kein Weihe gnomen an.’’
CHAPTER IV.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE. DIET OF WORMS TO THE PEASANTS WAR, A.D. 1521-1525.
§ 60. A New Phase in the Mistory of the Reformation.
At Worms, Luther stood on the height of his protest against Rome. The negative part of his work was completed: the tyranny of popery over Western Christendom was broken, the conscience was set free, and the way opened for a reconstruction of the Church on the basis of the New Testament. What he wrote afterwards against Rome was merely a repetition and re-affirmation.
On his return to Wittenberg, he had a more difficult task before him: to effect a positive reformation of faith and discipline, worship and ceremonies. A revolution is merely destructive and emancipative: a reformation is constructive and affirmative ; it removes abuses and corruptions, but saves the foundation, and builds on it a new structure.
In this home-work Luther was as conservative and churchly as he had been radical and unchurchly in his war against the foreign foe. The connecting link between the two periods was his faith in Christ and the ever-living word of God, with which he began and ended his public labors.
He now raised his protest against the abuse of liberty in his own camp. A sifting process was necessary. Division and confusion broke out among his friends and followers. Many of them exceeded all bounds of wisdom and moderation; while others, frightened by the excesses, returned to the fold of the mother Church. The German nation itself was split on the question of the old or new religion, and