The Reformation: The Story of Civilization, Volume VI

by Will Durant

the plutocracy of money superseded the aristocracy of birth in controlling the economy.

Forks had come to Germany in the fourteenth century, but men and women still liked to eat with their fingers; even in the sixteenth century a preacher condemned forks as contrary to the will of God, Who “would not have given us fingers if He had wanted us to use forks.”

All in all the picture is one of a people too vigorous and prosperous to tolerate any longer the manacles of feudalism or the exactions of Rome.

an age too absorbed in theology to recognize that it was losing, at ninety-three (1533), the greatest wood carver in history.42

“God lent me industry,” he said, “so that I learned well; but I had to put up with a great deal of annoyance from his assistants.”

Nevertheless his real religion was art. He worshiped a perfect line more than the imitation of Christ.

“What is not useful in a man,” he said, “is not beautiful.”

visiting Italy, came back bearing on them, even unwittingly, the pollen of the Renaissance.

“What profits all our learning,” he asked, “if our characters be not correspondingly noble, or all our industry without piety, or all our knowledge without love of our neighbor, or all our wisdom without humility?”

In his travels he took many samples of femininity, but none to the altar; and he concluded lightheartedly that “there is nothing sweeter under the sun, to banish care, than a pretty maid in a man’s arms.”

Creeds and ceremonies are to be judged not on their literal claims but by their moral effects; if they promote social order and private virtue they should be accepted without public questioning.

Epistolae obscurorum virorum ad venerabilem virum magistrum Ortuinum Gratium (Letters of Obscure Men to the Venerable Master Ortuinus Gratius,

There were no giants in the German literature of this age before Luther; there was only an amazing effervescence and fertility.

Ship of Fools,

and—between their sins and their cups—pious.

A thousand factors and influences—ecclesiastical, intellectual, emotional, economic, political, moral—were coming together, after centuries of obstruction and suppression, in a whirlwind that would throw Europe into the greatest upheaval since the barbarian conquest of Rome. The weakening of the papacy by the Avignon exile and the Papal Schism; the breakdown of monastic discipline and clerical celibacy; the luxury of prelates, the corruption of the Curia, the worldly activities of the popes; the morals of Alexander VI, the wars of Julius II, the careless gaiety of Leo X; the relicmongering and peddling of indulgences; the triumph of Islam over Christendom in the Crusades and the Turkish wars; the spreading acquaintance with non-Christian faiths; the influx of Arabic science and philosophy; the collapse of Scholasticism in the irrationalism of Scotus and the skepticism of Ockham; the failure of the conciliar movement to effect reform; the discovery of pagan antiquity and of America; the invention of printing; the extension of literacy and education; the translation and reading of the Bible; the newly realized contrast between the poverty and simplicity of the Apostles and the ceremonious opulence of the Church; the rising wealth and economic independence of Germany and England; the growth of a middle class resentful of ecclesiastical restrictions and claims; the protests against the flow of money to Rome; the secularization of law and government; the intensification of nati...

“As soon as the money in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory’s fire springs.”

Luther never forgot her remark that there was nothing on earth more precious to a man than the love of a good woman.

He described Rome as a “gigantic bloodsucking worm,” and declared that “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?”

“we should vanquish heretics with books, not with burning.”

Wherever Protestantism won, nationalism carried the flag.

believe none who exalt thee, believe those who humble thee.

“The tree bears fruit, the fruit does not bear the tree.”

On December 11 Luther proclaimed that no man could be saved unless he renounced the rule of the papacy.60 The monk had excommunicated the pope.

But in time he learned to speak German, Spanish, Italian, and French, and could be silent in five languages.

silence is half of diplomacy,

Wisdom came to him not by nature but by trials.

“Two: he attacked the pope in his crown and the monks in their bellies.”

“the Bible is like soft wax, which every man can twist and stretch according to his pleasure.”

my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against my conscience is neither right nor safe.

He was at his best and most Christian in those eight sermons in eight days. He risked all on being able to win Wittenberg back to moderation, and he succeeded.

He was the most powerful and uninhibited controversialist in history. Nearly all his writings were warfare, salted with humor and peppered with vituperation.

Printing was the Reformation; Gutenberg made Luther possible.,

Tertullian: Credo quia incredibile;

Nevertheless the authority of the state should end where the realm of the spirit begins. Who are these princes that assume to dictate what people shall read or believe?

Big thieves hang the little ones; and as the Roman senator Cato said, “Simple thieves lie in prisons and in stocks; public thieves walk abroad in gold and silk.”

The “communism” that was now set up was a war economy, as perhaps all strict communism must be; for men are by nature unequal, and can be induced to share their goods and fortunes only by a vital and common danger; internal liberty varies with external security, and communism breaks under the tensions of peace.

theologies are proved or disproved in history by competitive slaughter or fertility.

“If God can forgive me for having crucified Him with Masses twenty years running, he can also bear with me for occasionally taking a good drink to honor Him.”

“I have not been slow to bite my adversaries,” he confessed, “but what is the good of salt if it does not bite?”

“There is no wild beast like an angry theologian.”

Vituperation was expected of intellectual gladiators, and was relished by their audiences; politeness was suspected of cowardice.

“A twig can be cut with a bread knife, but an oak calls for an axe”;

“My enemies examine all that I do,” he complained; “if I break wind in Wittenberg they smell it in Rome.”

A little sin now and then, he thought, might cheer us up on the straight and narrow path.

Sin powerfully; God can forgive only a hearty sinner,” but scorns the anemic casuist;

“Christians must not altogether shun plays because there are sometimes coarseness and adulteries therein; for such reasons they would have to give up the Bible too.”

The man was immeasurably better than his theology.

Doubtless he was right in his judgment that feeling, rather than thought, is the lever of history. The men who mold religions move the world; the philosophers clothe in new phrases, generation after generation, the sublime ignorance of the part pontificating about the whole. So Luther prayed while Erasmus reasoned;

He had the courage to defy his enemies because he did not have the intellect to doubt his truth. He was what he had to be to do what he had to do.