Wittenberg

“ With touching kindness, he and his wife urged Katharine to regard their roomy house as the home of herself and her children; and, not knowing whether she would ever be able to return to Wittenberg, she finally yielded to their pleading. But she had scarcely consented, when the dreadful tidings were brought them, that the Emperor threatened to put the city under the ban of the Empire, for harboring the Wittenberg fugitives; and the hearts, which had bounded with renewed hopefulness, sank back again into deeper gloom. ”

“ A few days after the publication of this letter, Wittenberg,6 the journalist in Hamburg, writes to Jacobi (April 21) that many in Hamburg desire to possess these snuff-boxes, and he adds: “A hundred or so are now being manufactured; besides the name Lorenzo, the following legend is to appear on the cover: Animae quales non candidiores terra tulit.” Wittenberg explains that this Latin motto was a suggestion of his own, selfishly made, for thereby he might win the opportunity of explaining it to the fair ladies, and exacting kisses for the service. ”

“ But Wittenberg was the heart and centre of the whole movement, the muster-ground for all who were persecuted and exiled for the sake of the gospel, the gathering point and nursery of new preachers. Among the theological opponents of Luther’s doctrine appears a crowned head, Henry VIII. of England, and also “the king of literature,” Erasmus of Rotterdam, entered the lists against him. But neither the one nor the other, to say nothing of the rude invectives of Thomas Murner, was able to shake the bold reformer and check the rapid spread of his opinions. ”

“ Thus, at seventeen he was already master of arts, and at twenty-one was appointed professor at Wittenberg. The young man, with an insignificant, delicate frame, and a shy, awkward demeanour, yet with a handsome, powerful forehead, an intellectual eye, and refined, thoughtful features, effaced at once, by his inaugural address, any doubts arising from his youthful appearance. ”

“ Never before had such teachings fallen upon their ears. The glad tidings of a Saviour's love, the assurance of pardon and peace through His atoning blood, rejoiced their hearts, and inspired within them an immortal hope. At Wittenberg a light was kindled whose rays should extend to the uttermost parts of the earth, and which was to increase in brightness to the close of time.
But light and darkness cannot harmonize. Between truth and error there is an irrepressible conflict. To uphold and defend the one is to attack and overthrow the other. ”

“ Luther and the Wittenberg-Concord, 1536
It was a momentous event when, in 1536, the Wittenberg-Concord was established between Luther and the upper Germans, and when Luther said: "We have now heard the answer and confession that all of you believe and teach that in the Eucharist the true body and the true blood of the Lord is given and received and not only bread and wine; also that this giving and receiving takes place in reality and not in imagination; you only take offense, because the real presence is there also for the impious. ”

“ Luther was appointed professor of philosophy here in 1508; and the new university rapidly acquired a considerable reputation from its connexion with the early Reformers. In opposition to the strict Lutheran orthodoxy of Jean it represented the more moderate doctrines of Melanchthon. In the Wittenberg Concord (1536) the reformers agreed to a settlement of the Eucharistic controversy. Shakespeare makes Hamlet and Horatio study at Wittenberg. The ancient electoral palace is another of the buildings that suffered severely in 1760 ”

“ Thus Wittenberg, during Luther's days the fountainhead of the pure Gospel and the stronghold of uncompromising fidelity to the truth, had become a veritable nest of fanatical Crypto-Calvinistic schemers and dishonest anti-Lutheran plotters who also controlled the situation in the entire Electorate. ”

“ No student of history—especially no Protestant—can afford to visit Berlin without an excursion to Wittenberg, which may either be compressed into a single day, with a few hours in this old University town which was the cradle of the Reformation, or may be pleasantly prolonged to days full of musing on the manifold phases of that unparalleled movement in the history of religious thought, amid the very scenes with which they were most intimately associated. ”

“ Why had she assured the Wittenberg theologian, as she extended her hand to him in farewell, that what he offered her had given her great pleasure, and she would gladly invite him to bring her similar things often, but must deny herself this gratification from motives which he could imagine? His urgent entreaty at least to be permitted to call on her sometimes she had curtly and positively refused, but the Wittenberg heretic did not allow himself to be rebuffed, for Cassian had seen him several times in the neighbourhood of the castle. ”

“ But Luther declared, "I cannot recant, I cannot depart from the Scriptures." After lengthy negotiations Cajetan sprang up in anger and said, "Go, and let me not see you again, unless you recant!" To Luther's friends the cardinal said, "I do not wish to dispute with that beast any more, for he has deep eyes and strange ideas in his head." Luther, however, wrote to Wittenberg: "The cardinal is a poor theologian or Christian, and as apt at divinity as an ass is at music." On the 31st of October Luther returned safely to Wittenberg. ”

“ In the market-place, before the town house, (a huge, three-gabled building, like a beast of three horns,) stands Luther's bronze monument; apple women and pear women, onion and beet women, are thickly congregated around, selling as best they may. There stands Luther, looking benignantly, holding and pointing to the open Bible; the women, meanwhile, thinking we want fruit, hold up their wares and talk German. But our conductress has a regular guide's trot, inexorable as fate; so on we go.
Wittenberg is now a mean little town; all looks poor and low ”

“ For two years Lessing remained at Berlin; busy years, in which he scattered these treatises teeming with discernment and genius. Then at the end of that time he felt himself exhausted, he craved seclusion, in which he could once more live for himself and garner up fresh stores of knowledge. The city and his numerous friends were too distracting. So one day he stole away without previous warning and installed himself in the quiet university town of Wittenberg. At Wittenberg he spent a year of quiet study. ”

“ Their exchange of secret confidences concerning Wittenberg affairs is unmistakable. Melanchthon felt very lonely after the departure of Camerarius and missed the stimulating intellectual intercourse at Wittenberg, which had become a necessity to him. Frequently he complains, even as early as 1524, that he met with no sympathy, and sometimes he does not exclude even Luther. At Wittenberg he felt like a lame cobbler. [1208] “There is no one amongst my comrades and friends whose conversation appeals to me. ”

“ Wolf had expected this query, and, while he filled his companion’s goblet with the good Wurzburg wine which Ursula provided, he begged him not to bring religion into their conversation.
The young Wittenberg theologian, however, had come for the express purpose of discussing it with his friend.
Religion, he asserted in the fervid manner characteristic of him, was in these times the axis around which turned the inner life of the world and every individual. He himself had resolved to live for the object for whose sake it was worth while to die. ”

“ Day by day his accounts grew more and more fiery and spirited about Luther's powerful preaching, about the many thousands who were streaming to Wittenberg to hear the man of God, about the German Bible which Luther had translated, about the glorious songs of praise which the Lutherans sung, about the pure Sacrament in both kinds; that is, that in Wittenberg both the bread and the wine were given to the communicants, and not the bread merely, as is done by the Papists against the Lord's commandment. ”

“ Already before this the Augustinian monks had had a settlement at Wittenberg, though little is known about it. A handsome convent was built for them in 1506. In a short time young inmates of this convent, and afterwards more monks of the same Order who came from other parts, entered the university as students and took academical degrees. The patron saint of the University was, next to the Virgin Mary, St. Augustine. Trutvetter of Erfurt became professor of theology at Wittenberg in 1507. ”

“ Nevertheless, the Wittenberg theologians complained that this authority was not recognised, that the Church was a “spectacle of woe,” without “oneness either in doctrine or in worship”; “our princes and cities” ought to bring about unity. Moreover things are bound to grow worse, seeing that “each one wants to be his own Rabbi.” [1180] Outside Wittenberg, and even within the city walls, and that even in Luther’s time, the prediction of Duke George about the 72 sects of the Protestant Babel seemed about to be fulfilled. ”

“ They were still mainly under the influence of the scholastic traditions, guided by such men as those who had been made the butts of the Epistolæ obscurorum virorum. The [Pg 280] University of Wittenberg, founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederic of Saxony, was just in time to gain for its chairs some of the first-fruits of the revived classical spirit, which men like Reuchlin and Rudolf Agricola had imported into Germany from the Italian fountainhead. ”

“ Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st of October, 1517. In the middle of that day Luther's denunciation of Indulgences was fixed against the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg, and it became, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the sign to which the sick spirits throughout the western world looked hopefully and were And the kindling of Europe. healed. In all those millions of hearts the words of Luther found an echo, and flew from lip to lip, from ear to ear. ”

“ The Leipzig Disputation.167 Leipzig was an enemies' country, and his Wittenberg friends would not allow Luther to go there unaccompanied. The young Duke Barnim, who was Rector of the University of Wittenberg, accompanied Carlstadt and Luther, to give them the protection of his presence. Melanchthon, who had been a member of the teaching staff of Wittenberg since August 1518, Justus Jonas, and Nicholas Amsdorf went along with them. Two hundred Wittenberg students in helmets and halberts formed a guard, and walked beside the two country carts which carried their professors. ”

“ Luther himself thought these earlier regulations premature, and insisted that the Wittenberg ordinance should be cancelled. He knew that changes must come; but he hoped to see them make their way gradually, almost imperceptibly, commending themselves to everyone without special enactment prescribed by external authority. He published suggestions for the dispensation of the Lord's Supper and of Baptism in the churches in Wittenberg as early as 1523; he collected and issued a small selection of evangelical hymns which might be sung in Public Worship (1524) ”

“ He had visited Luther and Melanchthon during his year [Pg 456] of absence from Münster, but they had never been quite sure of him. He has confessed that it was at Strassburg and not at Wittenberg that he got most help for his future work and received it from Capito, who was no Lutheran, and from Schwenkfeld, who was an Anabaptist Mystic. It was Strassburg and not Wittenberg that he called “the crown of all Christian cities and Churches!” In his confession of faith he says that the Mass is no sacrifice, but only a sign of the true Sacrifice ”

“ All sects have reason to thank Luther for whatever depth and spirituality now remains in their faith: The heretic of Wittenberg was as much the reformer of German Roman Catholics as of Protestants; not only, because in the struggle with him the teachers of the Roman Catholic Church were obliged to erect at Trent a firmer building on the ruins of the Church of the middle ages, but because he left the impress of his mind on the character of the people, in which we all equally partake. ”

“ What was more natural than that they should seek the protection of the man whose teaching had opened the road to liberty for them. They did not come to Wittenberg to surrender themselves to Luther, but to seek his protection, advice, and help in beginning a new, natural life after the unnatural life which they had been leading. ”

“ In 1519, Luther is able to write with satisfaction to Lange, the Augustinian Vicar in Erfurt: “Lotter has completed the organisation here in Wittenberg of a well-appointed printing-office, fitted for work in three languages.” The languages were probably Latin, Greek, and German, but, a little later, Hebrew fonts must also have been added. Lotter did not give up his business in Leipzig, but after the completion of the organisation of the Wittenberg establishment he placed in charge of it his two sons, and arranged to pass the greater portion of his time in Leipzig. ”

“ The disturbances at Wittenberg were in the beginning treated by all as a mere squabble of the monks. To Leo the Tenth this discussion had no further interest than this: "Brother Martin," being a scholar, was most probably right. To Hutten, who cared nothing for doctrinal points, it had no significance; the more monkish strifes the better—"the sooner would the enemies eat each other up."
But now Hutten came to recognize in Luther the apostle of freedom of thought, and in that struggle of the Reformation he found a nobler cause than that of the Humanists—in Luther a greater than Reuchlin. ”