Luther Calls on the German Nobility to Break with the Catholic Church

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was an Augustinian monk from eastern Germany whose translation of the Bible contributed to the development of the modern German language. In penning his Ninety-Five Theses (1517) criticizing the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences, which allowed for the remission of sins without penance, Luther became the father of the Protestant Reformation. Some scholars argue that the theses, which Luther enclosed in a letter to a German archbishop, were posed in a format traditionally used as an invitation to debate and that their author could not have foreseen the consequences of his dissension, which led to his excommunication from the Catholic Church in 1521. In the following reading, Luther attacks the extravagance and corruption of the Catholic hierarchy.

Let us now consider the matters which should be treated in the councils, and with which popes, cardinals, bishops, and all learned men should occupy themselves day and night, if they love Christ and His Church. But if they do not do so, the people at large and the temporal powers must do so, without considering the thunders of their excommunications. For an unjust excommunication is better than ten just absolutions, and an unjust absolution is worse than ten just excommunications. Therefore let us rouse ourselves, fellow-Germans, and fear God more than man, that we be not answerable for all the poor souls that are so miserably lost through the wicked, devilish government of the Romanists, and that the dominion of the devil should not grow day by day, if indeed this hellish government can grow any worse, which, for my part, I can neither conceive nor believe.

1. It is a distressing and terrible thing to see that the head of Christendom, who boasts of being the vicar of Christ and the successor of St. Peter, lives in a worldly pomp that no king or emperor can equal, so that in him that calls himself most holy and most spiritual there is more worldliness than in the world itself. He wears a triple crown, whereas the mightiest kings only wear one crown. If this resembles the poverty of Christ and St. Peter, it is a new sort of resemblance. They prate of its being heretical to object to this; nay, they will not even hear how unchristian and ungodly it is. But I think that if he should have to pray to God with tears, he would have to lay down his crowns; for God will not endure any arrogance. His office should be nothing else than to weep and pray constantly for Christendom and to be an example of all humility.

However this may be, this pomp is a stumbling-block, and the pope, for the very salvation of his soul, ought to put it off, for St. Paul says, “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (I Thess. v. 21), and again, “Provide things honest in the sight of all men” (II Cor. viii. 21). A simple miter would be enough for the pope: wisdom and sanctity should raise him above the rest; the crown of pride he should leave to antichrist, as his predecessors did some hundreds of years ago. They say, He is the ruler of the world. This is false; for Christ, whose viceregent and vicar he claims to be, said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John xviii. 36). But no viceregent can have a wider dominion than his Lord, nor is he a viceregent of Christ in His glory, but of Christ crucified, as St. Paul says, “For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (II Cor. ii. 2), and “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant” (Phil. ii. 5, 7). Again, “We preach Christ crucified” (I Cor. i.). Now they make the pope a viceregent of Christ exalted in heaven, and some have let the devil rule them so thoroughly that they have maintained that the pope is above the angels in heaven and has power over them, which is precisely the true work of the true antichrist.

2. What is the use in Christendom of the people called “cardinals”? I will tell you. In Italy and Germany there are many rich convents, endowments, fiefs, and benefices, and as the best way of getting these into the hands of Rome, they created cardinals, and gave them the sees, convents, and prelacies, and thus destroyed the service of God. That is why Italy is almost a desert now: the convents are destroyed, the sees consumed, the revenues of the prelacies and of all the churches drawn to Rome; towns are decayed, the country and the people ruined, because there is no more any worship of God or preaching; why? Because the cardinals must have all the wealth. No Turk could have thus desolated Italy and overthrown the worship of God.

Now that Italy is sucked dry, they come to Germany and begin very quietly; but if we look on quietly Germany will soon be brought into the same state as Italy. We have a few cardinals already. What the Romanists mean thereby the drunken Germans are not to see until they have lost everything — bishoprics, convents, benefices, fiefs, even to their last farthing. Antichrist must take the riches of the earth, as it is written (Dan. xi. 8, 39, 43). They begin by taking off the cream of the bishoprics, convents, and fiefs; and as they do not dare to destroy everything as they have done in Italy, they employ such holy cunning to join together ten or twenty prelacies, and take such a portion of each annually that the total amounts to a considerable sum. The priory of Würzburg gives one thousand guilders; those of Bamberg, Mayence, Treves, and others also contribute. In this way they collect one thousand or ten thousand guilders, in order that a cardinal may live at Rome in a state like that of a wealthy monarch. . . .

This precious roman avarice has also invented the practice of selling and lending prebends11 and benefices on condition that the seller or lender has the reversion, so that if the incumbent dies, the benefice falls to him that has sold it, lent it, or abandoned it; in this way they have made benefices heritable property, so that none can come to hold them unless the seller sells them to him, or leaves them to him at his death. Then there are many that give a benefice to another in name only, and on condition that he shall not receive a farthing. It is now, too, an old practice for a man to give another a benefice and to receive a certain annual sum, which proceeding was formerly called simony. And there are many other such little things which I cannot recount; and so they deal worse with the benefices than the heathens by the cross dealt with Christ’s clothes.

But all this that I have spoken of is old and common at Rome. Their avarice has invented another device, which I hope will be the last and choke it. The pope has made a noble discovery, called Pectoralis Reservatio, that is, “mental reservation” — et propius motus, that is, “and his own will and power.” The matter is managed in this way: Suppose a man obtains a benefice at Rome, which is confirmed to him in due form; then comes another, who brings money, or who has done some other service of which the less said the better, and requests the pope to give him the same benefice: then the pope will take it from the first and give it him. If you say, that is wrong, the Most Holy Father must then excuse himself, that he may not be openly blamed for having violated justice; and he says “that in his heart and mind he reserved his authority over the said benefice,” whilst he never had heard of or thought of the same in all his life. Thus he has devised a gloss which allows him in his proper person to lie and cheat and fool us all, and all this impudently and in open daylight, and nevertheless he claims to be the head of Christendom, letting the evil spirit rule him with manifest lies.

This wantonness and lying reservation of the popes has brought about an unutterable state of things at Rome. There is a buying and a selling, a changing, blustering and bargaining, cheating and lying, robbing and stealing, debauchery and villainy, and all kinds of contempt of God, that antichrist himself could not rule worse. Venice, Antwerp, Cairo, are nothing to this fair and market at Rome, except that there things are done with some reason and justice, whilst here things are done as the devil himself could wish. And out of this ocean a like virtue overflows all the world. Is it not natural that such people should dread a reformation and a free council, and should rather embroil all kings and princes than that their unity should bring about a council? Who would like his villainy to be exposed?

Harry Emerson Fosdick, ed., Great Voices of the Reformation: An Anthology (New York: Modern Library, 1952), 109–111, 114–115.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS