A world lit only by fire: the medieval mind and the Renaissance : portrait of an age

Author:William Manchester [Manchester, William]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Europe, Learning and scholarship, 500-1500, Education, Medieval, General, Renaissance, Learning and scholarship - History - Medieval, History
ISBN: 9780316545310
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 1992-04-15T10:00:00+00:00

Emperor Charles V (Carlos I of Spain)

(1500–1558)

it, shall be repaid without further

delay.” Charles paid—mostly by

giving Fugger the right to collect

various royal revenues in Spain.

CHARLES HAD BEEN ELECTED, but his

coronation was more than a year

away. That was long enough to form

alliances, declare and win wars,

unseat dynasties —or nullify the

choice of an emperorelect. Pope

Leo, stubbornly refusing to concede

defeat, continued to neglect his

office, by persevering in his

courtship of Frederick the Wise. He

seemed prepared to endure the

Wittenberg

insubordination

indefinitely, trusting that this lesser

issue, which is how he regarded it,

would yield to a peaceful solution.

Lutheran ambivalence encouraged

him in this. Even before Leipzig,

Luther had been suffering through

what might be called an identity

crisis. He had been trying to define

the papacy and his relationship to it.

Meeting Von Miltitz in Altenburg in

January 1919, he had appeared

anxious to preserve the unity of

Christendom, offering to remain

mute if his critics would also. He

was prepared to issue public

statements

acknowledging

the

wisdom of praying to saints and the

reality of purgatory. He was also

willing to urge his followers to

make peace with the Church, and

would even concede the usefulness

of

indulgences

in

remitting

canonical penances. To Tetzel,

lying on a monastic deathbed, he

sent a gentle note, assuring him that

the issue between them had been a

minor

incident

in

a

larger

controversy, “that the affair had not

been begun on that account, but that

the child had quite another father.”

In March he even sent the pontiff a

letter of submission.

This was young Luther redux

—a flashback to the moment when,

as a twenty-eight-year-old monk, he

had first glimpsed the capital of

Catholicism and prostrated himself.

Then a devout pilgrim, he had

genuflected before saintly relics,

worshiped at every Roman altar,

and scaled the Scala Santa on his

knees. Now he wrote the Holy See

in the same exalted mood. The

response from the Vatican, prompt

and friendly, invited him to Rome

for confession. But by then Luther’s

inner struggle had resolved itself.

Leo’s overture was declined once

more. Wittenberg, after all, was

still safer for an avowed recreant,

and as the dark doppelganger within

him reformed, he made his final,

irrevocable turn away from Rome.

The Luther who would make history

was reemerging: willful, selfless,

intolerant,

pious,

brilliant,

contemptuous of learning and art,

but powerful in conviction and

driven by a vision of pure,

unexploited Christianity.

In a brief, insightful passage he

grasped

this

side

of

his

temperament: “I have been born to

war, and fight with factions and

devils; therefore my books are

stormy and warlike. I must root out

the stumps and stocks, cut away the

thorns and hedges, fill up the

ditches, and am the rough forester to

break a path and make things

ready.” Thus, within a month of

repledging his allegiance to the

Holy Father he wrote Georg

Spalatin, chaplain to Frederick: “I

am at a loss to know whether the

Pope is Antichrist or his apostle.”

And in a more moderate but

nevertheless revolutionary note, he

suggested: “A common reformation

should be undertaken of the spiritual

and temporal estates.” *

His followers, like him, were

angry men; wrath was a red thread

binding the Lutherans together.

More and more—and especially

after Leipzig—they resembled an

insurgent army, with Wittenberg as

its command post and new hymns

which sounded like marches. Some

members

of

his

retinue

left

memorable

contributions

to

polemical literature, but none could

match the vehemence of their leader

when fully aroused. After reading

the

Curia’s

continuing,

uncompromising, absolute claims

for the primacy and power of

Catholic pontiffs, he published an

Epitome

which

opened

by

describing

Rome

as

“that

empurpled Babylon” and the Curia

as “the Synagogue of Satan.” Three

years earlier he would have been

shocked to read such a diatribe, let

alone write it himself.

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