History of the Reformation - Thomas M. Lindsay

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Scriptures both in the Romance and in the Teutonic languages as early as the close of the thirteenth century. The records of inquisitors and of councils prove it. But there is no evidence to connect any of these German versions, save, perhaps, one at Augsburg, and that issued by the Koburgers in Nürnberg, with these earlier translations. The growing spread of education in the fifteenth century, and, above all, the growth of a non-ecclesiastical piety which claimed to examine and to judge for itself, demanded and received these numerous versions of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.102 The “common man” had the word of God in his hands, could read, meditate, and judge for himself. The effect of the presence of these vernacular Scriptures is apt to be exaggerated.103 The Humanist, Conrad Celtes, might threaten the priests that the Bible would soon be seen in every village tavern; but we know that in these days of early printing a complete Bible must have been too expensive to be purchased by a poor man. Still he could get the Gospels or the Epistles, or the Psalter; and there is evidence, apart from the number of editions, that the people were buying and were studying the Scriptures. Preachers were exhorted to give the meaning of the passages of Scripture read in Church to prevent the people being confused by the different ways in which the text was translated in the Bibles in their possession. Stories were told of peasants, like Hans Werner, who worsted their parish priests in arguments drawn from Scripture. The ecclesiastical authorities were undoubtedly anxious, and their anxiety was shared by many who desired a reformation in life and manners, but dreaded any revolutionary movement. It was right that the children should be fed with the Bread of Life, but Mother Church ought to keep the bread-knife in her hands lest the children cut their fingers. Some publishers of the translations inserted prefaces saying that the contents of the volumes should be understood in the way taught by the Church, as was done in the Book of the Gospels, published at Basel in 1514. But in spite of all a lay religion had come into being, and laymen were beginning to think for themselves in matters where ecclesiastics had hitherto been considered the sole judges.

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      There was another type of religious life and pious association which existed, and which seems in one form or other to have exercised a great influence among the better class of artisans, and more especially among the printers of Augsburg, Nürnberg, and Strassburg.

      It is probable that this type of piety had at least three roots.

      (a) We can trace as far back as the closing years of the thirteenth century, in many parts of Germany, the existence of nonconformists who, on the testimony of inquisitors, lived pious lives, acted righteously towards their neighbours, and believed in all the articles of the Christian faith, but repudiated the Roman Church and the clergy. Their persecutors gave them a high character. “The heretics are known by their walk and conversation: they live quietly and modestly; they have no pride in dress; their learned men are tailors and weavers; they do not heap up riches, but are content with what is necessary; they live chastely; they are temperate in eating and drinking; they never go to taverns, nor to public dances, nor to any such vanities; they refrain from all foul language, from backbiting, from thoughtless speech, from lying and from swearing.” The list of objections which they had to usages of the mediæval Church are those which would occur to any evangelical Protestant of this century. They professed a simple evangelical creed; they offered a passive resistance to the hierarchical and priestly pretensions of the clergy; they were careful to educate their children in schools which they supported; they had vernacular translations of the Scriptures, and committed large portions to memory; they conducted their religious service in the vernacular, and it was one of the accusations made against them that they alleged that the word of God was as profitable when read in the vernacular as when studied in Latin. It is also interesting to know that they were accused of visiting the leper-houses to pray with the inmates, and that in some towns they had schools for the leper children.104 They called themselves the Brethren. The societies of the Brethren had never died out. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they were continually subject to local and somewhat spasmodic persecutions, when the ecclesiastical could secure the aid of the secular authorities to their schemes of repression, which was not always possible. They were strongly represented among the artisans in the great cities, and there are instances when the civic authorities gave them one of the churches of the towns for their services. The liability to intermittent persecution led to an organisation whereby the Brethren, who were for the time being living in peace, made arrangements to receive and support those who were able to escape from any district where the persecution raged. These societies were in correspondence with their brethren all over Europe, and were never so active as during the last decades of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth century.

      (b) As early as the times of Meister Eckhart (d. 1327), of his disciples Tauler (d. 1361) and Suso (d 1366), of the mysterious “Friend of God in the Oberland” and his associates (among them the Strassburg merchant Rulman Merswin (d. 1382)), and of the Brussels curate John Ruysbroeck (d. 1381), the leaders of the mediæval Mystics had been accustomed to gather their followers together into praying circles; and the custom was perpetuated long after their departure. How these pious associations continued to exist in the half century before the Reformation, and what forms their organisation took, it seems impossible to say with any accuracy. The school system of the Brethren of the Common Lot, which always had an intimate connection with the Gottesfreunde, in all probability served to spread the praying circles which had come down from the earlier Mystics. It seems to have been a custom among these Brethren of the Common Lot to invite their neighbours to meet in their schoolrooms or in a hall to listen to religious discourses. There they read and expounded the New Testament in the vernacular. They also read extracts from books written to convey popular religious instruction. They questioned their audience to find out how far their hearers understood their teaching, and endeavoured by question and answer to discover and solve religious difficulties. These schools and teachers had extended all over Germany by the close of the fifteenth century, and their effect in quickening and keeping alive personal religion must have been great.

      (c) Then, altogether apart from the social and semi-political propaganda of the Hussites, there is evidence that ever since the circulation of the encyclic letter addressed by the Taborites in November 1431 to all Christians in all lands, and more especially since the foundation of the Unitas Fratrum in 1452, there had been constant communication between Bohemia and the scattered bodies of evangelical dissenters throughout Germany. Probably historians have credited the Hussites with more than their due influence over their German sympathisers. The latter had arrived at the conclusion that tithes ought to be looked upon as free-will offerings, that the cup should be given to the laity, etc., long before the movements under the leadership of Wiclif and of Huss. But the knowledge that they had sympathisers and brethren beyond their own land must have been a source of strength to the German nonconformists.

      Our knowledge of the times is still too obscure to warrant us in making very definite statements about the proportionate effect of these three religious sources of influence on the small communities of Brethren or evangelical dissenters from the mediæval Church which maintained a precarious existence at the close of the Middle Ages. There is one curious fact, however, which shows that there must have been an intimate connection between the Waldenses of Savoy and France, the Brethren of Germany, and the Unitas Fratrum of Bohemia. They all used the same catechism for the instruction of their children in divine things. So far as can be ascertained, this small catechism was first printed in 1498, and editions can be traced down to 1530. It exists in French, Italian, German, and Bohemian. The inspiration drawn from the earlier Mystics and Gottesfreunde is shown by the books circulated by the Brethren. They made great use of the newly discovered art of printing to spread abroad small mystical writings on personal religion, and translations of portions of the Holy Scriptures. They printed and circulated books which had been used in manuscript among the Mystics of the fourteenth century, such as the celebrated Masterbook, single sermons by Tauler, Prayers and Rules for holy living extracted from his writings, as well as short tracts taken from the later Mystics, like the Explanation of the Ten Commandments. It is also probable that some of the many translations of the whole or portions of the Bible which were in circulation in Germany before the days of Luther

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