Luther, who five years previously had been tormented with self-doubt, struggling with his faith, was rapidly growing in confidence. His mindset was changing. He was more assured and was relishing his burgeoning celebrity. He was beginning to realise what a superb, potent writer he was. Already a popular and confident lecturer, he discovered that he could write fast and well, in both Latin and German. He became a consummate communicator; he was an enormously effective journalist and propagandist. The new printing technology was a godsend for him. His papers, tracts and pamphlets were printed and distributed to large audiences all over Germany.
I wrote above that Luther was the perfect revolutionary. This might seem peculiar, given that he did not intend to start a revolution and had no idea of where to take it once it started. But his sheer mastery of communication, allied to his uncanny ability to act as a focus for all the resentment and frustration, both spiritual and nationalistic, that had been simmering in Germany – these, along with the unstoppable force of his personality, turned him into a one-man machine ready to turn the world, or a considerable part of it, upside down. Further, he was by now well prepared for the coming battle, when he knew his life would be in danger. The Church had neither shut him up nor squashed the dissidence. In the summer of 1518, Luther received an instruction from Leo X to journey to Rome and face his accusers. At the same time, the pope instructed the head of the Augustinian order in Saxony to have Luther arrested, manacled and imprisoned.
Luther knew that it would be folly to venture outside Germany. Anywhere in Germany outside Saxony might also be problematic, but within Saxony he was probably safe – so long as he had the protection of the elector. So, Luther made a specific plea for that protection. He understood that Frederick the Wise’s sympathy would be crucial; the secular ruler could, if he wished, safeguard both his life and his work.
Frederick was well disposed to Luther. Apart from anything else, Luther had put the little university of Wittenberg on the map. Frederick had founded the university, and he was gratified to find that it was now becoming famous. Furthermore, the elector was, obviously enough, a German – and German nationalism was nascent at this time. Frederick, although a good old-style Catholic (he was the proud possessor of a huge collection of relics), was by instinct unhappy with Italian clerics interfering in German affairs.
The specific political situation also favoured Luther. The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, was in poor health. Everyone knew that his death was imminent. Frederick was a member of the six-man Electoral College that would shortly be choosing the next emperor. The pope was concerned that the next emperor should not be Charles (son of Philip of Burgundy and Joanna of Spain); he would have preferred just about anyone else, perhaps even Frederick himself. It would therefore not be in his interests to alienate Frederick. Luther, meanwhile, was determined that his ‘case’ should not be heard in Rome, where, whatever the merits of his arguments, he would be in acute danger. Pope Leo tentatively asked Frederick the Wise as ‘a good son of the Church’ to hand over Luther, ‘a son of perdition’. Frederick did nothing.
Now the great test was approaching. Luther’s first significant adversary was to be yet another Dominican – this time the general of the entire Dominican order, Tomasso de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, who was also the papal legate in Germany. This was the man whom the pope chose to swat Luther into oblivion. Cajetan was decent and thoughtful, like Eck a distinguished theologian, but more personable. Cajetan had investigated the continuing cult of Savonarola. He was himself, in his own gentle, reasonable way, a reformer; he was a sincere enemy of corruption, and he wanted to restore moral rigour to the Church. But he had a tendency to snap under pressure, which was to prove fatal. In other circumstances, he might well have patched up what was still, just about, a little local difficulty.
Although he had only been in Germany as legate for a few months, Cajetan was well aware of the country’s political and diplomatic complexities. When Frederick the Wise formally asked for Luther’s case to be heard not in Rome but in the imperial free city of Augsburg, Cajetan told the pope that he should accede. And so, the first great set-piece of Luther’s career, which was to transform him from obscure heretic into the most celebrated man in Europe, took place in Augsburg, a large, wealthy and sophisticated centre, full of bankers, artists, printers and immigrant workers.
Cajetan had no stomach for a major clash. He was a natural conciliator. His personal instinct was to admonish Luther for errors rather than to condemn him for heresies. Yet he soon found that he had a distaste for Luther. Indeed, at their three meetings, the two men discovered that, despite themselves, they seriously disliked each other. Cajetan was irked by Luther’s eyes, constantly flashing with anger, and by his persistent pedantry. Further, Luther – always a terrible interrupter – showed Cajetan zero respect.
Cajetan had been advised not to get into a detailed argument with Luther but rather to demand a simple, straightforward recantation. If this was not delivered, the heretic was to be sent to Rome in chains. Luther was pugnacious, argumentative, truculently confident of his ability to debate any point, big or small, and utterly determined to force the cardinal to explain to him in fine detail precisely where and how he had lapsed into heresy. This was a trap for Cajetan, but he allowed himself to be dragged into it, and – clever as he was – he soon found himself outgunned and outclassed by the disputatious Augustinian. At the third and fatal meeting, Cajetan lost control. He shouted at Luther to get out.
Cajetan did not obtain his recantation; he had instead an escalating crisis. For it was Cajetan, more than anyone, who forced the issue, who concentrated Luther’s mind on the crux. In the course of their three confrontations, it finally became clear to Luther that he had a simple choice. He had either to endorse the pope’s absolute, unconditional authority – or to follow his convictions and accept, and publicly declare, that the pope could be wrong and that the Church did not have the ultimate authority to teach Scripture.
Luther still instinctively wanted to believe that the pope was just misguided, ill-informed, poorly advised. But he now had to face up to a stark truth: he was going to have to reject papacy and all it stood for. Once Luther had followed the logic of his own position, he found himself liberated, although paradoxically he was also in imminent danger of losing his personal freedom. He now knew that he would die rather than recant. He was free in his own mind; he was free to prosecute his own simple, crystalline case. At the end of the day, the pope did not matter. Scripture alone had authority.
The implications were colossal. For the last 500 years or so, we have been dealing with them. All sorts of things are supposed to have grown from this basic insight – individualism, capitalism, the opening of people’s minds. But, for the moment, all we need to note is that Luther had been forced into a position where he had no option but to assert that the pope’s authority did not exist. Furthermore, the Church was effectively redundant. All that the people needed was access to the Bible. If they had that access, they did not need priests.
Luther reduced Christianity to its very essence. The rising churchman had now declared his own Church superfluous. Man needed no intermediary between himself and God, as long as he had the Bible. Scripture alone possessed infallibility. Of course, this was far too simple. It could never be a case of all or nothing. The Church was needed. Priests were needed. Church buildings were needed. That was why the Reformation, in its purest essence, finally failed.
Luther was to have a major clash three years later at the Diet of the Holy Roman Emperor in the town of Worms. This has gone down in history as the time when he reached the point of no return. It was when he allegedly said: ‘Here I stand. I can do no other’, though these were not quite his actual words. Yet, almost certainly, the crucial, pivotal change came during his three disputes with Cajetan. Had Cajetan handled the impetuous academic differently, the revolution might never have happened.
After the third and final session in Augsburg had ended in disorder as a result of Cardinal Cajetan losing his temper and control of the proceedings, Luther’s good friend and mentor, Staupitz, who had bravely come to offer his
