Emser's Answer to Luther's "Abomination"
Hieronymus Emser's Answer to Luther's "Abomination" Against the Holy Secret Prayer of the Mass, Also How, Where, and With Which Words Luther Urged, Wrote, and Promoted Rebellion in his Books (Dresden, 1525) lays out many of the major elements of the Catholic view.[4] In part one of this reply to Luther's Concerning the Abomination of the Secret Prayer of the Mass, Called the Canon , Emser offered under five headings or "proofs," multiple excerpts from Luther's writings that demonstrated to Emser's satisfaction that Luther had incited the Peasants' War.
Emser introduced his lists of proof texts with an assertion that was key to at least three of his "proofs." For the last fifteen centuries, he claimed, Christendom was divided into two estates, namely the spiritual and the secular. "This order and differentiation between the two aforementioned estates, namely the priesthood and the laity, is not a human invention as Luther falsely claimed in his book to the German nobility, rather [the two estates] were established by Christ himself."[5] On this foundation Emser then built his case, proof by proof.
Proof one: "How Luther mixed up with each other both estates, the spiritual and the secular, and destroyed the order of Christ and the holy church, and thereby caused all sorts of strife and misfortune and gave the first cause for rebellion."[6] Under this category Emser cited excerpts from Luther that dealt largely with Luther's contention that all baptized Christians were priests and that differences were only ones of office. In rejecting the distinction between clergy and laity, Luther argued that secular authority should exercise its office irrespective of pope, bishop, priest, or ecclesiastical law. Emser also cited several excerpts in which Luther attacked popes, bishops, and priests.
Here are a few of Emser's examples. He excerpted from To the German Nobility (1520) from signature "A.4 on the last page"[7] Luther's assertion that "they have cooked up calling the pope, bishop, priests, and the cloistered the spiritual estate and the princes, lords, artisans, and farmers the worldly estate, which is a splendid deceit and hypocrisy, although no one should become timid on this account. For all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except one of office."[8] Emser reproduced six more ex-
cerpts from this pamphlet, including Luther's contention that "Christian secular authority should freely exercise its office without hindrance even though it might affect pope, bishop, [or] priests. That which the spiritual law has said to the contrary is sheer fiction [and] Romanist presumption."[9] Emser also quoted two excerpts from Luther's A Sermon on the New Testament, That Is, On the Holy Mass (1520), including one in which Luther asserted that all Christian men were priests and all Christian women, priestesses, "be they young or old, lord or serf, woman or girl, learned or unlearned."[10] Luther's Answer to the Hyper-Christian, Hyper-Spiritual, and Hyper-Learned Book of Goat Emser at Leipzig (1521) yielded three more excerpts,[11] his A Recantation of Dr. Luther of His Error, Forced on Him By the Most Learned Priest of God, Lord Hieronymus Emser, Vicar at Meiben (1521) four,[12] and his That a Christian Assembly or Community Has the Right or Power To Judge All Teachings and To Call Teachers (1523) one.[13] The excerpts from A Recantation included some that could be seen as encouraging violence against the clergy, as, for example, Luther's suggestion that it would be best that "we henceforth do not call this peculiar foreign priesthood priests but rather tonsurelings [blattentreger ] and chase the useless people out of the country. What to us are the tonsured folks, who are neither spiritually nor bodily priests, and what need have we of them since we are all ourselves bodily, spiritually, and in every respect priests."[14]
Although Luther had written similar things in other books, Emser wrote at the end of this list of citations for "proof one," he reckoned that he had provided sufficient citations to prove that Luther "mixed together the spiritual and worldly [estates], incited one against the other, and took it upon himself to make priests out of laity and laity out of priests and to allow them to remain neither priests nor Christians." Luther did all this, Emser alleged, with the goal of "dividing and troubling the general peace, brotherly unity, and the ancient Christian order which . . . has come down to us from Christ and the holy apostles."[15]
Emser obviously was greatly offended by Luther's assertion of the priesthood of all baptized and believing Christians. That which appealed to religiously engaged laity by dignifying their religious stature at the expense of clerical privilege, as seen in earlier chapters, not surprisingly was rejected by some of those such as Emser whose status was reduced or transformed. What is interesting in this is Emser's immediate conclusion that this transformation threatened all authority,
secular and religious. This conclusion was also reached by Thomas Murner, as seen in chapter 3.[16] I shall return to this point in a moment, but first let us briefly survey Emser's other four collections of "proofs."
Proof two: "How Luther despised, rejected, and condemned the power, government, order, right, and laws of both of the abovementioned estates, also [how Luther] exhorted their subjects to contempt and disobedience toward the same, made lords serfs and serfs lords and always free, [and] in addition he conceded to them all governmental authority."[17] The excerpts under this head dealt largely with a variety of specific attacks by Luther on human laws in the spiritual realm and on those who promulgated, enforced, and obeyed such laws. Among the laws Luther attacked were those requiring Christians to turn in the Scriptures to Catholic authorities,[18] and those dealing with vows, with the proper mode of receiving the Sacrament, and with mandatory confession. In some of these excerpts Luther advocated the freedom that all Christians had from baptism. This freedom allowed Christians to take the Sacrament as they wished, to confess or not, to judge doctrine, and to select their own pastors. Emser also cited Luther's praise of the Hussites and his rejection of the veneration of the Virgin and the saints. Thirty citations in all make up this "proof," drawn from eleven of Luther's treatises, ten in German and one in Latin.[19]
Proof three: "How Luther attacked with unchristian insults and calumnies the pope, bishops, and the whole spiritual estate, with no exceptions, and incited, angered, and embittered the common people against them."[20] Most of the excerpts under this heading reproduced Luther's highly unfavorable characterizations of the papacy and bishops. After thirty-four citations on this topic Emser quit multiplying examples and simply remarked that "on practically every page" of a whole series of Luther's publications Luther had "most poisonously" reviled and abused "pope, papacy, bishop, bishopric, convent, cloister, and all the clergy from the highest to the lowest." Luther had done this, Emser charged, to awaken "such animosity and hatred among the common people against their spiritual fathers and pastors [seelsorgern ] that they no longer want to hear their teaching and preaching." Instead, the common people would run after "Lutheran preachers" even "three miles away," and if they met a monk or priest on the street, they would throw filth or stones and scream at them "like wolves." Finally, they stormed and plundered their houses,
foundations, churches, and cloisters and struck them, took them prisoners, ravaged them and drove them into wretched exile. The like had not been seen in Germany before "Luther began his game."[21]
Proof four: "How Luther also especially attacked, insulted, and committed and incurred the crime of lese majesty against secular authorities such as the emperor, king, and princes."[22] Under this heading, Emser presented a series of twenty-three excerpts in which Luther attacked or ridiculed princes and even the emperor when they attempted to exercise their secular authority in the spiritual realm and, from Luther's perspective, overstepped their proper authority. "What of anything good the common man should then take from such horrible abuse, malediction, and injury to majesty and superior authority, to which, as the holy apostles have taught us, every soul is subject," Emser concluded his list, "I shall let the reader be the judge."[23]
Proof five: "How Luther also explicitly counseled rebellion, wrangling, and strife, [and how Luther] defied, scorned, and with the common rabble (whom he also zealously incited to this end) threatened the authorities, both the spiritual and the secular."[24] Under this heading Emser presented some forty-seven excerpts that, on the face, were incendiary or which fell under some of the classifications of proofs one through four. To give the most blatant example, he cited an excerpt from Luther's Latin afterword to Sylvester Prierias's Epitoma responsionis ad M. Lutherum , in which Luther remarked (albeit in Latin), "Since we punish thieves with the gallows, robbers with the sword, heretics with fire, why do we not even more employ every possible weapon against these teachers of destruction, these cardinals, popes, and all the dregs of the Roman Sodom, who unceasingly lay waste to the church of God, and wash our hands in their blood?"[25] Emser also cited excerpts in which Luther stated that disturbance accompanied the true gospel. For example, Emser cited a passage from Luther's Answer to the Goat Emser at Leipzig , in which Luther replied to Emser's charge that his teaching provoked unrest wherever it spread, "that I began in God's name and [that] my teaching is the true word of God has no stronger proof than that it has spread so quickly throughout the world and caused disunity. And if it had not done that, I would have long ago despaired and grown tired."[26] From this long list of examples—and Emser said that for the sake of brevity he had not listed a great number more—Emser concluded that any honest man would recognize that not the papists but rather Luther had lied when he said that he had not awakened or given cause for this uprising.[27]
To summarize, Emser began with the two estates, spiritual and secular. In proof one he rejected Luther's notion of the priesthood of all believers since it involved mixing the divinely established two estates. In proof two he took issue with Luther's notion of the freedom of the Christian since it asserted that all Christians were equal and thereby overturned the proper hierarchy in society and since it further advocated freedom from human laws and thereby encouraged disobedience to proper authority. In proof three he gathered many of Luther's attacks on the papacy and the bishops. In proof four he collected Luther's attacks on and ridicule of secular rulers who overstepped their bounds and attempted to rule in the spiritual realm. In proof five he concluded with what he saw as explicit incitements (and a few could easily be read that way) to rebellion.
Emser's treatise reproduced most of the elements of the Catholic understanding of Luther's responsibility for the Peasants' War. Although it is somewhat arbitrary to do so given the interrelation of the different "proofs," let's look more closely at proof two and bring in some other controversialists to show how they agreed in their reading of Luther.