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INTRODUCTION
THE OPEN LETTER TO THE CHRISTIAN
NOBILITY OF THE GERMAN NATION is closely related to the tract ON THE PAPACY AT ROME: A REPLY TO THE
CELEBRATED ROMANIST AT LEIPZIG.1 In a letter to Spalatin2 dated
before June 8, 1520, Luther says: "I shall assail that ass of an Alveld in
such wise as not to forget the Roman pontiff, and neither of them will be
pleased." In the same letter he writes, "I am minded to issue a
broadside to Charles and the nobility of Germany against the tyranny and
baseness of the Roman curia." The attack upon Alveld is the tract on THE
PAPACY AT ROME; the scheda publica grew into the OPEN LETTER. At the time when
the letter to Spalatin was written, the work on THE PAPACY AT ROME must have
been already in press, for it appeared in print on the 26th of the
month,3 and the composition of the OPEN LETTER had evidently not yet
begun. On the 23rd Luther sent the manuscript of the Open Letter to
Amsdorf,4 with the request that be read it and suggest changes. The two
weeks immediately preceding the publication of the work ON THE PAPACY must,
therefore, have been the time when the Open Letter was composed. In the
conclusion to the earlier work Luther had said: "Moreover, I should be
truly glad if kings, princes, and all the nobles would take hold, and turn the
knaves from Rome out of the country, and keep the appointments to bishoprics
and benefices out of their hands. How has Roman avarice come to usurp all the
foundations, bishoprics and benefices of our fathers? Who has ever read or
heard of such monstrous robbery? Do we not also have the people who need them,
while out of our poverty we must enrich the ass-drivers and stable-boys, nay,
the harlots and knaves at Rome, who look upon us as nothing else but arrant
fools, and make us the objects of their vile mockery? Oh, the pity, that kings
and princes have so little reverence for Christ, and His honor concerns them so
little that they allow such abominations to gain the upper hand, and look on,
while at Rome they think of nothing but to continue in their madness and to
increase the abounding misery, until no hope is left on earth except in the
temporal authorities. Of this I will say more anon, if this Romanist comes
again; let this suffice for a beginning. May God help us at length to open our
eyes. Amen."
This passage may fairly be regarded
as the germ of the Open Letter. The ideas of the latter work are suggested with
sufficient clearness to show that its materials are already at hand, and its
plan already in the author's mind. The threat to write it is scarcely veiled.
That Luther did not wait for that particular Romanist to "come again"
may have been due to the intervention of another Romanist, none other than his
old opponent, Sylvester Prierias. Before the 7th of June5 Luther had
received a copy of Prierias' Epitome of a Reply to Martin Luther,6
which is the boldest and baldest possible assertion of the very theory of papal
power which Luther had sought to demolish in his tract on the Papacy. In the
preface to his reprint of the Epitome, Luther bids farewell to Rome:
"Farewell, unhappy, hopeless, blasphemous Rome! The wrath of God hath come
upon thee, as thou hast deserved! We have cared for Babylon, she is not healed;
let us, then, leave her, that she may be the habitation of dragons, specters
and witches, and true to her name of Babel, an everlasting confusion; a new
pantheon of wickedness."7
These words were written while the
Open Letter was in course of composition. The Open Letter is, therefore,
Luther's first publication after the time when he recognized that the breach
between him and the papal church was complete, and likely to be permanent.
Meanwhile, the opposing party had come to the same conclusion. The verdict of
the pope upon Luther had been long delayed, but on the 15th of June, midway
between the letter to Spalatin, above mentioned, and completion of the Open
Letter, Leo X signed the bull of excommunication, though it was not published
in Germany until later. Thus Open Letter shows us the mind of Luther in the
weeks when the permanent separation between him and Rome took place. It was
also the time when he had the highest hopes from the promised support of the
German knights,8 who formed the patriotic party Germany and are
included in the "nobility" to whom the Open Letter is
addressed.9
The first edition of 4000 copies
came off the press of Melchior Lotther in Wittenberg before the 18th of
August.10 It is surmised11 that the earlier portion12
of the work was not contained in the original manuscript, but was added while
it was in the printer's hands; perhaps it was added at the suggestion of
Amsdorf. Less than a week later a second edition was in course of
preparation.13 This "enlarged and revised edition"14
contained three passages not included in the first.15 They are
indicated in the notes to the present edition.
He who would know the true Luther
must read more than one of his writings; he must not by any chance omit to read
the Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. In his other
works we learn to know him as the man of God, or the prophet, or the
theologian; in this treatise we meet Luther the German. His heart is full of
grief for the affliction of his people, and grief turns to wrath as he observes
that this affliction is put upon them by the tyranny and greed of the pope and
the cardinals and the "Roman vermin?" The situation is desperate;
appeals and protests have been all in vain; and so, as a last resort, he turns
to the temporal authorities, -- to Charles V, newly elected, but as yet
uncrowned; to the territorial lords, great and small, who have a voice in the
imperial diet and powers of jurisdiction in their own domains, -- reciting the
abuses of "Roman tyranny," and pleading with them to intervene in
behalf of the souls that are going to destruction "through the devilish
rule of Rome." It is a cry out of the heart of Germany, a nation whose
bent is all religious, but which, from that very circumstance, is all the more
open to the insults and wrongs and deceptions of the Roman curia.
Yet it is no formless and incoherent
cry, but an orderly recital of the ills of Germany. There are times when we
feel in reading it that the writer is laying violent hands on his wrath in the
effort to be calm. For all its scathing quality, it is a sane arraignment of
those who "under the holy name of Christ and St. Peter" are
responsible for the nation's woes, and the remedies that are proposed are, many
of them, practicable as well as reasonable.
The materials of the work are drawn
from many sources, -- from hearsay, from personal observation, from such histories
as Luther had at his command, from the proceedings of councils and of diets;
there are passages which would seem to bear more than an accidental resemblance
to similar passages in Hutten's VADISCUS. All grist that came to
Luther's mill. But the Spirit of the work is Luther's own.
For the general historian, who is
concerned more with the practical than with the theoretical or theological
aspects of the Reformation, the OPEN LETTER is undoubtedly Luther's greatest
work. Its frank outspokenness true condition of Germany, the number and variety
of the subjects that it treats, the multiplicity of the sources from which the
subject-matter is drawn, and the point of view from which the whole is
discussed make it a work of absorbing interest and priceless historical value.
It shows, as does no other single work of the Reformation time, the things that
were in men's minds and the variety of motives which led them to espouse the
cause of the Protestant party. Doctrine, ethics, history, politics, economics,
all have their place in the treatise. It is not only "a blast on the
war-trumpet," but a connecting link between the thought of the Middle Ages
and that of modern times, prophetic of the new age, but showing how closely the
new is bound up with the old.
The text of the Open Letter is found
in Weimar Ed., VI, 404-469; Erl. Ed., XXI, 277-360; Walch Ed., X, 296-399; St.
Louis Ed., X,266-351; Berlin Ed., 1,203-290; Clemen 1,363-425. The text of the
Berlin Ed. is modernized and annotated by E. Schneider. The editions of K.
Benrath (Halle, 1883) and E. Lemme (Die 3 grossen Reformationsschriften L's
vom J. 1520; Gotha, 1884) contain a modernized test and extensive notes. A
previous English translation in Wace and Buchheim, LUTHER'S PRIMARY WORKS
(London and Philadelphia, 1884). The present translation is based on the text
of Clemen.
For full discussion of the contents
of the work, especially its sources, See Weimar Ed., VI, 381-391; Schafer, LUTHER
ALS KIRCHEN HISTORIKER, Gutersloh, 1897; Kohler, L'S SCHRIFT AN DEN ADEL.
. .IM SPIEGEL DER
KULTURGESCHICTE, Halle,
1895, and LUTHER UND DIE KIRCHENGESCHICHTE, Erlangen, 1900. Extensive comment in all the
biographies, especially KOSTLIN-KAWERAU I, 315 ff.
CHARLES M. JACOBS.
Lutheran Theological
Seminary
Mount Airy, Philadelphia
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