The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches Part 10

But all his wooing came to naught; another man wedded the fair Cunigunde, and the coming storm of Romish wrath left Hutten no opportunity to turn his attention elsewhere.

The old Pope was now dead, and one of the famous family of Medici, in Florence, had succeeded him as Leo the Tenth. Leo was kindly disposed toward the Humanist studies, and Hutten, as poet of the Humanists, addressed to him directly a remarkable appeal, which made the turning-point in his life, for it placed him openly among those who resisted the Pope.

Recounting to the new Pope Leo all the usurpations which in his judgment had been made, one by one, by his predecessors--all the robberies, impositions, and abuses of the Papacy, from the time of Constantine down--he appeals to Leo, as a wise man and a scholar, to restore stolen power and property, to correct all abuses, to abandon all temporal power, and become once more the simple Bishop of Rome.

"For there can never be peace between the robber and the robbed till the stolen goods are returned."

Now, for the first time, the work of Luther came to Hutten's attention.

The disturbances at Wittenberg were in the beginning treated by all as a mere squabble of the monks. To Leo the Tenth this discussion had no further interest than this: "Brother Martin," being a scholar, was most probably right. To Hutten, who cared nothing for doctrinal points, it had no significance; the more monkish strifes the better--"the sooner would the enemies eat each other up."

But now Hutten came to recognize in Luther the apostle of freedom of thought, and in that struggle of the Reformation he found a n.o.bler cause than that of the Humanists--in Luther a greater than Reuchlin.

And Hutten never did things by halves. He entered into the warfare heart and soul. In 1520 he published his "Roman Trinity," his gage of battle against Rome.

He now, like Luther, began to draw his inspiration, as well as his language, not from the cla.s.sics, but from the New Testament. A new motto he took for himself, one which was henceforth ever on his lips, and which appears again and again in his later writings: "_Jacta est alea_" ("the die is cast"); or, in the stronger German, in which he more often gave it, "_Ich hab's gewagt_" ("I have dared it").

"Auf dasz ichs nit anheb umsunst Wolauf, wir haben Gottes Gunst; Wer wollt in solchem bleiben dheim?

Ich hab's gewagt! das ist mein Reim!"

"Der niemand grossern Schaden bringt, Dann mir als noch die Sach gelingt Dahin mich Gott und Wahrheit bringt, Ich hab's gewagt."

"So breche ich hindurch, durch breche ich, oder ich falle, Kampfend, nach dem ich einmal geworfen das Loos!"

(So break I through the ranks else I die fighting-- Fighting, since once and forever the die I have cast!)

In this motto we have the keynote to his fiery and earnest nature.

Convinced that a cause was right, he knew no bounds of caution or policy; he feared no prison or death. "I have dared it!"

"To all free men of Germany," he speaks. "Their tyranny will not last forever; unless all signs deceive me, their power is soon to fail--for already is the axe laid at the root of the tree, and that tree which bears not good fruit will be rooted out, and the vineyard of the Lord will be purified. That you shall not only hope, but soon see with your eyes. Meanwhile, be of good cheer, you men of Germany. Not weak, not untried, are your leaders in the struggle for freedom. Be not afraid, neither weaken in the midst of the battle, for broken at last is the strength of the enemy, for the cause is righteous, and the rage of tyranny is already at its height. Courage, and farewell! Long live freedom! I have dared it!" ("_Lebe die Freiheit; ich hab's gewagt_.")

Warnings and threats innumerable came to Hutten, from enemies who feared and hated, from friends who were fearful and trembling; but he never flinched: He had "dared it." The bull of excommunication which came from the Pope frightened him no more than it did Luther. But at last he was compelled to retire from the cities, and he took up his abode in the Castle of Ebernburg, with Franz von Sickingen.

Franz von Sickingen was one of the great n.o.bles of Germany, and he ruled over a region in the bend of the Rhine between Worms and Bingen.

His was one of the bravest characters of that time. A knight of the highest order, he became a disciple of Hutten and Luther, and on his help was the greatest reliance placed by the friends of the growing reform. His strong Castle of Ebernburg, on the hills above Bingen, was the refuge of all who were persecuted by the authorities. The "Inn of Righteousness" ("_Herberge von Gerechtigkeit_"), the Ebernburg was called by Hutten.

The Humanists who had stood with Hutten in the struggle between Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn saw with growing concern the gradual transfer of the field of battle from questions of literature to questions of religion. Reuchlin, growing old and weak, wrote a letter, disavowing any sympathy with the new uprisings against the time-honored authority of the Church. This letter came into Hutten's hands, and, with all his reverence for his old friend and master, he could not keep silence.

"Eternal G.o.ds!" he writes. "What do I see? Have you sunk so deep in weakness and fear, O Reuchlin! that you cannot endure blame even for those who have fought for you in time of danger? Through such shameful subservience do you hope to reconcile those to whom, if you were a man, you would never give a friendly greeting, so badly have they treated you? Yet reconcile them; and if there is no other way, go to Rome and kiss the feet of Leo, and then write against us. Yet you shall see that, against your will, and against the will of all the G.o.dless courtesans, we shall shake off the shameful yoke, and free ourselves from slavery. I am ashamed that I have written so much for you--have done so much for you,--since when it comes to action you have made such a miserable exit from the ranks. From me shall you know henceforth that whether you fight in Luther's cause or throw yourself at the feet of the Bishop of Rome, I shall never trust you more." The poor old man, thus hara.s.sed on all sides, found no longer any rest or comfort in his studies. Worn-out in body, and broken in spirit, he soon died.

The great source of Luther's hold on Germany lay in his direct appeal to the common people. For this he translated the Bible into German--even now the n.o.blest version of the Bible in existence. For in translating a work of inspiration the intuition of a man like Luther, as Bayard Taylor has said, counts for more than the combined scholars.h.i.+p of a hundred men learned in the Greek and Hebrew. "The clear insight of one prophet is better than the average judgment of forty-seven scribes." The German language was then struggling into existence, and scholars considered it beneath their notice. It was fixed for all time by Luther's Bible. Luther often spent a week on a single verse to find and fix the idiomatic German. "It is easy to plow when the field is cleared," he said. "We must not ask the letters of the Latin alphabet how to speak German, but the mother in the kitchen and the plowman in the field, that they may know that the Bible is speaking German, and speaking to them. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. No German peasant would understand that. We must make it plain to him. '_Wess das Herz voll ist, dess geht der Mund uber_.' ('Whose heart is full, his mouth runs over.')"

The same influence acted on Hutten. All his previous writings were in Latin, and were directed to scholars only. Henceforth he wrote the language of the Fatherland, and his appeals to the people were in language which the people could and did read. No Reformation ever came while only the learned and the n.o.ble were in the secret of it.

"Latein, ich vor geschrieben hab Das war ein jeden nicht bekannt; Jetzt schrei ich an das Vaterland, Teutsch Nation in ihrer Sprach Zu bringen diesen Dingen Rach."

("For Latin wrote I hitherto, Which common people did not know.

Now cry I to the Fatherland, The German people, in their tongue, Redress to bring for all these wrongs.")

A song for the people he now wrote, the "New Song of Ulrich von Hutten," a song which stands with Luther's "Em feste Burg" in the history of the Reformation:

"Ich hab's gewagt mit Sinnen, Und trag des noch kein Reu, Mag ich nit dran gewinnen, Noch muss man spuren Treu.

"Darmit ich mein Mit eim allein, Wenn Man es wolt erkennen Dem Land zu gut Wiewol man thut Ein Pfaffenfeind mich nennen."

Part of this may be freely translated--

"With open eyes I have dared it; And cherish no regret, And though I fail to conquer, The Truth is with me yet."

Hutten's dream in these days was of a league of n.o.bles, cities, and people, aided by the Emperor if possible, against the Emperor if necessary, which should by force of arms forever free Germany from the rule of the Pope. Luther had little faith in the power of force.

"What Hutten wishes," he wrote to a friend, "you see. But I do not wish to strive for the Gospel with murder and violence. Through the power of the Word is the world subdued; through the Word the Church shall be preserved and freed. Even Antichrist shall be destroyed by the power of the Word."

Now came the Great Diet at Worms, whither Luther was called before the Emperor to answer for his heretical teachings, and before which he stood firm and undaunted, a n.o.ble figure which has been a turning-point in history. "Here I stand. I can do nothing else. G.o.d help me."

Hutten, on his sick-bed at Ebernburg, not far away, was full of wrath at the trial of Luther. "Away!" he shouted, "away from the clear fountains, ye filthy swine! Out of the sanctuary, ye accursed peddlers! Touch no longer the altar with your desecrating hands. What have ye to do with the alms of our fathers, which were given for the poor and the Church, and you spend for splendor, pomp, and foolery, while the children suffer for bread? See you not that the wind of Freedom[2] is blowing? On two men not much depends. Know that there are many Luthers, many Huttens here. Should either of us be destroyed, still greater is the danger that awaits you; for then, with those battling for freedom, the avengers of innocence will make common cause."

I have wished, in writing this little sketch, that I could have a novelist's privilege of bringing out my hero happily at the end. I have hitherto had the struggles of a man living before his time to relate; the voice of one crying in the wilderness. If this were a romance, I might tell how, with Hutten's entreaties and Luther's exhortations, and under the wise management of Franz von Sickingen, the people banded together against foreign foes and foreign domination, and German unity, German freedom, and religious liberty were forever established in the Fatherland. But, alas! the history does not run in that way; at least not till a hundred years of war had bathed the land in blood.

For Hutten henceforth I have only misery and failure to relate. The union of knights and cities resulted in a ruinous campaign of Franz von Sickingen against Treves. Sickingen's army was driven back by the Elector. His strong Castle of Landstuhl was besieged by the Catholic princes, and cannon was used in this siege for the first time in history. The walls of Landstuhl, twenty-five feet thick, were battered down, and Sickingen himself was killed by the falling of a beam. The war was over, and nothing worthy had been accomplished.

When Luther heard of the death of Sickingen, he wrote to a friend: "Yesterday I heard and read of Franz von Sickingen's true and sad history. G.o.d is a righteous but marvelous Judge. Sickingen's fall seems to me a verdict of the Lord, that strengthens me in the belief that the force of arms is to be kept far from matters of the Gospel."

Hutten was driven from the Ebernburg. He was offered a high place in the service of the King of France; but, as a true German, he refused it, and fled, penniless and sick, to Basle, in Switzerland.

Here the great Humanist, Erasmus, reigned supreme. Erasmus disavowed all sympathy with his former friend and fellow-student. He called Hutten a dangerous and turbulent man, and warned the Swiss against him.

Erasmus had noticed, with horror, in those who had studied Greek, that the influence of Lutheranism was fatal to learning; that zeal for philology decreased as zeal for religion increased. Already Erasmus, like Reuchlin, was ranged on the side of the Pope. So, in letters and pamphlets, Erasmus attacked Hutten; and the poet was not slow in giving as good as he received. And this war between the Humanist and the Reformer gave great joy to the Obscurantists, who feared and hated them both.

"Humanism," says Strauss, "was broad-minded but faint-hearted, and in none is this better seen than in Erasmus. Luther was a narrower man, but his unvarying purpose, never looking to left nor right, was his strength. Humanism is the broad mirror-like Rhine at Bingen. It must grow narrower and wilder before it can break through the mountains to the sea."

Repulsed by Erasmus at Basle, Hutten fled to Mulhausen. Attacked by a.s.sa.s.sins there, he left at midnight for Zurich, where he put himself under the protection of Ulrich Zwingli. In Zwingli, the purest, loftiest, and clearest of insight of all of the leaders of the Reformation, Hutten found a congenial spirit. His health was now utterly broken. To the famous Baths of Pfaffers he went, in hope of release from pain. But the modern bath-houses of Ragatz were not built in those days, and the daily descent by a rope from above into the dark and dismal chasm was too much for his feeble strength. Then Zwingli sent him to a kindly friend, the Pastor Hans Schnegg, who lived on the little Island of Ufnau, in the Lake of Zurich. And here at Ufnau, worn out by his long, double conflict with the Pope and with disease, Ulrich von Hutten died in 1523, at the age of thirty-five. "He left behind him," wrote Zwingli, "nothing of worth. Books he had none; no money, and no property of any sort, except a pen."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ulrich Zwingli.]

What was the value of this short and troubled life? Three hundred years ago it was easy to answer with Erasmus and the rest--Nothing.

Hutten had denounced the Pope, and the Pope had crushed him. He had stirred up n.o.ble men to battle for freedom, and they, too, had been destroyed. Franz von Sickingen was dead. The league of the cities and princes had faded away forever. Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, no one knew where, and scarcely a trace of the Reformation was left in Germany. Whatever Hutten had touched he had ruined. He had "dared it," and the force he had defied had crushed him in return.

But, looking back over these centuries, the life of Hutten rises into higher prominence. His writings were seed in good ground. At his death the Reformation seemed hopeless. Six years later, at the second Diet of Spires, half Germany signed the protest which made us Protestants. "It was Luther alone who said _no_ at the Diet of Worms.

It was princes and people, cities and churches, who said _no_ at the Diet of Spires."

Hutten's dream of a United German people freed from the yoke of Rome was for three hundred years unrealized. For the Reformation sundered the German people and ruined the German Empire, and not till our day has German unity come to pa.s.s. But, as later reformers said, "It is better that Germany should be half German, than that it should be all Roman."

For the true meaning of this conflict does not lie in any question of church against church or creed against creed, nor that wors.h.i.+p in cathedrals with altars and incense and rich ceremony should give way to the simpler forms of the Lutheran litany. The issue was that of the growth of man. The "right of private interpretation" is the recognition of personal individuality.

The death of Hutten was, after all, not untimely. He had done his work. His was the "voice of one crying in the wilderness." The head of John the Baptist lay on the charger before Jesus had fulfilled his mission. Arnold Winkelried, at Sempach, filled his body with Austrian spears before the Austrian phalanx was broken. John Brown fell at Harper's Ferry before a blow was struck against slavery. Ulrich von Hutten had set every man, woman, and child in Germany to thinking of his relations to the Lord and to the Pope. His mission was completed; and longer life for him, as Strauss has suggested, might have led to discord among the Reformers themselves.

For this lover of freedom was intolerant of intolerance. For fine points of doctrine he had only contempt. When the Lutherans began to treat as enemies all Reformers who did not with them subscribe to the Confession of Augsburg, Hutten's fiery pen would have repudiated this confession. For he fought for freedom of the spirit, not for the Lutheran confession.