Works of Martin Luther Part 17

[228] See Kohler, _L. und die Kirchengesch._, 139, 151.

[229] The Archbishop of Prague was primate of the Church in Bohemia.

[230] The dioceses of these bishops were contiguous to that of the Archbishop of Prague.

[231] Bishop of Carthage, 240-258 A. D.

[232] _La.s.s man ihn ein gut jar ha ben_, literally, "Bid him good-day."

[233] One of the chief points of controversy between the Roman Church and the Hussites. The Roman Church administered to the laity only the bread, the Hussites used both elements. See below, pp. 178 f.

[234] Luther had not yet reached the conviction that the administration of the cup to the laity was a necessity, but see the argument in _the Babylonian Captivity_, below, pp. 178 ff.

[235] The Bohemian Brethren, who are here distinguished from the Hussites, Cf. _Realencyk._, Ill, 452, 49.

[236] St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominican theologian of the XIII.

Century (1225-74), whose influence is still dominant in Roman theology.

[237] The view of the sacramental presence adopted by William of Occam. For Luther's own view at this time, see below, pp. 187 ff.

[238] i. e., If they did not believe in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper.

[239] Places for training youths in Greek glory.

[240] The philosophy of Aristotle dominated the mediaeval universities.

It not only provided the forms in which theological and religious truth came to expression, but it was the basis of all scientific study in every department. The man who did not know Aristotle was an ignoramus.

[241] Or, "I have read him." Luther's _lesen_ allows of either interpretation.

[242] Duns Scotus, died 1308. In the XV and XVI Centuries he was regarded as the rival of Thomas Aquinas for first place among the theological teachers of the Church.

[243] i. e., In the universities.

[244] See above, pp. 94 f.

[245] i. e., "The chamber of his heart." Boniface VIII (1294-1303) had decreed, _Roma.n.u.s pontiex jura omnia in scrinio pectoris sui censetur habere_, "the Roman pontiff has all laws in the chamber of his heart."

This decree was received into the canon law (_c._ I, de const. In VIto (I, 2)).

[246] _Doctores decretorum_, "Doctor of Decrees," an academic degree occasionally given to professors of Canon Law; _doctor scrinii papalis_, "Doctor of the Papal Heart."

[247] The introduction of Roman law into Germany, as the accepted law of the empire, had begun in the XII Century. With the decay of the feudal system and the increasing desire of the rulers to provide their government with some effective legal system, its application became more widespread, until by the end of the XV Century it was the accepted system of the empire. The attempt to apply this ancient law to conditions utterly different from those of the time when it was formulated, and the continual conflict between the Roman law, the feudal customs and the remnants of Germanic legal ideas, naturally gave rise to a state of affairs which Luther could justly speak of as "a wilderness."

[248] "Sentences" (_Sententiae, libri sententiarum_) was the t.i.tle of the text-books in theology. Theological instruction was largely by way of comment on the most famous book of Sentences, that of Peter Lombard.

[249] Cf. Vol. I, p. 7.

[250] i. e., Doctors.

[251] The head-dress of the doctors.

[252] See above, p. 118, note 2.

[253] i. e., The monasteries and nunneries.

[254] i. e.. The name of Christian.

[255] This section did not appear in the first edition; see Introduction, p. 59.

[256] Charles the Great, King of the Franks, was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800 A. D. He was a German, but regarded himself successor to the line of emperors who had ruled at Rome. The fiction was fostered by the popes, and the German kings, after receiving the papal coronation, were called Roman Emperors. From this came the name of the German Empire of the Middle Ages, "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." The popes of the later Middle Ages claimed that the bestowal of the imperial dignity lay in the power of the pope, and Pope Clement V (1313) even claimed that in the event of a vacancy the pope was the possessor of the imperial power (cf. above, p. 109). On the whole subject see Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, 2d ed.

(1904), and literature there cited.

[257] The city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410.

[258] Luther is characteristically careless about his chronology. By the "Turkish Empire" he means the Mohammedan power.

[259] _So sol man die Deutschen teuschen und mit teuschen teuschenn_, i.e., made Germans (_Deutsche_) by cheating (_teuschen_) them.

[260] See _Cambridge Mediaeval History_, I (1911), pp. 244 f.

[261] Such a law as Luther here suggests was proposed to the Diet of Worms (1521). Text in Wrede, _Reischstagsakten_, II, 335-341.

[262] Cf. Luther's _Sermon von Kaubandlung und Wucher_, of 1524.

(_Weim. Ed. XV_, pp. 293)

[263] Spices were one of the chief articles of foreign commerce in the XVI Century. The discovery of the cape-route to India had given the Portuguese a practical monopoly of this trade. A comparative statement of the cost of spices for a period of years was reported to the Diet of Nurnberg (1523). See Wrede, _op. cit._, III, 576.

[264] The _Zinskauf_ or _Rentenkauf_ was a means or evading the prohibition of usury. The buyer purchased an annuity, but the purchase price was not regarded as a loan, or it could not be recalled, and the annual payments could not therefore be called interest.

[265] The practice was legalised by the Lateran Council, 1512.

[266] The XVI Century was the hey-day of the great trading-companies, among which the Fuggers of Augsburg (see above, p. 97, note 5) easily took first place. The effort of these companies was directed toward securing monopolies in the staple articles of commerce, and their ability to finance large enterprises made it possible for them to gain practical control of the home markets. The sharp rise in the cost of living which took place on the first half of the XVI Century was laid at their door. The Diet of Cologne (1512) had pa.s.sed a stringent law against monopolies which had, however, failed to suppress them. The Diet of Worms (1521) debated the subject (Wrede, _Reichstagsakten_ II, pp. 355 iff.) "in somewhat heated language" (_ibid._, 842), but failed to agree upon methods of suppression. The subject was discussed again at the Diet of Nurnberg (1523) and various remedies were proposed (ibid., Ill, 556-599).

[267] The profits of the trading-companies were enormous. The 9 per cent, annually of the Welser (Ehrenberg, _Zeitalter der Fugger_, I, 195), pales into insignificance beside the 1634 per cent, by which the fortune of the Fuggers grew in twenty-one years (Schulte, _Die Fugger in Rom_, I, 3). In 1511 a certain Bartholomew Rem invested 900 gulden in the Hochstetter company of Augsburg; by 1517 he claimed 33,000 gulden profit. The company was willing to settle at 26,000, and the resulting litigation caused the figures to become public (Wrede, _op.

cit._, II, 842, note 4; III, pp. 574 ff.). On Luther's view of capitalism see Eck, _Introduction to the Sermon von Kaushandlungund Wucher_, in _Berl. Ed._, VII, 494-513.

[268] The Diets of Augsburg (1500) and Cologne (1512) had pa.s.sed edicts against drunkenness. A committee of the Diet of Worms (1521) recommended that these earlier edicts be reaffirmed (Wrede, _op.

cit._, II, pp. 343 f.), but the Diet adjourned without acting on the recommendation (ibid., 737)

[269] _Sie wollen ausbuben, so sich's vielmehr hineinbubt_.

[270] Cf. Muller, _Luther's theol. Quellen_, 1912, ch. I.

[271] In the _Confitendi Ratio_ Luther had set the age for men at eighteen to twenty, or women at fifteen to sixteen years. See Vol. I, p. 100.

[272] Translated in this edition, Vol. I, pp. 184 ff; see especially pp. 266 ff.

[273] These sentences did not appear in the first edition.

[274] See _Letter to Staupitz_, Vol. I, p. 43.