The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER IV.

      THE MENTAL STRUGGLES OF A YOUTH, AND HIS

       ENTRANCE INTO A MONASTERY.

       Table of Contents

      (1510.)

      Great was the wickedness of the world, heavy the oppression under which the poor suffered, coarse the greed after enjoyment, boundless the covetousness both of ecclesiastics and laymen. Who was there to punish the young nobleman who maltreated the peasants? who to defend the poor citizen against the powerful family unions of the rich counsellors? Hard was the labour of the German peasant from morning till evening, through summer and winter; pestilence was quickly followed by famine and hunger: the whole system of the world seemed in confusion, and earthly life devoid of love. The only hope of deliverance from misery, was in God; before Him all earthly power, whether of Emperor or Pope, was weak and insignificant, and the wisdom of man was transitory as the flower of the field. By his mercy men might be delivered from the miseries of this life, and compensated by eternal happiness for what they had suffered here; but how were they to obtain this mercy? by what virtues could weak men hope to gain the endless treasure of God's favour? Man had been doomed from the time of Adam to will the good and do the evil. Vain were his highest virtues; inherited sin was his curse; and if he obtained mercy from God, it was not by his own merits.^[19]

      These were the questions that then struggled within the agonized hearts of men. But from the holy records of Scripture, which had only been a dark tradition to the people, went forth the words; Christ is love. The ruling Church knew little of this love; in it God was kept far from the hearts of men: the image of the Crucified One was concealed behind countless saints, who were all made necessary as intercessors with a wrathful God. But the great craving of the German nature was to find itself in close connection with the Almighty, and the longing for the love of God was unquenchable. But the Pope maintained that he was the only administrator of the inexhaustible merits of Christ; and the Church also taught, that by the intercession of saints for the sins of men, an endless treasure of good works, prayers, fasts, and penances were made available for the blessing of others; and all these treasures were at the disposition of the Pope, who could dispense them to whom he chose, as a deliverance from their sins. Thus, when believers united together in a pious community, the Pope was able to confer on such a brotherhood the privilege of passing over from one to the other, the merits of the saints, the surplus of prayers and masses, as well as of good works done for the Church.

      In the year 1530, Luther complained that the number of these communities was countless.^[20] An example will show how rough and miserable their mechanism was, and the "Brotherhood of the Eleven Thousand Virgins," called "St. Ursula's Schifflein," is selected, because the Elector, Frederick the Wise, was one of the founders and brothers. The collection of spiritual treasures given by statute to enable the brotherhood to obtain eternal happiness, amounted to 6,455 masses, 3,550 entire psalters, 200,000 rosaries, 200,000 Te Deum Laudamus, 1,600 Gloria in excelsis Deo. Besides this, 11,000 prayers for the patroness St. Ursula, and 630 times 11,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias; also 50 times 10,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias for 10,000 knights, &c.; and the whole redeeming power of these treasures was for the benefit of the members of the brotherhood. Many spiritual foundations and private persons had gained to themselves especial merit by their great contributions to the prayer treasures. At the revival of the society, the Elector Frederick had presented a beautiful silver Ursula. A layman was entitled to become a member of the brotherhood if he once in his life had repeated 11,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias: if he repeated daily thirty-two, he gained it in a year, if sixteen, in two, and if eight, in four years: if any one was hindered by marriage, sickness, or business, from completing this number of prayers, he was enabled to enter by having eleven masses read for him; and so on. Yet this brotherhood was one of the best, for the members had not to pay money; it was to be a brotherhood of poor people who wished only to assist each other to heaven by mutual prayer; and we maintain that these brotherhoods were the most spiritual part of the declining Church of the middle ages.

      The indulgences, on the other hand, were the foulest spot in its diseased body. The Pope, as administrator of the inexhaustible treasure of the merits of Christ, sold to believers, drafts on this store in exchange for money. It is true that the Church itself had not entirely lost the idea that the Pope could not himself forgive sins, but only remit the penances the Church prescribed; those, however, who held these views, individuals of the university and worthy village priests, were obliged to be careful that their teaching should not come into open collision with the business of the seller of indulgences. For what did the right teaching of their own Church signify to the papists of the sixteenth century? It was money that they craved for their women and children, their relatives, and princely houses. There was a fearful community of interests between the bishops and the fanatical members of the mendicant orders. Nothing had made Huss and his tenets so insupportable to them as the struggle against the sale of indulgences: the great Wessel had been driven out of Paris into misery for teaching repentance and grace; and it was the sellers of indulgences who caused the venerable Johannes Vesalia to die in the prison of a monastery at Mayence, he who first spoke the noble words, "Why should I believe what I know?"

      It is known how prevalent the traffic in indulgences became in Germany in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and how impudently the reckless cheating was carried on. When Tetzel, a well-fed haughty Dominican, rode into a city with his box of indulgences, he was accompanied by a large body of monks and priests: the bells were rung; ecclesiastics and laymen met him, and reverentially СКАЧАТЬ