chaplain and private counselor, described him in a letter to Zwingli, Aug. 4, 1521, as a promoter
of "the gospel," who would not permit that Luther be attacked on the pulpit. And this was the prelate
who had been intrusted by the Pope with the sale of indulgences. Such a change had been wrought
in public sentiment in the short course of four years.
The settlement of the religious question was ultimately left to the several states, and depended
very much upon the religious preferences and personal character of the civil magistrate. Saxony,
Hesse, Brandenburg, the greater part of Northern Germany, also the Palatinate, Würtemberg,
Nürnberg, Frankfurt, Strassburg, and Ulm, embraced Protestantism in whole or in part; while
Southern and Western Germany, especially Bavaria and Austria, remained predominantly Roman
Catholic. But it required a long and bloody struggle before Protestantism acquired equal legal rights
with Romanism, and the Pope protests to this day against the Treaty of Westphalia which finally
secured those rights.
§ 59. State of Public Opinion. Popular Literature.
K. Hagen: Der Geist der Reformation und seine Gegensätze. Erlangen, 1843. Bd. I. 158 sqq. Janssen,
II. 181–197, gives extracts from revolutionary pamphlets to disparage the cause of the
Reformation.
Among the most potent causes which defeated the ban of the empire, and helped the triumph
of Protestantism, was the teeming ephemeral literature which appeared between 1521 and 1524,
and did the work of the periodical newspaper press of our days, in seasons of public excitement.
In spite of the prohibition of unauthorized printing by the edict of Worms, Germany was inundated
by a flood of books, pamphlets, and leaflets in favor of true and false freedom. They created a
public opinion which prevented the execution of the law.
Luther had started this popular literary warfare by his ninety-five Theses. He was by far the
most original, fertile, and effective controversialist and pamphleteer of his age. He commanded the
resources of genius, learning, courage, eloquence, wit, humor, irony, and ridicule, and had,
notwithstanding his many physical infirmities, an astounding power of work. He could express the
deepest thought in the clearest and strongest language, and had an abundant supply of juicy and
forcible epithets.^395 His very opponents had to imitate his German speech if they wished to reach
the masses, and to hit the nail on the head. He had a genial heart, but also a most violent temper,
and used it as a weapon for popular effect. He felt himself called to the rough work of "removing
stumps and stones, cutting away thistles and thorns, and clearing the wild forests." He found aid
and comfort in the severe language of the prophets. He had, as he says, the threefold spirit of
Elijah,—the storm, the earthquake, and the fire, which subverts mountains and tears the rocks in
pieces. He thoroughly understood the wants and tastes of his countrymen who preferred force to
elegance, and the club to the dagger. Foreigners, who knew him only from his Latin writings, could
not account for his influence.
(^395) Kraftwörter, as the Germans call them.