you," he exclaims, "ye unclean hogs, away from the pure fountains! Away with you, wicked
traffickers, from the sanctuary! Touch no longer the altars with your profane hands! What right
have ye to waste the pious benefactions of our fathers in luxury, fornication, and vain pomp, while
many honest and pious people are starving? The measure is full. See ye not that the air of freedom
is stirring, that men, disgusted with the present state of things, demand improvement? Luther and
I may perish at your hands, but what of that? There are many more Luthers and Huttens who will
take revenge, and raise a new and more violent reformation."
He added, however, to the second edition, a sort of apologetic letter to Albrecht, the head
of the German archbishops, his former friend and patron, assuring him of his continued friendship,
and expressing regret that he should have been alienated from the protection of the cause of progress
and liberty.
In a different spirit Hans Sachs, the pious poet-shoemaker of Nürnberg,^401 wrote many
ephemeral compositions in prose and poetry for the cause of Luther and the gospel. He met Luther
at Augsburg in 1518, collected till 1522 forty books in his favor, and published in 1523 a poem of
seven hundred verses under the title: "Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetzt hört überall,"
and with the concluding words: "Christus amator, Papa peccator." It was soon followed by four
polemical dialogues in prose.
Among the most popular pamphleteers on the Protestant side were a farmer named
"Karsthans," who labored in the Rhine country between Strassburg and Basel, and his imitator,
"Neukarsthans." Many pamphlets were anonymous or pseudonymous.
It is a significant fact, that the Reformation was defended by so many laymen. All the great
German classics who arose in more recent times (Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller,
Uhland, Rückert), as well as philosophers (Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze),
are Protestants, at least nominally, and could not have grown on papal soil.
The newness and freshness of this fugitive popular literature called out by the Reformation,
and especially by the edict of Worms, made it all the more effective. The people were hungry for
intellectual and spiritual food, and the appetite grew with the supply.
The polemical productions of that period are usually brief, pointed, and aimed at the
common-sense of the masses. They abound in strong arguments, rude wit, and coarse abuse. They
plead the cause of freedom against oppression, of the laity against priestcraft and monkery. A
favorite form of composition was the dialogue in which a peasant or a laboring-man defeats an
ecclesiastic.
The Devil figures prominently in league with the Pope, sometimes as his servant, sometimes
as his master. Very often the Pope is contrasted with Christ as his antipode. The Pope, says one of
the controversialists, proclaimed the terrible bull of condemnation of Luther and all heretics on the
day commemorative of the institution of the holy communion; and turned the divine mercy into
human wrath, brotherly love into persecuting hatred, the very blessing into a curse.
St. Peter also appears often in these productions: he stands at the gate of heaven, examining
priests, monks, and popes, whether they are fit to enter, and decides in most cases against them.
(^401) Characteristic for his poetry is the well-known rhyme (which is, however, not found in his works):—
"Hans Sachs war ein Schuh-
Macher und Poet dazu."
A new edition of his poems appeared at Stuttgart, 1870 sqq. He figures prominently in Kaulbach’s picture of the
Reformation.