Читать книгу A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1&2) - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 41

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The real roots of the spiritual life of Luther and of the other Reformers ought to be sought for in the family and in the popular religious life of the times. It is the duty of the historian to discover, if possible, what religious instruction was given by parents to children in the pious homes out of which most of the Reformers came, and what religious influences confronted and surrounded pious lads after they had left the family circle. Few have cared to prosecute the difficult task; and it is only within late years that the requisite material has been accumulated. It has to be sought for in autobiographies, diaries, and private letters; in the books of popular devotion which the patience of ecclesiastical archæologists is exhuming and reprinting; in the references to the pious confraternities of the later Middle Ages, and more especially to the Kalands among the artisans, which appear in town chronicles, and whose constitutions are being slowly unearthed by local historical societies; in the police regulations of towns and country districts which aim at curbing the power of the clergy, and in the edicts of princes attempting to enforce some of the recommendations of the Councils of Constance and Basel; in the more popular hymns of the time, and in the sermons of the more fervent preachers; in the pilgrim songs and the pilgrim guide-books; and in a variety of other sources not commonly studied by Church historians.

On the surface no land seemed more devoted to the mediæval Church and to the Pope, its head, than did Germany in the half century before the Reformation. A cultivated Italian, Aleander, papal nuncio at the Diet of Worms, was astonished at the signs of disaffection he met with in 1520.68 He had visited Germany frequently, and he was intimately acquainted with many of the northern Humanists; and his opinion was that down to 1510 (the date of his last visit) he had never been among a people so devoted to the Bishop of Rome. No nation had exhibited such signs of delight at the ending of the Schism and the re-establishment of the “Peace of the Church.” The Italian Humanists continually express their wonder at the strength of the religious susceptibilities of the Germans; and the papal Curia looked upon German devotion as a never-failing source of Roman revenue. The Germans displayed an almost feverish anxiety to profit by all the ordinary and extraordinary means of grace. They built innumerable churches; their towns were full of conventual foundations; they bought Indulgences, went on pilgrimages, visited shrines, reverenced relics in a way that no other nation did. The piety of the Germans was proverbial.

The number of churches was enormous for the population. Almost every tiny village had its chapel, and every town of any size had several churches. Church building and decoration was a feature of the age. In the town of Dantzig 8 new churches had been founded or completed during the fifteenth century. The “holy” city of Köln (Cologne) at the close of the fifteenth century contained 11 great churches, 19 parish churches, 22 monasteries, 12 hospitals, and 76 convents; more than a thousand Masses were said at its altars every day. It was exceptionally rich in ecclesiastical buildings, no doubt; but the smaller town of Brunswick had 15 churches, over 20 chapels, 5 monasteries, 6 hospitals, and 12 Beguine-houses, and its great church, dedicated to St. Blasius, had 26 altars served by 60 ecclesiastics. So it was all over Germany.

Besides the large numbers of monks and nuns who peopled the innumerable monasteries and convents, a large part of the population belonged to some semi-ecclesiastical association. Many were tertiaries of St. Francis; many were connected with the Beguines: Köln (Cologne) had 106 Beguine-houses; Strassburg, over 60, and Basel, over 30.

The churches and chapels, monasteries and religious houses, received all kinds of offerings from rich and poor alike. In those days of unexampled burgher prosperity and wealth, the town churches became “museums and treasure-houses.” The windows were filled with painted glass; weapons, armour, jewels, pictures, tapestries were stored in the treasuries or adorned the walls. Ancient inventories have been preserved of some of these ecclesiastical accumulations of wealth. In the cathedral church in Bern, to take one example, the head of St. Vincentius, the patron, was adorned with a great quantity of gold, and with one jewel said to be priceless; the treasury contained 70 gold and 50 silver cups, 2 silver coffers, and 450 costly sacramental robes decked with jewels of great value. The luxury, the artistic fancy, and the wealth which could minister to both, all three were characteristic of the times, were lavished by the Germans on their churches.