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Using the Past against the Papacy: Luther’s appeal to Church History in his Anti-Papal Writings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
It is well known that Martin Luther found ultimate authority sola scriptura. The evangelical endeavour which he initiated and exemplified focused on the return to the gospel and the rediscovery of a church modelled according to scriptural lines. For the Reformers, the truly catholic church was that church which adhered most closely to the church established by Scripture. The early church, being chronologically closest to that established in Scripture, was more authentic, not yet affected by innovation. But how were the details of that church to be discovered? Scripture was not always informative on practical questions of church life and ecclesiastical order, and for these an appeal to church history was necessary. Drawing particularly on Scott Hendrix’s study of Luther’s attitude towards the papacy, and the studies by John Headley and others of Luther’s view of, and appeal to, church history, this essay explores the ways in which Luther used his knowledge of church history to define and support his developing critique of the papacy. It focuses on his early writings to 1521, but will also consider the later work Von den Consiliis und Kirchen (1539), a testimony to Luther’s growing interest in the history of the church.
- Type
- Part I: The Churches’ Use of the Past
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2013
References
1 There has been relatively little work done on the uses of history in the Reformation. For some notable exceptions, see the works on Luther’s use of history in n. 3 below; cf. also O’Malley, John W., ‘Historical Thought and the Reform Crisis of the Early Sixteenth Century’, Theological Studies 28 (1967), 531–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dipple, Geoffrey, Just as in the time of the Apostles’: Uses of History in the Radical Reformation (Kitchener, ON, 2005).Google Scholar For an account of history-writing in early modern England, see Woolf, D. R., Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000).Google Scholar
2 Hendrix, Scott H., Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Philadelphia, PA, 1981).Google Scholar
3 Headley, John M., Luther’s View of Church History (New Haven, CT, 1963).Google Scholar This in turn draws on earlier works of German scholarship: Lilje, Hanns, Luthers Geschichtsanschauung (Berlin, 1932)Google Scholar; Köhler, Walther, Luther und die Kirchengeschichte nach seinen Schriften, zunächst bis 1521 (Erlangen, 1900)Google Scholar; Schläfer, Ernst, Luther als Kirchenhistoriker (Gütersloh, 1897)Google Scholar; Headley argues that Luther was not a church historian, but nonetheless maintains that ‘there exists in his thought a definite, if implicit, view of Church history’, which ‘represents a major expression of the Christian interpretation of history’: Luther’s View of Church History, 266.
4 See Luther, Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, Theses 25, 26 (LW 31, 27; WA 1, 234).
5 Ibid., Theses 48–51 (LW 31, 29–30; WA 1, 235).
6 LW 34, 328; WA 54, 179. Scholars have long debated the realities of Luther’s attitude towards the papacy at this point in his career. In his study, Luther and the Papacy, Hendrix identifies seven phases in Luther’s view of the papacy: ambivalence (1505–17); protest (October 1517 – June 1518); resistance (June-December 1518); challenge (1519); opposition (1520); conviction (1521–2); and persistence (1522–46).
7 Whitford, David M., ‘The Papal Antichrist: Martin Luther and the Underappreciated Influence of Lorenzo Valla’, RQ 61 (2008), 26–52, at 37.Google Scholar
8 Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 37.
9 Lindberg, Carter, ‘Prierias and his Significance for Luther’s Development’, SCJ 3 (1972), 45–64, at 50–1.Google Scholar
10 For the significance of Luther’s dispute with Prierias, see Lindberg, ‘Prierias’. For Luther and Eck, see Bagchi, David, Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists 1518–1525 (Minneapolis, MN, 1991), 69–91.Google Scholar For a recent discussion of the role of history in the debate between Luther and Eck, see Schreiner, Susan, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford, 2011), 152–65.Google Scholar
11 WA 1, 57r; LW 31, 152.
12 WA 1, 572–3; LW 31, 155. Against Cajetan, Luther would later claim that ‘according to Hilary, one should not read a meaning into the Holy Scriptures, but extract it from them’: WA 2, 17; LW 31, 276. LW’s editors refer at these points to two different figures: the first is Hilary of Poitiers, who refused to sign a condemnation of Athanasius, and was banished by the Arian emperor Constantius (a son of Constantine) to Phrygia in 357; the other is Hilary of Aries, bishop of Arles from 428, who sought to exercise primacy in the province of Southern Gaul and in 444 was deprived of his rights to consecrate bishops, call synods, or oversee the church in the province by Pope Leo I. The former is the more likely since, had Luther been referring to Hilary of Arles, he would have been able to make good rhetorical use of the latter’s conflict with the pope. Spiridion (more commonly Spyridon) was an archbishop of Tramathus (Trimythouse), Cyprus, who argued against the Arians at the Council of Nicaea (325). He was known for his simplicity, which makes Luther’s anecdote surprising.
13 WA 2, 22; LW 31, 284.
14 ‘Rhomanam ecclesiam non fuisse superiorem aliis ecclesiis ante tempora Sylvestri negamus, Sed eum, qui sedem beatissimi Petri habuit et fidem, sucessorem Petri et vicarium Christi generalem semper agnovimus’: Eck’s proposition, as cited by Luther, WA 2, 185.
15 WA 2, 225.
16 WA 2, 185; cf. WA 2, 161; LW 31, 318.
17 Headley, Luther’s View of Church History, 164.
18 Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?, 155.
19 WA 2, 186, 231–2.
20 WA 2, 216.
21 WA 2, 201.
22 WA 2, 216, 238 (Nicaea), 201, 232 (Chalcedon).
23 WA 2. 226. These three popes were associated with canon law collections: the Decretals of Gregory IX, promulgated in 1234; Liber Sextus, promulgated by Boniface VIII in 1298; and Clementinae, the constitutions of Clement V, promulgated by his successor John XXII in 1317. This is presumably why Luther names them. I am grateful to Peter Clarke for this point.
24 WA 2, 201–2. For more detailed consideration of the proposition, see Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 81–5.
25 WA 2, 446–7; LW 27, 155.
26 WA 2, 447; LW 27, 156.
27 Luther to Spalatin, 20 July 1519: WABr 1, 422; LW 31, 322.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 WA 2, 158; LW 31, 315. Bartolomeo Platina (1421–81) was the author of the Liber pontificalis, a history of the popes: see n. 45 below.
31 Luther to Spalatin, c.14 February 1520: WABr 2, 41–2; LW 48, 151; cf. Whitford, ‘Papal Antichrist’, 38.
32 Luther to Spalatin, 19 March 1520: WABr 2, 72; LW 48, 155. Luther reported that two thousand copies of Hus’s work had been printed. For a summary of Hus’s De ecclesia, see Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?, 139–46.
33 Hendrix, Scott, ‘“We Are All Hussites”? Hus and Luther Revisited’, ARG 65 (1974), 134–61 Google Scholar; repr. in idem, Tradition and Authority in the Reformation (Aldershot, 1996), VII.
34 WA 6, 454; LW 44, 196.
35 Luther’s interest in the Council of Constance did not abate: in 1536 he wrote the preface and Nachwort to Johannes Agricola’s Latin edition and German translation of three letters by Jan Hus (WA 50, 23–39), and in 1545 his account of Constance was central to the treatise Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft: WA 54, 206–99.
36 Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 98; Whitford, ‘Papal Antichrist’, 40.
37 Valla’s text has been edited by Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung. De falso eredita et ementita Constantini donatione. Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1975). For a summary of Valla’s argument in the Oratio, see Camporeale, Salvatore I., ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Oratio” on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance Humanism’, JHI 57 (1996), 9–26 Google Scholar; Fubini, Riccardo, ‘Humanism and Truth: Valla writes against the Donation of Constantine’, JHI 57 (1996), 79–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitford, ‘Papal Antichrist’, 28–30.
38 Luther to Spalatin, 24 February 1520: WABr 2, 48; cf. Whitford, ‘Papal Antichrist’, 40.
39 WA 6, 434; LW 44, 166. In 1537 Luther published an annotated translation of the Donation: WA 50, 60–89. It seems surprising that Luther only became aware of Valla’s claim that the Donation was a forgery in 1520; however, he seems not to have engaged with questions of the authenticity of decretals until pushed into the discussion. Eck and Prierius both cited Marsilius of Padua in this connection (for Eck, see WA 2, 275; cf. WA 59, 461; WABr 1, 480; for Prierius, see WA 6, 336), but Luther himself never mentioned him.
40 This is the thesis of Whitford, ‘Papal Antichrist’.
41 Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 98–9.
42 WA 6, 406; LW 44, 126.
43 WA 6, 413; LW 44, 137.
44 In 1539, Luther would reiterate: ‘History will have to bear me out, even though all the papists get mad, that if Emperor Constantine had not convoked the first council at Nicaea, the Roman bishop Sylvester would have been obliged to leave it unconvoked’: WA 50, 522–3; LW 41, 24.
45 Luther had access to a range of sources: Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica and its elaboration by Rufinus; the Historia Tripartita by Cassiodorus Senator, the standard Latin textbook on church history in the Middle Ages; Bartolomeo Platina’s Historia de Vitis Pontificum (completed between 1471 and 1481); Peter Crabbe’s newly published Concilia Omnia (Cologne, 1538); and collections of the writings of the Fathers and canon law: see ‘Introduction’, LW 41, 8.
46 WA 50, 551; LW 41, 58.
47 WA 50, 523; LW 41, 24.
48 O’Malley,’Historical Thought’, 548.
49 Headley, Luther’s View of Church History, 164.