GERMAN’S PEASANTS WAR

More specifically, there were a few factors to consider if we are to talk of German-speaking lands in the 1520s.

1. Changing social order. We already saw the lesser Knights rise up in revolt in 1522-23 in the so-called Knights’ Rebellion in the Rhineland where lesser Knights attempted to reverse the new order dominated by burghers and a new style of warfare centered around the Landsknechts.

   The result was a combination of declining value of rural agriculture and declining prestige of knights as warfare shifted to large units of armed infantry. The leader Franz Sickingen had also supported Lutherans and helped print Lutheran propaganda.

   So as their movement turned to armed rebellion, Luther viewed this as liability, fomenting an argument among his supporters as to who had authority in Germany.

   In this period, Luther wanted to gain the support of Princes, however he saw them as favoring the status quo. This is around the time that Luther and Melanchthon espoused the idea of “Two Kingdoms”, that the church should not exercise worldly government, and that temporal princes of the church could not also be saviors of souls.

   Further, the temporal world needed laws, endowed by God, through which it should be governed. However, as most people could not clearly know the boundary, they should submit to the authority of princes.

2. Socio-economic enmity between landlords and tenant farmers (Bauern in German). The second half of the 1400s had seen labor shortages in Germany due to various factors. This allowed tenant farmers (translated to “peasants”) to negotiate better conditions for work and living.

   In southwestern Germany, most of the landlords were minor princes both ecclesiastical and secular, under the Holy Roman Empire. Now the landlords attempted to push their tenant farmers into serfdom.

These tenant farmers and their leaders had been exposed to the ideas of Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli. They saw their landlords — largely wealthy monasteries, bishops and archbishops — as exceeding their authority and abusing their office.

Pointedly, they saw these landlords as abusing the true law which should favor the well being of the tenant farmers, or at least not be abused to push them into serfdom. Zwingli had preached that the Scripture should provide the law, thus providing a strong rationale in the Peasants’ movement. The preacher Thomas Muntzer was a key leader in fomenting the rebellion, preaching from church pulpits, stating that to be held as a serf is to go against the Scripture. Thus, Muntzer promulgated a religious justification for the rebellion.

In 1525 the leaders of the rebellion printed the so-called “Twelve Articles” which distanced them from many of Muntzer’s ideas, in particular it did not mention Muntzer’s visions of the pending apocalypse. Instead, the Twelve Articles focused on socio-economic-political reforms such as abolotion of serfdom, rationalization of tithes (there were several!) and how they are to be used, restoration of pastures and forests, further privileges on labor, taxes, rent, and of course a reform of the justice system. Addressing this, Luther wrote that he supported their plight but that he rejects their violent means, and the Scripture did not justify this.

Luther himself was initially sympathetic to the plight of the peasants, but as the rebellion rose in violence he wrote two strong responses: An admonition to peace, and a few weeks later Against the robbing and murdering hordes of peasants.

In the first, he wrote that the duty of humans in this world was to work, and therefore the duty of the farmers was to labor in the farm. In the second, he portrayed the rebellion as a radical movement run by fanatics, outside the true spirit of his Reformation.

Lutherans on the side of Luther began to paint Muntzer as a heretic stirring up violence and bloodshed. They focused on Muntzer’s call for a “Christian League” (read: a religious state against the then-present HRE), iconoclasm, refusal to pay tithes, adult baptism, and apocalyptic visions.

So in reviewing this topic, it is important to view the evolution of Luther’s own thinking as regards to authority. Political consideration was certainly a factor, as in this period, Luther wanted a moderate Reform whereby the Princes would be the agents of change, as it was both their Godly privilege to be in their station and their Godly duty to correct what he saw as eggregious errors in the Church of the time.

Further reading:

• J. D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations: 1450-1650, ISBN 0-8476-8834-8, 1999.
• D. MacCulloch, The Reformation, ISBN-13: 978-0143035381, 2005.

E. W. Gritsch’s Martin Luther and Violence: A Reappraisal of a Neuralgic Theme, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Apr 1972. Which to be honest is the extent of my knowledge on this specific topic. I can go on and on about the 30YW but unfortunately that’s much later!

Luther’s reaction to the Peasants’ War was highly criticized, and still is. Some say that he was wrong to ask peasants to tolerate injustice while dreaming of an idealistic world. Some say he was right to reject violence, in particular when he called the rebellion to be driven by carnal desire, not spiritual enlightenment.

Luther certainly used the language of punishment in some of his writing, even those earliest ones. But as far as I know, in his lifetime he never joined a political movement violent or otherwise, rather relying on words to convey his message. This is one reason that the “Protestant movement” fractured.

Going back to Against the Horde of Peasants he said specifically that God along could use wrath against the bad conditions, and that the word of Scripture and the actions of prices should be the remedy of the problems. He cited Deuteronomy 32:35 (“God is not on the side of insurrection”) to say that God alone has the privilege to espouse violence, thus very strongly “no insurrection is ever right, no matter how right its causes are.”

The above is not to say that Luther is against all violence, rather that it can only be wielded by an authority that is endowed by God. And this is what Luther said the Peasants’ War lacked.

Hope the above helps. I highly recommend that article if you haven’t read it yet. Otherwise I rely on the two references in my first post.

So, we might see that he allowed rebellion by the Protestant princes because they were an authority (although lower than the Emperor), but didn’t allow violent rebellion by the peasants because they were not?

Might is absolutely correct, because Luther had died in February 1546 before the Schmalkaldic War broke out in July 1546. That conflict saw Charles V largely successfully compartmentalize the Lutheran Princes, resulting in their inability (or decision) to not provide military support to one another. However, as far as I know, the decision of some Lutheran princes to either abstain or support Charles V was largely political. I do not know to what extent each individual prince sought guidance in Luther’s writings.