Martin Luther Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Return to Wittenberg and Peasants' War: 1522–1525=== {{See also|Radical Reformation|German Peasants' War}} [[File:Wittenberg Lutherhaus.JPG|thumb|[[Lutherhaus]], Luther's residence in [[Wittenberg]]]] Luther secretly returned to [[Wittenberg]] on 6 March 1522. He wrote to the Elector: "During my absence, Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word."<ref>Letter of 7 March 1522. Schaff, Philip, [http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/7_ch04.htm ''History of the Christian Church, Vol VII, Ch IV''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170823185716/http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/7_ch04.htm |date=23 August 2017 }}; Brecht, 2:57.</ref> For eight days in [[Lent]], beginning on Invocavit Sunday, 9 March, Luther preached eight sermons, which became known as the "Invocavit Sermons". In these sermons, he hammered home the primacy of core [[Christian values#New Testament teaching|Christian values]] such as love, patience, charity, and freedom, and reminded the citizens to trust God's word rather than violence to bring about necessary change.<ref>Brecht, 2:60; Bainton, Mentor edition, 165; Marius, 168–169.</ref> <blockquote>Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: "Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it." But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear.<ref name="Schaff IV">Schaff, Philip, [http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/7_ch04.htm ''History of the Christian Church, Vol VII, Ch IV''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170823185716/http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/7_ch04.htm |date=23 August 2017 }}.</ref></blockquote> The effect of Luther's intervention was immediate. After the sixth sermon, the Wittenberg jurist Jerome Schurf wrote to the elector: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin's return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth."<ref name="Schaff IV" /> Luther next set about reversing or modifying the new church practices. By working alongside the authorities to restore public order, he signaled his reinvention as a conservative force within the Reformation.<ref>Marius, 169.</ref> After banishing the Zwickau prophets, he faced a battle against both the established Church and the radical reformers who threatened the new order by fomenting social unrest and violence.<ref>Mullett, 141–43.</ref> [[File:Titelblatt 12 Artikel.jpg|thumb|upright|The ''[[Twelve Articles]]'' of peasants’ demands, issued in 1525]] Despite his victory in Wittenberg, Luther was unable to stifle radicalism further afield. Preachers such as [[Thomas Müntzer]] and Zwickau prophet [[Nicholas Storch]] found support amongst poorer townspeople and peasants between 1521 and 1525. There had been [[Popular revolts in late-medieval Europe|revolts by the peasantry]] on smaller scales since the 15th century.<ref>Michael Hughes, ''Early Modern Germany: 1477–1806'', London: Macmillan, 1992, {{ISBN|0-333-53774-2}}, 45.</ref> Luther's pamphlets against the Church and the hierarchy, often worded with "liberal" phraseology, led many peasants to believe he would support an attack on the upper classes in general.<ref>A.G. Dickens, ''The German Nation and Martin Luther'', London: Edward Arnold, 1974, {{ISBN|0-7131-5700-3}}, 132–133. Dickens cites as an example of Luther's "liberal" phraseology: "Therefore I declare that neither pope nor bishop nor any other person has the right to impose a syllable of law upon a Christian man without his own consent".</ref> Revolts broke out in [[Franconia]], [[Swabia]], and [[Thuringia]] in 1524, even drawing support from disaffected nobles, many of whom were in debt. Gaining momentum under the leadership of radicals such as Müntzer in Thuringia, and Hipler and Lotzer in the south-west, the revolts turned into war.<ref>Hughes, 45–47.</ref> Luther sympathised with some of the peasants' grievances, as he showed in his response to the [[Twelve Articles]] in May 1525, but he reminded the aggrieved to obey the temporal authorities.<ref>Hughes, 50.</ref> During a tour of Thuringia, he became enraged at the widespread burning of convents, monasteries, bishops' palaces, and libraries. In ''[[Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants]]'', written on his return to Wittenberg, he gave his interpretation of the Gospel teaching on wealth, condemned the violence as the devil's work, and called for the nobles to put down the rebels like mad dogs: <blockquote> Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel ... For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who, of their own [[Free will in theology#Lutheranism|free will]], do what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4 [:32–37]. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others—of Pilate and Herod—should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all measure.<ref>Jaroslav J. Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, ''Luther's Works'', 55 vols. (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia Pub. House and Fortress Press, 1955–1986), 46: 50–51.</ref> </blockquote> Luther justified his opposition to the rebels on three grounds. First, in choosing violence over lawful submission to the secular government, they were ignoring Christ's counsel to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"; St. Paul had written in his epistle to the {{bibleverse||Romans|13:1–7|NKJV}} that all authorities are appointed by God and therefore should not be resisted. This reference from the Bible forms the foundation for the doctrine known as the [[divine right of kings]], or, in the German case, the divine right of the princes. Second, the violent actions of rebelling, robbing, and plundering placed the peasants "outside the law of God and Empire", so they deserved "death in body and soul, if only as highwaymen and murderers." Lastly, Luther charged the rebels with blasphemy for calling themselves "Christian brethren" and committing their sinful acts under the banner of the Gospel.<ref>Mullett, 166.</ref> Only later in life did he develop the [[Beerwolf]] concept permitting some cases of resistance against the government.<ref name=Whitford>Whitford, David, ''Tyranny and Resistance: The Magdeburg Confession and the Lutheran Tradition'', 2001, 144 pages</ref> Without Luther's backing for the uprising, many rebels laid down their weapons; others felt betrayed. Their defeat by the [[Swabian League]] at the [[Battle of Frankenhausen]] on 15 May 1525, followed by Müntzer's execution, brought the revolutionary stage of the Reformation to a close.<ref>Hughes, 51.</ref> Thereafter, radicalism found a refuge in the [[Anabaptism|Anabaptist]] movement and other religious movements, while Luther's Reformation flourished under the wing of the secular powers.<ref>Andrew Pettegree, ''Europe in the Sixteenth Century'', Oxford: Blackwell, {{ISBN|0-631-20704-X}}, 102–103.</ref> In 1526 Luther wrote: "I, Martin Luther, have during the rebellion slain all the peasants, for it was I who ordered them to be struck dead."<ref>Erlangen Edition of ''Luther's Works'', Vol. 59, p. 284</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. 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