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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029231004
JOHN A LASCO
BY
DR. HERMANN DALTON
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
BUT few words of
introduction are necessary in presenting the following pages to the English
reader. The aim of the learned author has not been to furnish a history of the Reformation,
dealing mainly with names and dates, such as would be appropriate to a manual
of Church history, but rather to exhibit the secret motives and springs of
action which impelled the friends and foes of the evangelic movement at its
most critical period. For the decades over which A Lasco’s reforming activity
extends mark the time of transition from the days of youthful conquest on the
part of the Reformation to those sad years of divisions and declension which
followed.
Some of the matters
recorded in this volume have only an historic interest for us in the present
day. Many differences that stirred the hearts of men in those days are now
happily consigned to oblivion among evangelical Christians. Many other
questions, however, which were then raised are still urgently pressing for
solution, and foremcSst among these that as to the blending of the greatest
amount of Christian freedom with a spiritual discipline in accordance with the
Word of God. On this subject in particular the example of A Lasco has still
much to teach.
From a purely
literary point of view, it might appear a disadvantage that the book has been
composed little by little, at such intervals of leisure as could be secured
amidst
the absorbing
engagements of a large city church. This disadvantage, however, is greatly
outweighed by the consideration that the writer has, during more than a
quarter of a century, given practical exemplification to the principles laid
down by A Lasco, and that his congregation is perhaps second to none as
respects Scriptural order and the works of evangelisation and benevolence.
In the English
edition some omissions have necessarily been made, more particularly as
concerns the evidences on which our author’s conclusions rest. On the other
hand, a few extra notes have been added, and the year of death has been given
in connection with many names in the Index. The last page and a half of the
text was likewise appended by the translator, by way of explaining how Dr.
Dalton’s history is here brought somewhat abruptly to a close.
Those who would trace
the influence of A Lasco’s Church Order upon the liturgical writings of the
Church of the Netherlands may profitably consult the translation of Dalton’s
work made by Rev. P. C. van Oosterzee, of Enschede, Holland (Utrecht: Kemink en
Zoon), where, moreover, the Latin text is in many places compared with the old
Dutch reading as given in Kuyper.
May this volume go
forth on its way, and be blessed to the promotion of that oneness in the truth
for which A Lasco himself so earnestly laboured.
M. J. E.
CONTENTS.
I.
JOHN A LASCO AS A CATHOLIC IN HIS NATIVE
LAND.
I. LAND
AND PEOPLE OF HIS HOME .... I II. FAMILY AND YOUTH 23
III. THE FIRST STUDENT TRAVELS ABROAD
1. In Rome
2. In Bologna
IV. AT HOME AGAIN
V.THE OTHER STUDENT TRAVELS ABROAD
1.The first residence in Basle
2. In Paris
3. The second residence in Basle
4. The return home by way of Italy
VI. THE LAST DECADE AS A CATHOLIC IN HIS NATIVE
1. Trying experiences at home
2. Laski’s activity in the ecclesiastical domain
3. The severance from Church and fatherland
VI.
VII. ON THE PILGRIMAGE
VIII. AT THE GOAL IN EAST FRIESLAND
1. The waiting time
2. The work with the sword in the hand
3. The work with the trowel in the hand
4. The Reformer in his private life in East
5. The Interim in its influence on Laski’s fate
IX. IN ENGLAND
1. First residence in England
2. Second residence in England
JOHN A
LASCO AS A CATHOLIC IN HIS NATIVE LAND.
LAND AND
PEOPLE OF HIS HOME.
A WIDE and painful
distance now separates the land and people of our hero from the time in which
he was himself living among them. For almost a century past his people has
ceased to be a nation with its own government, its native constitution. By its
own fault, by a cruel bitter fate, it had sunk so low as to be obliged to succumb
to the violent pressure of its neighbours, to submit to dismemberment at their
hands and incorporation into other States, alien indeed, but more firmly compacted
than itself. That lot has already, in the iron course of history, overtaken
many a nation which has outlived itself, and has insensibly disappeared,
absorbed in the life of the mighty conqueror. With tenacious perseverance and
touching love of the fatherland, this people struggles against such iron
destiny ; it cannot yet bring itself to die, and is unable to forget what it
once was, in its heroic days. Reminding in many a striking feature of the
people of the Jews, who nowhere on earth have settled so numerously and
permanently as in this land, its sons wander hither and thither ; only against
their will bearing the foreign yoke or eating the bread of exile, and watching
for every intimation that may
Yes, it is Poland’s
heroic age, this first half of the sixteenth century. More widely have its
frontiers never extended than under the last powerful rulers of the house of
the Jagellons. Lelewel, whose heart glows with such ardent love for his
country, furnishes us among the maps to his history of Poland with one of the
time of John Albert, somewhere about the year 1500. It is a territory which in
the north stretches along the coast from Dantsic to Memel, and then, in a line
running almost direct east, touches the neighbourhood of Dunaburg, passes on by
Witebsk to Smolensk, for the possession of which Russians and Poles often
contended in those days, then again in the east bends deep into the land as far
as the Donetz, and along the Dnieper attains the Black Sea at Kherson. The
sea-coast forms as far as Kilia and Ismail the greatly contested frontier,
which then stretches inland as far as Transylvania and along the Carpathians,
including Moldavia, Bukovina, Galicia, in the west, as far as the district of
Teschen, then northwards
It was a wise step on
the part of Hedwig; the young Queen of Poland, in whose veins Piastic blood
still flowed, to sacrifice her inclination for Duke William of Austria to the
welfare of the State, and to give her hand to the Lithuanian prince Wladislaw
Jagiello (1 386). With this marriage covenant Poland and Lithuania entered into
the relation of a personal union, which, after a lapse of nearly two hundred
years, terminated, by means of the famous Lublin Union (1569), in the firmly
welding of the two lands into a single indivisible commonwealth under the same
ruler and with like constitution. With Wladislaw, who had
before consented to receive baptism in order to be able to wed the fair Hedwig,
there ascended the throne that race under which Poland was led forward to its
highest summit of prosperity. It is a kingly house of rare capacity, that of
these Jagellons, gracious in its character, fascinating in the power and vigour
with which its members wielded the sceptre, and with which they
This fair heritage
likewise pertained in its full extent to its last descendant but one, Sigismund, who for two-and-forty years (1506-1548) gloriously bore the crown in
difficult times. He belongs to the most prominent figures of the sixteenth
century, of high estimation in the council of the regents, feared by his
enemies, but warmly loved by his people, specially during the first decades of
his reign, and so long as the influence of his second consort, the intriguing
Queen Bona (married 1519), did not make itself too greatly felt. Sigismund was
zealous in the fulfilment of the arduous duties of a king of Poland, a
faithful, watchful guardian of his land and people. Yet now and then a certain
trace of weakness pervaded his actions; the wish for repose and order led him
often to leave matters to take their own course where a tighter grasp of the
rein was to be desired. Just upon the point which was at that time the most
decisive of all, the religious question, his different measures are marked by a
want of resolution, which could satisfy neither the Evangelicals nor the Romish
Church, and which in reality proved not for the benefit of either. This
wavering is not to be ascribed alone to his love of
Another element of
difficulty was to be found in the constitution of the land, as this had
gradually shaped itself out in long, deep-reaching conflicts. Poland had become
a republic with a king at its head. The real power lay in the hands of the
nobility, those families which in the struggles of
As opposed to the
nobility, there arose in the towns with the lapse of time a new and weighty
element, of which the princes often availed themselves as a means of holding
in check the inconveniently powerful barons. The influence of these citizens
was at that time one so deeply affecting the history of the Reformation in
Poland, that we must,
The third fragment of
the population was formed by the peasants, the kmetes, a pitiable class, almost
deprived of civil rights, serfs to the nobility, and living on, or rather
pining on, under a heavy load of oppression. The distance between the lords and
But we have not yet
spoken of the religious and
More than half a
millennium had passed since the Polish prince Miecyslaw, the fourth in the
succession of the Piasts (if we may accept the testimony of tradition), sued
for the hand of Dubrawka, daughter of the Bohemian duke Boleslaw, and, in
consequence of this marriage union with thezealous Christian princess,
underwent the rite of baptism (966). A part of this, till then heathen, people
willingly followed the example of their prince and received the doctrines of
his first spiritual instructor, Jordan, although a long time elapsed before the
last remains of heathendom disappeared. Upon the reception of baptism quickly
followed the ecclesiastical organisation of the land; Otho the Great helped to
found in Posen the first Polish bishopric, which was placed under the jurisdiction
of the archbishopric of Magdeburg.
The German
ecclesiastical influence felt at the outset was maintained in subsequent
times, and indeed assumed ever greater proportions. In long well-nigh
uninterrupted succession a mighty host of monks and priests out of almost every
province of Germany pressed eastward to the Oder, and even more deeply into the
land, to the Vistula, and founded monasteries and churches in every part in
such great abundance that, from the time of the contact with the members of the
Russian Church (begun in the days of the Jagellons), the latter were wont to
call the Catholics the people “ of German faith.” With simple trust the nation
submitted to the teachings of the Church, willingly received its ordinances,
even those which were imposed in the form of heavy burdens and obligations. The
fair Slavonic heritage
Very much of that
which was said of the foreign town-population in Poland may be repeated with
regard to this priesthood, likewise alien in nationality, though it may be in
the ecclesiastical domain the evil consequences of this diversity did not
render themselves so sharply and strikingly apparent as in that of the State.
The Romish priest is himself brought up without a home. It is true the impressions
of youth, of the people whose language has become for one a mother-tongue, can
never be entirely obliterated ; even under the most foreign cowl the home
feeling with the land of one’s descent still abides. It is otherwise here;
Those who in the Romish Church and its Latin tongue had found a second
fatherland saw themselves here in Poland
With sure and firm
step, the Church acquired from generation to generation an increasingly
powerful, increasingly significant position in the land. In one respect there
was no distinction between the different social ranks : in the devout
subjection to the Church and its distant head, the vicegerent of the Lord in
Rome. From the king down to the humblest peasant, willing obedience was
rendered to him and his underteachers. To the Church and its highest
dignitaries in the land there had been conceded in the course of time important
prerogatives. The
Yet, with however
great fidelity and obedience the people in all its parts was attached to the
Romish Church, it nevertheless early learned to exercise toleration towards
those in its midst who were not members of that communion, and the more
decidedly to do this in proportion as by victory it more and more widely
extended its frontier. In the exercise of this Christian duty, so rare in those
days, the nation was supported by the fine and noble impulses of the Slavonic
nature, which is not easily aroused to religious fanaticism. Where we come upon
manifestations of that kind in its midst it will not be difficult to detect
the presence of foreign influence, by which the nation was impelled to enter
upon paths it would hardly have entered on of its own accord. First of all, the
Poles were brought into
Apart from the
comparatively few Armenians who, likewise by the incorporation of Podolia, became
united to the kingdom of Poland without their position towards the Pope and the
Church of Rome being as y-et clearly defined, the most important and pressing
occasion for the manifestation of a tolerant spirit towards men of other faith
within the kingdom was the receiving of nearly a third part of the adherents of
the Greek ritual under the sway of the Polish king as Grand Duke of Lithuania,
which was brought about by the accession of the Jagellons. Heathen Lithuania
indeed had been led by Jagiello to Christianity and the Romish Church ;
bordering upon Lithuania, however, were a series of provinces, acquired by
conquest, whose inhabitants had for centuries been so firmly attached to the
Greek Church, that the princes of the house of Gedimin had been obliged, as a
condition of their sovereignty, to go over to this Church. The metropolis of
the Greek Church, Kieff, was included within the domain of Lithuania ; at the
baptism of Wladislaw Jagiello the
Very different was
the line of conduct towards the almost contemporaneous surging upheaval in the
land of a kindred race, Bohemia. The fierce Hussite conflicts cast their mighty
waves as far as Poland in
It is a harsh
language, till .then unfamiliar to Polish ears, when it runs in this edict, “After mature deliberation, and with consent of our prelates, princes, and
barons, we determine, and declare, moreover, that we wish it to be held as a
fixed, abiding, and unalterable decree, that in our kingdom of Poland, and in
all the lands subject to us, every heretic, or every one tainted with heretical
doctrines, or suspected thereof, and in like manner every one who is an abettor
of heretics, shall, by our captains and officers throughout the land, be seized
as a traitor and punished according to requirement. All persons who enter our
kingdom from Bohemia shall be arrested, and subjected to an examination
concerning heretical teachers on the part of those deputed thereto by the
Apostolic see. Every Pole, whosoever he may be, that shall not have returned
out of Bohemia before Ascension Day next (1424) shall be looked upon as a
convicted heretic, and be liable t'o the punishments appointed for heretics.
All his goods and chattels fall to the State treasury, his male and female
descendants forfeit their right of heirship and their rank, and his family is
declared infamous and deprived of all the privileges of the nobility.”
Inexorable as sounded the language, and terrible as the punishments threatened
against the Hussite heresies, they did not prove altogether successful. The
sacred power of the Gospel everywhere calls forth the spirit of freedom, in
such wise that it can
Only in faint outline
have we described the signs which slowly, as the appearing of the daybreak
towards the month of May in the far north, for
In all the lands of
the Reformation we see that it has been men richly endowed with grace whom the
Lord of the Church has called to enter upon the heritage received. Like
victorious leaders of armies, they have brought in the hosts of the believers
to the sanctuary of God’s word, and shown them therein, as the most precious
treasure of the Reformation, the alone salvation in the grace of God through
Jesus Christ. Has such an one been wanting to Poland ? Has there arisen among
its manly sons no hero ready to respond to the call of the Lord, “Here am I;
send me”?
FAMILY AND
YOUTH.
AT Petrikow we quit
the track of the railway which in the present day connects the old capital of
Masovia, Warsaw, with Vienna. Not without an effort do we withstand the attraction
to pay a visit to a town so rich in historic reminiscences, within whose walls
more than one fascinating page in the history of Poland has been written ; for
here during the bloom-time of the Jagellons most of the national diets held
their sittings, often of so stormy a character, of so great import for the
whole of Europe. Another task impels us into the interior of the land. We mount
the open carriage standing ready at the railway station, and are quickly
rolling on our way, behind our cheery team, towards the interior, bound for the
out-of-the way town of Lask, a distance of some six German miles (twenty-five
to thirty English miles). Through the midst of truly Polish scenery speeds the
carriage. The far-reaching undulating plain is a well-cultivated and fertile
district; here and there at the verge of the horizon is descried a slight
extent of forest, but a forest ever receding farther before the ploughshare,
from which the colon it. hopes to obtain more abundant returns out of the soil
We meet with but few inhabitants; rarely does the
These are for us
children of the nineteenth century gloomy pictures, on which our eye does not
care to rest. Shortly before one comes to Lask, the ground resembles the
landscape of the Dunes, but with the difference that the refreshing glimpse of
the sea is wanting : sand-hills, with only a scanty growth upon them, run far
into the cultivated land. We now
A hurried examination
of the documentary records in the parish church having proved unavailing,
there remained yet one more visit to be paid in Lask, thus to come perchance
upon ancient traces of our hero.
Only with difficulty
did we find out a Jew, of whom, it need not be said, there are very many in the
Polish country town, who recalled to mind from the time of his long-past boyish
days the remains of
Far away up there,
where all objects are lost in the hazy blue of the distance, tradition places
the origin of the Laski family. We surrendered ourselves for a moment to its
guidance; but whenever we sought to follow up an indication, specially when it
pointed with great decidedness to England as the cradle of the race, we
invariably returned after a while undeceived. That which is furnished by the
These nebulous forms
of legendary ancestors disappear in the daylight of well-authenticated documents.
In these there emerges, so far as I can learn, as the first of the family,
John, called, on account of his bodily stature, “ the Little,1'
Bishop of Cracow, who died in 1392, after many afflictions, patiently endured.
The Bishop is renowned as a great and learned man ; he was distinguished not
only for considerable theological attainments, but also as an eminent
physician, highly esteemed as such by his king, Lewis, and his see had to boast
of many advantages received at his hand. His brother Albert outlived him by a
quarter of a century. The latter was lord of the manor of Lask and Krowicz,
from 1391 till his death in 1417 Castellan of Leczyc (Ladensis).t He died in
his strong castle of Smarszew; his son interred him in the family vault at the
church of the Minorites in Kalisch. He married Catharine, the titled daughter
of the Standard- bearer of Sieradz; the high dignity of the father-in-law
descended to his son John (1393—1451)- As such, John Laski had to carry in
battle the banner of this palatinate, a perilous post of honour, as the brave
Before the father had
entered upon his pilgrimage he had betrothed his son Andrew to Barbara, of the
noble house of Rembieszow (Randyeszow). Besides two daughters, of whom only
faint traces, hardly more than conjectures, have come down to us, there sprang
from this marriage four sons. The eldest, named after his father, Andrew, was
Custos of Gnesen, Cracow, and Cujavia, and held a canonicate in Posen. When he
died, in 1512, he was interred by his brother in the cathedral church of
Gnesen. This his brother John, born in 1456 at the family seat of Lask,
attained to the highest spiritual dignity in Poland, and died Archbishop of
Gnesen 1531. We shall often in the sequel have occasion to return to him. Of
the youngest brother, Michael, who seems to have died early, there is nothing
to relate. For us his elder brother Jaroslaw, the father of our hero, occupies
the foreground. He was lord of the manor at Lask. From 1492 to 1506, we find
him Tribune of Sieradz, upon which office his younger brother entered when he
himself became Palatine of
John a
Lasco beheld the light of the world in the fortress of his father’s family,
probably about the year 1499. Here, in the finely situated castle, the boy
spent his childhood in the society of his parents and the companionship of his
brothers and sisters. In great fear and reverence of the father and mother were
the Polish children of those days brought up. It was looked upon as a
distinction to be allowed to remain a considerable
time with the parents; ordinarily the children in such great houses were consigned
to their own rooms and to the care of attendants or tutors. Not rarely might
one see upon the landed estates, besides the nobleman’s mansion, the proper
family seat, likewise a separate edifice which served as a domicile for the
children, and from which they came, as it were, on a visit to their parents.
The first years of
life the children may have passed in quiet, amidst the fresh and invigorating
country life. Even though a noisy and uproarious mirth may have prevailed in
the nobleman’s house, taking into account the hospitality of the land, the
manifold forms of dissipation, and the exalted position occupied by the head of
the family, yet but little of this turmoil penetrated into the apartments of
the children, who were kept far away from the din and distraction of social
life. The education of the family began early. In the towns there were schools,
or the growing lads were sent to the nearest cloister-school; the wealthy noble
took into his house a young priest or tutor, to whom the whole training was
then committed. The education of youth of noble birth was a careful one in
those days. Much diligence in particular was applied to the acquiring of the
Latin language, the boys and girls taking part together ; and both sexes
acquired so great a degree of proficiency therein, that they employed, in oral
and written intercourse, this foreign language, which was even more homely and
familiar to them than the sound of their mother-tongue.
Seldom did the
children while they were young go beyond the limits of their parents’ castle.
They
From among the
miserable cabins of earth or wood in the little town, the stone church rose in
splendour, an object of almost astonishing adornment amidst the indigent
surroundings, yea even surpassing in its outward appearance the house of the
nobleman itself. It could not fail to produce an early and abiding impression
upon the susceptible minds of the children when they observed how highly the
sanctuary of the house of God was
The grandfather,
Andrew—so it was related to the eagerly listening children—had more than half a
century ago devoted a stone church to St. Anne, upon the spot where a poor
little building dedicated to St. Michael had stood before. His son, their uncle
John, was at that very time lavishing yet greater sacrifices and wealth of art
upon their parish church. With his lively family feeling, with his warm love of
country, he rested not until he had conferred enhanced lustre and renown upon
the church of his childhood. He was the means, in 1506, of inducing the
Archbishop of Gnesen to found a collegiate institute in connection with this
church. As soon as he had himself become archbishop, and had returned from his
journey to Rome, he caused the church to be enlarged, and its interior
completed, in part by Italian architects from Cracow. The new edifice received
the name of the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and
also Church of St. Michael. As the greatest object of veneration, in addition
to many other relics and precious vessels, he bestowed upon it the statue of
Mary, executed in white marble, which Pope Clement VII. had given to him,
faithful Catholic as he was, and regarding which it was quickly rumoured that
it was gifted with miraculous powers, and that helpless invalids were healed by
touching it, not at all to the hurt of Lask. For during many successive
centuries pilgrimages were made from afar to this statue,”which is now but
little visited and appealed to for help, hidden as it is in the world-forgotten
The boys passed no
more than their childhood in rustic seclusion at the family castle of Lask.
Perhaps even- from
the time of the coronation of King Sigismund (1507), or, it may be, only from
the time of the uncle becoming Archbishop of Gnesen (1510), the latter received
his nephews into his archiepiscopal residence at Cracow, there to bestow upon
them a higher education, mainly .under his own oversight.* The Archbishop
cherished great affection for his family, specially for his brother the
Palatine of Sieradz and his talented, highly endowed sons. Willingly did the
father grant to the royal chancellor and after-ar'chbishop free rein in the
education of his sons. The Archbfehop belonged in those days to the number of
the most renowned personages of the Polish court. Great services rendered to
his fatherland had obtained for him the high position of Primate of the
kingdom, and he filled this office in a brilliant manner as an ecclesiastical
prince and. a statesman of the first rank. King Casimir had already desired! to
have the secretary and chancellor of his lord-chancellor in his own immediate
service, as had also, but likewise for the time being without success, King
John Albert. Some few embassies, however, Laski could not decline. He was in
Rome when the troops of Charles VIII. entered there (1494), and a second time
at the great Jubilee (1500); in like manner we see him at Brussels in the year
1497. In 1502 he becomes chief secretary to the King; in the following year he
is already Chancellor of the kingdom. We cannot follow this energetic man
through all the labours by which in that position he rendered such eminent
services to king and country, until at the age of
There is presented to
us in his person the enchanting picture of a mighty prince of the Church of
that day. His significance lies much more in the civil than the ecclesiastical
domain. He administers his high office with great prudence, and always as one
animated by an ardent love of the fatherland. In his actions he is guided in
the first instance by his views as a Pole. It is thus he gives his counsel to
the King; thus he raises his powerful voice in the Senate, at the different
provincial diets. The Church is not a matter of indifference for him; far from
it. He is and will be a Polish Catholic ; firmly and faithfully is he wedded to
his Church, even to its so great errors, so superstitious customs of those days
; while those of his own rank in Rome have only the same pitying smile alike
for these and for. the truths of the Gospel. It is not merely a sense of
prudence which impels him to obtain an approving papal brief for his edition of
the civil laws ; his wish is to have done nothing which might be displeasing
to the Pope.* Just as little is it with him imitation of traditional custom :
he is really of the devout belief that he shall rest in more sacred soil when
he brings with him earth from Jerusalem' and from the grave of St. Gregory, and
causes it to be emptied out in front of the cathedral church at Gnesen, on the
spot where one day his bones are to be laid. With real devotion does he give reception
to the relics which have been presented
As a Polish
ecclesiastical prince, the Archbishop lived in great and brilliant style. It is
an abundant inventory of valuables which he devises to friends and relatives in
his will. The long 'enumeration makes us soon forget that it is the legacy of
a servant whose Master, poorer than fox and bird of the air, had not where to
lay His head. The Archbishop’s position necessitated his holding court, and not
in Gnesen alone : in Cracow too he had his residence, where the highest of the
kingdom went in and out
.
Hither he had his
three nephews removed so soon a? the years came when they must receive a higher
education in order to fit them for the career which, in consultation with their
father, he selected for them. Jerome and Stanislas were destined to the
statesman’s office, while our Johannes—as it seems, his uncle’s favourite—was
early marked out for an ecclesiastical career. We have not the slightest ground
for
It was a vast change,
particularly for the mind of an emotional youth, from the quiet of a country
life, from the seclusion of his father’s castle, to be transferred all at once
into the bustling city of Cracow and into the palace of the revered Archbishop.
Cracow was then in the days of its splendour. King Casimir the Great, who so
much loved the city, had found it at his accession built of wood and earth, but
at his death had left it constructed of stone. During tlie preceding
half-century the prosperity of the city had increased with extraordinary
strides ; hand in hand therewith had arisen a creative spirit, delighting to
give to this wealth an abiding expression in magnificent buildings, such as
bear fair testimony to a lively taste for art. The very different conditions of
later centuries have not succeeded altogether in effacing this expression. Even
in the present day the city enchains us by its ancient towering structures, and
the judge of architecture still discovers many an edifice which brings to his
mind those palmy days of the Jagellonian age. One trait in particular even now
manifests itself with great significance; the twofold current, namely, which
Everywhere, upon the
streets, in the houses, in the guild chambers and halls, prevailed a most
active and bustling life. That which must most favourably strike one in a city
like Cracow at this time is the remarkable prominence given to the burgher
element, side by side with the imposing splendour and glory of the residence of
a king whose voice was mighty in the council of crowned heads—a burghership
which was conscious of its own importance, and with pride also knew how to
maintain its rights in presence of a haughty nobility. It was not thus at all
in accord with the other relations in the land. Nor was it yet known at that
time, that the powerful nobility would gradually, to the ruin of the country,
force back this so important element, and deprive it of its privileges.
With great
earnestness and jealous care did the uncle watch over the education of the
nephews committed to his charge. He demanded much of them and imposed severe
discipline, because he intended one day to confer much upon them, and would confer
this only upon men who were called, by reason of their vigour and ability, to
be an ornament of their country. Cracow offered even in those days a choice of
very fine schools ; the Archbishop, however, preerred, as was then
customary with the nobility of higher rank, to provide private tuition for his
wards, who were accordingly placed in the hands of a pedagogue. This course was
the more imperative in the present case, inasmuch as the uncle was often
obliged to stay for a long time together in other places, while Cracow remained
the constant dwelling- place- of his nephews. Such a tutor was looked upon as a
member of the family. He remained year after year in the house, and accompanied
the sons to the University. In his later days he obtained, as a rule, some kind
of engagement, generally as secretary or steward to his former pupil, and at
last a generous provision for his old age. We are perhaps justified in
regarding John Braniczky as such pedagogue of the boys as early as the Cracow
days ; we meet with him again as accompanying them in Bologna ; and he is
afterwards adopted by the elder brother, Jerome, among those of his household
(familiaris), and is also often employed by the uncle as a sort of confidential
agent.*
We have been unable,
notwithstanding zealous investigations, to discover immediate accounts of the
course of study pursued by our boys in the archi- episcopal palace ; but, since
we have no reason to suppose that this differed in any essential respect from
that usual in Cracow in those days, we may suppose the impressions we have
gained with regard to the prevailing form of instruction to hold good also so
far as concerns the education of the nephews. We shall certainly not be far
wrong in the conception, formed from the school books which appeared in
The great number of
school books appearing in Cracow in those days, particularly for the classic
languages, enables us to infer the great demand existing, equally so as the
early editions prepared of the Roman and even Greek writers. Special merit for
such editions was here acquired by fohn of Glogan, Professor in the
University,f and fohn Sommerfeld, pupil of Celtes.
Much stress was laid
by the strict and accomplished uncle upon his nephews’ acquiring the necessary
attainments by means of severe discipline and training ; their great desire for
learning, and the rich natural gifts which early manifested themselves, readily
and easily seconded these requirements. The time was spent not in scientific
studies alone; in the case of the sons of the Polish nobility respect was had
likewise to vigorous physical development. In early years the boy learned while
in his father’s castle to mount the horse, and soon knew how to urge him on
with gleeful delight. The stables at the archiepiscopal palace were
sufficiently extensive for the young barons not to need to forego in the city
their wonted art. The wielding of arms, too, was not long an unknown
acquirement to the freeborn youth so soon as he had attained the strength
So far as it is
possible for us to form a clear conception, from the sparse information we
have, as to the education of the Polish nobility of that day, it reminds us not
a little of many a prominent feature in the education even to the present day
in the ancient schools of England, which have been scarcely touched by the
rapidly transforming hand of time. A kindred trait of great significance is
presented to us in the fact that here, as there, in the houses of the nobility
the son who is growing up learns that which is stirring in the minds of the
fathers. As yet the young men are not allowed to take a. personal part in the
conversation ; but they are silent attentive listeners, and acquire in this
way, in social intercourse with those of riper age, almost without an effort a
portion of their special refinement. Their fathers, then in Poland and still in
England, were not idle spectators of that which was passing in the world ; they
felt themselves called to play an energetic part
It was mainly in
order to afford his nephews the abundant advantage which accrues to youth from
an early association with the leading men of the fatherland that the royal
chancellor and Archbishop had taken the highly promising lads out of their
ancestral castle to himself in the city. The house of this distinguished man
formed a place of rendez
In the intellectual
domain also the highly favoured land had just attained to the zenith of its
development, was perhaps at that very time preparing to descend again from the
height. The culture of the Polish nobility at this time drew to itself the
wondering gaze of other nations ; that which outside of the land stirred the
spirits found here a lively echo, open welcome, free asylum. The Humanism, too,
awakened by the revival of the sciences in the fifteenth century, passed, in its
travels through the cultured nations of Europe, over the Polish frontiers,
settled in the hospitable land, and became quickly naturalised among the upper
ranks of society; specially in Cracow, whither, in the year 1400, King
Wladislaw removed the University, already founded, in 1364, by Casimir the
Great in the humid city of Kasimir. It had become a fashion with the sons of
the nobility to pass a few years abroad in study at the main seats of science ;
eager as they
The restless and
unrestrained love of travel which took possession of not a few Humanists, and led-them
to roam from place to place, to search in ancient monasteries for lost
manuscripts, or to scatter in all directions the fresh-discovered knowledge,
had brought many of these “ errant people ” to the distant Sarmatian land ; and
great was their astonishment when they beheld in the strongholds, amidst the
rude wilderness, so much refinement and intelligence ; when in Cracow and the
other cities, peopled mainly by German burghers, they met with such busy life,
such stirring commerce. The famous historian Dlugosz is able to relate to the
almost omnipotent Bishop of Cracow of that time, Zbigneus (1450),—upon whom the
Pope conferred the cardinal’s hat,—that JEneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius
II., one of the first waters of his day, and renowned for his Latin style,
expressed his astonishment at the letter he had received from the supposed
land of barbarians. ^Eneas twitted the Germans present, he tells us, with the
words that the epistle was a reproach to them ; for this epistle was so
charming and full of thought, that he did not know whether he should himself
succeed in framing a worthy reply. The letter was a proof that there
When the
distinguished Humanist Filippo Buonac- corsa da Gemignano, better known under
his nom de plume of Callimachus, was driven out of Rome by Pope Paul II., who
was hostile to Humanism, he turned, impelled by curiosity and love of travel,
to Poland (1470) ; in Cracow he entered himself as scholar at the University,
and became tutor and afterwards familiar friend of the royal princes. His
influence in diffusing Humanism in Poland was far from small; an Italian bishop
composed on him the not altogether inapposite epigram :
Barbes were the family clept who drove put of Rome Callimachus,
But he in return has
made into Romans barbarians.
At the time when
Callimachus was opening up a path to Humanism in Poland, there dwelt at Cracow
Conrad Celtes, the true picture of an errant Humanist of that day, who in Rome
had been a disciple of Pomponius Laetus, and had already obtained from the
German emperor the doctor’s hat, and yet did not disdain to be enrolled as a scholar
at the Polish University (1497)—scholar and teacher, it is true, at the same
time. While to-day he sat at the feet of Albert of Brudzewo and attended his
lectures on
Callimachus, it is true, no longer lived when young Laski was in Cracow for his education, and Celtes, too, had a decade before wandered back to Germany; but the influence of such men and of those like-minded with them did not come to an end with their departure : far and wide extended the circle of intellectual movement which they had set going, and the quickening surge touched with refreshing vigour that society which frequented the house of the Archbishop, himself acquainted with Callimachus in his best years, and assuredly no stranger to the “Society of the Vistula.” The growing lads, themselves devoted with most ardent zeal to the study of the classics, could only be advanced in a high degree by a surrounding like this.
Such was the
intellectual atmosphere breathed by the young Laskis during the days of their
education in Cracow. Their after-life affords evidence that this atmosphere
braced and prepared them to enter with vigour upon their future life-task. They
had reached in the course of time the years at which, having outgrown the age
of home-training, they were to receive the finishing touch to their education
at the University. The Polish University was no doubt in a position to have
imparted this. It counted its students by many hundreds, and distinguished professors
in the different departments contributed not a little to the reputation of the
University. But it was the practice of the nobility to send their sons abroad
for the completion of their studies. Paris, Bologna, Padua exerted greater
attraction for the travel-loving Poles, than the national University. Formerly,
too, the sister school of Prague had belonged to the number of these specially
favoured seats of learning; but the Hussite conflicts, and the edicts issued in
consequence thereof against repairing to the Bohemian capital, now tainted with
heresy, had told unfavourably upon this predilection. For our young Laskis the
decision of the question as to the scene of their future studies rested with
the uncle ; his official business at the time determined the choice of the
University.
THE FIRST
STUDENT TRAVELS ABROAD.
THE beginning of the
year 15 12 brought with
The route led first
to Cracow. Here he received the intelligence, communicated by the King, of the
death of Julius II. Sigismund left it to the judgment of the ambassador whether
he would be put from his journey or not by the unexpected event; Laski,
however, hastened the more to attend the assembly of ecclesiastical princes at
the decisive hour. He left the Castellan of Kalisch behind to await the new
credentials, and himself departed in the first week of April. The two elder
nephews, Jerome and our Joliannes, were to prosecute their studies under his
eyes in Rome. Stanislas, as yet only twelve years old, remained for the present
with his father. In place of him we hear of another companion in study, whom
the Archbishop took, along with the two nephews, at his own charge. Although a
few letters of his are lying before us, we are unable to discover anything
definite with regard to this person. Laski, who supported at his own cost a
lecturer on theology at the University of Cracow, and in a liberal manner
supported learning and its disciples, furnished at the same time a number of
young people with the means of pursuing their studies. Among these he may have
been one, an intimate friend of the nephews, perhaps a member of the family
bearing the escutcheon Korab (the cognisance of the Laskis).
It may be the two
nephews were already equipped to begin with their uncle the long and tedious
journey, or it may be that they only overtook him, with his companions in
travel, in Brack, on the Mur, whither, by way of Olmiitz, Stanislas of Ostrorog
It was the seventh
sitting of the Lateran Council, -—on the 17th of June,—which Laski first
attended, and at which he delivered his credentials. While his companion,
Stanislas of Ostrorog, is mentioned in the protocol as amongst the ambassadors,
we find Laski in the catalogue of the Patriarchs and assistants of the Pope.
Leo X. received the Primate of Poland with great honours ; he placed him upon
the important commission of the council, in which all questions touching the
restoration of a universal
We have not been able
to discover the slightest
The last twenty years
had not been favourable to the liberal sciences in Rome. A breath, pestilential
for all sound development of sober science, had proceeded from Alexander VI.
Subsequently indeed Julius II. had shown, after his manner in majestic style,
taste and intelligence for all the arts of peace, but yet he loved still more
to draw the sword for the liberation of Italy, for the aggrandisement of the
Ecclesiastical States ; and amidst the constant din of war the studies could
not flourish, since these call for quiet and composure. The favourable time
dawned at length under the polished and brilliant De Medici (Leo X.). From the
beginning he directed all his interest to the Gymnasium founded in Rome seventy
years before. In the very year of our young students’ residence in Rome this institute
of higher learning possessed nearly a hundred professors of repute, who
delivered lectures on theology, civil and ecclesiastical jurisprudence,
medicine, ethics, logic, and mathematics. The main attention in the Gymnasium
was at that time directed to the study of the Greek language. The renowned John
Lascaris, called to the office by the
How gladly, however,
would we pierce the taciturn obscurity and get to know what impression the
sojourn in Rome produced upon these susceptible young spirits. But nothing
whatever is told us on this point. And yet it was a stirring time, and one
profoundly affecting the destinies of Rome, this eve of the Reformation, in
which, from the prevailing sultriness of the atmosphere, many a one already
anticipated the coming storm. Did the stay there pass away entirely without a
trace for our young Poles ? Did they receive during these years of so great
susceptibility an afflatus of the breath which streamed forth from the art
there celebrating its
The uncle did not
wish his nephews to complete their studies in Rome. For Johannes in particular
a visit to the neighbouring world-famed University of Bologna was of importance
for the prosecution of his studies in ecclesiastical law. The Primate himself
was compelled to attend for a while longer the sittings of the council, and to
perform the many and very difficult commissions entrusted to him from his
native land to be fulfilled at the papal court (which for months in succession
showed itself unfavourable to the wishes of Poland), now alone, since as early
as the end of the year 1513 his companion, the Castellan of Kalisch, had, at
the King’s command, journeyed to Spain, and thence had returned direct to his
own country. Towards the close of the year 15 14,")" John Braniczki,
the tutor of the young men,
The distinguished
party required four days to reach Bologna from Rome, probably by way of the
pass of Furlo. They would travel slowly by a route that presented so much
worthy of notice on these breezy days of the later autumn.
2. In Bologna.
The first few days of
their sojourn at Bologna were spent by our friends in the public hostelry,
until they could find a dwelling suitable to their requirements. Some letters,
accidentally lighted upon, afford us an attractive glimpse of the quiet life of
study of these our young friends in that city.
We see first certain
new-comers entering the circle of our old acquaintances. In May, 15 14, the
Archbishop had sent his marshal, Nicholas Wolski, Castellan of Sochawczew, a
man very faithfully attached to him, and, moreover, afterwards related by
marriage, to the King of Poland with an important message. In the autumn (8th
September) the Polish general Constantine of Ostrorog inflicted a crushing
defeat upon the Russians, under the Grand Duke Wassilij Ivanovitch, at Orsza.
With this victory, too, the affairs of Poland at the papal court took a
favourable turn, as Laski at once began to experience in his negotiations. It
was in truth a victory not only over the threatening foe of the distant Poland
: for Rome it was still more a victory of the faithful son of the Romish Church
over the schismatic. In the joy of his heart, and with a view to maintain the
favourable sentiment in Rome, the King sent the
The favourable
occasion of the journey, which followed the route by way of Bologna, was turned
to account for convoying a few students to our friends : first, the youngest
brother, Stanislas, who was now thought by his father old and matured enough to
pursue his studies in Bologna. With him arrived at the same time a brother of
that Johannes as to whose family and connection with the lineage of
Braniczki
commends the young men to the Archbishop as being very industrious and virtuous
(adolescentes studiosissimi et virtuosi sunt). A great zeal for the acquisition
of learning animates the two nephews, who are attached to each other in
heartfelt love. What the one wishes to learn, the other also will learn,
although now, owing to their different branches of study, they must follow
separate paths. In point of ability Jerome surpasses them all ; he merits
without qualification the encomium of a very gifted youth. Concerning his
beloved brother, our Johannes, the testimony is given, that he is his tutor’s
dearest pupil, a youth of the highest integrity. Braniczki declares he has
never seen such an one, and gives utterance to the wish that a long life may be
granted him: “ Carissimus dominus Joannes nepos- R. P. tuse, ibi est summa
virtus, nunquam vidi hujus modi puerum ; utinam esset longe vivens.’' This is
the first direct testimony we have been able to obtain concerning our hero; it
touches that chord of his nature which lifelong has given forth such a pure
entrancing note, a note which a decade later, as a most sweet resonance of
home, affected with deep longing the innermost soul of a man like Erasmtis, to
which we shall ourselves more than once in the following pages, when in full
maturity the noble form shall come nearer to us in word and deed, listen with
delight. Nor did this nobility and charm of disposition, which so early
proceeded in a surprising manner from the youth, exert its influence upon those
only who came in contact with him for the first time : equally did it exert
this upon the nearest occupants of the house, who, in the intimacy of a common life,
received undisturbed the same agreeable impression from the moral purity of
this personality. After the two brothers had been separated for a time Jerome
wrote to his uncle from Bologna: “ When I met my beloved brother Johannes again
here, I became a new man ; by him all my weariness of life was driven far away,
all tedium disappeared, and all delight in labour returned with him in enhanced
degree. He has augmented the stores of his mind and his knowledge, which he has
manifested in discourse of prose and verse, and that far beyond the measure of
other young men, during his sojourn in Germany; he has certainly not idled away
his time and counted the sand, but has read and listened to the most
distinguished authors. One cannot but admire the power of memory, the
perseverance, the gravity \constantia et severitas] with which the youth is
inspired, so that we are all filled with respect and reverence for him \ut eum
omnes facile timemus et veneramur\ ; * one thing we most earnestly implore,
that many years of life may be granted to him. I do not make this boast of him
as my brother, but rather as a good and most honourable young man, with whom,
so long as we are together here, I will advance in common in the good arts with
all the power of my manhood.” That the brother also, in like manner as the
preceptor, does not suppress the wish for long life to this rare youth,
inspires us with the apprehension that the bodily sufferings with which
But we must return to
our scholar and his studies at the seat of the Muses in Bologna.
As Poles our youthful
students were counted to belong to the University of the Ultramontani, which,
in opposition to the University of the Citra- montani, consisted of scholars
from eighteen different non-Italian nations, and enjoyed as such full civic
rights, together with the great privileges which Bologna, in opposition to the
Sorbonne, conceded to the scholars. For in Bologna the students from ancient
time formed the Corporation, and elected the heads thereof from their own
midst; the tutors were subject to them* Originally only a twofold School of
Law, there were added, as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, an
Art School for the Philosophers and Medical Men, and further, as a fourth High
School, the Theological School, founded by Innocent VI. in the second half of
the same century, which by a peculiarity was constituted after the model of the
Sorbonne, so that in it not the scholars, but the professors, formed the Corporation.
Alike in the School of Law as in the School of Arts and that of Theologians had
our Johannes to attend lectures, since, in the first place, the humanistic
studies had not yet come to a close; and then the further studies, on canonical
law and that which the theological faculty afforded, were superadded.
Unhappily we cannot
accompany our young priest in his professional studies at Bologna. All attempts
If we abate somewhat
from the arrogant and disdainful judgment of the German, prejudiced as he is
against the Italians, there is still left a residuum which is confirmed from
other quarters. The theological studies were in those days far outstripped by
the humanistic. While in the latter a new life was awakening, like the shaking
and moving which the prophet beheld when he looked upon the dry bones; while
here, in a beauty unimagined before, the world of the Greeks and Romans arose
as from a grave before the intoxicated vision, and all the intellectual
activity of the contemporaries was directed, as with gigantic power and almost
spasmodic energy, to the raising of this so wonderful treasure; theology, on
the other hand, had fallen behind and moved on in the primitive ruts, untouched
by all that which, like an earthquake, stirred the hearts of contemporaries to
their depths, drifting along in an almost guileless way, without a single
foreboding, towards the point at which its miner’s-candle of scholasticism is
extinguished by the gust of the new age.
Precisely such old
renowned universities as Bologna are readily exposed to the temptation of
clinging rigidly to that which is traditional. It may have been monks who piled
up around the established dogmas this infinite series of questions, of reasons
and counter-reasons, of definitions, distinctions, syllogisms, and
corollaries, as the autumn wind covers a grave with withered leaves; but such
affliction must have been unendurable to a youthful spirit, which had already
for years past breathed in the clear, pure, bracing air of the ancient authors,
twofold affliction at a time when in all the domains of life a new movement
was astir, and scholasticism
For the exposition of
Holy Scripture Bologna also possessed a professor’s chair; but for a long time
past this important branch had become degenerated or overgrown into an
exposition of the exposition, in which the subtlety of the prevalent theologic
tendency found a wide and pleasant field for running riot, now indeed no longer
an authority entirely unquestioned. As early as 1516 there appeared in Genoa a
psalterium in four languages;
A special activity
prevailed during the residence of our friends at Bologna in the province of
philosophy, in which province a quick-sighted eye might even then have seen
that spirit most astir which brought to a close the mediaeval period, and powerfully
furthered for Italy its transformation into the form of the Renaissance. We can
hardly suppose that our young theologian remained at this early period unmoved
by the working of this spirit. Until then Aristotle and his dialectics had
dominated the thought of men through the centuries, exerting an influence such
as certainly no other far-famed philosopher had ever exerted. The researches
of the Humanists had brought to light fresh writings of the master, which
considerably extended the circle of their knowledge. Specially since the fall
of Constantinople (1453) had an acquaintance with the writings of Plato
likewise become widely diffused in Italy ; and so many a “ Platonic academy ”
attested the enthusiastic affection cherished for this world- famed sage. Both
heroes of the intellect found their ardent admirers, not at first in a sense
mutually exclusive, but the longer the time that elapsed the sharper became the
accentuation of the difference. There is certainly a diverse tendency of mind
in the two Dioscuri, that primeval divergence which was also manifested in the
most vigorous days of scholasticism. In Bologna itself main representatives of
the two tendencies were then engaged in teaching, Alexander Achilinus, himself
a Bolognese, who died in his native town in 1518, exerted considerable power.
Ritter judges of him that his philosophical
It would be a great
satisfaction if we could only discover now whether these intellectual conflicts
and scientific endeavours exerted any influence upon the development of our
friend, and if so, of what kind. But all effort to come upon the track of
farther information as to his course of study at Bologna proved in vain ; and
it remained to us only to make the modest attempt, above presented, to combine
in
Nor does our young
theologian seem to have found any particularly excellent models in the
preacher’s office at the ,High School. We are again led to fall back upon
the—as it seems to us, exaggerated—statements of Cochlaus, as he lashes the
style of preaching with the following drastic strokes : “ Most of the fast
preachers are, if I may so say, rather buffoons or declamatory strolling
players than preachers, than apostles, than Augustines. While many, surpassing
each other in a foolish manner in gesticulations and in voice, think they are
imitating Paul or Cicero, they yet speak and act only hypocritically to the
people. Is it to be wondered at that they accomplish nothing in this manner ?
When they wish to be passionate, they gallop through the discourse without
observing a comma ; to and fro they move their heads like crows, spring up, run
about the pulpit here and there, cry out, fight with their arms, turn their
backs upon the congregation, specially when they pray for the congregation to
the little crucifix standing behind them ; outwardly they weep, inwardly they
laugh and please themselves infinitely.”
Not entirely
undisturbed by external things did
As is well known, Leo
X. held in 1516 the renowned and momentous interview with Francis I. in
Bologna. From the time of the glorious victory of the chivalrous hero and King
at Marignano, the Pope was obliged to take every step for entering into
friendly intercourse with the victor ; the meeting at Bologna was to give its
expression to these endeavours. Great privileges were here granted to the
French king. The Pragmatic Sanction, subject of so much controversy, was indeed
annulled ; but the most important privileges and immunities conveyed by it were
renewed by a special Act, which then became the basis of the “freedom of the
Gallican
A few weeks after
this august meeting serious collisions had arisen among the Bolognese students
between the different nationalities. The Germans turned out against the
Lombards ; quickly the young fiery blood had recourse to the sword, to the
unwieldy musket; for two days the fierce turmoil lasted on the streets. On the
side of the Germans were ranged, among other nationalities, also the Hungarians
and the Poles. Whether our chivalrous Poles, too, expert as they were in the
handling of weapons, betook themselves to the sword, we cannot say ; at any
rate, however, they heard in these stormy days a manly German knight, as
advocate of the Germans, and thus also of the Poles allied with them,
vigorously represent before the partial governor the injustice done to them;
it was no less a man than Ulrich von Hutten * We have not met with any hint,
either in Laski or Hutten, which might lead to the supposition of a mutual
personal acquaintance between the two during their contemporaneous stay in
Bologna. Numerous as are the points of contact which might be discovered in the
character of the two men, equally far-reaching
The residence in
Bologna was hastening to an end. In most cases strangers remained three years
at the University. So greatly had this become the custom that every scholar had
the right to remain three years in his dwelling, during which time the owner of
the house could not give him warning.^ Our Poles did not remain their full
triennium. The uncle had left Rome as early as the first days of August, 1515;
and, after a brief stay in Vienna and then with the Cardinal Archbishop of
Gran, had
In the following year
a disconnected passage in this same testament occasions us surprise. It may
belong to the beginning of the year, and the incident relate to the close of 15
17. ‘‘ Our nephew Johannes has, in consequence of I know not what error,
persuasion, or occasion, withdrawn from the University of Bologna ; nor do I
know whither he has repaired. I fear that I shall be involved in costs from
this business.”t Our Johannes cannot have been long absent from Italy; for it
was in the spring of 1518 that he was excommunicated at Rome. His cousin,
Martin Rambiewski, it must be known, had drawn a bill in Rome for six hundred
and seventy gulden in the name of our Johannes, of which the latter knew
nothing. Rambiewski seems to have fallen into somewhat doubtful society in
Rome, and to have laid out more money in country pleasures and the purchase of
expensive pictures than his means admitted, and so, pressed by his creditors
and led astray in an evil moment, to have had recourse to the expedient
hazardous in itself,
And upon our
Johannes, too, it inflicted no stigma, specially since he suffered it so
undeservedly. When also in after-years, upon a much more serious occasion, he
drew down upon himself the punishment of expulsion, albeit unpronounced, it
was yet powerless to hurt his character, or by such imperious decision of the
Church to separate him from his Lord and Saviour.
AT HOME A
GAIN.
AFTER an absence of
five years, our Johannes
What proofs of his
maturity for entering upon his chosen calling Laski brought home from the
University, we know not. Perhaps we have not to set down this ignorance
exclusively to the sparseness of the communications made to us. Examinations
in the sense of our anxious, careful age were not then required in order to
pass the threshold of official dignities and burdens. The examination for the
obtaining of the title of licentiate or that for doctor of canon law Laski did
not undergo in Bologna,* probably because he was not disposed to undergo it,
inasmuch as his prospective mode of life lay in another direction, in which he
could dispense with such dignities. It was of service to him only to have
resided for a certain time at a distinguished university for the pursuit of
his studies. How these years were then actually employed mattered not much,
specially if one enjoyed the protection of influential personages. This aid was
certainly not wanting to the son of a distinguished palatine, nephew of the Primate
and Archbishop of Gnesen ; and the first ripened fruits of such a relationship
had already fallen into his lap before he had crossed the frontiers of his
native land. Of so many reproaches made to the Archbishop of Gnesen by his many
and decided opponents, who were for the most part envious of him, there is not
one which has a greater amount of foundation than when he is accused of
nepotism in availing himself
The uncle, as already related, had returned to Poland from the Lateran Council in 1515, loaded with tokens of personal favour on the part of the Pope and of recognition of his exalted position. Among other marks of honour, he was himself as the first, and each of his successors in the archiepis- copal see in turn, appointed a legatus natus, a high distinction granted only to a few bishoprics, and one which at the same time invests the occupant for the time being of the archiepiscopal throne with the rank and dignity of a papal nuncio, who as such also has direct communication with the pope and the ruler of the land. The kindly Archbishop was not slow to raise his nephew to the first round of the ladder to whose topmost round he had himself climbed, and which he was minded one day at his death to yield up to the much-promising young man. Even while the scholar was pursuing his studies in Bologna, he made him canon (canonicus) at the Collegiate Institute in Leczyc, the principal town of the palatinate of the same name, in which the father held the dignity of palatine from the year 1506 to this year of the appointment of his son as canon (1517). The son will assuredly not have resided, any more than the father had done, in this unwholesome place, surrounded on every side by swamps. On the 30th of December, 15 17, a further and higher rank was added. The young man, who was preparing for his homeward journey, was nominated coadjutor to the Dean of Gnesen.
And it seemed as
though even yet sufficient honours were not placed upon the youthful head,
which was still in Bologna, bending over the folios of canonical law. In the
same fateful year in which the hammer-strokes on the Castle-church at
Wittenberg reverberated with such powerful and lasting effect through the whole
edifice of the church, Leo X. granted to the youth of hardly
eighteen years the title to the custodianship of Leczyc, and in addition to
this the canonicate of Cracow and Plock.* Enough benefices, truly, for one at
the beginning of his career!
The securing of the
papal ratification to these offices for his nephew was not accomplished by the
uncle on moderate terms. We are hardly any longer surprised or astonished when
we unexpectedly light upon an out-of-the-way passage in which we find the
charges for such a commission at the papal see of those days entered with an
innocence as great as though it had only been a question of the purchase of a
sheep: in Rome everything was disposed of for money in those days ; and only he
who paid the price obtained the simoniacal wares. “ Fourteen hundred gulden
”—so the careful uncle enters in his testament under the year 1517— “ changed
into a thousand gold gulden, have I sent to Rome for the prosecution of the
business regarding the custodianship of Plock and Leczyc. My marshal, Nicholas Wolski, knows the order” ; probably the word indicates among
what series of officials and in what gradation the sum has
The benevolence of
the uncle was not restricted to the providing with these benefices. It was
necessary to place abundant means at the disposal of the nephew, in order that
he might be able to live in a style becoming his position. Even the income,
however, from the posts just mentioned—for the demands, already made upon young
ecclesiastical princes at that time, amply balanced a great revenue piled up
from accumulated posts—did not suffice for the reckless liberality, the free,
large-hearted hospitality which is natural to the Pole, and at all times has
distinguished his nobles, but has also at all times seriously damaged him, and
that not in the domain of property alone. It was necessary to open further
sources of revenue.
The archbishops of
Gnesen had great possessions in the palatinate of Rava, in Masovia, specially
in Lowicz and Squiernievice, towns which belonged to them, and in which they
held fortified castles. The income derived from these extensive properties was
not small. As early as the year 1517 the uncle leased out the two properties to
the Bishop of Chelm, Nicholas Kosczieleczky, and to his nephew John, while the
latter was still in Bologna, for two
In after-years, when
our Johannes walked in the light of the Gospel, and found his highest glory in
being a poor but faithful servant of his poor and faithful Master, his eye was
open and clear to perceive the deep injury which the Church has suffered from
such distribution and accumulation of her spiritual offices. It is but a small
consolation in connection with such glaring failures that in this case so much
distinction in such immature years was not bestowed upon one unworthy of the
office. That, however, the youthful Canon of Cracow and Plock, who, from the
time of his ordination as priest in 1521, had been advanced from his position
of a mere coadjutor in Gnesen to be the actual dean of the metropolitan church
there, must have been approved among his companions in the spiritual office and
have drawn upon himself the eyes of the chapter, is to be inferred from the
fact that he took part, as representative of the metropolitan cathedral chapter
at Gnesen, in the Provincial Synod at Petrikow in 1521. He did not owe to his
kinship with the Archbishop alone a mission of so great honour ; the
distinguished chapter aimed at being represented on such an occasion by a
learned and able person. The protocols of the synod I
But in Poland, too,
that spirit was moving which in the Reformation made its procession through all
lands. We have not to accompany its course through that land ; our task imposes
narrower limits upon our recital. The way for the Reformation here too was
prepared by many a precursor’s labour, mediately, as everywhere else, by so
many open and manifest disorders under which the Church and her ministers were
suffering in a terrible degree ; in this
Nor was there wanting
immediate contact. How was this to be avoided, considering the high position
which Poland occupied in the council of the nations in those days, and the love
of travel on the. part of the nobility, who sent their sons by preference to
foreign universities ? At an early period Polish youths were to be found in
Wittenberg also, among the hundreds of students that flocked thither out of the
lands of all princes. In addition to this, we have to take into account the
strong German element, which gave the tone in almost all the cities, especially
of Greater Poland, and preserved a lively sympathy with all that was taking
place in the old home-land. Dantsic became the advanced post of this movement
in the Polish territory. As early as 1518 the Dominican monk Jacob Knade raised
his manly voice there agajnst the abuses of the Church ; with firm courage, lie
frees himself from the vows of his order, and is one of the first monks to take
a wife. The excitement enkindled by him communicated itself quickly to the
whole town, flashed over to the other German sister-towns of Poland : Thorn,
Posen, Elbing, Braunsberg; like fiery beacons blaze wherever the burning
language of a bold preacher of the Gospel touches the inflammable material so
abundantly present in the
The letter of the
Vice-Chancellor was a precursor of the severe measures to which the Government
roused itself in the following year, when the thunderclouds of the Reformation
gathered ever more threateningly in the land. The edict of the King, which
appeared in the summer of 1523, likewise
The clergy, disturbed
in their comfortable existence by the strange occurrences in the neighbouring
land, approved of such measures, and credited them with the necessary force. So
also the man who stood at the head of the Polish Church. We must confess that
the Archbishop during a long and brilliant career in Church and State had
become too much of an ecclesiastical politician for being able to acquire in
the evening of his life an appreciation of the ideas of the Reformation. That
which reached him with regard to it on his exalted seat appeared to him,
Our Johannes was no
longer present when this synod met. Not that he would have intentionally
withdrawn himself from such heresy-hunting doings. We have no reason whatever
for supposing that in those days he had already severed himself from the views
of his uncle, or looked with other eyes than those of the main representatives
of his Church upon the movement which was accomplishing itself in foreign
lands. That goad had not yet been pressed into his heart against which a Saul
of Tarsus found himself too weak to struggle. He was in full career ascending
the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment. Hardly had he been made Dean of
Gnesen, and therewith, even in his twenty-fourth year, attained to the highest
post of the chapter, before the uncle was
All these
distinctions were not able to bind the young man to the land ; no ambition now
impelled him to distinguish himself on the spot, and rapidly to climb the further
steps, at a time when everything in his native land seemed to be disposed in
his favour. He was strongly attracted again to foreign lands. The reason for
this feeling is not clear. Certainly the life passed abroad some years before
had inspired him with a longing for the refreshing intercourse of men who,
themselves standing at the highest point of the humanistic movement, had
kindled in him the love for those studies, the desire
If the opportunity
was afforded to our Johannes, who in those years was living for the most part
in Cracow—and how should the opportunity be wanting to him ?—for obtaining an
insight into the meanness of disposition in many a prominent ecclesiastic, whose
doings in truth powerfully drew the Church towards a reformation, we cannot be
surprised that he should wish to be removed from such surroundings, and longed
for a while again, far from all hateful commotion, to breathe the pure atmosphere
of humanistic studies and enjoy the society of men whom he could look upon with
esteem.
* Amongst the most unscrupulous opponents
of the Archbishop at this period is to be mentioned Peter Tomiczi, Bishop of
Cracow and Vice-Chancellor of the kingdom, who had formerly been on terms of
friendship with the Primate. Tomiczi was ably seconded in his designs by the
ambitious Andreas Krzycki, then Provost of Posen, and soon after Bishop of
Przemisl, to whom we shall have occasion to refer more than once.
THE OTHER
STUDENT TRA VELS ABROAD.
THEY were warm days,
in every sense, at the time of the diet which was held in Cracow during June
and July, 1523. The time of assembling had been somewhat delayed on account of
the pest which, at the beginning of the year, had shown itself in Cracow. The
question of the filling up of the bishopric of Plock, which was among those discussed
on the sultry summer days at Cracow, could not yet be brought to a settlement;
the Primate encountered much vexatious opposition. In serried ranks the powerful
adverse party was ranged against him ; even from the King indeed he could not,
as was his wont, obtain the wished-for concessions. On this occasion, too, as
in so many following conventions, the Lutheran heresy had appeared in the
negotiations, like an awe-inspiring spectral form. The heresy, spreading ever
more and more widely, began to press like a heavy nightmare upon the spirit of
many, the longer the more heavily, because no good conscience supplied the
needed counteractive, and ignorance as to the real ground of the movement led
to fear of its destructive operation upon a domain which was unreal. Spiritual
and secular councils discussed, under the presidency of the Arch-
Now the reaction from
the overstrained labour had set in. The exhausted, and withal somewhat
irritated, old Bishop had urgent need of recreation. Hardly had the termination
of the sittings arrived, when he hastened from the close and stifling
atmosphere of the town, to spend the oppressive autumn days in the shady park
of his manor [at the now famous] Squiernievice. Here, in the quiet of the
country, and in pleasant seclusion, was also once more taken in hand that
testament the contents of which in not a few places possess the attractive
value of a diary. Under the date of the 17th of August "f" we find
the entry made, that his nephew the Dean cherishes the intention of repairing
anew to Italy for the purposes of study. The nephew seems not to have been in
the vicinity of the uncle, so that he was unable more fully to unfold his intention
to him. Let us then attempt to do so for ourselves.
The favourite brother
of our Johannes, Jerome, with whom he had shared a common education, had
studied together in Rome and at Bologna, had, as
Jerome
appears to have returned from his embassy during the summer of the year, and to
have been present at the General Convention. In the latter autumn it became
necessary to follow up still farther the thread of negotiations.’)' This time
Rome was not again touched ; the charge, however, was given to the royal
messenger to repair also to the court of the Emperor. This course was taken, it
may be, in order to divert, or even remove, any rising suspicion in connection
with the lively intercourse between Poland and France. Charles V. was at that
time in Spain ; thus the ambassador of the King of Poland could, without
exciting much attention, either on his going or return take the great high-road
through Paris to the Pyrenees. Travelling in the suite of a royal ambassador
had in those days in more than one respect a seductive charm ; even the
protection thereby afforded in
strange lands, on the insecure highways, in which so many “ roaming people ”
wandered about aimless and without means, was not to be lightly esteemed. There
was consequently no need of any long persuasion on the part of the ambassador
to induce his two brothers to make the journey in his company.
1. First
Residence in Basle.
When our three Polish
friends left Cracow, and by what route they set out upon their long journey, is
not clear to us. We unexpectedly meet with them at a remote spot on their way.*
At the end of December, 1523, or beginning of January, 1524, we find the
brothers, still in the prosecution of their journey to the Emperor, staying in
Basle, and there in familiar converse with Erasmus. The great Humanist, who was
in those days in a particularly angry mood, because he had been publicly called
a second Balaam, connects the origin of this very offensive appellation with
the visit of these Poles. With Jerome Erasmus had already been acquainted in
Brussels, and now they saw each other frequently. One day, as they are chatting
in the library of the great scholar, the conversation turns upon the simple
preacher who has now for some years kept the world in a state of excitement.
The Pole- is carried away, with all the ardour of his nature, against Luther ;
the impressions of the General Convention at Cracow are still fresh in his mind
; he has perhaps observed that his king is surely not quite so much in earnest
to proceed with the same resolution in
This incident
suffices to give us an impression of the atmosphere in which our Johannes was
still living at that time, and which was so entirely opposed to the fresh and
invigorating breeze of the Reformation. Erasmus experienced a lively pleasure
in the three Polish young men, who, though belonging to the highest nobility,
bowed with friendly homage before the intellectual. nobility of the Humanist.
The brothers appear
to have stayed only a short time in Basle on their route, but yet long enough
to have formed a few acquaintances in the highly animating humanistic circle,
who were powerful enough to detain our
Johannes, after an absence of some months, for a longer period in the
university city. We shall have an opportunity on his second visit of becoming
ourselves at home in these circles. Only to one person would we refer, with
whom Laski now came into contact, but whom he no longer found present at his return
: he had then, at Basle, too, been compelled to take up again the wanderer’s
staff of banishment, already so often in request with him. It was Guillaume
Farel, the fiery hero from France, who had bidden farewell to his own fair
native land and gone into exile in order to be able to live in accordance with
his faith. He is a phenomenon in a high degree attractive, this man, who, a
fugitive from France, has for months been living in Switzerland, where the
waves of the Reformation already run high, and in the first weeks of the year
1524 has found a shelter in the free city of Basle; a countryman of Calvin, and
his forerunner and path-breaker in Switzerland. The energetic son of the
Dauphiny could not long impose silence upon himself, even in the city in which
he enjoyed the rights of hospitality. As early as the twenty-third of February
he persisted in holding, despite the protest of the University, a public
disputation upon thirteen theses, in which the spirit of the Reformation
flowed with mighty onward sweep. On this occasion Oecolampadius acted as
interpreter. The victorious issue of the disputation was an important step in
advance for Basle towards a final decision in favour of the Reformation. For
the impetuous and
Our Johannes had,
during this first residence in Basle, been brought into personal contact with
the lively, earnest-minded Frenchman, and even formed an intimacy with him.
This might awaken some surprise, when we have regard to the bearing, then so
fundamentally different, of the two young men towards the Church. In
explanation may be urged the inner affinity of the Slavonic and the Romance nature,
then already to be recognised in many traits. We must likewise take into our
account the zeal of the Pole for keeping his eye open for every phenomenon of
the spiritual life ; and who, considering the imperfect accounts which have
come down to us from that time, shall prove that one or another of the theses,
even though they at first startled the nephew of the Polish ecclesiastical
prince, living as he did in the midst of such totally different associations,
did not pierce his heart like a lightning-flash, there to light up in lurid
glare a world hitherto veiled in dense night ? However this may be, the
impression left was so deep, that even a quarter of a century afterwards, at a
time when the Basle days often revived again fresh in his
But that took place
long after the Laskis had left the city. We are without any information as to
the time of their departure ; nay, we are to so great an extent groping in the
dark as regards the succession of time that it is only by a conclusion on the
2. In Paris.
If our conjecture be
correct, it was about the spring of 1524 that our three Poles entered the
metropolis of France, not as distinguished strangers who must first open to
themselves a way into the higher society. Jerome had already repeatedly visited
the court of the King, and, moreover, the last time in particular on a mission
which of necessity brought the plenipotentiary into familiar relations with
the King himself. Francis Z, for whom much depended on an intimate alliance
with Poland, was on a very friendly footing with the gifted ambassador, the
more so because he was drawn to the chivalrous person of the ambassador
himself. The youngest brother had either already, on a previous occasion as
formerly mentioned, won the favour of the King, or he acquired it now, and that
in such high degree that he entered the service of the King of France, and in
his immediate surroundings often afterwards gave proofs of his most faithful
attachment to Francis even in the darkest days of his adversity. It is thus
self-evident that our Johannes could go in and out at the French court at his
pleasure.
It was for an
aspiring theologian an attractive
The men well-disposed
towards the Gospel gathered around the venerable form of the Bishop of Meaux,
Briqonnet, the spiritual adviser of the sister of the King, Marguerite of
Valois. Specially during the first years of his episcopal administration is
there to be perceived in the action of the pious shepherd of souls a compassion
for the flock entrusted to him, a profound grieving over the open and gaping
wounds of his Church. It seems like a breeze of spring in the Gallican Church
when we see how this pastor proclaims to his flock the Word
In the circle of
these men we meet with one of the most attractive forms to be found among the
precursors of the Reformation. It is the then highly venerable Jacques Lefevre
d'Etaples, who, proceeding from the studies of the ancient literature, was
among the first courageously to apply himself to the investigation of Holy
Scripture, at first, it is true, only with the interest in those days
passionately devoted to every literary fragment of antiquity. But just this
prosaic mode of contemplation, which aimed only at the right understanding of
the words, was the means of striking off the fetters in which it had been
sought for ages past to place the Word of God, to the intent th^t it should be
made to give its assent only to all possible dogmas and definitions of the
Church. In the course, however, of a further unceasing penetration into the
meaning, the sacred contents of the book exerted their inevitable effect upon
the devout man. So soon as he had felt this saving effect in his own experience
he rested not until he had submitted the great throng of his students at the
Paris University to the same influence. His
unfolding of single books of the New Testament is a veritable pioneer labour.*
During these very days (1522—1523) his expositions on the four Gospels had
appeared in the press, and in rapid succession the Catholic Epistles, creating
the greatest sensation, and for the Sorbonne no small degree of offence. These
books now fell into the hands of our Polish friend. The name of the author had
been familiar to him from his boyhood. The school editions and elucidations of
Faber Stapulensis on the Latin and Greek classics had almost all been reprinted
in Cracow, and the numerous editions give us an idea of the frequent use of
them in Laski's native land. In those Paris days Laski seems to have been
brought likewise into close personal relations with the serious and devout
investigator of Scripture. In the only passage of his works, so far as my memory
serves me, in which he makes mention of the French expositor, he lauds certain
qualities in the man which may well have become known to him from personal
intercourse.! Faber was up to that time still firmly persuaded that he could
yet claim room and toleration in his mother Church for his opinions, which, it
is true, were already most fiercely assailed by the opponents. The painful
moment of decision had not yet come for the old man. Timidly did he shrink from
the dreaded hour. But while upon his deathbed, in 15 36, the veteran of
eighty-six years was tortured with the thought that he had been weak in the
hour of peril, and had
Out of the midst of
these men, profoundly inspired as they were with the evangelic spirit, and of
kindred sentiments and endeavours with them, towers in graceful beauty the form
of the renowned Marguerite- de Valois. She.belongs to the most chosen number of
the daughters of her native land, and in like degree to the most favourite
daughters of the Renaissance, at the point at which it inclined to the side of
the Reformation. The current of thought in those great days beats upon her
well-nigh masculine soul, there to meet with a warm and deep and delicate
receptiveness. With full understanding and enjoyment, the highly gifted and
noble princess reads the Latin, Italian, and Spanish authors ; nor is she
unacquainted with Greek and Hebrew. The same passionate acquisitiveness for
learning, which unceasingly animates the Humanists of those days, has
descended likewise upon her. But with a certain feminine refinement of feeling,
she avoids such disquieting research ; her devout mind leads her in the
advancing path of her severe studies into the depths of the word of God. She is
brought into contact with the “ friends of God ” in Meaux. Briqonnet is to her
more than a father-confessor; in the fair,,
evangelical sense of the word, her spiritual shepherd. Before him she pours out
her heart, athirst for grace,, and that in affecting letters, preserved to the
present day, precious testimonies of her pious soul, as also- of the age in
which she lived. She is to be regarded
This train of thought has led us far from our starting point. We hasten to return to that far-off year of the visit of Laski to the court of the King. Francis I. cherished great esteem for his highly gifted sister, and heeded her wise counsel. It was a frequent occurrence that after holding an interview with the foreign ambassadors, he would refer them likewise to his sister, would consult with her as to a final decision, and would follow her guidance therein.
On account in
particular of his secret commission would the ambassador of King Sigismund be
introduced by Francis I. to his sister ; through him our Johannes also
obtained access to the court. That he was brought into immediate personal
converse with the high-minded Marguerite de Valois in those days is attested by
the epistle of Erasmus to the princess, in which he makes mention of the
How long our Laski
still remained in Paris after his brother had departed for the execution of the
royal commission entrusted to him, we have been unable to discover, and just as
little whether he repaired thence to Switzerland direct, or whether his course
of studies led him to other places also. We meet with him only in Basle at the
end of 1524, and breathe freely again, as it were, on having found him there,
because from this time we have more solid groun’d under our feet; and certainly
a clearer light falls upon this second visit than the twilight in which
hitherto for the most part we have had to trace our steps.
3. The Second Residence
in Basle.
The fortunate Basle,
even in the sixteenth century,
Rather then in Basle
as a journeyman rope-maker, than be entertained in Paris as a king. It is the
proud answer of the free Humanist, who has found in this place what he wants.
Not a little did it contribute to the fame of this city that it had become the
workplace of important master-printers, above all the renowned Froben, and then
also people like Amerbach, Oporinus, and so many others. The printing art was
not yet old, and those engaged in its service passed through the ever-memorable
period of first love for the new wonder-inspiring art.
Those who practised
the marvellous discovery looked upon themselves as artists, not as handicraftsmen
; they were enthusiastic heralds in the service of the humaniora, not a few
among them the greatest favourers of science, their workshop a fount of
learning. The profit from their calling was for these men a secondary question
; their enthusiasm was derived from the satisfying feeling of being an
essential link in the chain at which the greatest minds were standing day and
night, in order to raise-the new-found treasure. They had the sense of being
royal mint-masters, who gave currency to the gold obtained, as the common
possession of the learned ; upon all their doings in those days rests the fine
enamel of an intellectual act, which carries its reward in itself.
The master-printer Froben was the powerful magnet which in those years drew to Basle an Erasmus, the friend and invited guest of kings and the highest spiritual and secular dignitaries, which was strong enough also to detain him in the quiet burgher city even when Margaret of Austria, spite of th£ imperial mandate, made the payment of the pension granted him dependent upon the return of this king of science to the court of Brabant.
Erasmus, at the time when he migrated to Basle, was looked upon as the king in the domain of knowledge and of the study of ancient literature. In this delicate form, with the sharply projecting, pointed nose, with the fine firmly closed lips, about which plays a slight suppressed smile, as the pencil of Holbein has depicted the man to us as the archetype of an intellectual scholar, was collected, as it were in a focus, all that gave shape and life to the humanistic movement. That which once in after-times Zinzendorf confessed of himself in a very different province—he had “ only one passion, and that was Christ,” the word of a passion consuming all other emotions of the soul,—is true also of Erasmus, only with regard to that other object, the newly awakened science. Of an acute mind, a refined intellect, freed from the trammels of earlier times, Erasmus launched forth into the province now first opening itself to human research ; with greater ardour has no youth ever clasped to his heart his bride, than that with which he impressed the kiss of his love and enthusiasm upon the newly awakened, reviving world of the ancients. It is a gigantic industry, which the man with the sickly physical frame unfolded his life long. Into all the most remote corners his searching eye is found to penetrate; nothing remains strange to him ; everywhere he is at once at home in the newly discovered domain. The genius of the ancients is not ungrateful in return for such faithful devotion; it opens up to the unwearied wooer its beauty, so that it is as though the ancients themselves were speaking through him, so pure, so clear, so well proportioned and sparkling flows forth his Latin discourse.
Even as a Humanist
Erasmus bears the stamp of the German character. The latter is more earnest,
profound, more immediately penetrating to the sources of life, than the other
nature, beyond the mountains, in the sunny, joyous south. For a Boccacio, or
even an Aretino, we have no congenial spot. The direct effect of the revival of
the sciences may be compared, in all lands through which it held its
procession, to the exultant jubilation of a crowd of boys, who, long pent up
in the close schoolroom, with its dust and vapour, are now suddenly set free,
and rush out amidst the breezes of spring, to drink in deep draughts the
delicious air of May. Just as great was the difference between the breath of
fresh air which was wafted to the Humanists from the study of the newly revived
Greeks and Romans as compared with the oppressive atmosphere which had gradually
formed about the investigations of scholasticism. We must not pronounce too
severe a judgment on the outbreak of the first, perhaps wild jubilation at the
reopened place of exercise ; and must not apply too stern a rule'to the period
of the first boisterous
It was in Germany
that the studies of Humanism underwent a timely diversion into more serious
channels, and amongst those who took the lead in this direction we find
Erasmus. In the course of his investigations, which, with bold spring, left far
behind them the beaten tracks of scholasticism, he plunged into the writings of
the Church Fathers ; astonishing is the number of the editions of the old
witnesses for the faith which he brought out. Froben had hardly
printing-presses enough to keep pace with his beelike industry. The Humanist
did not restrict his unresting step to the Fathers alone ; he penetrated even
to the fountain-head. His edition of the New Testament appeared in 1516. It was
a hurried labour; Erasmus himself admitted this. But that the edition did
appear was in those days a great fact. It was the victorious return to the word
of God, the freeing of the path from all the unspeakable brushwood of human
dogma which had blocked up the access to the fountain itself. The New Testament
was looked upon now as afresh brought to light, like a newly discovered writing
of Cicero or Plato ; and was also so read by many. This was, in the first place,
a gain for the understanding of it; all the unhappy allegorisings of
scholasticism vanished before the sober grammatical treatment of the Scripture
text, as the misty forms vanish before the piercing ray of the sun. This
liberating effect of the studies of Humanism in their furthering influence upon
the Reformation may be compared to the significance of the campaigns of
Alexander upon the first diffusion of Christianity. Ximenez had begun the
preparatory labours for his polyglot of the New Testament much earlier, and
everybody was intently looking for its appearing. Erasmus had been led to
undertake the hurried labour by the wish to be beforehand with the Spaniard.
The German Humanist, however, did not content himself with an edition of the
text; with devout mind he kept his eye fixed upon the higher task of opening up
to his contemporaries the understanding of Holy Scripture. Precious directions
thereto, of value to the present hour, are to be gathered from the writings of
Erasmus bearing on this subject, communicated by a soul deeply affected by the
sacred contents of the writings, which surrenders itself to the impression of
the Word of God, though still in a certain nazve manner without calculating the
full bearing of this impression. A breath of the Reformation sweeps through
these passages ; no one can deny it. In them moves a spirit which is out of
harmony with the modest or even scrupulous self-restriction, which Erasmus, in
a figure, designates as the life-task assigned to him. On one occasion he
compares his position to that of the pillars of Mercury in ancient Rome, which,
set up at the cross-roads, point out the way to the traveller, without entering
upon it themselves. The Humanist did enter upon it, but, alas ! shrank timidly
back when he observed that which he might have to encounter upon this path.
path have often
bitterly condemned the conduct of those who remained behind. More lenient, but
at the same time more just, is our judgment after an interval of more than
three hundred years. We have to judge the great Humanist not only by the
standard of those who pressed forward from Humanism to the Reformation ; we
have to measure him also by that wherein the endeavours of the German Humanist
are so essentially and so advantageously distinguished from the endeavours of
those beyond the Alps. Even before the decided rupture had been made between
the German Reformer and the German Humanist, Luther expressed the opinion—
already with the presentiment of the approaching separation, but as yet under
the spell of esteem for the powerful man—that Erasmus, like another Moses, had
brought up his people out of Egypt, but had not led them into the land of
promise. Erasmus has never been anxious about the salvation of his soul, as the
Augustin monk at Erfurt. He offers in his whole appearance the brilliant and
incontestable proof of that which purely humanistic efforts are capable of
yielding: how under their quickening breath a fair world arises, for a while
irradiated by the full and pure charm of art, but also how its light is ever
unable to disperse the mists of sin, to reconcile us to God, to effect our
sanctification. God, however, has not appointed us the task of enjoying a fair
life, but of becoming holy as He is holy. Humanism is able perhaps for a moment
to silence the earnest voice of the conscience amidst its liquid melodies ; but
never is it qualified to afford a consolatory answer, a blessed satisfaction,
to this voice, which cries after God as the hart cries after
Erasmus, at the time when Laski came to Basle, was standing at the decisive parting of the ways for or against the Reformation, which had already become strong enough in Germany and Switzerland to wring from the presiding spirit among the Humanists the painful decision. Wc know that he cast his die otherwise than Ulric von Hutten, from whom he became so remarkably estranged in those years. The Humanist, who by the public renunciation of the Reformation, as likewise by the cessation of a sound development of life, maintains his course, does not find the path open to him for his return to the sheltering bosom of the Romish Church. Both currents cast upon him the burning sand of the shore, on which he pines in solitude ; it is difficult to decide whether the darts hurled from Wittenberg, or those from the Sorbonne in Paris and from the University in Louvain, were the more galling for the lonely and wounded man.
We have, in sketching
the central person, who occupies, at that mighty turning point, so prominent a
post that his fate acquires a typical significance, already to some extent
anticipated the time at which our Laski stood on terms of intimacy with him.
The sketch has perhaps been made too broadly and on too large a scale for our
framework ; we were carried away by the attraction of the theme, because the
influence of that extraordinary man is to be traced upon the course of our
hero’s life during a whole decade. The eventual decision in his position
towards the Reformation was considerably delayed by the powerful personality of
the revered master. Erasmus appeared for a long time to the timid Churchman to
afford eloquent proof that one may surrender himself, wholly and
enthusiastically, to the fresh warm current of the studies of Humanism, without
becoming unfaithful to the mother Church.
We have already seen
that Laski did not form the acquaintance of the illustrious man merely on his
second residence in Basle ; the elder brother had already introduced him to the
acknowledged head of the sciences ; the commendatory recognition of the young
Pole in the previous year conferred upon him the right now to beg a second time
for admission to the society of the master. The favourable impression was
augmented from time to time,
Erasmus was wont to receive boarders into his society of young men. He had sufficient space at his disposal in his quarters, at the house of his printer Froben, to vacate a room for a young scholar. Since he did this in order to augment his income, only young men of wealth could share the privilege of becoming part of the household of the famous scholar. Our liberal Pole, already in his youthful years in the possession of no inconsiderable benefices, and, after the manner of his nation, entirely careless as regards money matters, probably paid dearly enough for the favour which he enjoyed during the last half of his stay in Basle. Three and a half gulden per month was the price of the room,* and he seems to have defrayed the whole expenses of the kitchen out of his income ; so that Erasmus was a guest in his own house, and long painfully missed the generous guest after the latter had been called to leave Basle. In a magnanimous spirit, Laski further purchased of his book- collecting host his entire library, with the friendly concession of leaving the scholar to the end of his life in the enjoyment of the slowly accumulated treasures. Laski was not then in a position to pay down the full purchase money; there remained a sum of two hundred gulden still lying on it, and Erasmus observed in his willf that the books were to be delivered up at his death only on condition that the outstanding amount should have been paid to his heirs. The payment seems not to have been made ; at the time of Erasmus’ death Laski was almost fortuneless, and was on the point of quitting the Romish Church.
It was not these
external advantages which attached Erasmus to his new household companion. The
old man felt the power of a captivating influence exerted by the youthful form.
Erasmus in his letters is not sparing of words, specially where there is a
prospect of that which he has written coming under the eye of the person
commended. But when we review the different passages in his letters concerning
the young friends, they certainly leave the impression that the words are not
merely the light coin of social intercourse. It seems as
Laski clung with great deference to the master whose disciple he boasted to be in those days. He was willingly led on by him in his humanistic studies, then pursued with so great ardour ; but the deeper and more abundant knowledge acquired by him in this domain was not in after-years the most grateful memory. Yet higher is his boast of the man, that he first guided his soul to spiritual things ; that he had under that guidance first begun to feel himself at home in the province of true religion.* Strange, and yet in those days not surprising confession, as coming from the Romish Church. The young man, already high on the ladder of ecclesiastical dignities in early years, who in former days had long devoted himself to theological studies in Bologna, now first learns in Basle, and at the feet of the German Humanist, the primary and wholly decisive rudiments of his vocation! And it is Erasmus again who gives the impulse to a movement which with necessity impels into paths which the master himself did not venture to enter on. So leniently and beautifully does Laski in after-years judge of this weakness and half-heartedness of the Humanist, with which he had already become sufficiently acquainted during his residence in Basle. “ Every one has his measure of gifts, and no single one is strong in all domains ; for us also there is still much to-day which we do not know. It is our part to congratulate ourselves on that which God, in accordance with the decree of His will, has been pleased to vouchsafe to us according to the measure of our faith. On that account also we must rejoice in the gifts of Erasmus, which were of a truth great and significant enough, and ought to acknowledge God In them. But if we believe we have advanced farther, let us consider that this too was only- granted to us of God.”* Yes, that is the temperate language, on account of which the youth already served as an example to the old man.
Erasmus' writings and his oral teaching in personal converse were well adapted for introducing a devout mind to the glory of the spiritual vocation, by leading far away from artificially constructed, leaking cisterns of scholastic lore, beyond the Fathers of the Church, to the living fountain of the Word of God itself. How should a writing like the Manual of Instruction for attaining to a True Theology, published as early as 1515, fail of exerting its influence upon Laski And what precious, what stimulating, and refreshing passages, in Erasmus' paraphrases and explanations of single parts of Holy Writ ! Yet even in these courses of exegetical investigation it is not difficult to discern the timid step of the man who advances only to the threshold of the sanctuary, then halts, and contents himself with merely external things. Those were the heroes of the Reformation who courageously brooked not to remain standing outside, and then in the sanctuary have seen Jesus only.
With one of these
heroes Laski was brought into' personal contact during his Basle days, true,
only in a passing moment, but yet quite sufficiently for hirn to receive that
goad of God pressed into his soul
In imperishable
remembrance remain for Laski these Basle days, which he spent in spiritual
intercourse with the
leading men. Through the agency of his host, it was only to be expected that he
should be brought into contact with the household which had been for Erasmus
the reason of his staying in Basle. Among those who frequented the society of
Froben he attached himself in particular to Boni- facius Amerbach, who in 1524
had become professor of civil law in Basle. When we contemplate the fine
picture of the young jurisconsult, painted by the hand of his friend Holbein,
it is as though we were looking upon our Johannes in the days of his youth. And
in truth, if we had to name among the acquaintances of our friend in Basle a
personality having elective affinity for that of our Laski, we should have at
once to point to this professor, of about the same age with Laski, as the one
who presents the most similar mental traits. The passages in the letters of the
renowned painter concerning this his dearest friend read as though they were
referring to Laski himself.* In them the purity of his character, his
integrity, his conscientiousness, fidelity to duty, severity of morals, are
boosted of. Then again Holbein dwells on the charming gifts of social converse,
his vivacity, the exuberant wit in conversation, a fine poetic and musical
vein. People loved to listen to the Professor as he played upon the lute one
of the ditties composed by himself, perhaps to the then favourite air “ Adieu,
mes amors.” In such leisure hours of social fellowship, no doubt our Laski too,
acquainted as he was with music from his university days, was wont to take his
guitar in hand, to render to his
It was an exceedingly
stimulating intellectual intercourse which prevailed in Basle in those days,
and into the full current of which the guest and companion of Erasmus entered.
The humanistic and reformational movement here still advanced peacefully side
by side, though, it is true, in the last steps of such amicable walk. The
heads, who on the morrow were compelled to present a hostile front, conversed
with each other to-day, sometimes with a naivete which appears astonishing to
us at the present time. In social converse, you might hear from the lips of
Erasmus utterances, for instance, on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, which assign
to him a position further to the left than that taken even by Zwingli. The
oppositions and distinctions were not yet defined, had not as yet been clearly
brought out and reduced to shape. Thus one saw grouped around
With Oecolampadius
indeed Laski had been brought into contact during his first brief sojourn in
Basle, probably by the agency of Farel, who had been the table-companion of the
after-Reformer of Basle.j- Laski retained an honouring memory of this eminent
man. At the close of two decades, his judgment with regard to him is still such
that he thinks of him with the highest respect, on account of his rare
simplicity and piety, combined with so great learning.^ The works of the master
adorn his collection of books ; he wishes to possess all that Oecolampadius has
written. A detailed comparison would show how faithful and zealous a reader of
his works, specially of his exposition of the Holy Scriptures, Laski has been.
In the far-off home they may well have become friendly, solitary guides to the
Romish priest, to lead him more and more deeply into the understanding of the
Scriptures, and with this, as a logical and necessary consequence, gradually
When often in later
years the Basle days stood in attractive beauty before the spirit’s eye of
Laski, it was the form of Conrad Pellican in particular which in memory
heartily saluted him. As yet, in the garb of a superior of the Minorite order,
and with faithful touching attachment to the quiet contemplative cloister
life, the honest simple scholar nevertheless already heard in those days such
ringing herald calls for the Reformation sounding forth over the land. A fair,
heartily genial, and withal decided and upright form in the circle of those
towering men of Basle, is that of Pellican, who, animated by the most affecting
zeal for the studies of humanity, ever enters more warmly, more consciously
upon the path of the Reformation.* Laski felt himself in a high degree
attracted by the man, to whom similarly attuned chords of the soul attached
him. After an interruption of twenty years, he renews the old relations in a
letter to the tutor and companion in studies, through which there runs so
heartfelt a note of
While these two men
had entered with decided step upon the path of the Reformation, two other
attractive forms meet us in the animating surroundings of Laski at Basle, men
who were not drawn away from the narrowly circumscribed domain of Humanism in
the high floodtide of intellectual movement on this side of the Alps. On the
equipoise indeed stands the one, Beatus Rhenanus. Once the highly gifted
scholar of Lefdvre in Paris, then in Basle the intimate friend of Erasmus, he
did not break with this old master of the studies of humanity when the latter
fell out with the Reformers and retired to Freiburg as a sort of pouting
corner. That did not hinder our brave Alsatian from diffusing from time to time
the writings of Luther in Switzerland and greeting Zwingli in an interesting
letter on the latter’s entering upon the pastoral office in Zurich* His main
strength, however, lay in the domain of Humanism. Erasmus estimated at no low
rate the merit of the highly cultured scholar. To him he dedicated the
beautiful exposition of the first Psalm, with the epigrammatic words, “ Mitto
Beatum Beato,” “ I send the blessed man [of the Psalm] to Beatus ” (the blessed
one). This man could not remain a stranger to the constant companion of
Erasmus. Laski also participated in the far-reaching studies of the scholar;
and such fruit-bearing participation demanded an exact and loving appreciation
of the Roman historians. For Rhenanus published not unimportant critical
labours on Tacitus,
The other prominent
form in the circle of our Laski’s acquaintances, Henry Glarean, separated
himself in an equally decided manner as Erasmus,
in the progress of development, from the Reformation. A finely cultured
Humanist was Glarean, at first equally intimate with Zwingli as with Erasmus.
This state of things, however, had already become essentially changed at the
time when Laski went to live with Erasmus. For him the Reformational movement
was a painful interruption in his agreeable course of study. He got angrily out
of the path of the Reformation, and of course also of the leaders
But we too at last
have to bid farewell to Basle, and to leave the attractive circle of men in
whose midst A Lasco was so fully at home, and over whom our description has
already lingered too long. More suddenly than he expected, and certainly than
he hoped, he had to break the bonds which now attached him and quit that city
in which he had known a happiness such as in no other, not even in his native
land.
5.
The Return Home by way of Italy.
It was in September,
1525, that Jerome the much- travelled royal ambassador,
again charged with a diplomatic mission, made a call upon Erasmus in Basle. He
brought at the same time to his brother a decided instruction from home to
leave Basle without delay and to enter upon his homeward journey in slow stages
by way of Italy. The state of affairs in Poland had come to such a pass as to
The royal ambassador handed to Erasmus the passionate and venomous attack upon Luther and his adherents from the pen of that Bishop Krzycki already unfavourably known to us. To employ the friend of Erasmus on such an errand, in order in this way to enter into personal communication with the revered head of the Humanists—for this, in the estimation of the mean-spirited defamer, the nephew of his hated archbishop was after all good enough. At the National Diet of 1523 the Bishop, as a talented and facile writer, was urged to the undertaking of this treatise alike by the King and by his colleagues, though certainly the unbridled character of its contents made up no part of their instruction. He now acknowledges, in an accompanying letter to Erasmus, that the form of the work was influenced by the wish which guided him in its composition, that, namely, of weakening the force of the suspicion that he himself rendered a secret fealty to the views of Luther* As it happens with common minds which love not the truth, he accomplished this end by freely reviling his opponent. It does not appear that Luther ever saw the production ; at least, I have not found in his writings any passage referring to it. If he had seen the calumnious book, it would perhaps have been dismissed with the words, “ Devil, thou liest ! Buffoon, how thou liest! O Hans Wolfen- biittel, what a shameless liar art thou, ventest much and sayest nothing, ragest and provest nothing! ”f Erasmus did not enter upon a review of the document ; it was thus perhaps too strong for him. J He returned the gift by the present of a work from the pen of Tonstall, Bishop of London, a man who opposed the Reformation with the same passionate hatred.
Hardly did the Polish
friend and guest find time to make himself acquainted with the purport of this
invective missive from his native land. He was on the point of taking his
departure. It had been planned that he should pass by way of the Alps into
Upper Italy, should make a stay for a while in Padua and Venice, and there
await further directions as to the time and route of his return. Erasmus
furnishes his friend, as though he had been a dear son, with letters of
introduction to the leading Humanists in those cities where Laski proposed to
make a stay. And with what warmth of language
On the 5th October,
1525, Laski set out from Basle.f He was accompanied on his journey by Karl
Utenhove, a gifted young man from Ghent, who lived with Erasmus as a sort of
amanuensis, was frequently employed by him, specially on the occasion of
despatching important letters, and now again was commissioned to convey a
message to Rome. As regards his Latin, the master has, it is true, to complain
that the man of Ghent did not employ the classical language with the same ease
and skill as the young friend from Poland ; but he was pleased with the
faithful devotion of the Fleming, and association with him afforded a solace to
the now elderly man.J We are specially interested, in this travelling companion
from the fact that probably on this journey to Rome the bonds of attachment
were formed with the family which after decades of years so closely and
faithfully bound John, the halfbrother of this Charles, to our Laski. Charles,
too, was a welcome companion to him on the way ; A Lasco informs his Amerbach
concerning him, that he could not have wished a more faithful guide or a more
agreeable comrade.
The first letter
preserved to us from the time of these travels was written at Venice, 26th
November,
Week after week
passed away for our Laski in
Basle in the house of
his friend Amerbach), all information is wanting to us ; we are rather
inclined to doubt it. Just at this time Titian was contracting a friendship
with the worthless Aretino, and so long as this continued the pure-minded Laski
could find there no point of attachment.
We have mainly indeed to seek our friend in the circle of the leading Humanists, to whom he had been introduced by Erasmus with such warm commendation. Erasmus, in after-letters, gives thanks alike to Casimbrotus and to the renowned Egnatius for the hearty reception accorded by each of these men to his Polish friend.* The intimate associate of Froben and of Amerbach would certainly when in Venice have the entrance to the house of the no less eminent master-printer Aldus. The best houses were open to the young Pole. It is true the Doge, to whom the uncle of Laski had more than a decade before delivered the royal message, was no longer living. His successor, too, the almost nonagenarian Grimani, whose firm characteristic expression of countenance stands forth livingly before our eyes in the immortal drawings of 'Titian, was already dead ; and Andrew Gritti now wore the proud tiara. He had in earlier years pined as a prisoner in Constantinople, was companion of the changing fortune of Francis I. in Italy, and yet astute and adroit enough to keep his Venetian army out of the battle of Pavia. Gloomy days had supervened for the maritime supremacy of Venice : away in the East the Sultan, with evil boding, was raising his victorious head, a source of anxiety to two powers alike—Poland, whose frontiers were contiguous to those of Turkey, and Venice, the queen of the Mediterranean. In the sense of common danger to both peoples, the presence of the nephew of the Polish primate will not have passed unobserved, albeit no notification of a meeting between Laski and the Doge has been preserved to us.
Already February was
approaching, and still the messenger from Cracow had not arrived, nor had any
intelligence from thence come to hand with new instructions as to the course of
action. Before Easter (1st April) Laski with certainty expected a decision ;
perhaps the issue might be, as he mentions to his friend in Basle, that ere his
return he would once more pay a visit to Switzerland and France. The delay was
painful to him. He had borrowed of Amerbach money for the journey, and, through
the failure of the messenger to appear, was unable to liquidate the debt within
the given period. At length, in March, the long-wished-for tidings from home
came to hand, and the return journey was at once entered upon. As early as the
8th of April he is able to report his arrival in Posen. Here he has soon
discovered in the busy trading city merchants who are going to Basle, and are
ready to take with them a part of the sum to which he was indebted. They carry
also valuable presents to the friend in Basle : two sable-skins and two bundles
of ermine- skins.
Only two days does
Laski make his abode in Posen, and then hastens on to Cracow, where, after an
absence of two years and a half, he arrives in the middle of April.
THE LAST
DECADE AS A CATHOLIC IN HIS NATIVE LAND.
1. Trying
Experiences at Home.
MORE difficult than
ten years before was it now to our Laski to adapt himself to the old relations
in his native land. Even in those days, in which Poland was preparing to ascend
to the culminating point in its history, it was not easy for a child of that
land who had breathed for a few years the different atmosphere in the haunts of
the Humanists at once to feel himself in his right place and at his ease again
at home.
At first the eyes
were turned backward, in spirit at least, to prolong his life with his friends.
An active interchange of letters was kept up; only isolated fragments has a
happy destiny preserved to us,— more of letters to Laski, than it has of those
from his hand. A fortunate discovery of some of the latter, which agreeably
supplement the few specimens in the Complete Edition ,* leads to the hope that,
here or there in ancient collections of manuscripts, there may yet lie hidden
letters which shall afford to a
Mere epistolary
correspondence did not afford sufficient amends to our friend, in his sense of
isolation, for the copious enjoyment of personal
For an enjoyable life
of quiet, in epistolary correspondence with his friends without, our Laski had
not been recalled to his native land. The nephew of the Archbishop of Gnesen
already occupied too high a post for the fatherland in the distresses which
threatened it not also to have counted upon him. In the opinion of Erasmus, the
Church needed just such men as he had discovered, in such brilliant prominence,
in this his youthful friend. He writes to the Bishop of Plozk that no one can
be of more salutary influence for the Church of the present day than men who,
to their deep regret, have been called away from their charming studies of
philosophy in order by their counsel to aid the fatherland.t This advice,
however, so far as it aimed at Laski, was distrusted; and our friend had first
to clear himself of the suspicion which had cast a dark shadow upon him. While
the Dean of Gnesen was dwelling so long abroad, especially in Basle—whence full
many an evil report had reached Xracow, that there also the terrible heresy was
already gaining ever firmer ground—the intelligence reached his native land,
that this priest of the Romish Church had already in Zurich visited Zwingli
(whose name, it is true, was not so well known, and therefore not in such
Our Laski, when at
length he had returned home, could frankly and without reserve appear in his
uncle’s presence. He had not married a wife abroad, as his detractors would
fain have had it believed with regard to him ; and otherwise than in
At first he lived in
foreign lands as a Pole, for whom the question which impelled the solitary man
in his relations at home ever farther and farther upon the way that leads to
separation was as yet only something remote. The contact with Zwingh may have
been only a very fleeting one, lasting enough indeed to press the goad- into
his soul which impels him henceforth into the depths of the Gospel, decisive
enough to lead him after decades of years still with grateful heart to describe
Zwingli as the man of God who, with powerful hand, had given him the first
impulse to that movement which can only find its issue in the Evangelical Church,
but yet not so long and constraining as to call forth from his conscience at
once the fateful sacrifice of decision. That important passage, in which Laski
after thirty years speaks of his meeting with Zwingli, has been turned to
account, in the absence of more detailed notices as to the course of his
development, generally at the expense of psychological truth.
Oecolampadius
and Pellican themselves had not yet, at the time of his stay in Basle, taken
the final step which must lead to an open rupture. The hero- form of the German
Reformer had unhappily been met with by our Pole only in the refraction in
which this form appeared in the vicinity of Erasmus.. It was no longer the
clear, great light which at the first blaze of the Reformation the distinguished
Humanist likewise had seen and recognised ; at that time the mist had already
risen which more and more rendered it impossible for Erasmus to recognise and
appreciate, behind the dim, shifting outlines, the true features of the leader
of the Reformation. The fatal and incurable rupture between the leader of the
Reformation and the acknowledged head of the studies of humanity had already
taken place at the time of the companionship with Erasmus. The passionate,
irritated language of the Witten- berger at the same time wounded the guest,
who, out of sympathy with the master so harshly assailed, chivalrously espoused
his side, and thereby augmented for himself the trial of piercing through the
repulsive exterior to the golden heart of the Reformer. Repelled by the form,
his access to the contents was made less easy. That which Erasmus at first
rejoined, in the fine tone of superiority which he knew how to wield with such
ease and dexterity, to the attacks of Luther, must appear fully convincing to a
mind which, under the spell of a so-called sound common sense, had not yet cast
a glance into the fearful depths of sin, the utter corruption of human nature,
which not yet, standing beside this abyss, had cried only for grace, as a hart
crieth after the water-brooks ; must commend itself to a mind which had not yet trodden
the path of an Augustine and a Paul to the point of recognising that we are
saved by grace alone through faith which is in Christ Jesus. This was at that
time still to .our Laski a mystery sealed with seven seals; and the harsh,
unsparing language of the Reformer did not call forth in the refined Pole the
desire to unseal this mystery. God was leading him in those days by another
path, but to the same goal.
A further element of
difficulty came also into Operation. Our friend had, moreover, opportunity in
Basle of seeing the questionable compact made between the movement of the
Reformation and the revolutionary insurrection and agitation in the peasant
class ; and who would guarantee for him that the current arising in the
religious domain would not issue and run out in a political, demagogic domain ?
They were certainly very ominous notes which, as early as 1524 and 1525, were
raised by the peasants of Upper Swabia in their twelve articles. There, on the
other side of the Rhine, in the neighbouring Waldshut, Hubmaier and Reublin
were engaged in agitating; in Klettgau Miinzer roused the peasantry in the
autumn of 1524, after, expelled from Miihl- hausen, he had retreated by way of
Nuremberg and Basle. The men who headed the excited crowds had till but
recently been on friendly terms with the Reformers in Germany and Switzerland.
Despite the notorious rupture with them, what, an easy and convenient mode of
reproach it was for the enemies of the Reformation to characterise these
insurrections, which awakened so much apprehension, as the legitimate fruits of
the Reformation ! If one did not join in such reproach, this was in itself a
With the impressions
thus acquired, our friend had returned to his native land and entered on the
ministry of his church. He was soon indeed able to convince his uncle that the
reports spread abroad by his rivals and detractors, concerning his leaning towards
the Reformation, were false. This, however, did not suffice for the Archbishop.
That which the opponents had pretty loudly whispered must be publicly refuted ;
and so he required of his nephew, that he should publicly confirm that which he
had privately acknowledged to him, and should do so by an oath of purgation in
presence of one of his most decided opponents, the Bishop of Cracow. The
document of this oath, in the handwriting of Laski, is still preserved in the
Privy Record Office at Konigsberg.* He protests in this solemn declaration
that he has read, with the papal licence {ex indulto Apostolico), many writings
even of those who have separated themselves from the Romish Church ; but that
he has wittingly and willingly adopted no opinion, no article of faith which is
in contradiction to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. If he has fallen
through inadvertence, if he has become involved in an error, which truly may
also happen to the most learned and holiest of men, he disavows this publicly
and emphatically, and acknowledges of his own free will that he feels no
Our Laski was in
those days in sacred earnest with regard to this oath, which perfectly reflects
the position in relation to his Church still occupied by him. Anything for him
rather than a separation from the one holy, Apostolic mother Church. Outside
of it there is no other. It stands indeed in need of reformation ; but, as the
bearer of the truth, it carries in itself the power of healing, and will of its
own power overcome and heal the ills which his spiritual eye has likewise
recognised. Verily it was not fear of being deprived of his benefices, and
having to wander forth upon a painful martyrdom, that forced these words upon
reluctant lips ; and just as little was it respect and filial affection for the
uncle; it was his full conviction, which only that man would have a right to
designate as a declension, yea as a fall, who was in a position to afford the
indisputable proof that he had already, inwardly liberated from the Romish
Church, attained to the height of evangelic truth. Such proof has not yet been
furnished ; nor will it be in the future, even though more abundant sources
should be opened to our research.
After all the
malignant calumnies had been thus conspicuously reduced to silence, our Laski
applied
2. Laski’s Activity in
the Ecclesiastical Domain.
Against his will our
Laski had been drawn even into the tumult of battles and all the disquiet of
wildly surging party conflicts. He may well often have sighed at the thought of
being thus for years together forced away from the calmer island of retired
studies after which he longed. But the political sea, rising in mighty waves,
was yet not able to draw down the resolute swimmer into its depths. We see him
appear above the surface ever
* In order to follow the thread of the
narrative, it is necessary to understand the part played by the Laskis between
the years 1526 and 1535. Upon the death of the young and chivalrous Lewis of
Hungary, nephew to the King of Poland, in conflict with the hordes of Soliman
(29th August, 1526), the throne was claimed by John Zapolya, Vayvode of Transylvania,
Sigismund’s brother-in-law, and by Ferdinand of Austria, brother of the
Emperor. The former was favoured byFrancisI., and the latter by Charles V. The
Polish nobility sympathised undisguisedly with the cause of Zapolya. Sigismund
tried to bring about an agreement between the claimants. Jerome Laski threw
himself unreservedly on the side of Zapolya, to whose service he sacrificed the
best days of his life. After visiting Paris, London, Venice, in his interest,
he repaired to Constantinople towards the end of 1527, where he passed some
months in securing the support of Soliman. Eventually, at Ratisbon, he made
good the claim of Zapolya to the throne. He was rewarded with the lands of
Kesmark, at the foot of the Carpathians, while the bishopric of Vesprim was
bestowed upon his brother John. In 1533 the governor of Transylvania was
murdered at the instigation of the treacherous Gritti, son of the Doge of
Venice, who aimed at supplanting Zapolya by the aid of Soliman. Gritti paid the
penalty of his life. Zapolya, however, suspected Jerome of complicity, and ac
and anon, straining
every nerve to cast the anchor of his life’s ship in that firm ground in which
God, by the peculiar leading of His providence, would hold him fast. We must
again retrace our steps for a few years, in order to accompany him upon the
path of his spiritual development, so far as only very isolated traces enable
us thus to accompany him.
The political events,
as also the troubles of his native land, specially as occasioned by the
continued far-reaching disorders and vicissitudes of war in the neighbouring
States, would in themselves suffice to force somewhat into the background the
seriously pressing religious questions; * but for Poland, as other lands, these
threatened to assume too much of a burning character to admit either of being
passed over in silence or forcibly suppressed. While, in Germany especially,
they were standing in the very forefront of the whole movement of the age,
their giant shadows also fell threateningly upon Poland, which had the
reputation of being such a stronghold
cordingly imprisoned
him at Ofen. The tidings reached Johannes only in 1534. He instantly made the
most heroic efforts for the liberation of his beloved brother, and was at
length successful. Zapolya, who owed his throne to Jerome, at length yielded to
the expostulations raised on every side, and released his ambassador from the
shameful captivity. After retiring for a time toiiis estates at Kesmark, Jerome
proffered his services to Ferdinand, by whom they were eagerly accepted. He had
laboured from the year 1530 for the establishment of peace between the rival
candidates, and this end he finally attained in 1535. The bearing of the two
claimants towards the Reformation is fully examined by Dalton. For the evidence
on this point, and for a list of authorities, the historian must be referred to
the original work.
* The Bishop of Breslau, too, complains in
a letter to the Pope of the year 1531 (Theiner, Vetera Mofiumenta, ii. 472)
that, owing to the Turkish war, the King has not the time for applying a remedy
to the ecclesiastical disorders.
of Catholicism. We
have already observed at an earlier stage how in the old edifice there began to
be heard strange creakings. In the years which had now expired no thought had
been given to the improvement of the defective places ; it was thought that
enough had been done when the attempt had been made to suppress every murmur.
The sterner measures, however, to which recourse was had, were no longer
successful against the spirit of the Reformation violently bursting forth.
Even the severest menaces proved no more than blows dealt upon the water.
Mention has already
been made how the evangelic movement first came to a head in Dantsic, then the
most important seaport town of Poland. Whilst our friend was pursuing his
studies abroad, the Archbishop of Gnesen had himself repaired to the town, then
in the fervour of excitement, though without any substantial result from his
visit. The Primate was ill-adapted for the quelling of such a fermentation, for
the very reason that he was unacquainted with its nature. That is made fully
manifest from a document in which he expounds his opinion with regard to the
Dantsic differences* On the one side stands the ecclesiastical prince, well
versed in jurisprudence, who sees a Church with its doctrine unassailed from
Apostolic times; on the other side he sees opinions of people addicted to
innovation (neoterici), who like to follow their own judgment in particular
rites and ecclesiastical regulations. In connection with such a division, the
man who has grown grey in the observances of his Church
Equally little result
had the mission of the four royal counsellors, among whom was numbered Jerome
Laski (1525). Even the most skilful statecraft shows itself powerless in the
solution of questions which have arisen out of true faith, and are advanced by
a conscience established in the peace of the Gospel. These are no other than
voices out of a kingdom which is not of this world, and their abiding guardian
is that holy form which has overcome the world. By way of rejoinder to the
decision of these counsellors, the Protestants of Dantsic sent, it is true, a
long detailed defence of their doctrines to the King. Krzycki, of whose
incisive and facile pen the bishops had gladly availed themselves in the
difficult questions of the faith ever since he had won his spurs by his
defamatory writing against Luther, was appointed to compose the written reply
which was then delivered to the Protestant deputies of Dantsic by the Bishop of
Cracow. Both writings are to be prized as voices from the first days of the
Reformation, and seem from their nature to demand a comparison.* In the one
writing breathes the language of conscience, which rises against gross
distortion of Divine truth, against abuses crying to Heaven in the Church and
among its ministers, the clear, firm, fearless word of a disciple who has
attained to the all-surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, and, from the height
of this free watch-tower, is ready to give up even the Church, which he sees
corrupted in worldly way's, to separate from it in order to be
henceforth bound to
the Saviour alone. We gather from the tone of the discourse that these freed
ones have travelled by the bitter way of deep knowledge of sin to the abyss of
utter despairing of their own righteousness, but that at this very abyss they
have been saved of grace alone. The episcopal answer, on the other hand, is
couched in a tone of superiority, frigid, taking its stand upon the legal
ground of the Church as the only body of Christ, and, from the aristocratic
height of this secularised standpoint, dismissing in a few words the
complaints and grievances of this little, disobedient people. No trace of any
pity for their troubles, no intelligence for the cry of anguish wrung from a
conscience which is concerned about .its salvation, as though they were no
spiritual fathers, only police-officers of the man there in Rome. But the days
for such decrees, as also for finding obedience and subjection among those who
had tasted the liberty of the children of God, the “ good old days,” were
irrevocably past, even for the priests and bishops of Poland.
About the time of
these negotiations our Laski returned home. Even during his absence he had,
through the interest of his uncle, been appointed administrator in Gnesen. He
seems to have found this new dignity awaiting him as a sort of welcome on his
return to Posen ; at any rate, he adds the title for the first time, in his joy
at the attainment of this office, to a signature in a letter from this place.
It would appear to us that the new office corresponded to his wishes; it afforded
him the desired opportunity of escaping the life and movement at the noisy and
bustling court, and in greater retirement living for his vocation. With all
earnestness he joined
in the work of ecclesiastical life. We have unhappily no evidence in what sense
he participated in the measures now deemed urgent against the supposed
seditious ones, or whether he approved of all the measures adopted by his
Church. With regard to particular phenomena, of which he received tidings, he
could certainly point to similar incidents in Switzerland and the evil
consequences which had already attended them.
The King still
wavered for a short time as regards having recourse to more serious measures
after the episcopal letter against the Dantsic insurgents had exploded ineffectually.
A really devout mind may certainly have paralysed for him the arm that would
hastily draw the sword in matters of faith. And then there was the unfavourable
character of the time—everywhere the swelling waves of political disorder ;
threatening foes along almost the whole length of his frontiers, specially in
the east and south ; and then the serious complications with the German Grand
Master not yet brought to a peaceful solution. Everybody felt that a storm,
pregnant with decisive consequences, was, as it were, in the air in that
tempest-charged age ; and men sought as far as possible to keep their hands
free, that at the moment of the discharge they might be able to appear with
undivided strength on the field of conflict. Sigismund knew that in connection
with this expected course of warlike events his kingdom would be threatened in
the first line ; and political caution must suggest to him not on the eve of
the crisis, out of sheer lightheartedness, too greatly to irritate the people
of Dantsic, and to play with that which constituted his
most important key to
the sea and the outlet for his commerce. And yet he was not permitted to defer
proceeding with decision, when those about him had succeeded in persuading him
that the prime source of the whole rebellious movement was not of a religious
but of a revolutionary nature, the perilous rising of the people against the
hereditary power of the nobles and kings. With the assailing of the Church, the
two other main buttresses of the State were threatened.
Almost everywhere,
with the proclamation of the freedom of the Gospel, there had penetrated into
the lower ranks of the people the consciousness, now so oppressive, of their
position of bondage and deprivation of civil rights under their lords and
mighty ones. Here and there, goaded on by deceivers or deceived, the unhappy
masses had already attempted by violence to throw off the yoke, now that they
had become conscious of its full weight, so intolerable for them. The peasants,
once aroused, had broken out in ungoverned fury, with almost simultaneous
action, in the most varied and remote localities ; burning and destroying on
their way, they had unfurled the standard of revolt and gone forth against the
castles and strongholds of their tyrants, like a fierce, blood-red, avenging
host, intent on exacting reparation for centuries of injustice ; and had at
the same time taken upon themselves to discharge the functions alike of accuser
and judge and executioner. That which had been done by the Swabian peasants
was attempted likewise by their East Prussian companions in suffering, not in
imitation of that which was done in South Germany ; at least, the proof for
such imitation has not been given.
Like conditions have
only forced open the valve, and the steam everywhere plenteously accumulated
has escaped from its narrow enclosure with a shrill hissing. What then if the
harsh note should penetrate deep into the forests or the desolate marshy plains
of Poland, where the unspeakably wretched kmetons dragged out their slavish
existence, if, as was not to be doubted, the 'note should there too find an
intelligent response ? The inflammable material was indeed abundantly piled up.
The nobles, the clergy, instinctively felt the danger, and so it became easy to
persuade the King that every act of concession on the ecclesiastical side would
only afford support to the threatened insurrection of the lower classes
against all authority. This representation, as also the profiting by its use,
was charged with fatal effects for the Romish Church. It is to be enumerated
among the most prominent marks of the Divine truth of the Reformation that,
with the same sacred earnestness with which it dissociated itself from the
humanistic studies which, in proud seclusion, took no care for the people, it
now refused to make common cause with the tumultuous multitudes, but following
the Gospel alone, gave unto God that which is God’s, and to Caesar that which
is Caesar’s. But the Romish Church in Poland too had lulled itself to sleep, in
the fond supposition that only one and the same revolutionary movement was to
be perceived in the Reformation and in the risings of the peasants, and
composing itself under this delusion, had let pass unused the time of its
visitation for healing the inner defects.
The clergy in Poland
urged upon the King, con-
vinced of the
threatening danger, the necessity for instantly taking severe measures. No time
was now to be lost. That which was manifesting itself in Dantsic was repeated,
though in a milder form, in Thorn, in Elbing, in Braunsberg, in Posen, in so
many other places then under Polish sway. Yea, even in Cracow, and farther in
the interior of the land, there were witnessed strange flashes of lightning.
At the National Diet held in Petrikow, only at the close of which our Laski
returned home, the religious disturbances formed a main subject ol excited
debate. In the very message to the provincial diets, in which the King
enumerates the subjects on which counsel is to be taken by way of preparation
for the National Diet, it was stated that the King had indeed made peace with
the Duke of Prussia, but that the whole land was still confused and endangered
by the presence of the Lutheran sect. Already the peasants too, after the
example of the peasants in Germany, and upon the pretext of evangelical
freedom, had taken up arms against their masters, had slain many of them, and
reduced their dwellings to ashes. Only swift measures of force, we are told,
were now in a position to extirpate this widely diffused pestilence.* The
National Diet in alarm gave its sanction to such measures. The King himself, at
the head of a great retinue, marched against Dantsic. Thrown upon its own
resources alone, the town ventured upon no resistance; helpless, it was obliged
to submit to all the conditions imposed. The Reformational movement
was accordingly
delayed for a few years ; suppressed, as the hastily tranquillised Poles
believed, it was not by any means.
The spirit which had
animated the last National Diet at Petrikow was naturally transplanted to the
ecclesiastical assembly which the Archbishop of Gnesen summoned for the
following year at Leczyc (1527), and in which our Laski took part. The
bishoprics of Breslau and Cujavia were specially signalised as infected with
the heretical plague. It was resolved to proceed vigorously against the
recognised heretics, as also against those only suspected of heresy, and that
upon the basis of the severe measures adopted in the previous assemblies, to
set aside all fear in the carrying out of the same, to have only God, the
faith, and the holy religion before one’s eyes, and in connection therewith to
spare neither money nor toil.* Here, for the first time, mention is made of an
attempt not merely to suppress the heresy with strong hand, but also to
instruct the people. May we perhaps trace this turn of affairs to the influence
of our dean, who had opportunity enough for recognising that this spirit could
no longer be quelled by violent measures alone ? The assembly resolved, namely:
“ Since even the most searching investigation and chastisement would avail but
little to root out this sect, unless the genuine pasture of the Word of God is
applied and taught by true Catholic men, who stand high on account of their own
works and example, and who, by their sound doctrine, can bring men to reject
the
evil and to choose
the good, it is ordained that the archbishops and bishops, particularly those
of Breslau* and Cujavia, shall maintain at their courts, metropolitan,
cathedral, and collegiate churches, and in particular those where the Lutheran
sect appears still to be spreading, learned men, theologians and preachers of
the word of God, who shall be able to make known and expound to the orthodox
the Gospel of Christ, the Holy Scripture, by thorough instruction and a good
discourse.”
We have no means of
knowing to what extent the several bishops followed this wise counsel in their
jurisdictions ; sundry indications lead to the conclusion that matters did not
go beyond good resolutions. But our Laski rested not. Repeatedly did he urge
upon the leader of the Humanists to give the King of Poland hints and advice ;
at length the cautious man gave way. His letter is composed with wondrous
skill, brilliant, replenished with reminiscences of the fair vanished world
which had been called forth to new life by the Humanists, graceful, and stamped
with dignity, and, moreover, rendering a delicate homage to the powerful King,
* The Bishop of Breslau had two years
before made his complaint to the papal see regarding the inroads of heresy. “
From the neighbouring Meissen, whence the monster in Wittenberg has found an
outlet”—so he complained to his chief shepherd—“ this accursed sect has invaded
my ecclesiastical province also, and that which there appears in books is with
me realised in the life ” (compare Theiner, ii. 431). Here, too, again and
again only the hue and cry over the change of some ecclesiastical customs,
neglect of the tithes, the abridgment of ecclesiastical rights, but no entering
into the deeper-lying causes—because no comprehension of them— of which the
disorders now arising are nothing more than the necessary consequences.
a fragrant blossom of
the time of the Renaissance, but with all its well-chosen words powerless to
reach and lay bare the ills, and to contribute to their healing.* Erasmus, with
all his gifts, was not the man for this ; and there is something tragic about
the effect of the letter, certainly an undesigned one, which has come to our
knowledge—a royal present to the Humanist, f By yet another sign of life, in the
same year (152y), Erasmus manifested as well his friendly disposition towards
the family of Laski, as likewise his wish to act with stimulating influence
upon the Polish clergy through the medium of the archbishop of the kingdom. He
dedicated to the Primate his edition of Ambrose, not only because this
particular Father of the Church was ready to issue from the press, but because
the Humanist recognised many a trait of resemblance between the first prefect
of the Church at Milan and the present primate of Poland, and wished, for the
purpose of animating the contemporary Archbishop of Gnesen, to bring before his
mind the spiritual picture of the venerable Archbishop of Milan.
Very soon the
ecclesiastical relations seem to have wrought with paralysing effect upon our
Laski. As early as a year after his return to his native land he complains to
his friend Amerbach that in the province of faith no changes whatever had taken
place. All that has been done has been slightly to curtail the great booty of
the monks. The senate, namely, had decreed that no monastic property could be
divided among private individuals, and that the private property of monks and
nuns should
after their death
revert to their relatives. “ Sic forte pauciores monachos habebimus ” (“ So we
shall perhaps have somewhat fewer monks ”) ; with this exclamation the
earnest-minded Dean seeks to console himself in his grief over the state of his
Church. It was but a dreary consolation. The longer the time that passed, the
more did the faithful son become conscious that the mother Church was fixed
and immovable in its old ruts, and the scandalised vision was rendered more
acute to perceive the fail; Lgs of this Church. It was in those days that our
friend formed in Cracow the acquaintance of a young man preparing for the
priesthood, who was then twenty-three years of age, a bachelor of the
University, and on the point of completing his studies by a residence of some
years in Padua and Bologna. The gifted and devout young man had already
attracted the attention and won the favour of the Bishop of Cracow ; nor could
the student remain concealed from the searching eye of our Laski, since by his
serious walk and conversation he towered so prominently above the life and
doings of his fellow-students. A Lasco had then indeed no conception that one
day there would arise for him, in the young man to whom he now turned with so
much kindness, his own most dangerous enemy, and that of the whole
Reformational development of Poland : Stanislas Hosius. A generation later he
recalls to the memory of his opponent those conversations which he held with
him in Cracow, in which Laski not only blamed the life of many false servants
of his Church (pseudo-ecclesi- astici), but also was already scandalised at
many of their articles of doctrine. At that time there still
Once Laski in his
inner life had entered upon these paths and given room to such convictions, the
natural result could only be that they drew him ever farther upon by-paths
perilous for a faithful son of the Romish Church. He was not in the mood, with
his earnest studies, to confine himself now to the practical work of his office
; he must, in accordance with his whole constitution of mind, though at
present only from afar, follow the mighty intellectual current without, in the
home lands of Humanism and the Reformation. Almost insensibly he was carried
away by the surging ‘waves which, though only after long years, landed the
earnest man upon the shore of the Evangelical Church. The first letter from him
contained in Kuyper’s collection is to the well-known Johannes Hess, in
Breslau, written from Kalisch, the chief town of the palatinate of the same
name, to which also Gnesen belonged. The name of Hess was a familiar one to the
Humanists and Reformers in Germany and Switzerland. His renowned theses of the
year 1524, on the word of God, the high-priestly office of Christ, and on
marriage, breathe a fresh Reformation spirit; they penetrated deep into France
; and Lefkvre testifies in a charming letter to Farel from Meaux his warm
assent to their contents.f It would appear that Laski during his stay in Basle
heard nothing concerning this Nuremberger, for whom Poland had
become a second
fatherland ; but in Poland itself men spoke much in liberal circles of the
renowned Breslau doctor, and so our Laski turned to him, animated at first by
the wish of coming into intellectual contact with the fresh and lively
scholar,* but then also through him to become possessed of the most recent
products of the book-market. For the Dean of Gnesen the stern inhibition of
books does not seem to have existed, so far as concerns the importation of
Lutheran writings. He has at that time already read the Hyperaspistes f of
Erasmus against Luther ; he wishes to obtain all the writings which have since
then proceeded from the pen of Erasmus or of Luther. The Hyperaspistes had made
its appearance just at the time when our Laski set out from Venice ; in it the
final and irreparable breach between the head of the Reformation and the prince
of the Humanists is accomplished. So great is the bitterness and irritation of
Erasmus, ordinarily, so refined in language, so calm and lofty in tone, that,
even as regards the form, he exposed himself to a perceptible weakening by the
surrender of the wonted moderation in which his strength lay. In point of
contents, too, the Humanist occupies a lower standpoint than the Reformer, in
presence of the deepest and most mysterious question of life, that of the
freedom or unfreedom of the human will. There the Humanist, with his weapons
drawn avowedly from the armoury of Church doctrine, but it is nevertheless
rather Pelagius than Augustine
Many, and those even
earnest-minded believers, will not be able to follow the colossal man in all
his most daring conclusions ; and Erasmus by his sharp, unsparing rhetoric
would easily win for himself the approbation of those whose so-called sound common
sense prefers to evade the serious, difficult questions with a convenient
dictatorial utterance, rather than make the attempt to sound their depths, much
less to think of their solution. Dorner is thus right in his verdict on this
controversy when he says : “ Erasmus makes man, to begin with, richer than
Luther ; but how much superior in the long run is Luther’s notion of freedom to
that of Erasmus, for whom the highest and best in the same is resolved into
freedom of choice, who thus, as a logical consequence, must teach an
everlasting possibility of falling. Luther’s notion of freedom leads to the
Godlike real freedom of grace ; for this it could not appear a privilege, but
only a defect, to be still involved in choice and hesitancy. Here, too, as in
the Christology, it is the goal of the yet to be perfectly realised idea which
Luther has apprehended, though he has been less successful in completely and
distinctly marking out the stages to the attainment of the goal and the factors
entering into such attainment. Erasmus’ notion of freedom, with its
everlasting twofold possibility, and with its uncertainty in regard to
salvation, can
not appear to him an
enviable one ; nor can he perceive a loss in that condition in which man,
through the power of God-given love, even as God by virtue of His own free
eternal love, can eventually will only the good.”*
In addition to the
second part of the abovementioned work, which appeared in the course of the
following year, Hess had yet many other writings to send to our Laski, in
accordance with his request; for with the most strained attention the circles
of the Humanists and the adherents of the Reformation followed the decisive
conflict of the two leaders, and from the opposite camps resounded now one cry,
now the other. The biographer of Erasmus points to a few isolated expressions
of those who had been repelled by the assertions of Luther from a contemplated
adhesion to the cause of the Reformation ; j the final issue, however, shows
us not LutJur driven into a corner, but the Humanist retiring in vexation from
Basle to Freiburg, and thereby abandoning the field of battle.
If we had only an
expression of our Laski showing us what was the effect of this feud upon him in
those days!
But no sound from his
mouth. One thing-only has become manifest for us : that a slight cooling of the
relations between Erasmus and Laski must have already set in towards the close
of the twentieth years of the century (1527—1529). Long
Another cursory
notice affords us the opportunity of observing our Laski in his lonely studies.
He had prayed his friend Amerbach to forward him the • lucubrations of Sadolet
(152 7). f We shall certainly not err if we think of Laski in those days as
being at the standpoint of the upright, prudent, and able Bishop of Carpentras,
in the duchy of Avignon. Sadolet, already in early years—at the time when Laski
as a boy was staying with his uncle in Rome—appointed, along with Peter Bembo,
secretary to Leo X., had, without immediately participating in the feud
between Luther and Erasmus, sought on this important question to preserve an
intermediate position between the two combatants ;
3. The Severance from Church and Fatherland.
So passed the years
for our Laski in his native land, storm-tossed without when the fate of his
relatives called him to take part in the events of the world, but also storm-tossed
in mind, because he inwardly shared in the conflict of spirits of that time,
because his soul entered into the questions raised by the Reformation, and
raised with a force and distinctness which demanded of a pious heart
In the midst of this
movement there fell a severe visitation. The last years of the uncle’s life
were saddened in manifold ways. He had more than once to make a bitter
experience of the hostile spirit of his powerful and closely combined
opponents. He saw the mysterious shadow of the Reformation fall, too, within
the bounds of his own spiritual jurisdiction ; but he no longer knew how to
explain the varying outlines, and had a conception only of the great peril with
which the Church, entrusted to his oversight, was threatened by this movement.
Still more heavily did the course of events in Hungary press upon the aged
man. His heart was with the nephew upon the side of Zapolya, and, with the
ardour of Polish patriotism, he allowed his words and his means to be drawn
with his heart into the support of the brother-in-law of his king. Even a heavy
loss in earthly possessions the failing man might be able to overcome ; more
distressing, however, was it to him to see that even this his bearing towards
Zapolya, of which he could hardly be said to make any secret, and in which he
was conscious of being in harmony with the most eminent men of Poland, was
turned to account by his never-resting detractors in order to render him
suspected at Rome. The labour does not seem to have been in vain.
We are told that Pope
Clement VII. placed the Archbishop and his family under the ban. The Cardinal
of Ancona is said to have summoned the legatus natus to Rome to answer in his
own defence, and that in a citation so boundlessly violent that he designated
Laski therein as “ only in name archbishop, in reality arch-devil, standing on
one level with Datan, Korym, Abyron, Judas.” While the letter branded the
nephew Jerome as a second Herostratus, the Cardinal did not shrink from the
charge that the Primate had acquired arms by means of the sum obtained from the
alienation of ecclesiastical properties, and that these had been sent to the
Turks in Hungary.
The shameful document
itself I have not been able to find anywhere, and on several weighty grounds
doubt its existence. But the fact that such a rumour should be able at all to
attach to the name of Laski at a very early period reflects the disposition of
the opponents, which he had still to experience himself, and which shed a gloom
over the late evening of his life. In February, i 5 30, he officiated at the
coronation of the son of his king, at that time a youth of ten years ;
afterwards he still held a synod in.Petrikow, none of which he could have done
if he had been placed under a ban. On the 19th of May, 1531, he fell asleep,
now seventy-five years of age and weary of life, in his castle at Kalisch.
Only our Johannes
seems to have been present at his deathbed. Stanislas had already returned from
France to Poland in 1527; his occupation in life, however, detained him for the
most part far from the uncle. Jerome was still in Hungary ; at the intelligence
of the death he hastened to his native country.
By the end of June
the brothers met in Cracow at a sort of family council. The testament of the
uncle had been continued up to within a few days of his decease : they were
called to carry into effect the very minute instructions, which afford also to
us an extremely interesting glimpse into the sumptuous style of housekeeping of
a Polish archbishop of the sixteenth century ; at the same time they had on
this occasion to arrange and divide their, father’s property. Johannes had
already a few years before, immediately after the death of the father,
voluntarily renounced his portion of the inheritance in favour of his brothers.
Jerome, as the eldest, received the ancestral castle in Lask, the
youngest'brother a few other possessions, among which the principal was the
township of Strykon, with all its outlying lands and villages. The brothers
could not remain together long. Jerome repaired from Cracow direct to Linz, in
order to treat with Sigismund of Herberstein, the ambassador of Ferdinand, with
regard to the projects of compensation and exchange to be made with John
Zapolya. These negotiations, together with all the mental strains of the past
months, exerted so wearing an effect upon Jerome Laski, that he had hardly
returned to Transylvania, when he fell into a severe and dangerous illness,
which prostrated him for seven. weeks upon the bed of pain. Nor was this the
whole of his troubles. While he was still mourning over the loss of the uncle,
a son and a daughter were carried off in rapid succession, and, so far as we
can learn from the letters preserved to us from that time, it does not appear
that either of the brothers was able to tend him*
The departure of the
Archbishop affected the destiny of our Johannes most of all. By the uncle’s
death he had been deprived of his strongest support for the ascending of the
high ladder of ecclesiastical dignities. Shortly before his decease the uncle
had, with friendly concern, obtained for him the appointment as Provost of
Gnesen and Leczyc. Now, however, he took his place as the nephew and namesake
of the deceased Archbishop, and thus also in part as heir to the hostile
sentiment which was cherished on so many sides towards the departed. Men could
now with impunity vent upon him their rancour at his having been so long"
by preference the object of a too paternal solicitude on the part of the mighty
Primate. We do not hear that such interruption on the path of rapid advancement
had the effect of causing the bereaved nephew to despond ; his earnest purpose
of mind imposed upon him other and higher tasks, and in the accomplishment of
these the ill-will of the envious could not disturb him. His grief over the
Church had long drawn its nourishment from other and very different sources
than the pitiful laughter of un gratified ambition. With the departure of the
venerable form, however, the bond was loosened which with a heartfelt filial
affection attached the nephew to the uncle who had manifested such faithful
paternal love, which, moreover, attached the Dean to his archbishop; he could
now unhindered follow the guidance of those thoughts which led him ever more
deeply into the
The change was not
quickly accomplished. We are glad on Laski’s account that a few years yet
elapsed before the completed rupture, since in this way the reproach brought
against him by his defamers is deprived of its force—that from the days of his
stay in Basle he had, as a sort of disguised apostate, hypocritically preserved
the semblance of attachment to the Romish Church so long as the high position
of his uncle afforded him the prospect of an equally high succession. It was
not the case that the disappointment of this hope, with which he is credited,
impelled him in vexation to burn the ships behind him. He was still fighting a
giant’s fight to be able to remain in his mother Church ; he fought it
faithfully, earnestly, with the feeling of sadness that it was a contest also
involving his fatherland, his beloved Poland, but ever more also with the
impression, with the dawning conviction, that the wrestling mysterious form in
the night was the Lord Himself, and from that moment with the imploring wish, “
Lord, I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” As the blessed of the
Lord, then, at the dawn of the morning, he had no utterance of complaint that
the sinew of the thigh was thus shrunken.
In the first place,
the death of the Archbishop brought about for the young Provost of Gnesen a
series of official labours, even before his domestic affairs had been arranged
with his brothers. The cathedral chapter of Gnesen deputed him to convey to the
Bishop of Cujavia, Matthias Drzewicki, the intelligence of the election of the
last-named to the
fell at court the
designing game of envious prelates ; and all this while the fire of the
Reformation around was now blazing high, and there was urgent need of laying
aside all domestic contention and turning the combined strength against the
opponents, from day to day growing more numerous. The dignity of an archdeacon
of Warsaw, which the uncle had certainly intended for his nephew when he
acquired the patronage, was the last distinction which the Romish Church
bestowed upon this her gifted, but already half-recreant son.
Exceedingly sparse as
are the data from that momentous time, we shall not be wrong in supposing our
friend had then already advanced by one foot beyond the tent of his mother
Church. As early as 1536 the rumour was current that Laski had quitted his
native land and repaired to Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg. The report
turned out to be false, but it shows what was thought likely to be true with
regard to him in Cracow, whence the intelligence comes. There is still extant
an interesting letter bearing on this rumour.* The letter, addressed to Laski
by a certain Andreas Fr., under which abbreviation I am inclined to recognise
the Polish statesman Andreas Fricius Modrzewski—a man of some literary note,
and subsequently a member of the Protestant Church, whom we shall meet with
once or twice in the after-history—treats the report, made known by Sbigneus in
Cracow, as nothing at all improbable or even surprising. We discover from this
letter how the change on the part of Laski then appeared to his friends a
matter for
Modrzewski,
in that letter, gives us a detailed report of the diets of the Wittenberg
Concord (Sunday, 21st, to Monday, 29th May, 1536). That which was effected by
Bucer and his men of Upper Germany in their negotiations with Luther during
this week was entirely after the mind of our Laski in subsequent times ; and it
is like a fair prediction when rumour speaks of him as already in those very
days present at Wittenberg. Never did the German Reformer hold out so
conciliatory a hand to the people of Strassburg, Augsburg, and the other towns
of Upper Germany, as on that 23rd of May, when “ his eyes and face beamed in
elate, joyful, and kindly mood;”* he will not contend with the people who do
not admit that the ungodly partake in the Supper of the body of the Lord.
The diversity of
views was not inwardly overcome, but in that one hour Luther was able to extend
the brotherly hand above and beyond this diversity. Many freer views with
regard to the Supper than were admitted here had Laski already heard expressed
by Erasmus twelve years before, only orally, indeed, at the symposium with a
little chosen company. From the nature of the description given by Modrzewski
it is clear that our Laski had remained no stranger to the development of the
•doctrine of the Supper since those days.
Not as early as 1536
was the breach with the mother Church completed.* Two years later, soon after
he had been made Archdeacon of Warsaw, he •quitted his native land—to our eyes,
suddenly—and that with the definite intention of thereby separating himself at
the same time from the Romish Church. But he did not take this important step
in secret, like a fugitive. His high position in life, socially as well as
ecclesiastically, had often brought him into intimate contact with the King ;
and Sigismund remained to the last well-disposed towards the earnest and
influential man, as witness Laski’s appointment to the archdeaconship as late
as 1538 ; and to this we must add the further brilliant testimony, that the
King in the same year offered him likewise the vacant bishopric of Cujavia. The
fact
It may well thus have
been a sad leave-taking as our friend, standing on that frontier which borders
on Germany, bade a last farewell to the land of his fathers, and cast one more
lingering glance upon that country which he loved with all the fiery ardour of
a Pole, and from which he now tore
JOHN A
LASCO AS A PROTESTANT IN , GERMANY AND ENGLAND.
IT may have been at
the end of the summer in the year 1538 that John a Lasco crossed the
frontiers of his native land and entered upon German . soil. It was not
merely a quitting of the fatherland and a going forth into a strange territory,
but much more,—a forsaking of the ancient Church, a dissolving of the most
intimate family ties, and a journeying into the hazy distance to which the
Divine voice powerfully and irresistibly called him, the voice which will yet
make known to him the unknown land of his dwelling. Our pilgrim there upon the
Polish frontier stood in the full strength of his prime ; soon he will have
passed out of his fourth decennium, a fine, well-formed son of his fatherland,
with lofty brow, great, open eyes, sharply cut nose, about the closed mouth the
expression of an inflexibly firm will, the whole vigorous outward appearance
full of nobility,—an attractive, earnest type of manhood. Those who had first
seen him in those great days commend in that manly form the serious dignity
expressed in the countenance, combined with a trait of amiable grace, as also
the whole majesty of the bearing, which at once proclaimed a hero.*
His spirit’s eye
found the land of the Reformation essentially altered since those days,—now,
indeed, already separated by an interval of twelve years—in which upon the
border territory he had looked forth from the quiet room in the house of
Erasmus upon the rising tide of the Reformation. At that time the whole
movement was in full fermentation, and only the seething foam lay before the
gate of the great Humanist in Basle. Erasmus had just entered upon his
decision-fraught passage of arms with Luther; for the companion of the leader
of the Humanists, in those days universally recognised as such, it might still
appear doubtful whether the Reformer so sturdily hacking away would come out
eventually conqueror; and upon that victory depended the existence bf the
Church. The mighty on-rolling spirit of the Reformation, springing from the
heart, and now also laying hold of the whole popular soul in its depths, had
set free likewise other long, long-pent-up forces ; and these now broke for
themselves their stormy channel and called inexorably for solution, even on the
part of the Reformation ; and yet their source lay far away in another domain.
It was still very uncertain what would be the issue, and whether the Reformation
would succeed in holding itself aloof from the various heterogeneous demands,
and in separating from itself the impetuous allies who, with bold Radicalism,
forsook even the ground of the Gospel to enter upon a path of their own
choosing.
The relations had in
the meantime become essentially simplified. Easily and decidedly had emerged
from the conflict of opposing elements the clearly outlined form of that which
was then known
But the violent
political movements, which threatened to draw all the lands of Europe into a
vortex, advanced in an unexpected manner the firm establishment of the Church,
reformed in accordance with God’s Word. We have already once stood at the spot
where this whirlpool threw up its angriest waves. Upon the wide, fruitful
plains of Hungary it seemed for a moment as though the fate of Europe was to be
decided for centuries in the bloody conflict of the two pretenders to the crown
there,—a conflict which, on the one hand, brought the victorious Soliman, with
his bloodthirsty hordes, under the very walls of Vienna (October, 1529), which,
on the other hand, seemed to bring to an issue the hostile politics of Charles
V. and Francis 1. and those who rallied around them in the varying fortune of
arms. Kaiser Charles did not venture, considering the serious turn of military
affairs, to drive the German Protestant States into the camp of his enemies,
and had therefore to tolerate very many things on their part which he would
assuredly under other circumstances have suppressed with
The political events
upon the stage of the world in this fourth decade had been nothing but
favourable to Protestantism in its national position. The hindrance in the way
of attaining the full result within its reach arose, in a manner ruinous to all
subsequent development, out of its own midst. The Convention at Marburg
(beginning of October, 1529) had clearly shown the dissimilar mental tendency
of the two heads of the movement, Luther and Zwingli, upon one decisive point.
The shadows of these two forms rested thenceforth upon the hosts which followed
their leading, and gave to them differing outlines. The merit of having
maintained their personal conviction must be acknowledged to both alike. The
greater and more hearty sympathy must be accorded to the action of that leader
who, reaching over the irreconcilable point of difference, extends the
brotherly hand to the German Reformer, and has with taars to see it repelled.
How unspeakably much sorrow has since then come upon the Evangelical Church,
which saw in the rejection of the proffered hand discord carried into its own
bosom.* “ You have another spirit than we ! ” That fatal, lamentable utterance
became a sort of watchword, which divided the allies into two camps, between
His Divine love, that
we may happily preserve the Christian work of this concord, to the hallowing
and honour of His holy name, and to the blessedness of many souls, which has
been brought about by the grace of God in opposition to Satan, the world, and
all their adherents.”
About this time Laski
entered the home-land of the Reformation. It was as though in the ordering of
his life’s course the moment had been waited for in which just the personality
could enter upon the theatre of action which in the whole endowment of natural
gifts seemed to be the chosen instrument for further labouring on the edifice
of the Reformation upon the basis of this concord. But yet God’s ways are not
our ways. The stranger, who had turned his back upon Poland and the Romish
Church, was led to his work only by long circuitous paths.
Laski
directed his steps, in the first place, not to Wittenberg, where the friend had
two years before conjectured him to be. He seems purposely to have shunned the
presence of the great Reformer, whether it was that the conception of Luther
once formed in the vicinity of Erasmus had not yet entirely vanished, or that
he had given the promise to his king, who had allowed the highly distinguished
son of his country to depart, that he would avoid immediate intercourse with
this most redoubtable heretic. But neither did he, in the first instance, enter
upon the way of personal contact with the Reformers of the other line. In
Switzerland he might quickly have renewed the old connections. The intrepid
Zwingli indeed had already fallen upon the bloody field, a valiant Swiss ;
Oecolampadius too,
mark, not essentially
different from the impress eventually borne by himself.
We are unfortunately
ignorant of the motives which led our friend to strike out another path. At the
first glance the way seems like a play of chance, the drifting of a shipwrecked
mariner at the sport of the waves ; with a deeper penetration, we recognise the
leading of the Lord, who guides the destinies of men as the streams of water.
First, we see the form of our wanderer emerging at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
somewhere about the time when, in the latter autumn, the master-printers were
wont to assemble from all parts, with their new stores of books, to the fair in
the then so important commercial town. Even from Cracow, from Thorn, Posen,
and Breslau, the people repaired to the Main, generally in intimate
association, in order the more easily to obtain protection for themselves and
their wares upon the insecure highways. He took up his quarters at the house of
a certain Hadrianus, who is said to have been a bookseller on the
Liebfrauenberg, and who in after-years effected for him the purchase of books
and performed other commissions, by birth a Netherlander, but naturalised as a
citizen of Frankfort.* Perhaps it was just the book fair which attracted the
Pole to the city of the Main. For certainly not every fresh contribution to the
literature of the Reformation was able to pass the jealously guarded frontier
of his own land ; and such a fair afforded the most favourable opportunity for
enjoying one or other fruit forbidden and perforce dispensed with at
At the age of twenty,
Hardenberg, arrayed in the white cowl, with the black scapulary of the
Bernardins, repaired to Louvain, to complete the eight years’ course of a
theologian preparatory to the bachelor’s degree. He had become an object of
suspicion to the professors of a narrow creed on account of his more liberal
conceptions, and he had the intention at the time of the autumn fair of 1538 to
travel by way of Frankfort to Italy. The obstinate attack of sickness compelled
him to change his plan. Instead of journeying to Italy he repaired to Mayence,
to acquire at the university of that city the highest dignity of his vocation,
the honour of the doctor’s diploma. The new-found friend accompanied him to the
neighbouring city, which in those days had received, chiefly on account of the
renown of its university, the distinguishing appellation of “ the golden
Mayence.”
Just at that time,
days of noisy excitement and turbulence prevailed in Mayence. After a wilful
absence of years, the Elector Albert of Mayence had at length been compelled to
yield to the ever more impetuous urgency of his people, and had come from Halle
into his cathedral city. From February to June, 1539,* he held his court in
Mayence, not as a spiritual Shepherd, who cares for the soul’s welfare of the
flock entrusted to him, rather as a secular prince, in whose veins flows the
blood of the Hohen- zollern, zealously occupied with the raising of mercenaries
and exercising them for speedy service. If the oft-recurring assertion is
correct, that Laski was provided at his departure with letters of recommendation from his
king, there was assuredly among them one to the King’s relative, the Elector
and Cardinal, in whose hand the ultimate destiny of Germany would have lain
more than once if the moral earnestness, the religious depth of his character
had corresponded to his influence. At that time the pleasure-seeking
ecclesiastical prince could no longer afford any guidance to our Laski, even
though the latter had at all approached him. A quarter of a century earlier
perhaps it would have been otherwise. That was the brilliant period in which
the studious and art-loving prince was the friend of Hutten, and still bowed
with heartfelt reverence and devotion before the kingly intellect of Erasmus.
At that time the distinguished ecclesiastical prince was animated by the
ardent desire of transforming his university of Mayence into a model school for
the studies of Humanism, and at the same time also, quite in the spirit of the
great German Humanist, of exerting a reforming influence upon the Church.
Humanism proved even in his powerful hands inadequate to accomplish so great a
work. Moreover, there was wanting to this its enthusiastic disciple the sacred
moral earnestness for caring for the salvation of one’s own soul ; he too
failed of the realisation of his purpose, because he forgot that the sanctuary
can be cleansed not with merely learned or humanitarian, but only with holy
hands. The Elector, in his fondness for display, would enjoy life in like
manner as the Medician in those days upon the papal throne, perhaps with
somewhat more of German seriousness, but in essential features the same.
Elector Albert and our Laski had started from the school of Humanism and
its great master ;
the after-path, however, of their spiritual development had led them ever
farther asunder; in that spring of 1539 there was already no longer any point
of contact. One of them had risen to the dignity of a cardinal, yea, to the
eagerly coveted possession of the golden rose from the Pope, but at the same
time had been turned aside to the most manifest rupture with the Reformation.
He died, deeply aggrieved at the course of history, and inexorably pushed aside
by it in earnest judgment, to his very deathbed dunned by his creditors, while
even on his inanimate dust rests the unkindly shadow of the pedlar in
indulgences, plying his disgraceful trade, half the profits of which went to
the treasury of the splendour-loving Elector, yet without being able to fill
it. The path of the other led him into the Evangelical Church, all his
ecclesiastical benefices and dignities—and he could perhaps have risen as high
in his own land as Albert in Germany —resigned of his own free-will, a poor
servant of his only Lord, henceforth ever willing and ready to suffer hardship
as a soldier of Christ, to the end joyous in the blissful possession of the
grace of Christ Jesus.
Laski
seems to have remained nearly a year in Mayence, remote from that which was
passing in the sumptuous chambers of the Bishop, and devoted to serious
studies, if we are not at this time already to seek him in the Netherlands. Our
sources fail us for this year; the stay in Louvain, however, seems, from all
the indications, to have had a longer duration than the short interval which
is left if we think of Laski as remaining in Mayence until his friend received
his diploma, and not rather suppose him
to have hastened out
of the Netherlands to be present at the ceremony. His friend in the pursuit of
the doctor's degree had given lectures on the books of the Sentences and some
epistles of Paul. The latter, in particular must of necessity confirm the two
men in their Reformational views. The year did not come to a close without
Hardenberg having acquired the wished-for dignity. Laski was present at the
conferring of it. The Emden Library still contains the book which he gave on
this occasion to his friend, now crowned with the doctor’s cap; it was
Reuchlin’s Elements of the Hebrew Language. At one time the precious volume
belonged to Erasmus, whose handwriting (“ sum Erasmi, nec muto dominum ”*) it
yet bears. Nevertheless it did change its owner when the liberal Pole in so
magnanimous a style purchased of the renowned scholar his collection of books.
Hardenberg, too, regarded the book as doubly valuable on account of the giver ;
and' eight years afterwards wrote upon the title-page, “ Therefore [because he
had received it as a present from Laski on the festive occasion] this book
shall not change its master so long as I live, which I testify by this
subscription with my own hand.”f When, in the following year, the agents of the
Inquisition at Louvain burnt at least the books of Hardenberg, in vexation
that the heretic had escaped them, this book, so highly prized by him, escaped
the flames.
Soon after receiving
his diploma Hardenberg departed to his native land. The faithful friend
accompanied him down the Rhine. They had no
The Regent of the
Netherlands at that time was Mary* the widow of the unfortunate King of
Hungary, who lost his young and promising life in the marshes of Mohacz. In her
maiden days this highly gifted and studious pupil of Humanism had been much
esteemed, and even lauded, by Erasmus. Her pious mind had led the young Queen
to the study of the Holy Scriptures ; she showed herself not unfavourable to
the evangelical movements now spreading in Hungary ; and Luther thought himself
justified in expecting great things from her. When he received the intelligence
of the severe visitation which had befallen the pious widow, he sent to her at
Vienna, whither she had
<Laski
passed by Brussels and its splendid court to return to Louvain. The friendly
seat of the Muses was to afford him for the space of a year a desired place of
retreat for inwardly maturing in silence. Erasmus had on one occasion lauded
the renowned University and its fair situation. “ Nowhere,” said he, “can one
with greater quiet and freedom from interruption apply one’s self to study;
moreover, the neighbourhood is pleasant and healthful, overspread by an
Italian sky.”t More than three thousand students out of all lands,—at that time
great numbers from France, and not a few from Spain,—assembled in the different
lecture rooms; the number and scientific rank of the professors was in due proportion to
the great throng of students ; an ample collection of books afforded the
desired means for profound research. But Louvain had become at that time in its
theological faculty, through the influence of its leaders, a stronghold against
the Protestant Church and its doctrine, the worthy, nay even distancing rival
of the Sorbonne and of Cologne in opposition to every evangelic movement. The
rule, already in force during that year, was confirmed by law in 1545, that no
student should be admitted to the University who did not avow himself by a
solemn oath to be the enemy of all the doctrinal articles of Luther and Calvin
* At the head of these most pronounced and militant opponents stood Latomns,
the authorised spokesman of the faculty, stigmatised by Luther as the Louvain
sophist and Ishbi (2 Sam. xxi. 16), whom a pamphlet in my possession
characterises as an assuming syco- phanff
Not to sit once more
in late years as a student at the feet of teachers who expounded a defunct
scholastic theology did A Lasco come to Louvain. Nothing leads us to suppose
that he held any kind of intercourse with these men, with whose ecclesiastical
standpoint he had already entirely broken, and who soon enough discovered what
a suspicious kind of person this stranger from Poland was. At
* De Ram, Considerations sur
I’Hist, de P Univ. de Loievain, p. 62.
t “ Epistola de magistris nostris Lovaniensibus qnot et quales sint,
quibus debemus magistralem illam damnationem Lutherianam.” The letter
is addressed to Zwingli—a charming proof how' soon the bold act of Luther found
a glad response even in Louvain. The tractate appeared five months after Luther
had nailed up his theses. The writer has not given his name.
least, it is related
that they regarded with distrust Hardenbergs intimate converse with him, and
that difficulties arose for Hardenberg in consequence. Among the students, who
in part were of much more mature age than our university scholars are wont to
be, might already be discovered one or another enterprising personality, who,
resenting the unnatural restraint in the sacred domain of the faith, inclined
to the doctrine of the pure Gospel. Many a Reformational book passed secretly
from hand to hand, and eagerly was the free, salvation-bringing word received
by the young devout spirits. We know of a few youths who, though with great
shyness and reverence for the noble Pole, yet drew towards him in Louvain.
Amongst these stands especially prominent Francisco de Enzinas, who, as a lad
of seventeen, had been brought under Protestant influences in his native town
of Burgos in 1537, and two years afterwards, already entirely won to the
Gospel, had come to Louvain, simultaneously with Laski, in order to continue
his studies. He had soon heard of the illustrious Pole, who for the faith's
sake quitted the land of his birth, and descended from the brilliant height of
an ecclesiastical prince into so obscure and quiet a position. A letter from
him to Laski, written two years later, describes with eloquence and grace the
deep and abiding impression made by the Pole upon the susceptible and ardent
Spaniard.* Enzinas was already occupied at that time with the translation of
the Holy Scriptures into his mother-tongue—a highly lauded work, which procured
for the believing young man a
The circles in which
Laski especially moved in Louvain, and in which he found the greatest profit to
his spiritual life, are to be sought not under the shadow of the lecture rooms
of the University. They lay out of the way, still contemptuously overlooked at
that time and unmolested by the leaders of the Church,—hidden
fountain-chambers, wherein the living water collected which for ever slakes the
thirst. It is a charming glimpse which is afforded us into these little modest
circles ; we willingly enter their assembly for a moment with our friend.
As early as a century
and a half before the events of our history there had been kindled in the
Netherlands a fire of which the light and warmth was felt with beneficent
effect far and wide, and whose blessings extended even beyond the frontiers of
the land. He who kindled that fire in the temple was Gerhard Groot, this “
truly Christian man of the people, a man of marked and deeply earnest
character, notwithstanding all the geniality and kindness of a soul- seeking
love, of vigorous, resolute, trenchant personality, without fear or favour of
men—a man of the most comprehensive knowledge and many sided acquaintance with
men, of great acumen, and affect
ing, moving
eloquence.” * Were it not impracticable to compare with each other the towering
forms of different ages, who bear each the stamp of his own age, one might
certainly speak of Groot as the Spener of the Romish Church in the time of its
decline. Great was the incitement which he gave; one recognises how much it
was in accordance with the need of the best spirits of his time, as also of his
free and devout people, when he founded the brother and sister-houses, as
opposed to the sadly corrupt cloisters, with their beggar-like, degraded
occupants. Those who retired into these newly founded houses were truly pious
souls, who had calmly broken with the world and all that it has to offer of pleasure
and honour, and in quiet and seclusion, almost like a pietistic conventicle,
would live for the peace of their own hearts, but not exclusively in contemplative
indolent repose. A deep sympathy with the distresses of the time passed through
their soul, and they sought the lever for their activity, in checking the
prevailing corruption, by preference in the training of the young. Where their
brother-houses stood—and that was soon almost everywhere throughout the
land—one saw also the most peaceful industrious occupants at once busy in the
schools; and the blessing upon their labours was everywhere to be traced,
especially among the burghers, who at that time filled the thriving cities of
the Netherlands with prosperity. A voice from those brother-houses has given
such wonderfully classic expression to the peculiar tone of mind there current,
that this voice can since then nevermore be reduced to silence, and
In Louvain, too, a
powerful influence of these brother-houses is to be traced in the instruction
of the young. Here too the free spirit of the citizens was awakened ; and that
profound pious earnestness, which sought to investigate Divine truth at the
fountain-head, was effectually kindled. Precisely in the burgher circles was
stirred up a vigorous selfconsciousness, which would not any longer blindly
submit to all the arbitrary precepts of the Church and its dominating priests,
whose immoral walk caused so great scandal and offence to the honest burgher-
folk. Specially the Guild of the Cloth-weavers was very strongly represented in
Louvain also ; Flemish cloth was everywhere in high request. Even as far as
Cracow the wealthy merchants despatched their bales of costly wares, and by
this time also beyond the seas and to the farthest coasts. The other trades,
too, were flourishing in this populous
The unpretending
burgher-house lies not in the centre of the town and of its intellectual life,
where at that time, in the freshness of sumptuous and cheerful splendour, stood
the monumental structure of the Council House, to this day the fair witness to
the lively, active mind of the citizens of that period ; we have to seek it in
the outskirts of the town, close to the ramparts, where the little stream La
Voer mingles with the rivulet of the town La Dyle. There, on the Bolleborre,
dwelt Antoinette van Rosmers, who was closely connected with the best families
of the place. The year before (1539) she had lost her husband and two children
during the prevalence of a pestilence; only the one grown-up daughter, Gudula,
had remained to her. A widow at the age of fifty, she had also been deprived of
her property ; she must seek a more modest dwelling ; perhaps also she made
some small addition to her income by the letting of her rooms, for we know from
Enzinas that Laski dwelt at her house and went in and out thereat.* The trying
visitation had only led the pious widow and her like-minded
There are always but
few who meet at the house on the Bolleborre, in order to escape all attention,
for the Quintin’s church stands not far from the house, and who knows but the
suspicious priests have their doubts, or even have their informers in the
neighbourhood ? To-day there have assembled in the house of the widow the
rarely absent Josse van Ousberghen, a furrier by trade, deeply grounded in the
Gospel, full of peace of soul, of a quiet nature, but immovably steadfast and
robust in his faith. With him enters one of the sculptors, Jan Bey arts, along
with his already aged wife, Catharine Metsys; the member of their household,
too, Jan Schats, is not absent this evening. If we were to enter again another
time, we should meet with new faces. When, at the expiration of about three
years,
the enemies stretched
forth their blood-seeking hands against this little flock of believers, they
apprehended a band of forty-three companions in the faith (March, 1543)- .
The edification
begins with fosse's reading a passage of the New Testament, and endeavouring to
explain it. Those present take part in the exposition ; one thing helps the other
in the unfolding of Scripture; and we observe from the deeply edifying remarks
that those present are no longer children in understanding. After this the
Postil is brought in, long a specially favourite book of edification with them.
They know not much of him who wrote the book, the great German Reformer, and
are in no kind of communication with him ; but what they read there agrees so
fully with the dear Word of God and so powerfully refreshes their souls by its
vigorous way of speaking. The book then has eluded the prying eyes of the
censors and the priests; over there in Amsterdam there were already many
booksellers who kept the forbidden Reformational writings and knew how to
deliver them to the purchaser, and full many an enkindling tractate found its
way into the workroom even in Louvain. By cunning secret paths it had eluded
the vigilance of those on the watch. A method to which recourse was frequently
had, and that with success, was to bind up the coveted Evangelical fly-sheet
with a bulky volume of indifferent contents, to which the cursory glance of the
censor heedlessly granted the privilege of diffusion.*
This reading from the
Postil, or some other book
With sacred
earnestness did they hold these conferences. When once a word of derision
escaped the lips of one present concerning the doctrine of purgatory, of the
untruth of which all were convinced, the derider drew down upon himself a
stern rebuke. They did not wish to separate from the Church ; they wished to
remain with it in peace, so long as they were only let alone in their Bible-
searching and mutual edification. They had already indeed passed beyond the
boundary line marked for them by the Church, even farther than those
Laski,
who, with Hardenberg and Enzinas, had been brought into contact with this
evangelical circle, probably found here that of which he had
How greatly our
friend felt himself at home in the midst of these devout people is evident from
the fact, among others, that in the social life he lived with them the
resolution was matured of trampling down the last plank for a retreat to the
old life of the priesthood, and breaking through the injunction of celibacy.
This step was the public and final renouncing of the ordinances of the Romish
Church, the henceforth irremediable breach with that Church. From among the
simple burghers’ daughters of the city he chose to himself a companion for
life. We regret, after much research, not to have been able to discover the
faintest trace of her family connections or of her past history; even the
maiden name is
Trying times set in.
Over in Ghent insurrections had broken out: the friends of the Reformation had
attempted to shake off by force the oppressive yoke of the intolerant Church.
Kaiser Charles had at the intelligence thereof hastened to the land of his
birth, with violence to suppress the dangerous heresy. From every part of the
dominant Church he was urged to proceed with unrelenting rigour, and there was
no need in his case of any strong pressure to this end. Severe laws were
enacted. All books printed in Germany within the past twenty years were
interdicted ; no one was permitted to compose, or even sing, spiritual songs in
the language of the country ; the conventicles * were forbidden ; even the
thoughts were no longer allowed to pass unchallenged. There was no hesitation
in Louvain about carrying these Draconian laws into effect. One of the first to
experience their operation was Hardenberg. With fearless eloquence the young
doctor of theology, after his return from Mayence, expounded the epistles of
Paul to a crowded audience ; the citizens, too, loved to listen to the ingenuous
speech of the gifted man, who “ spake not as the scribes ” of Louvain. He was
accused at court. The order was given that he should be carried captive to
Brussels, whereby his fate would have been sealed ; the capital of the empire
had then acquired the melancholy cognomen of “slaughterhouse of the
Christians.” The Louvain citizens interceded on his behalf; the appeal was
successful
Nor did Laski any
longer continue to dwell in the inhospitable Louvain, among men who, in place
of investigating the truth, preferred to act as bloodhounds for the
Inquisition. He went in search of a land where, unmolested, he could live out
his faith in the greatest seclusion. Close to the frontier of the Netherlands
lay, as a hidden corner of the earth, a little free domain, which offered a
friendly asylum in those days of persecution. It was East Friesland. Thither
did our friend, again taking in his hand the traveller’s staff, direct his
steps.
The way thither ran
northwards, past Groningen. It is more than probable that A Lasco made a
diversion from Groningen to the cloister of Aduard, distant only some seven or
eight miles, which had received Hardenberg within its walls. The cloister was
larger-hearted and more lenient than the University. The banished one of
Louvain had not only found refuge in the hospitable cell of the monastery ; not
only, was the liberal-minded monk left without interference in the enjoyment of
his evangelical views ; the abbot even granted him the right of preaching and
lecturing, and the monks now eagerly listened to a discourse which the students
were forbidden to hear. Hardenberg owed this freedom to the accomplished abbot
of the widely renowned monastery. For the past twelve years it had been under
the oversight of Johannes Reekamp, in the succession of the abbots the one most
highly
For our friend a more
pleasant portion had been provided by his Lord. He passed the cloister by, to
advance for his confession’s sake farther abroad, deeper into the conflict and
into bitter sorrow, but with this also into the gracious knowledge that such a
life is a glorifying of God.
AT THE
GOAL IN EAST FRIESLAND. ALA FRIA FRESENA : “ Welcome, free
Half a thousand years
and more had since then elapsed. The people did homage to no overlord ; almost
every village had its own petty chieftain, who built to himself forts, and
engaged to protect the inhabitants of the village. But then these hovetlings
sought to outvie each other in power and influence. Troublous times ensued,
wherein the strength of the nation was exhausted in endless internal feuds, and
unfitted for presenting a victorious front to the common external foe.
Chieftains who were on terms of friendship concluded on St. Martin’s Eve, 1430,
a league of freedom, under the Upstallsboom, and chose as the head of the
league the son of that noble Enno Cirksena, who had himself declined election
on account of his age. It was a happy choice. Rapidly had the family of the
Cirksenas risen to eminence; prudent, full of warm devotion to the nation,
maintaining and defending its rights and liberties, they had thereby at the
Theda, the highly
revered mother of .the country, died in 1494. The prelates and hovetlings of
the land assembled, and, with the approval of the popular assemblies,
acknowledged her son the Count Edzard as regent. For upwards of thirty years
the destinies of the country rested in his hand, and that so securely and
prosperously that the grateful people styled him the Great, and the remembrance
of him is yet cherished in the land. Strong in war, strong in peace, he was ever
the guardian of his people, himself a genuine Frieslander, faithful, temperate,
prudent, just, full of glowing love of country, devout with all his heart, and
overflowing with kindly feeling, even towards the humblest in the land. In 1528
he fell peacefully asleep, with the words of Simeon upon his dying lips. He had
in believing spirit seen the Saviour, as He was made known by the Reformation,
and travelled through the German land, blessing, pardoning. Now would he as His
servant depart in peace. His son Enno II. succeeded him in the government, not
like the father in all respects, and more addicted to a life of pleasure than
to serious labour for the prosperity of his country. For the troublous times in
which his
reign of ten years
falls, with their great and momentous demands, he was hardly adequate ; he
went not to work with certainty and with readiness for selfsacrifice, clearly
conscious of his task, and from his heart devoted to it. He rather suffered
things to take their own course, and that to happen which he was too indolent
and too indifferent to avert. Thus his people had many heavy taxes imposed upon
them, and the land was called to suffer irreparable losses : it had become a
battle-field for the most diverse views ; a ferment pervaded all ranks of
society, and it was felt how much a strong hand was wanting to curb the excited
spirits in this time of agitation, and to lead them into the right path. In
1540 Enno died, at the age of only thirty-five, just in those days when Laski
arrived in Emden. His widow, Countess Anne, of the house of Oldenburg, akin to
the energetic Theda in more than one respect, assumed the reins of government
as guardian of her sons.
The free and
indomitable spirit of the Frisian people distinctly appears likewise in its
religious life. It is a devout people, which bows before its God in heaven, but
is little disposed to bring its neck under human ordinances. At the threshold
of its history stands, in strongly outlined form, its king Radbod. Against
Charles Martel he had valiantly defended the liberties of his people, but the
superiority of force was too great ; the Frankish duke vanquished the Frisian
king. With the victor the missionaries had entered the land, the hero-forms, to
be looked upon as messengers of the Lord Himself. The conquered Radbod had to
listen to the preaching of the f ross, and finally became willing to undergo
baptism.
Already he is
standing in the river to receive the consecration, when the Frisian king asks
the bishop, “ Where may my ancestors be ? In heaven or in hell ? ” “ Thy
ancestors died as heathen, and are consequently all gone down to hell.” In
perverse mood Radbod came up out of the water, and said, “ Then I will sooner
be with my own kinsmen in hell, than with the few Christians in heaven.” No
subsequent persuasion could induce him to receive baptism.
After only a few
years none of his tribesmen could any longer withstand the preaching of the
Cross. Already an old man, Winfrid returned to the land of his early labours ;
and now he began to accomplish among the Frieslanders that wherein in former
decades he had not been able to succeed. Liudger and Willehad were disciples of
Winfrid, and themselves sons of the Frisian people,—men to whom the Christians
of the land were devotedly attached ; in ever-gathering hosts the people came
forward for baptism. Once become Christian, the nation clung with piety and
fidelity to its faith ; hardly anywhere did heathendom sink into so dark a
night of oblivion as among the Frisians. But in the ecclesiastical province,
too, the people made its peculiar impress, and through the centuries defended
and preserved its rights. There was no episcopal see in the land : one half of
the country was under the pastoral staff of the Bishop of Bremen, the other
under that of the Bishop of Munster; any influence of these ecclesiastical
princes upon the destiny of the country was not perceptible. To the demands of
a Gregory VII. for the introduction of celibacy, the Frieslanders opposed their
maxim, “The priests are as much
Things became changed
in the days of Luther. The writings of the German Reformer fell betimes into
the hands of the vigorous Count Edzard II. ; and, with growing pleasure and
approval, he became charmed with the pious, daring spirit with which, in a way
hitherto unexpected, he was there brought into contact. The fearless manly word
of Luther rang forth so bold and free, as though it had been spoken * by a
Frieslander. The Count desired of Luther a preacher of the Gospel. In the land
itself the fitting and qualified personality was to be found— a disciple of the
Brothers of the Common Life in Zwolle, Master Aportanus. He did not stand long
alone. In the most diverse places of the land a longing for the preaching of
the Gospel was awakened ; then also men offered themselves, mostly
liberal-minded priests, who had been affected in their youth by the teaching of
the Brothers of the Common Life, and who saw in the new movement
At the time of
Edzard's death the evangelical doctrine had been diffused throughout the whole
land, the departing Count being attached to it in faithful love. Even on his
deathbed he exhorted his sons to continue in this doctrine. His successor kept
his word. In the carrying of it out, however, he availed himself of his promise
mainly in order to confiscate the abundant possessions of the cloisters,
The first decisive
impulse to the Reformation movement in these Low German provinces, too, had
unquestionably been given by the earliest and unique Reformational writings of
Ltither, and his bold impetuous confronting of kaiser, and empire, and pope, so
heroically free, in submission only to the Gospel of the Lord. But the impulse
given did not in East Friesland continue to bind itself closely and slavishly
to the giant form of the German Reformer. The free Frisian likes to walk in his
own ways ; the well-nigh overpowering influence of the Wittenberger was broken
beyond the Weser and the Ems.
In the case of the
Magister Aportanus, too, whose mighty personality decidedly impressed upon his
land the stamp of its theological bent and bias, there are early manifest—in
part because he was himself a genuine Frieslander—views upon the one decisive
point which Luther would have already rejected without hesitation as erroneous
doctrine of the Sacramentarians. As early as 1526 the preacher in Emden writes
such sentences as this: “ God, who has always enabled us to bear in memory His
great works and
wondrous deeds by means of a sign or seal, has given to us Christians baptism
and the Supper, as He gave to Noah the rainbow, to Abraham circumcision, to the
children of Israel the eating of the paschal lamb. As those are only sign and
seal, so also baptism and bread and wine are not the Divine purification and
sanctification, but only certain and infallible signs and seals on the part of
God regarding the things mentioned.
. . . To know Christ
and to receive Him with the whole heart through faith, that is truly to drink
His blood and truly to eat His flesh. Inasmuch as’ Christ is corporeally in
heaven at the right hand of His heavenly Father, so He is not corporeally, but
spiritually, present in the bread.” What Apor- tanus taught in this form in
Emden, that in Norden his brave companion in the faith and conflict, Heinrich
Rese, in 1527, composed and sang in that spiritual song which quickly passed
from mouth to mouth, in which it is said :—“ Faith is the true eating ;—Else we
may not suppose—To enjoy in a bodily wise—Such wholesome meat.—Faith receiveth
Christ Himself—And all that He hath for us done,—His flesh and blood, His body
and soul,—Yea, in Him God Himself altogether.” * But that is the loud echo, far
in the north, of the doctrine of Zwingli: it encountered opposition, as well on
the Romish side as on the part of evangelical preachers who attached themselves
more closely to Luther; yet it comes out victoriously and clearly in the
earliest Confession of Faith, which the evangelical preachers issued
immediately after the
In accordance with
the sense of freedom on the part of its inhabitants, Friesland soon became the
asylum of all those persecuted for their faith’s sake in the neighbouring
States. The influx was very considerable. The little country contained a motley
array of persons representing the most diverse religious views, in those days a
unique phenomenon as though there by the sea an island had arisen with laws such
as have elsewhere been established only within the most recent times. From the
Netherlands the adherents of the Evangelical Church flocked in to the
hospitable harbour of freedom of conscience. Amongst them, and mingled with
them, came also the Anabaptists—Heinrich Niclaes here carried on his practices
for a time, then again David Joris ; eveiy where persecuted, Carlstadt reposed
here a while : a real rendezvous of the most manifold enthusiasts. Their
influence failed not to make itself felt, especially under the rule of Enno,
who readily let things take their course. From Bremen had come preachers who
thought they could oppose a barrier to the rising disorder by a close and exclusive
adhesion to the doctrines of Luther ; but the community rose indignantly
against such demand. Nor did laws of government, framed in accordance with the
Marburg Articles, prove of great avail, specially inasmuch as no obedience was
yielded to
Such was the state of
East Friesland when John a Lasco crossed over from Groningen, here in quiet to
live in the midst of his studies.
I. THE WAITING TIME.
It must have been in
the latter autumn of 1540 that our friend, weaiy of the rising persecution in
Louvain and the whole domains of the regent of the Netherlands, longing for
repose to live in accordance with the promptings of his faith, sought the
friendly shelter of the Frisian land.
Emden was not in
those days an inviting place of residence. The sea washed right up to the town
wall; and in the chill autumn storms, the murky winter nights, the swelling
flood dashed angrily against the town. Damp and raw hung the mists over the
low-lying lands. The narrow streets, the little modest dwelling-houses, hardly
afforded sufficient shelter to the inhabitants, steeled as they were from
childhood to all such discomforts of rude climate; altogether inhospitable must
they appear to a stranger, especially to a Pole, used to the comforts of the
patrician houses in Cracow. When,
The means, likewise,
of our exile seem to have been at that time too scanty for protecting himself
by greater conveniences against the stress of wind and weather. He has written
home to have his collection of books forwarded by way of Frankfort to him at
Emden, and now sends to his friend in Aduard a list of his duplicates for the
supplementing of the copious library of the monastery, with a view at the same
time of defraying from the proceeds his expenses of living. Towards the
inhabitants of Emden his relation was that of a stranger. To the educated among
them he could easily make himself intelligible in the mother-tongue of the
Humanists ; from the people, however, he was separated, as by an impassable
gulf, by that Low German (Dutch)
language, sounding so
entirely different from that which he had acquired of the German language in
Basle. But it was a people here in Friesland that could not, like a race of
Polish kmetons, be passed aside unregarded ; nor certainly would Laski now wish
so to slight them.
To all these
difficulties in the way of becoming at home in this rude and uninviting region
there was added, in the case of our friend, that of a painful physical
disorder. We have to think of him in this respect as, like Paul, having a thorn
in the flesh, may also regard him as otherwise resembling that great Apostle^
who had learnt in the school of suffering and in the instruction of the Gospel,
that the grace of his'Lord was sufficient for him. Even the first reports which
we heard concerning Laski in Bologna lead us to infer a delicate state of
health, such as to cause anxiety to his immediate friends. During the last
thirteen years of his life in his own land he had been physically well.* But
now, in the cold, damp, low-lying lands, the attacks of ague had returned with
renewed violence. Food to which he was not accustomed had deranged his stomach,
which suffered the more from the remedies prescribed to him by the physicians.
Continued vomiting tortures the sufferer; the short journey to the church
suffices well-nigh to exhaust him ; if he reads only a little, a dimness comes
over his eyes ; a few lines of a letter cost him a day of pain. Yet all this
discomfort wrung from him no single murmur. “ To God be the glory, who is
reminding me j,n grace by such bodily admonitions of my guilt and
It is unfortunately
not permitted us to obtain a glimpse of his course of study during the quiet
year which followed. We see only that new works of importance in the
theological domain do not long escape his attention. He commends on one
occasion the vigorous language of Melanchthoris tractate, which appeared in
1539,—“The principal [fiir- nembste\ difference between pure Christian doctrine
of the Gospel and the idolatrous papistical doctrine,” —a production which, as
he tells his friend in the cloister, has been read with the most lively
interest by the Emperor himself, and wherein, with admirable brevity and
condensation, Melanchthon has touched upon the main articles of the faith. From
his distant watchtower by the sea Laski followed the progress of events in the
ecclesiastical world. It was then the order of the day to treat of the most
difficult and obscure questions of theology in lengthy deliberations. He who
should wish to follow the course of such a discussion merely as an event of the
day would be insensibly placed in presence of the most important problems, and
involuntarily called upon to furnish a solution of, them. How much more so our
friend, whose serious studies continually urged him, for his own enlightenment
and confirmation in the faith, to labour on the answering
of the questions
raised. In November, 1540, deputies from the different States had assembled
for conference at Worms. Ranke calls attention to the extraordinary fact that
in this instance the representatives of the papacy were divided in opinion ;
those of Protestantism, on the other hand, were at one.* The Wittenberg Concord
as yet cemented the minds together ; Calvin and Melanchthon, both present, were
united in intimate confidence. The main question turned upon the point of
ecclesiastical law which of the two Churches abides iji the fellowship of the
true and ancient Church, and, consequently, which has a right to lay claim to
the title of Catholic. The question must exert a powerful attraction upon
Laski, and urge him to studies of which the results appear in the important
labours of after-days. This conference at Worms was followed, in the beginning
of the subsequent year, by a Conference on Religion, held at Ratisbon, the
latter in presence of the Emperor himself. For years the two Churches had not approached
each other in so conciliatory a spirit as here. The Granvellas and Contarinis
on the one hand, the Bucers and Melanchthons on the other, were inclined to
concessions which, in the present day, would have carried the one to the bench
of the Old Catholics, the other to the vicinity of the Central Party. On that
side they were willing to leave the marriage .of the priesthood an open
question so far as Germany was concerned, and in like manner the concession of
the cup to the laity ; on this side some of the princes were not disinclined
under certain conditions to acknowledge the primacy of the Pope. Nay, even
To our friend, in his
distant asylum, this conference, too, of which the intelligence spread so
quickly through Germany, brought with it the necessity of submitting all the
points of division once more to the most earnest examination before the bar of
his own conscience. The decision could not be doubtful. The result was for him
a yet more decided severance from the Romish Church, a yet more powerful
emphasising of the Protestant standpoint.
The more strongly and
decisively the emphasising of Protestantism manifested itself with Laski, the
more urgent was he, with his friend in the cloister, to come to decision. Laski
must have orally called upon his friend to depart; Hardenberg still hesitated,
but the sting against which it was vain to strive had already been implanted in
his soul by A Lasco. “That which you write concerning shame, pain, grief, and
all the wretchedness that constantly tortures you, how in all the world shall I
believe that, since you yourself assert that Christ unquestionably approves of
the reasons for your inten
of Christ. As for
myself, I love you, my Albert, as ever; but your dilatoriness I do not love.” *
This is the honest,
manly language of a true soldier of Christ, who is not ashamed of the Gospel,
but boldly confesses the Lord without disguise, and with joyful resolution has
for His sake severed every bond which could enchain him to the world, to feel
himself held henceforth only by that one bond which links the redeemed and
liberated soul to its Saviour. Thus, as entirely separated and inexorably
resolved, Laski would not yet have expressed himself while in the circle of the
Bible- readers at Louvain ; with rapid strides he presses forward upon the
career, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to that
which is before, recognising his strength to lie in the fact that he has been
apprehended of Christ.
And he rests not till
he has forced the lingering friend to the like momentous step. Hardenberg
brings forward a number of difficulties, which show the severe conflict through
which his soul was passing ;t in the letter just cited we have indeed the
refutation of single points, which the oral converse in Emden had perhaps not
fully cleared up. Hardenberg may have seen in the church at Emden the images of
the saints, which had not yet been put away ; hence the doubt whether the
change would not be, after all, a passing from one Babylon to another Babylon—a
doubt so easily arising in one who was hesitating. The interchange
The lingering
Hardenberg could not in the long run withstand this manly and pressing urgency.
It is true it was only in the spring of 1543 that the monk in his Bernardin
cowl knocked at the door of Laski. The monk’s garb was here put aside and laid
up, and Laskis wife took care that the moths should not consume the woollen
garment.* From Emden Hardenberg very soon went on to Wittenberg, to establish
himself in the doctrines of the Evangelical Church under the oversight of
Melanchthon. An intimate relation of friendship quickly united the two men, who
were more spiritually akin to each other than was the case with the resolute,
vigorous, uncompromising Pole.
Nor were the
nunneries of this period more favourably judged of by our Laski, not even those
of the mildest ritual, such as we meet with in the Beguine houses of that day
on the Lower Rhine—communities whose members, without any kind of vows binding
them for life, led in ordinary houses a devout life, in simple unpretentious
domestic order. In the neighbouring Groningen there lived in the first
residence of the Beguines the daughter of an ancient and distinguished
Groningen family as a domicella inantellata—i.e., one belonging to the leading
division of the house— the intellectual, pious Gertrude Syssinge. Laski had
formed her acquaintance, and was in epistolary correspondence with her,—a
correspondence which
the educated Beguine
knew how to conduct in the Latin language, while at the same time so well
versed in domestic labours that her spindle and loom were no strange occupation
to her. Laski urges upon her too to quit the community in which she lives; his
house in Emden shall be a place of refuge for her. More instant becomes the
pressure as the din of war threatens to advance to Groningen. “ God will not
forsake thee, wherever thou art, if thou wilt only follow Him in truth and with
thy whole heart ; and I doubt not of thy willingness. I will not fail of
affording thee a stout protection in the time of need.” In a further letter *
we meet with yet more urgent language : “ Though I cannot, and will not, be lord
and judge of another’s conscience, yet I do not comprehend how any one who has
any knowledge of the truth, and knows the mysteries of ungodliness in the
convents, can justify his conscience before God if he remains in the midst of
those of whom he daily sees and hears that the merits and the glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ are dishonoured by them.” The ultimate decision was longer delayed
in the case of our Beguine than in that of the Bernardin monk of the convent of
Aduard ; many a devious step, which cannot be followed by us here, was made
with hesitating foot by the maiden before she quitted the threshold of the
cloister for ever. Those who in their convent days had not been far from each
other now found themselves for the rest of their lives united under the same
roof: in 1547 Hardenberg led home his
“ Tnitje” * as
companion for life to his Bremen pastorate.
The two years of
waiting which passed away in Emden before Laski obeyed the call to throw
himself with vigour and decision into the course of events did not flow on so
smoothly and quietly as he may well have wished. Visits were made from time to
time to the neighbouring border district of the Netherlands. A brief stay in Amsterdam
brought him many a tempting offer. A journey to his old home-land, the beloved
Poland, falls likewise within this time of waiting. The occasion is a painful
one. A few years before this, the important action of his renowned brother
Jerome and his tragic experiences had already produced a deep effect upon the
life of our friend : we remember with what unflagging zeal our Johannes had set
all things in movement until he had freed his beloved brother from the
disgraceful bonds into which the aspirant to the throne of Hungary had cast
him. This shameful treatment on the part of one for whom he had sacrificed
everything, and who owed almost everything to him, had driven the deeply
injured Pole into the camp of the other pretender. His whole endeavour was
henceforth directed to obtaining at last healing and peace for the fair
Hungarian land, bleeding as it was from a thousand wounds. And he honestly
worked to that end. Kaiser Charles himself bears witness in a letter to Jerome,
which is still preserved,f what an essential part Laski had
How gladly would we
have listened to the conversation which Johannes held with his dying brother.
More than one indication points to the conclusion that Jerome was not far from
the Gospel ; and had
After the death of
the brother our Laski did not remain much longer in Cracow. In the spring of
1542 he is already at Emden again. A passing notice in a letter indicates that
he had held serious negotiations with the bishops of his native land.J It was
his intention to make these public ; unfortunately he did not carry this
intention into effect; at least, up to the present time no MS. having
With the death of the
brother a strong tie which bound him to his native land was broken. The
negotiations with the Polish bishops would suffice to convince him that no way
was yet opened to the free proclamation of the Gospel in his fatherland, and
only on this condition did he conceive of the possibility of returning. He laid
himself out for a long sojourn in a foreign land ; and, after all, he felt
himself at home by this time in the kindly spot far away in the north upon the
bleak coast of the sea. His health had somewhat improved, and was better fitted
to contend with the inclemency of the rude climate. The passion for active
labour was reviving. It was to be foreseen from the first that a nature like
that of our friend could not stand long idle in the market-place once he had
inwardly worked his way through all pressing questions, and the Lord had given
him the stability of a fixed standpoint.
And he was not called
to stand long idle ; the Lord had need of him as a chosen vessel.
We have already
sought to present in broad outline a description of the state of affairs in
East Friesland. Count Enno had been cut off in the prime of life in 1 540 ; his
widow, the Countess Anne, of the house of Oldenburg, had entered upon the
government as guardian of her youthful sons. It was an arduous and venturesome
enterprise, specially for a woman, to undertake the conduct of the disordered
affairs of the land at such a troublous time. The Countess Anne, of devout,
earnest mind, shrank not from confronting the difficulty ; in firm and
masculine hand she held the rein like that Tlieda who, seventy years before, as
widow of Ulric Cirksena, had ruled over the land with such abundant blessing in
place of her sons, not yet of age. The labour was rendered more difficult to
Countess Anne by reason of particular circumstances. Her brother-in-law, Count John,
a brother of the late regent, demanded guardianship of the nephews during their
minority, notwithstanding the fact that, on the occasion of his marriage with a
natural daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, he had solemnly renounced for
himself and his descendants the right of succession in East Friesland, and that
under letter and seal. The alliance with an emperor’s daughter he had counted
worth a pitiable relapse into the Church of Rome ; on account of both of these
recommendations he seemed to Charles V. worthy of being acknowledged as the
feudal lord of the province of East Friesland. So much the more unworthy was
he counted by the Fr*eslanders, who had already promised fidelity to
the widow of Count Enno ; with heavy sacrifices of money, almost exceeding the
resources of the little country, exhausted as it was by the many wars and con
Count Christopher
was, like his sister, attached with all his heart to the cause of the
Reformation, a goodly heritage of their pious mother. Both recognised that for
the weal of the cruelly straitened land the lever of good order must be
applied, in the first instance, in the ecclesiastical domain. The Polish baron
dwelling in Emden was well known to them ; to gain him on behalf of the Church
was their most zealous endeavour. A new preacher’s office was to be founded at
the church in Emden. Laski declined the offer, pleading his defective
acquaintance with the language of the country; this would be the second
refusal, if the opinion of Emmius could be sustained.
In the place of him
Thomas Bramius was chosen, an able, pious person, whom our friend likewise
esteemed.* Count Christopher still relaxed not in
2. The Work with the
Sword in the Hand.
As was the case
elsewhere, so was it also in East Friesland. The rupture with the ancient
Church was not at once so violent and striking that one might draw with
clearness and distinctness the boundary line between the old which had passed
away and the new which had occupied its place. It happened not rarely—and we
could, as regards Friesland, prove this by examples—that in the same church the
one preacher proclaimed the Gospel as with new tongues, and enthusiastically
unfolded the sacred banner of the Reformation—our righteousness of grace alone,
through faith in Christ Jesus—while below at the altar, after as before, the
priest read his traditional mass, which ceased only when no one was any longer
found ready to attend its performance. So also it was in Emden. For two decades
now the
The new
superintendent at once manfully encountered them: their position seemed to him
an anachronism. He forbade to them preaching and baptism, and issued a severe
injunction that the images till then tolerated in the Church should be removed.
The monks, now grown daring, withstood him. First of all, they held up Laski to
suspicion as a stranger who sought to introduce new customs. They owed no
obedience to him, the Pole with a beard reaching to his breast. The sly
Franciscans knew right well the value of the card they were playing against the
hated opponent, for the Fries- lander is almost inaccessible to strangers, and
I count it among the strongest marks of the authority of our
Even among the
Protestants themselves there were not a few disinclined for a decisive rupture
with the papal customs. We receive a distinct impression of their opinion from
a writing of A Lasco, published probably about this time : On the holding alooj
Jrom Papal Services* The interesting tractate places us in the midst of the
movement of that day, and shows us for how many it had become difficult to
sever themselves from the customs half understood indeed, but endeared to them
from their earliest youth. Patience was demanded for these weak persons; one
may even discover in these forms a Christian sense, and ought at least to let
them die out undisturbed. Laski victoriously proves the untenable, hybrid
character of such unsettled views, and lays bare the deep injuries inflicted
upon the religious life by participation in a religious service which, after
all, is built up without any foundation in God’s Word. He appeals once in his
reasoning to the beautiful words of Calvin, that “ nothing in our lives ought
to appear so dear and valuable to us, that we should for the
It was an unwonted
language which the people of Emden now heard pronounced with manly and firm
decision. It was not to every one’s taste; it contradicted too bluntly the
traditional and now endeared practice; called for a radical change in the life,
such as is heartily accomplished only by those who refuse to confound custom
with the truth, and are resolved to follow the latter alone. The demand of the
stranger appeared, moreover, to these hybrid beings a curtailment of their
freedom ; and on this point the Frieslander is firm. And yet they could not but
feel that the word to which they had listened was rather an animating reference
to the chain they were still dragging behind them ; only the courage of faith
for snapping it asunder was lacking to them. Even the Countess wavered. The
timid woman saw the peril which threatened her and her people from the
adjoining Netherlands, from the Kaiser himself, if she should proceed with too
great decision against the monks and their godless ordinances. She wished, as
the mother of her country, to have patience with the weak, as Paul enjoins; but
overlooked the fact that this
I am a stranger, have
a family, have need of a settled abode, for the preservation of which I have
need of benevolence, not hostility, not injury; and of A truth my aim and
endeavour is to stand on terms of friendship with all, and to accommodate
myself to every one’s mode of life, but only unto the altar : to cross this
limit, even from prudence in such feeling, I am not able, though I should
thereby suffer the loss of all friendship, and though I should leave my family
in the deepest distress and poverty ; the Lord, who feedeth all things, will
also care for those that are mine if I leave them nothing.” He would not have
thus written—so our Laski concludes his memorable and affecting letter—if he
did not know the devout mind of the Countess ;
And God answered the
prayer of His faithful servant. The Countess bowed before the earnest and
reproving words of the undaunted man ; the letter inspired her with courage,
even at the risk of drawing down upon her and her poor little land the imperial
displeasure, to lay aside all anxious considerations and to listen to the voice
of God, as she believed she heard it in this letter. The letter which she
returned to Laski does honour to both ; let us leave it undisfigured in its
true-hearted language in the original:—“Our salutations first of all, Wosthy,
Beloved, Trusty. You have lately
The command of the
Countess was carried into execution. The monks did not yet abandon all hope of
ultimate success. A few weeks after the edict their protector, the apostate
Count John, came again to Emden, glad to have a pretext for intervening in the
affairs of the little country. The Countess, however, stood firm. Even threats
were unavailing ; the God-fearing Reformer had inspired her with resolute
courage, the sacred courage for doing God’s will, and this makes a woman at any
time a match for a man. Nay, even Count John felt the wonderful power which
proceeded from Laski, established as he was in the will of God. He had an
interview with him; we know only the result,—that tacitly, as though
vanquished, the Count left affairs to their own course. The prop of the monks
was broken. They had to submit to the inevitable. Angrily they withdrew, like
old people retiring upon an annuity when the children
have grown up. To the
monks was farther granted only right of asylum in the cloister ; without influence,
without activity, they passed their days, little molested indeed themselves,
but placed upon the superannuated list. The time dragged out slowly with them ;
only after nearly two decades (1561) the last seven beneficiaries could no
longer tolerate a life where on all sides another spirit was prevailing. They
were portioned off, and sought out for themselves a fresh resting-place, to die
in the faith of their fathers, which they could hand down to no children as
heirs.
The renegade was not indeed minded for all time to lower his arms to the man who had, it is true, been able to reduce him to silence, but in whom he could not fail to recognise the strongest barrier that arrested him in the execution of his selfish plans. As to the means, one need not be over- scrupulous. So in August, 1544, there appeared, at the instigation of Count John, an ambassador from the regent of the Netherlands at the court of the Countess, to demand the expulsion of Laski as a perjured man and troubler of the peace* It was not difficult for the accused to prove his innocence. The Countess urgently besought him not to be discouraged by such charges, and only to remain with her; she gave the crafty brother in-law to understand that she could not dispense with the counsel and co-operation of this man. “ But I know,” says Laski, “ that these people will not cease from their machinations until they have succeeded in driving me hence."
Yet not so quickly as
these over-powerful opponents thought were they to succeed in the expulsion of
this warrior. He proved more and more a chosen vessel of the Lord for the weal
of this land. He had yet many a skirmish to sustain, in order to keep the field
for his building labours clear of adversaries.
It is very
interesting to witness his contest with another opponent, in those days a very
formidable one. It would lead us too far if we should attempt to show that the
Netherlands had for more than a century before this concealed within itself the
elements of fermentation in deep and far-reaching operation—men who in devout
earnestness revolted against the degenerate Church and its corrupt ministry,
with inner indignation beheld the abomination of desolation in the sanctuary,
and now in manifold and often strangely perverted wise meditated on a remedy,
or, aside from the Church, lived out unmolested their quiet, circumscribed
life, a godly one after their way. They were still reckoned in the membership
of the Church, and appeared of too little significance for directing to them an
attentive eye, were it only that of pastoral care ; with light heart those who
should have been their shepherds passed by the little, insignificant,
disregarded flock. But this was changed from the time of the Reformation. The
clear morning note of the Augustin monk had awakened all the spirits ; the
long-closed valve was set open, and with shrill sound these forces, hitherto
pent up, now burst forth. They are not to be at once designated as children of
the Reformation ; and the faults committed by them in sanguinary and misguided
fanaticism are not, any more than
the disturbances of
the peasants breaking out on every side, to be laid to the charge of the Reformation.
They were children of that disorderly and degenerate Church against which the
Reformers raised their sacred protest, not seldom in decided insurrection
against the Evangelical Church, then rising in youthful beauty, victorious in
the light of the truth, above all the fermenting and conflicting elements.
Most of these fermenting elements collected among the Anabaptists. It was not
mainly the protest against the warrant for infant baptism which united on this
point the different varieties, but rather the endeavour after a sacred
communion, as an angry protest against the Church sunk in vices, which seemed
to offer them in the baptism only of the regenerate a barrier against such
worldliness. Seemed, but how little in reality afforded it L And what
abominations of a fanaticism let loose, which runs out and comes to an end in
the slime of the deepest immorality, were perpetrated behind this supposed
bulwark! The blood-red infamies of the neighbouring, city of Munster gleamed
over even, into East Friesland.
We have^ already
pointed out that the free inhabitants of Friesland had transformed their little
country into a home for all those driven out for their faith’s sake in those
evil, troublous days. Nor can this hospitality be too highly lauded. In dense
crowds they came, those earnest, believing forms, who had forsaken house and
home and native land for the sake of their Lord and Saviour; and here sought
and found a quiet spot in the asylum opened with liberal heart, where they
might recover from the wounds inflicted, and live in stillness and gravity,
according to their
faith. Amongst them, however, arrived others, restless, fanatical, and excited
spirits, who as true enthusiasts hurried from land to land, here pining in
dungeons, there again, unsubdued by all persecution, publishing their doctrine
in conventicles and houses, and introducing a dire confusion among the
unjudging multitude. Upon their journeyings hither and thither they gladly made
a halt in East Friesland, not in order to rest, but to avail themselves of the
hospitality afforded, in order to make their hosts sharers *,of their peculiar
opinions, and that in a very manifest and imperious manner, at a time when the
affairs of the Protestant Church in the land were still so little established
or settled.
Ever more urgently
did the regent of the Netherlands insist upon the expulsion of those fugitives
who belonged to her territory. She could not bridle her indignation when she
saw, on the very confines of her land, the door opened for all those for whom
she had intended to leave open only the gate of the prison and the passage to
the stake. Imperial commands arrived in Emden, peremptorily demanding the
expulsion of the sectaries. In case of refusal the threat was held out of
putting a stop to all trade with East Friesland, a kind of Continental
blockade by water and land for the poor dreary little country. The threat did
not fail of producing its effect, specially among the courtiers, who feared a
curtailment of their luxuries. But it did not move our Laski, and his
courageous faith imparted itself also to the Countess. He severely reprimanded
the timid ones, reproaching them with being Epicureans, more readily alarmed at
the edict
of an emperor than at
the threatenings of God, who chastises a negligent government. “ They are prepared,
if God permits it, to banish sects, not for the sake of God, but for the sake
of the Emperor.”* Formerly there was need only of a timely mildness to restrain
the people within bounds ; at that time,, however, the authorities suffered
anything whatever to take place; and now they are ready to proceed with such
severity as passionately to assail all strangers, without regard to guilt or
innocence. Laski enabled the Countess to put a check upon this procedure, by
requiring that, in the first place,, a distinction should be drawn in the
judgment between dangerous and inoffensive sects and sectaries, and only the
former should be expelled. The ministers had to try the individuals; he who
w.as seen by them to be harmless and innocent was permitted still to enjoy the
rights of hospitality undisturbed. A graceful victory of the profoundly
Christian spirit of the Reformer, who feared God, and, therefore, no longer any
man, even any emperor, over the intolerance of those men of the world who are
prepared to bow before any kind of force.
It was an immense and
toilsome labour which was thus rolled upon the shoulders of Laski and his
colleagues. Our friend cherished the hope that, in a mild and conciliatory
mood, an understanding might be arrived at with one or other of these factions.
He had preserved a clear and open eye for discovering in the different sects
some common property which was akin to the essential characteristic of the
Evangelical Church. With the em-
phasising of this common
possession, he thought he would be able by persuasion to bring those who were
misled to the rejection of their sectarian doctrines ; the nobility of his
mind, the purity of his character, might well serve as security for a
favourable result. His sacred love to the Redeemer, his longing desire to avoid
that division in the Evangelical Church, and to render this Church, in its
compact unity, strong against the common foe—ever more threatening, because led
by one mind,—inspired him with courage not to shrink from the magnitude of the
labour. A man of like mind, Martin Bucer, had lately succeeded in Strassburg,
in a similar endeavour—that of winning over the Anabaptist elements of that
region, by means of kindness and conciliation, to the Evangelical Church ; why
should not this also be possible to him in East Friesland ?
Among the first
attempts to pave the way for an understanding was that directed to the
followers of David Joris, one of the strangest and most doubtful leaders of
sects of that day, whose adherents were numerously scattered throughout the
land. The writer who has succeeded in most clearly working out from the maze of
contradictory accounts a fitting picture of this painter and prophet of Delft,
fiercely gleaming in boundless self-delusion, sums up the peculiarity of this
extraordinary and almost incomprehensible phenomenon in the words : “ In the
highest degree fired with enthusiasm, exalted above all outward distress in the
night-life of the spirit— a life subject to the dominion of an overstrained
imagination—and withal held in bondage at the same time by voluptuous passion ;
thus, with the most remarkable mingling of the sublimest and the
basest thoughts, Joris begins to form his sect, in ever firmer conviction of his Divine mission. Nothing is too high, too remote, too difficult for him, in venturing the attempt to obtain recognition for his prophetic dignity. Fanatical disciples, blindly devoted to him, augment his self-confidence ; and thus he ventures not only to measure himself with different parties of the Anabaptists, but also with the leaders of the Reformation, and even with the leading secular powers of his time. It is in vain that he is visited on every side with repulse, mockery, persecution ; he arises ever more ardent, ever more fanatical, as a reformer of the world ; and ever more blindly do his partisans follow him upon the slippery path, themselves, like him,-now drunk with the highest enthusiasm, now enslaved with degraded sensual lust. No toil, no danger, no persecution is shunned by the prophet, nor is it shunned by the disciples ; yet the foolhardy courting of danger does not long hold out in the case of such spirituo-physical enthusiasm, but speedily gives place to the opposite; when the pinching poverty of the beginning has been replaced by sudden wealth, he who in any case had placed himself in the closest relation to the Christ of David disappears without a trace from the scene of the conflict.”
All attempts to bring
about a union between the
Another and more
friendly form would the bearing towards the numerous Mennonites assume. As early
as 1528 Anabaptists had entered the land, and had met with hospitable
reception. At first they were but little noticed. They lived on in quiet,
avoided all contact with the world, and were for the most part glad to rest for
a while, after the persecution they had undergone in their native land. This
state of matters was changed when in 1531 Melchior Hofmann came to Emden,—a
rude, excitable, fanatical nature, who had been travelling about for the
previous eight years in the character of journeyman furrier, and withal
preacher. In the course of his restless wanderings he had come as far as
Dorpat; the little knot of adherents quickly gained there was dissolved again
soon after his removal; no trace of his activity has remained at this distant
outpost of the Evangelical Church. Presently Hofmann stood at the head of the
Anabaptists in East Friesland ; his messengers traversed the little land
through and through, and spread his doctrine in the remotest villages. Soon
after his departure to Strassburg his place was taken by Jan Matthiesen, who
ere long played a notorious part in Munster, as the prophet Enoch. The tragedy
gleamed from there,
This Mennonite
congregation was in the days of Laski in a flourishing state. Almost
simultaneously with himself Menno had come to Emden. The community numbered in
its midst honest, quiet, rigidly moral citizens. To carry out against them the
whole severity of the imperial commands, and thus to deprive the land of these
its industrious, honest, quiet people, was that to which Laski would never have
consented. He occupied towards them the enviable standpoint which Luther held
in the brilliant days of his labour, when he quitted the Wartburg and hastened
to Wittenberg, to quench
And Laski did not
grow weary of dealing with the Mennonites in this truly evangelical spirit.
With the consent, of the Countess and the approval of his colleagues, he held a
prolonged discussion with Menno in the presence of many. The controversy
proved fruitless ; there were in particular three points on which no unity
could be arrived at: on the Incarnation of Christ, on Baptism, and on the
warrant for undertaking the Ministry of the Word in the congregation. Both
sides, as usually happens, claimed the victory. Specially among the Mennonites
was the joy of victory loudly expressed, and there seems to have been no lack
of really malicious judgments regarding the Evangelical Church and its
ministers. Menno further, during the same year, issued a letter to Laski, in
which he treated at large of the first controverted point in their discussion.
Laski, who till then had kept silence, thought himself called upon to meet this
challenge, the more so since Menno had here too inveighed abundantly against
him, against his companions in office, and the whole Evangelical Church, and
his adherents had loudly boasted of the silence preserved hitherto, as an
acknowledgment of defeat. In spite of the insulting tone of the opponent, Laski
preserves his gentle refined repose. "I shall judge that I have rightly
answered, not when I have returned invective for invective, or have exposed
thee and thine, but if I have, in proportion to my little power,
The controverted
point played an important part in the doctrine of the Anabaptists. The Munster
Anabaptists had caused a medal to be struck with the legend, Verbum caro factum
habitavit in nobis : “ The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” ^ The second
member of the proposition was interpreted by not a few of them in a pantheistic
sense ; the first member served them as the main support for their
much-involving peculiar doctrine: that the Son of God did not take upon Himself
human form, but that the Word of God became man. Hofmann had already strongly
emphasised the heavenly descent of the flesh of Christ ; Menno took up this
doctrine again, and sought to support it in particular on the side of the
doctrine of sin. Christ cannot have taken upon Himself our guilty, curse-laden,
sinful nature, and made it His own ; otherwise He would not have been able to
redeem us. He must have a pure, Divine humanity, not the corrupt Adamic nature,
that He might be the second Adam.t Laski in his reply J sums up the opposition in the two forms
of doctrine in the words : “ This is, however, our point of difference. We, who
ascribe to the Lord Jesus Christ true Godhead, and also at the same time true
humanity—we say,
‘ That adorable Word, who as to His essence is from eternity to eternity God and also spirit, is still also that which He was ; but now He has in such wise for us united with the Lord Christ, after taking upon Him our flesh and blood, that He is in truth that which His name denotes, Immanuel, God with us.’ But thou teachest, the Word, which was once spirit, has, by some kind of mutation, become flesh, not, however, our flesh, but a flesh received and derived from the Holy Ghost.”
We are too widely
removed in the present day from the point of controversy to be able tolexperi-
ence any pleasure in reproducing the whole diffuse analysis in detail. Laski
kept the promise he had made in the introduction. As soon as the main
proposition of the controverted point was laid down, he attempted, in that
earnest dignified manner which is concerned only about the subject itself, to
prove the justice of his exposition, as opposed to the' adverse opinion. His
only weapon he derives from Holy Scripture. He does not arbitrarily separate
one or other passage from the connection in order to avail himself of it for
the support of his opinion otherwise reached, merely because it seems adapted
to this end. With a large acquaintance with Holy Writ, he proves his view as
only drawn from Holy Scripture, from Scripture in its fulness. His exposition
is calm, intelligent, even as with the great
The writing .met with
great approbation among the theologians of that day.* Melanchthon spoke of it
in a letter to the Duke Albert of Prussia as a praiseworthy treatise ; f nay,
he commended it to Luther himself for reading. This he would venture to do at
that time (it was in the summer of 1545) only if he were quite sure of not
creating a fresh scandal for the old master by the writing thus commended. For
the sacramental controversy had but lately, enkindled anew by Luther, broken
out afresh with unexpected energy; and Melanchthon and his friends had long
dreaded lest the vial of the terrible man’s wrath should be poured out upon
their heads also. What unspeakable misery would such open difference have
entailed upon the Evangelical Church ! Luther seems not to have read, the
Originally A Lasco
cherished the intention of treating the other two polemic writings of Menno
with like fulness of detail. Under the pressure of other labours, which beset
him on every side, he did not find the time necessary for this work, as also
the wish was gradually lost. It was needless, because the opponent was lacking
in the requisite preparation and thorough training for the scientific
examination of such serious and profound questions ; his opinions and
assertions were wanting in the necessary confirmation from Holy Scripture; nor
was he conscious of the presence of this defect. Against such incapacity even
the most honest zeal for teaching is powerless.
Menno did not remain much longer in Emden after this interchange of correspondence. He was the acknowledged head of that sect which came forth chastened and purified out of the bloody persecutions, whose members were henceforth called by his name, and owe it mainly to his pious activity that -they have been preserved through the days so unkindly to them, and brought into a time of greater tolerance. As a son of this more tolerant age, our Laski already granted them generous protection so early as the days of the Reformation. Only a few cross-grained, brawling members were banished the land; the bulk of them were bravely and firmly defended, even against the Emperor. Unmolested in the enjoyment of their faith, these Mennonites, specially in Emden, have lived to the present hour, quiet, peaceful folk, who preserve themselves as far as possible from contact with the wicked world, themselves no longer walking so strictly in the footsteps of their forefathers, and no longer so rigidly enforcing that Church discipline to which one day. Menno, almost in spite of himself, had to submit.
3. The Work with the
Trowel in the Hand
We turn now to the
other important part of the Reformation al labours of A Lasco,—that which he
did for the upbuilding of the work entrusted to him in this his second home.
This part does not rise entirely clear of the other, in such wise that he would
have only to build undisturbed upon the foundation laid in the Reformation :
here too it was needful for him in manly resolution to open a path for himself,
and with firm hand to tighten the overlax rein.
Serious times for the
Church of East Friesland had just preceded; the unsatisfactory feeling of
having not yet attained to the decided entrance on a distinct and fixed
direction, after making nothing but endeavours on every side, had attained its
culminating point; everywhere were seen the marks and traces of fatal
irresolution, of dispersion of ecclesiastical affairs ; discipline and order
were wanting; the individuals acted as seemed good to them ; the congregations
were involved in the mutation of opinions successively arising. The brave old
Count Edzard had been attached to the Reformation with
A Lasco, too, was a stranger, like those unwelcome Luneburg preachers, not, however, a stranger under the protection of a harsh Romish victor, but an exile from his native land, poor, defenceless, standing only in the armour of his Lord, for whom he had joyfully sacrificed his all. The Frisians had taken a liking to the outspoken foreigner who boldly raised his voice for the rights of the people, even against the mightiest despot who should dare to invade these rights. The radically disordered state of affairs was but too clearly apparent; the necessity for a remedy pressed upon every one who had the welfare of the land at heart. A longing desire was felt for effecting an improvement ; and the firm confidence was cherished alike by the Countess as by her people that the devout Polish noble, who had been living for the past year or two a quiet serious life in the land, was the man qualified for the task.
This was no delusion.
A Lasco had recognised what was needful for the Church of the land, and, with
marvellous tact, he gave to it its permanent stamp; so that he is rightly
designated the Reformer of East Friesland.
The existing troubles
in ecclesiastical affairs compelled him first of all to seek the lever for his
Reformational activity in the province of Church discipline. The disorders
arising from a long absence of all discipline were terrible. The railing and
scolding of the preachers in the pulpit; their lives, not at all free from
reproach, and sometimes even a scandal; the widespread indifference among the
congregations with regard to the schools, the care for the poor, etc., had
alienated from the Church many earnest minds. They lived for a while a quiet
life apart, addicting themselves only to the study of the Word of God in their
houses, afterwards in due time a sure and easy prey to the Anabaptists, who
observed so severe a Church discipline among themselves. A Lasco had a clear
eye to recognise the disease. “I told the Council we should never want for
sectaries so long as we were severe towards others and lenient towards the vices
in our own midst. So long as they prevailed among us, we should have to make a
distinction between those who submit to the Church’s regulations and those who
despise the Church of God and its discipline.” There arose a great outcry
over such a demand ;
At last, however, A
Lasco carried his point, especially in the capital of the land. He found old
customs still existing, such as made for the accomplishment of his endeavour,
and which he knew how to turn prudently to account. Even from the days of the
Middle Ages the Frieslanders had contrived to retain a much greater share in
the ecclesiastical affairs, than the Romish Church had yet been willing to
concede elsewhere, among more docile peoples. The congregations had been wont
from of old to elect their own preachers, whom they had been able, longer than
anywhere else, to protect against the demands of celibacy. So-called
churchwardens had part in the exercise of Church discipline; at synods there
were to be found laymen who possessed a vote.* The consciousness of a right,
nay of an obligation, to an active participation in ecclesiastical affairs, had
been preserved in lively exercise. Even the Luneburg Church regulation had been
compelled to respect these firmly established conditions.
Taking his ground
upon this old traditional practice, A Lasco got it enjoined in the summer of
1544, that with the ministers of the principal church at Emden should be
associated four men out of the congregation, earnest, worthy, pious people, the
task being assigned to them by the whole congregation (ecctesia) of exercising
an oversight in common with the preachers over the life of the citizens, to
exhort every one to his duty, and with authority also, in the
Vigorously, and
without being detained by the manifold difficulties and hindrances, was
progress made upon the path struck out. Laski and his colleagues made tours of
visitation throughout the land. Minute investigation was made on these journeys
into the capabilities and conditions of the single Churches, their position as
regards the doctrine, the life, the zeal of the ministry. When an exact insight
had thus been gained into the often very sad state of affairs, Laski there also
at once applied with vigour a reforming hand. The whole drift of
In order to the
attainment of this end, he organised, with the approval of the Countess and the
supreme Senate, the Preachers’ Assembly, the so-called Coetus, without doubt
the most important and far-reaching institution of Laski, and one which bears
brilliant testimony to his ReformationaL endowment. It well repays us to
obtain a near insight into this peculiar “ synod.” From Easter to Michaelmas
the ministers of the land had to meet in Emden every Monday morning. The
assembly elected out of its midst a president and a clerk for the whole
summer-time. The sitting was opened with a prayer, offered by the president.
Its language;' is still preserved to us,"f" nor is it difficult to recognise
Laski’s voice in the pithy and hearty pastoral utterances, specially when we
compare this prayer with the numerous ones of his Liturgy, hereafter to be spoken
of. Under the hallowed influence of such a prayer, the assembly then enters on
the testing of the morals of the individual ministers.- That which had become
known concerning the life and walk of particular members was with fraternal
unreserve discussed and thoroughly investigated. If the charges proved to be
well-founded, earnest brotherly admonition followed. No one was exempt from
this censura morum; each one was under obligation to bring forward that which
had come to his hearing of an unfavourable nature ; and the right was given to
the members of the congregation of having such complaints as they might have to
make brought before the Coetus. After this important point was disposed of,
the assembly proceeded to the testing of the candidates for the ministry. No
one was admitted to the office of preacher who could not adduce satisfactory
testimonies to his godly and upright life. The candidate who was approved must
thereupon deliver a brief discourse before the Coetus, that his preaching gift
might be judged of therefrom. It then depended on the verdict of the assembly
whether the candidate could be furnished with a testimony to his maturity or
not.
After coming to an
end with these practical matters, there followed discussions on the principal
points of Christian doctrine, especially on the controversial questions of the
day. The Coetus laid down the subjects for treatment;
two preachers were appointed.as opener and respondent, and their theses made
known eight days before, that every one might have an opportunity of preparing
for the thorough treatment of the subject.
Unfortunately the
minutes belonging to the first century of its existence are lost,* an event
much to be deplored. For how great would the advantage have been if we had been
able to follow the early course of an institution which has preserved itself
through the ages, and whence, specially in its first days, so rich a blessing
proceeded to the Church of the land ! The French preacher in Emden, Pastor
Fremaut, even in the seventeenth century testified of this Coetus, “ This
assembly serves for the preservation of concord and peace amongst the ministers
and congregations. It is a good school for young preachers who have a desire
for their further training; I confess I have learnt more there than at the
University.” f A glance at these first minutes, however, would have also
afforded us a striking picture of Laski presiding in the circle of his
colleagues. For our friend was, as is boasted of him by East Friesland’s
leading historian,J of a candid spirit, and was wont to set forth his views,
specially on Divine things, in clear and frank discourse. From the minutes
still existing in his time Emmius has formed a judgment as to how A Lasco in
these assemblies used to summon all to concord. In weighty, expressive words he
declared his opinion, and confirmed its truth with valid arguments ; those who
doubted or differed were calmly listened to, instructed, as also borne with
when he was unable to convince them, if they only maintained peace ; and the
others were taught that
Though not as a
compensation for the lost early minutes, yet at least as a subdued echo of the
theological arguments in the Coetus, may we perhaps regard the treatise of
Laski on the doctrine of the Churches of East Friesland.* At any rate, this important
work affords us an interesting aid for determining the theological standpoint
of our A Lasco in those days, for which he was likewise at pains to obtain
recognition in the Church entrusted to his guidance. “ The only fountain-head
of Christian doctrine is God, and that which He has made known in clear words
in Holy Scripture. Human opinion has validity only in so far as it subordinates
itself to the analogy of faith and to the Word of God. There are two main
points around which the whole of Christian doctrine revolves : the knowledge of
God and the knowledge of ourselves. God can be rightly known only from the Word
of God, which is Christ. He teaches us to know God as our Lord, as righteous
and true and merciful. To the know
More briefly does he
discourse of the Supper on this occasion, perhaps because Laski felt called
about this time to express himself more at large on this subject in an open
letter to a friend.* The letter is a valuable document for evidencing his view
on this much-controverted article of doctrine, and still more a precious
testimony to the liberal spirit of our friend. Luther expressed himself on the
occasion of the Cologne Reformation Scheme (in which, as we shall see, Laski
was not without participation), and with reference to the conclusions
concerning the Supper reached, in this document: “ The book is for the
enthusiasts not only tolerable, but also consolatory, much more favourable to
their doctrine than to ours/'f This severe judgment was shortly after
(September, 1544) followed up by the much-to-be-deplored writing of the
Reformer, Brief Confession. of Dr. 'Martin Luther concerning the Holy
Sacrament, in which he suffers himself to be carried away into the expression,
“ For I, who am now going to the grave, will carry with me this testimony and
this glory before my Lord’s judgment seat, that I have with all earnestness
condemned and avoided the fanatics and enemies of the Sacrament, Karlstadt,
Zwingel, Oecolampa- dius, Stenkefeld (Schwenkfeld), and their disciples at
Zurich, and wherever else they are, according to His command (Tit. iii. 10).” J
Of such unchristian
But we should have to
reproduce the whole
In the stating of his
own view there emerges even
in this earliest
manifestation the favourite thought that the little words “ this is” are not to
be restricted to “bread,” but extend to the whole foregoing action of the
breaking, the thanksgiving, and the distribution—a thoughtful and ingenious exposition,
but yet an untenable one (compare the words at the dispensing of the cup, 1
Cor. xi. 25), however important and correct the emphasising of the close
connectedness of the words, “ The bread, which we break.” To the words of Paul,
“ Communion of the body of Christ, communion of the blood of Christ,’' Laski
in the connection of the passage concedes only the passive application ; so
that the sense of the words is, “ We, who eat the bread of the Lord in His
meal, have thereby at the same time fellowship in the mystery [mysteria\ of
this bread, i.e., in the body of the Lord.” * “ The signs of the meal are,
because a sacrament, seals, namely, of our fellowship with the Lord ; thus, if
we partake of them in accordance with the institution of the Lord, they set
forth before our eyes in the sacred act \mysterinm\ this fellowship with the
Lord, and renew it in our souls, and seal us wholly to Him by the operation of
the Holy Ghost, in firm undoubting faith, although they afford us no physical
and literal partaking of the body and blood of the Lord.”
The treatise of which
we have spoken affords us an insight into the endeavour of A Lasco to prepare
the way, by means of the theological deliberations in the Coetus, for the
greatest possible unity of doctrine among the ministers of the land. But this
harmony in the doctrine of the ministers of the Word was intended above all to
redound to the blessing of the congregation, of that part of the congregation,
too, upon which the Evangelical Church from the beginning had bestowed special
attention, namely the school-children.
East Friesland early
enjoyed the blessing of good schools. The main labour indeed of the “ Brothers
of the Common Life ” had been to reform the schools of their time; and our
little country was too nearly adjacent to the home of these Brothers not to
receive, as at first hand, their beneficial influence in this domain. As early
as the time of the great Edzard there were schools even in the hamlets ; and
the first evangelical preachers of the land, for the greater part trained among
the Brothers in Zwolle, Deventer, Groningen, entered right earnestly on the work
of education. A Lasco followed in their footsteps. The celebrated police
regulation of the Countess Anne in the year 1545, upon the framing of which the
superintendent and confidential adviser of the Countess had exerted so vital an
influence, determines what is needful with regard to the schools.
Bullinger (Kuyper,
ii. 569, 572, 575, 765). The verdict upon it was not favourable either in
Wittenberg or even in Zurich (Gabbema, p. 59; Melanchthon, v. 574, 790). Laski
was guided by the counsels of his friends, and the work did not appear in
print. Only now, after an interval of three hundred years, it has fortunately
been discovered in its hiding place and incorporated in the complete works of A
Lasco.
“We will have you
pastors and Church officers earnestly exhorted that you exercise a diligent
oversight over your home-staying [kussitende\ poor, born in and inhabitants of
your town, village, or hamlet, who are ashamed to beg their bread, and by
reason of age and infirmity are not able to earn anything with their hands;
where also the parents have children who are of five or six years of age, that
they be put to school, in order to learn the Creed, the Ten Commandments of
God, and the Our Father; if the parents oppose this and are not willing, they
shall be compelled to go by the magistrates and officers, whom you will inform
of it; and the school- fee, if so be that the parents are unable to meet it,
you shall pay out for them. And when they have learnt the Lord’s Prayer, the
Ten Commandments, and the Greed, and have become old and strong enough, both
boys and girls, to earn their own livelihood, they shall be put to a trade or
service and not permitted any longer to beg at home. If the parents shall not
be willing to let their children be put to a service, this shall be made known
to the authorities, that the parents may be punished for such neglect. Nor
shall any assistance be given to such parents as have not placed their children
in a service, each according to his strength and opportunity. If also it is found
in truth by the pastors and Church officers that among the poor children there
might be one, two, or three who have been gifted by the Almighty with a special
understanding, they shall, at the expense of the town, village, or hamlet, with
the help of the congregation, be kept at school, and remain until such time as
they are old enough to obtain a post to teach, and it is
The main object of
these schools is stated to be the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten
Commandments, and the Creed. These are the old, well- known subjects of
Christian instruction. The framing of the words leads to the conclusion that at
the time of proclaiming this regulation (r 545) A Lasco had not yet prepared a
Catechism. The need for it must, however, have become more pressing from day to
day. The publication of his Epitome of Christian Doctrine (in the previous
year) might, it is true, to some extent meet the want for a time, so far that
at least the ministers had a common leading-thread of doctrine; inasmuch,
however, as the work was not put into print, the publication of a Catechism was
the more urgently necessary. Laski applied himself to the task in 1546, in
common with his brethren in office, yet in such wise that he is to be regarded
as the veritable author, and accomplished the same with considerable ability.
The circulation was at first only in a manuscript form. It was ordained that on
the Sunday afternoons the ministers should preach on this Catechism in regular
order, in such manner that twice during the space of a year the whole contents
The very lengthy
Catechism—it contains two hundred and fifty questions and answers, the latter
often of such extent that the thought of acquiring them by heart must be
abandoned—is divided into four parts : The Commandments (1 —103), Faith
(104—193), Prayer (194—214), The Sacraments (215—250). This division is the
old, frequently employed one. It would be interesting to learn what led Laski
to abandon the division of Calvin, who inserted in his Catechism the Doctrine of
the Word of God as a chapter between the Doctrine of Prayer and that of the
Sacraments,
With the same end in
view, the Emden ministers
A very important
place in the literature pertaining to this subject is taken by the Catechism of
our Laski, specially in the Emden compendium, which for long, long years was
the authorised Catechism in East Friesland—a precious possession, in which
generation after generation found its edification and the armour of its faith.
It wrought with deep and decided effect on the life of the people; it was
found, along with the Bible and the Psalm-book, in every house, and that not as
a piece of ancestral lumber, lying, neglected and covered with dust, in a
corner, but rather in the living possession of the individuals. In the church
on the Sunday afternoon the minister of the Word expounded the book ; at
It was Laski’s
intention to explain and establish,
Yes, it was a
toilsome labour to prepare the ground in East Friesland for these so blessing-
fraught Church regulations, and to get them to take firm root. He had need of
summoning up all his great power of faith, in which he pursued, the work, as a
charge committed to him by God, with enthusi-> astic devotion, all his
gentleness and patience in conjunction with an immovable steadfastness,of conviction,
in order not to become paralysed, and to stand manfully against all the fierce
assaults of the adversary. Our friend often thought he would have to quit the
place of conflict, and he was inclined to follow this or that call into other
lands; for. one thing he was firmly resolved on, that he would in, no wise
enter into negotiations with the opponent- at the cost of the surrender even of
a single point of that which he had recognised as Divine truth*.
The features of one
part of the opponent are- not unknown to those who have looked upon the
conflicts of Calvin in Geneva. They are the full
Such opponents
likewise arose for our friend. So
pastor had remained
who was a faithful adherent of Wittenberg, and felt himself conscientiously
bound to enforce his view from the pulpit and in society, apart from the
question whether quite a different tendency had been followed by his predecessor
and favoured during past years by the congregation. No fixed Church order
prevented such undertakings. So long as the mild operation of the Wittenberg
Concord continued in the German lands, the divergent tendency did not appear in
a harsh form in East Friesland either. But, owing to Luthers hostile bearing in
his last days, the unhappy controversy on the Sacrament, which for a time had
only glowed in its embers, was now stirred up to fresh vigour, and the lurid
gleam shone forth on every side. Even in East Friesland those who travelled in
the old Luneburg ruts felt themselves called upon to come forward as guardians
of the imperilled doctrine, and to proceed against the new presbyterial
.constitution. Their spokesman was the preacher Lemsius in Norden, a native of
Antwerp, who had come into the land in the Luneburg days (1536), and had
occupied the pulpit, whence a decade before had resounded the abovementioned “
Song of the Supper,” * of Hendrik Rese, the preacher there, or, as his
congregation liked better to call him, “ the Norden evangelist.” Three or four
other pastorates, as Aurich, Strick- haunse, Friedeburg, Brockmer,' joined
the zealous opponent. At first these pastors resolutely refused to join in the
Coetus; then they proceeded to an open attack upon the doctrine of Laski, who
was
But Laski was
inexorable where it was with him a question of the central point of his
doctrine. He knew well that, by the men of the world in particular, his demand
for Church discipline was most reluctantly
Our warrior was
thoroughly in earnest with this threat. He waited patiently for a few more
months ; but as he observed in the pastors neither the unity of doctrine for
which he had laboured, nor the maintenance of any kind of discipline among themselves,
and also found the magistrates slothful in this respect, he laid down his
office of superintendent at the spring of the year 1546,"!' remaining but
as simple pastor of the great Church at Emden, and this only upon condition
that he should be allowed perfect freedom of action there. This state of
The report of that
which the Church of East Friesland, under the oversight of A Lasco, strove
after, and gradually became, spread far and wide, and, among other places, to
Geneva. With lively interest, Calvin was witness of a development which was so
closely akin to his own endeavours. He had received intelligence of the
formation of the Coetus; some ministers belonging to it had invited him to
write a Catechism for youth ; the Genevan Reformer complied with the request,
and dedicated his Catechism to the ministers of East Friesland.* Within wide
circles men spoke with warm approbation of that
which was done in East Friesland ; the Church there exerted a strong power of
attraction, specially upon the neighbouring lands ; and just the flower of the
younger energies desired to be received into the communion of this Church.*
4. The Reformer in his
Private Life in East Friesland.
They are but scanty
accounts which we have been able to glean regarding the private life of our
friend, with difficulty, and often from quite out-of-the- way places. In those
days people were very sparing of such communications ; behind the mighty
events. upon the world’s stage the private life even of the most prominent
actors retired into a modest background ; their home, however dear and
cherished it might be to them, appeared to the men themselves too little for
becoming the subject of much talk, as compared with the sublime tasks of their
public life. Only here and there at best a hurried notice, almost as by
accident, in a private letter to a friend ; and then generally occurring in so
cursory and disconnected a form, as to fail to satisfy the larger claims of our
time which are made in this respect also. This is no reproach against that
great age, only a regret at the perhaps excessive demands of our own day.
We know already that
in the history of A Lasco, as of others, the first public indication of his
final rupture with the Romish Church was marriage, in his case with a
burgher’s daughter of Louvain, whose maiden name is unknown to us. That step,
so eventful
for -the Evangelical
Church, was taken by almost .all the Reformers and preachers of the Gospel; the
beginnings of the evangelical parsonage, and therewith the sources of a deep
and abundant blessing for the whole Church life of after-ages, stand quite
close to the rise of the Reformation, and are most intimately connected with
its whole character. This bond of plighted fidelity lasted only twelve years.
In 1551 there appeared in London the first traces of consumption, probably a
consequence of that putrid fever which so fearfully raged about this time in
the city of the Thames. A year later the sufferer succumbed to her ailments in
a distant land. A Lasco loved her tenderly ; her decease deeply crushed him ;
the grief for her imperilled for a moment his own health,, at best but
delicate. He calls her the other part of himself, which death has snatched from
his side ; and praises at once her piety and the integrity of her whole
character. *
The marriage union
had been richly blessed with children ; his first child, the little daughter
Barbara, we have already saluted on a visit to her grandparents ; j" in
1558 we meet with her again, this time in Cracow; she and her younger sister
Ludovica were then both betrothed. J Greatly gladdened was A Lasco in 15 46 by
the birth of a son. After the lapse of a quarter of a year the child died, at a
time of great physical suffering on the part of our friend. “ He has gone
beforehand to Christ, and we shall soon follow him, if God will ; for my
sickness is to me a sure sign that I have to forsake my dwelling-place here
upon earth,
When A Lasco removed
with his young wife from Louvain to Emden in 1540, he dwelt during the first
years in a private house. He did not think that his enfeebled bodily condition
would be equal .to bearing for a permanence the discortiforts of the damp, raw
climate in these storm-lashed flats of the Ems, combined with the dreariness of
the humble, almost indigent dwellings ; and for a long time he was on the point
of removing to a more healthful region. But none presented itself which would
have offered the same fair assured right of asylum for his
Not far from the road
which leads from Emden to Aurich, close to Loppersum, lies the farmstead of
Abbingwehr, a simple country-house, with outlying arable and pasture land.
Four thousand five hundred dollars was the price of the estate.* A Lasco was
unable to pay down the whole purchase money himself. We know that though born
and educated amidst the most brilliant surroundings, he quitted his Church and
country in poverty. A small legacy had indeed come to him from his brother ;
but this too had been curtailed, by the dishonesty of a relative, to such an
extent that at most barely fifteen hundred dollars remained to him. “ What
shall I
* Kuyper, ii. 609. What the size of the estate was can no longer be determined from existing accounts; the relative value may perhaps be gathered from the fact that about that time (15457 a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy pairs of oxen could have been purchased for this sum ; i.e., a pair of oxen was worth twenty-six to thirty dollars. Compare Klopp,Gesch.ich.te Ostfrieslands (Hanover, 18154),
do ? ” he exclaimed
at the intelligence. “ I will say with Job, ‘ The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ ” He was thus obliged to take up
a loan, in order to meet the required amount. After much toil and trouble, the
matter was so arranged that there should be several joint purchasers, in
relation to whom he reserved only the privilege of freeing himself from their
claim by the subsequent buying up of their shares. Here, upon his pleasant
little estate, he now began to feel at home. The country air, the residence in
the open grounds, the more considerable activity, proved beneficial to his
enfeebled health. .During the last period of his stay in the town he suffered
so painfully from his old disorder, in the midst of the most arduous conflicts,
that in May, 1546, he was nearly blinded by a disease of the eyes ; even after
this was relieved, everything was, as it were, veiled in mist. A year after his
becoming a landed proprietor his health was so greatly improved, that in the
cold winter days he was a few times able to make his way home from the town on
foot. The faithful companion in life at home looked after the greatly augmented
domestic affairs. In dairy matters she 'is well versed ; a jar of butter and
som'e home-made cheese are set before the old friend of the family, now become
a pastor in Bremen ; * it would seem that the diligent housewife was wont to
send to market the produce of the field and the work of the spinning-wheel,
and thus helped to wipe out the debt still burdening the estate. Quite
joyfully, and
pleasantly does A
Lasco subscribe his letters from his country homestead, “ ex regno nostro
Abbing- weerensi ”—“ from our kingdom of Abbingwehr.” Our A Lasco was not
indeed very well adapted for a life of parsimony. This would present a twofold
difficulty for a Pole, accustomed from childhood to a careless liberality, and
our friend did not deny his nationality in this respect either. Even amidst the
greatly altered circumstances which afforded him only a scanty revenue,
considering his growing family, he did not forego his noble unselfishness, his
large-hearted generosity. His old friend Hardenberg was dilatory in the
repayment of a debt. “ So I send you twenty additional dollars,” our Laski
writes to him ; “ more I have not at this moment in hand. If you should pay us
a visit, we will arrange about the necessary reckoning. If I hear that you have
become rich, I will demand of you what you owe me. But if not, I will add other
gifts.” * He confidingly furnished a noble with letters of v recommendation
to persons in Switzerland, and particularly to Calvin. These letters were
basely abused, and employed for the extortion of money. As soon as A Lasco
receives intelligence thereof, he declares himself ready to make good the
amount. “ Be assured,” he writes to Calvin, “ that it would be in a high degree
matter of thankfulness to me if I might in any way help to diminish this loss
to you ; let me know, if only for the sake of our fraternal love and mutual
candour. ... I can more easily bear that the hypocrite has deceived me, than
that he abuses my name and even my handwriting for
the deception of
others ; I cannot say how much it pains me.” *
With this amiable
unselfishness went hand in hand a touching humility in his estimate of himself.
The fine confession is one of perfect sincerity when he says, “ I make so bold
as to serve the Church with my little talent, and implore the mercy of God,
that among all the great offerings of others, He will deign also not to despise
my little sacrifice, after the example of that widow in the Gospel.”
All these traits of
his character, and those others also which would well deserve to be brought
into relief, were with him transformed and consecrated, nay even first attained
to their full and fair development, by his entire self-surrender to Christ as
his Saviour. This imparts to him the free, joyful courage in the presence of
all men ; this confers upon him the calmness and independence in all the heavy
afflictions of his changeful life. From this lofty and secure watchtower, tha,t
Christ for him was alone his Master, and the Word of God the only, but also the
absolute rule of his life, of his whole thinking, he looked forth more dispassionately
than so many a contemporary upon the high-running waves of the conflicts of the
day, not as an idle spectator, who from a protected spot witnesses the strife,
but rather with the sacred and earnest desire, so far as in him lies, to
contribute to the ending of it, that only Christ and His kingdom may be
advanced. A group of attractive forms arises about this time, whose whole noble
endeavour is directed to the filling up of the yawning gap in
the Evangelical
Church ; we know hardly one among these heroes who would seem to occupy a more
amiable, and at the same time a more prominent position in such precious work,
than he. With piercing glance—the subsequent events will afford many a
significant proof of this—he perceived the deep injuries of the division in the
one Church of the Reformation ; in the case of no other in the progress of his
particular experience of life did the sword of this separation penetrate the
breast more deeply than for him, when he saw his most ardent longing for the
Church and his fatherland suffer shipwreck upon this rock; and yet he did not
wish for peace at any price. He was closely akin in his peaceful disposition to
his friend, the noble Bucer, in Strassburg ; but he could not ^lways join hands
with the busy man in his incessant activity for discovering formulas, for putting
together words better adapted for a momentary covering of the breach than for
its permanent removal. “ For the terminating of this conflict in doctrine, for
peace within the Church ”—thus he can write to a friend with full conviction at
a time when he had to endure the most grievous vexation at the hands of confessional'Hotspurs—“I
am and was always so greatly concerned as to yield to no one in this, but yet
only in such wise that the truth may come to light, not that it may be
obscured, or, out of desire of- pleasing men, in any wise distorted. I will
not, so far as I have any power, for the gratification of men be excluded from
the number of the servants of Christ.”*
Characteristic of
this his noble disposition are the judgments he has pronounced here and there
upon the heroes of. the day. Only one or two of these out of a rich abundance.
A Lasco had spent his whole time beyond the influence of immediate contact with
Luther. The impressions received during the social life with Erasmus in Basle
may long have dominated his judgment as respects this heroic form of the German
Reformer ; and when then in ripe years he himself entered upon the work, it
was, as it were, naturally ordered that he should follow that section of the
Church to which the continued development of the Reformational thoughts had
fallen as a fair inheritance. From the year 1543 forward, the Evangelical
Church of the Reformation held its further progress of conquest in the
direction pointed out and opened up by Calvin. Our friend likewise, in an
independent spirit, followed this tendency. But he warns those of like spirit
not to allow a just judgment to be obscured by partisanship. How fine is his
request to Bullinger, whose doctrine had just been condemned again in a most
vehement and painful onslaught by Luther, as he kindled afresh the Sacramental
controversy.
“ In
glancing through your Confession"—it is the answer of the Zuricher to the
Brief Confession of Dr. Martin Luther concerning the Holy Sacrament—“ I have
found a more bitter language against Luther than I could have wished. I do not
deny that Luther has given way too much to vituperations against you, and has
far overstepped the bounds of Christian love; but such things must be pardoned
him on account of his prominent merits in regard to the Church of Christ,
and in
order that we be not dashed upon the same stone which we censure in Luther. It
was enough to have shown the error which you have in my judgment fully brought
out; but there was no need for this purpose of invective, by which we effect
nothing save to bring the doctrine and ministry of the Gospel in our
congregations into ill savour with the opponents. In my opinion it would have
been enough to say, ' Here Luther is in error,’ or something similar, which
defends our innocence, if it wins assent, and still leaves the name and honour
of the others unassailed.” * Accordingly when, a few months later, the tidings
of the departure of that great man reach him, our friend writes to the Swiss
that he hopes—alas! how was he deceived in this hope, to his own deepest
sorrow, to the most bitter experience in after-times—that after the decease of
Luther an end to the Sacramental controversy would be brought about, ,
Melanchthon
had already shown in the altered Augsburg ' Confession, whose wording upon the
.decisive’ point Luther had tacitly allowed,' what a powerful influence Calvin
had exerted ,upon him, particularly since Calvin’s personal interview with him
at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1539. The companion of Luther thereby also
approached nearer in spirit to A Lasco. We have, it is true, already noticed
his censure of that writing of A Lasco's this, nevertheless,' did not prevent
the two men finding ever more intimate points of contact the longer they knew
each other, to the enhancement of their mutual esteem. In 1543 A Lasco writes
to the venerated man, “ The longer I contemplate the many and distinguished gifts of God bestowed upon thee, the more do I judge that thou art the only one to whom I can pour out what of doubts arises in my heart. And I will do so, as with the greatest confidence, so also with the greatest candour, in the hope that, as I confidently believe, thou wilt, according to thy kindly sentiment a,nd Christian love, give good counsel.”* Ten years later, after many disappointing experiences in connection with the wavering man, his judgment sounds less favourable : “ I recognise Philip [Melanchthon] in that proceeding, which is like him. I esteem his learning, I acknowledge his piety, I commend his modesty; but I can bestow no approval upon his timid spirit ”.
It would,
nevertheless, carry us too far afield if we would further extend the anthology
of his pertinent and moderate testimonies concerning his contemporaries,
kindly withal, even in regard to the opponent. In all he leaves the impression
of a man of fine culture, who earnestly wishes to do justice to each
individual, and is animated by the ardent desire rather for Christ’s sake to
lay stress upon unity, than to fall into the man-service of party.
<A Lasco
was highly esteemed by the ablest among his contemporaries! Friend and
opponent, so long as the opponents were not wholly blind, paid the tribute of a full and
warm admiration of the sincerity and purity of his character; and even where it
was indeed right to refuse assent to the particular moulding and expression of
his doctrine, men acknowledged the seriousness and honesty of the
investigation, the dignity of the conception, the fearless, candid language,
the victorious sway of a spirit,which desires to be the servant of Christ
alone. What he accomplished with strong and firm hand in the ruined and unruly
state of ecclesiastical affairs in East Friesland, amidst so many passionate
attacks, already filled his contemporaries with legitimate astonishment, and
places him for us in the foremost rank of those men who have wrought with
transforming effect upon the life of the Evangelical Church. His influence in
this direction has not been effaced to this hour; we have on many points to go
to his school in order to be in a po'sition to render justice to the serious
demands of the present day.
The attraction of such a personality could not fail of extending far beyond the scene of his immediate labours, nor his judgment and aid of being sought in other lands. We are not here speaking of the endeavour, clearly perceptible as it was up to the year 1544, to entice him to his native land upon the condition of his return to the communion of the Romish Church, even with the bait of a leading episcopal see. “ But I have. so dismissed these people that they will certainly not come to me any more with this.” It is worthy of particular notice that Laski firmly withstood the. tendency, at that time so strongly manifesting itself, to travel hither and thither and enforce one’s counsel in the most diverse places ; he can on a fitting occasion testify to his king, Sigismund, that during a decade of years he had not quitted the place of his labour save when impelled by necessity, and had taken up the traveller’s staff only when no possibility of further working was afforded him.
Among the labours on behalf of the Church of Christ, beyond the limits of East Friesland, which he could not decline, is to be enumerated in the front rank his residence with the Archbishop of Cologne, the Elector Hermann von Wiedj An exceedingly impressive form is that of this noble Church prince, whom Ranke' portrays with master hand in the few strokes: “ Hermann of Cologne perceived at last, as he says, that he made no progress with these deliberations (which he held with his suffragans in the year 1536) because all was based upon human ordinance, not upon God’s Word. When afterwards he approached the Scripture, from which alone the doctrine of godliness is to be drawn, he was convinced that its sense is embodied in the Augsburg Confession. The older he grew, the more deeply was he penetrated by the influence of this purified doctrine. He was diligently occupied in setting it forth in his life and walk. In the writings of contemporaries he appears as the good', devout lord of Cologne, as the old God-loving Elector, the excellent veteran (he was born in 1477). He was a tall man, with snowy beard ; of venerable appearance ; with an expression in which good-nature, earnestness, and honesty were prominent. After hesitating for a time, he finally resolved to do for his diocese that which, as he expresses it, becomes a man of God.” Even from 1536 the Archbishop had entered into manifold friendly relations with Protestants, gladly supported therein by a part of his canons at Cologne. To the number of these canons still belonged the brother of our Countess Anne, and her vigorous defender against the pretensions of her Catholic brother-in-law —Christopher von Oldenburg* After the Diet of Ratisbon (1 541), and rapidly availing himself of the temper manifested there, the Elector entrusted to Bucer and Melanchthon, who had both come on this behalf to Bonn, the drawing up of a project of reformation. That which serves as the basis for this Simple Consultation (Bedenken), as the title reads,f is the Nuremberg Church Order of Andreas Osiander, Bucer elaborated the Consultation. Melanchthon approved of it in all its parts. This unqualified assent is an interesting instance of the manner in which Melanchthon, even in the doctrine . of Church constitution and Church discipline, struck into the paths which had been trodden by Strassburg and Switzerland with so great and far-reaching success. It is well known that the article on the Lord’s Supper, to which Amsdorf by a detailed judgment drew the attention of Ltither, furnished to the latter the lamentable occasion for reviving afresh the Sacramental controversy, hardly yet calmed down, and this time indeed with ruinous consequences to the progress of the Evangelical Church. Melanchthon passed days of deep concern, fearing lest the angry Reformer should perchance sever the bond of communion between the two.
This attempt at a
peaceful Reformation was frustrated by the other clerical members of the
Cologne chapter. While the Consultation afforded a precious incitement in
far-off lands, the opponents within the archiepiscopal chapter itself succeeded
in nullifying all its effect at home. The critical position which was now
beginning for the Protestants in the empire was most decidedly favourable to
their success. But the Archbishop remained faithful to his conviction ; the
evangelical preachers, drawn by him into the land, possessed in him a firm protector
so long as he lived. Hardenberg likewise sojourned at his court. Through him
indeed the attention of the Elector was called to Laski. In January, 1545,
Hardenberg had paid a visit to his native land, and upon the return journey had
passed a month in Emden.* The two friends had for long not enjoyed such a time
of intercourse. Hardly had Hardenberg returned to the Elector before A Lasco
received an urgent invitation from the latter, to which, with the consent of
the Countess, he yielded compliance. Manifold important subjects had the aged
ecclesiastical prince to discuss with the Reformer jof one such subject alone
has the intelligence reached us: the
departure of the huns from the cloister, which had assumed great proportions
within the archbishopric. Only with regret did the Archbishop take leave of A
Lasco; he would fain have retained him altogether beside himself at a time when
the state of his affairs in relation to the Emperor and the cathedral chapter
was daily growing worse. He at least obtained from him the promise that he
would attend the Diet at Worms as one of his counsellors.
On the 16th May,
1545, Charles V. arrived in Worms, and on the next day the Cardinal Farnese, ( about the
same time also, as promised to the Elector, John a Lasco. On the way thither he
had made a stay of a few days in Heidelberg, to visit the Count Palatine, Otho
Henry.% A radical change had, however, set in at Worms from the
spirit which prevailed in the days of the Diet at Ratisbon (1541), or even
those of Spires only in the previous year. At Trent the Council was now at last
assembled ; the Protestants were not invited thereto.^ Between pope and kaiser
there was still a conflict with
Hermann and his friends were wanting in that power of faith which, as Varrentrapp aptly points out, “gives the courage not only to suffer, but also to -act and to venture; they did not know how to combine the glance of the man of the world with the earnestness of the enthusiast.” A Lasco was not ignorant of this art; but he was brought too late into contact with the Elector, and would not perhaps have been in a position, with his measure of knowledge, to have made up the lack of the others
We should have
further to speak in strict chronological order of two other journeys that fall
within the Emden period—to England and to Prussia; we shall transfer the
description to its more appropriate connection. Before closing this section,
however, we may yet be permitted to mention a little work which, it is true,
first appeared from the press in i551, but the composition of which and
its circulation in a MS. form within the circle of the East Frisian clergy
falls five years earlier than that date.
When A Lasco had returned to Emden after his run through to the court of Hermann von Wied, and in the time intervening before his departure for Worms, in April, 1545, he felt the urgent necessity for stating his view of the Lord’s Supper in clear and candid language. We recall to mind that the Sacramental controversy had broken out anew; just when he was in Bonn at the court of the Archbishop, whose Consultation had afforded the first occasion for conflict, he had the leisure and the call for testing and justifying his own view upon the burning question of the day, at first perhaps only for his own satisfaction. The controversy, however, spread so widely on every side, called for such definite decision in all circles, that the Coetus in Emden was obliged to take, up its position in relation thereto. We have seen that there were likewise elements in the land which were decidedly ranged as regards this question on the side of Luther, and, ever since the master had broken out with such inexorable wrath against the Swiss, these had plucked up courage here also to use decided language.. A Lasco judged that he ought not to keep silence; but yet he had no wish to publish his view as a confessional writing, and thereby in his influential position to exercise a certain pressure; he chose therefore the more inoffensive form of expounding his conviction in a letter to a friend, which he placed in the hands of the Churches under his oversight.* Five years afterwards the time appeared to him to be come for making public the contents of this epistle. To the last A Lasco held to the view here set forth. In 1555 he testifies to King Sigismund of Poland, that he occupies to-day the same position with regard to this doctrine as he had confessed for ten years in East Friesland."]*
Laski lays
down in general concerning the Sacraments the proposition that they
are institutions of Christ, committed to His Church to this end in particular,
that by their rightful use the whole Church may be sealed (obsignetur) in the
salutary communion with the Lord Christ, by which alone, when in faith we
apprehend it, we are justified, but then also
The standpoint of A
Lasco is clear. He has most in common with the Calvin-Melanchthon conception,
as this found its authentic expression in the altered Augsburg Confession of
1540, an alteration which was, to be sure, at least tacitly, admitted by
Luther.
But the more calm and
peaceful period in the life of our friend was hastening to its close. Only for
three years was he permitted to enjoy his country seat undisturbed; then the
trying times passed over this little country too, far as it was removed from
the centre. The personality of Laski there by the sea towers too high, like a
mighty German oak,
S. The Interim in its
Influence on Laski’s Fate.
That which had
contributed so essentially to the failure of the Cologne attempt at
reformation—the incapacity “ for combining the glance of the man of the world
with the earnestness of the enthusiast ” —now also asserted itself in a
terribly fatal manner in the progress of the evangelical movement, as though
this inaptitude were an ineradicable defect in the German character. And
Germany’s most valiant forces stood at that time already in the camp of the
Protestants. Even the unpractised eye was compelled to recognise that the
destinies were inevitably closing in in such wise as to admit of no arbitrament
save that of the sword. How easy would it have been for the Smalcald League,
even in the summer of 1546, to have thwarted the crafty policy of the Spaniard
; turning as he did, with the most refined calculation, everything to account
for the one end; how easy, with only a little diplomatic skill, to have availed
themselves of the tension between kaiser and pope to their own
advantage. But all
unsuspecting, almost without an inkling of the real state of the case and of
the way to turn it to account, the Protestant princes drifted upon their fate.
Even after the Smalcald war had already broken out, the decision was still in
their hands. In the Thuringian forest they had about twenty thousand men ready
equipped ; in the Wurtemberg country there lay encamped twelve thousand men ;
and the Kaiser had still with toil to collect his widely scattered legions. To
the gallant Schdrtlin * it would not have been a difficult thing in
those days to cut off the approach of imperial troops from the south ; but the
Protestant council of war was smitten as with blindness' in presence of mere
party considerations. Then came the occupation of Electoral Saxony by Duke Maurice,
which proved by its result to be a deed of infamy against the Evangelical
Church. .Thus also in the political domain the raising of the particular
interests above the common weal, the division in the League, as well as the
ecclesiastical disunion already so soon manifesting itself, redounded only to
the advantage of the enemy. On the Lochau heath, near Muhlberg, the decisive
blow was delivered in the spring of 1547. The battle was not so terribly bloody
; but yet in it was cast the die of world-historic import, and this fell in
favour of the Kaiser : he had dealt the Protestant powers an almost fatal blow.
The Elector of Saxony was taken prisoner, Duke Maurice received his
electorate, and an imperial garrison occupied the city of Luther ; as an afterconsequence
of this victory, the Landgrave of Hesse
The fate of the
Evangelical Church was placed, fiumanly speaking, in the hands of the Emperor.
Only in Lower Saxony were a few- convulsive movements still to be observed, in
the endeavour to rise against the power of the Spaniard. Christopher of
Oldenburg, the valiant swordsman and warlike advocate of the Protestants—we
have already often met with this friend of Laski—placed himself, with Albert
von Mansfeld, at the head of a host of horsemen and landsquenets. In the
neighbourhood of Dronkenborg they came upon the imperial troops under the
command of Duke Eric of Brunswick. Here at least the Protestants were
victorious ; joyfully was the Whitsun-festival kept in Bremen. Bu.t the little
gain could not countervail the irreparable loss: the Emperor did not even feel
called upon to notice the success of the Lower Saxons ; the trivial advantage
of the Protestants would of necessity disappear if fortune still favoured him
to pluck all the fruits of his victory at Muhlberg.
It was not a conflict
exclusively between Rome and Wittenberg which, even in a political respect, had
here been brought to a final issue. There was for the evangelical party a
promising sign in the profound discord, the severe tension, which was now
apparent between the Emperor and the Pope. Paul III. was more concerned to
assert his secular dignity against the Emperor, than, in alliance with him, to
do violence to the Evangelical Church at this favourable juncture ; and Charles
V. was prepared rather to surrender the profit of the victory and to sacrifice:
the cause of the Romish Church, than to
suffer his imperial
power to be in the least curtailed. The blasphemous words are said to have
escaped the Pope at this time, in his rage, that “ he would help himself as
best he might, though he should summon Hell to his assistance.”* A league
between the Pope and the Sultan was judged not improbable; while the imperial
ambassador in Rome thought of seizing the castle of St. Angelo in the name of
the Emperor. This state of affairs wrought effectively, and, despite the injury
which the Interim inflicted upon the Evangelical Church, we may even say,
favourably, upon the treatment of the subjugated Protestants. For voices were
raised within the surroundings of the Emperor which were desirous offhand of
wiping out the last thirty years from the history ; and every one felt that
Germany at this moment possessed once more a chieftain of commanding power.
Who, however, will venture to deny that with such attempt the bowstring, too
greatly strained, might have broken, and the little company there in Bremen
have been swollen into an avalanche such as would have swept before it the
whole empire ?
Under these
circumstances the Diet assembled at Augsburg in the autumn of 1547. Only a
quarter of a century separated it from the memorable Diet at Worms ; but what a
history in this short space of time! And this time the Protestants had no
longer a Luther boldly to confront kaiser and empire in the power of God alone.
Charles V. himself was
* Behind the redoubtable Emperor stood his
confessor, Peter de Soto, a Dominican friar. Respecting this man, Hooper writes
from Antwerp in April, 1549, “ I am informed by our ambassador that if the
Emperor’s confessor were but moderately religious, there would be the greatest
hope of shortly bringing him [Charles] into the knowledge of Christ. . . . When
the Emperor was in Upper Germany seven months since, he was deserted by his
confessor because he would not act with severity against some godly persons,
and restore popery altogether.” And Jewell writes in May, 1559, “Our
universities are so depressed and ruined, that at Oxford there are hardly two
individuals who think with us, and even they are so dejected and broken in
spirit, that they can do nothing.
It is a painful
course to follow the introduction of this Interim into the different Protestant
lands of Germany. With only very rare exceptions, the princes yielded, however
reluctantly ; seriously threatened with the imperial displeasure, the magistracy
of the cities likewise submitted, often after an affecting resistance.
Unhappily even Melanchthon was pliable enough to take a part in framing the
so-called Leipsic Interim, which would tolerate as indifferent that which
seemed to thousands a grievous outrage on their evangelic faith. Yet many
pastors were found willing to surrender office and livelihood rather than the
Gospel freedom of a Christian man. Driven from house and home, they went forth
to endure extreme penury; this bitter step appeared to them, after all,
preferable to remaining in a comfortable office under dire distress of
conscience.
Even into our little,
half-forgotten country, by the low-lying strand of the sea, so remote from the
world’s intercourse, the effect of this Interim soon penetrated, and that in a
way fraught with momentous consequences for our friend. The residence in Bonn,
and afterwards in Worms, had brought him near to the centre of this movement ;
then had come the dark days of the war and its lamentable issue. When his
supporter, Duke Christopher of Oldenburg, entered as victor into Bremen, and
there held the Whitsun-festival, friend Hardenberg had
already become pastor at the cathedral in Bremen, after resigning his office
under the Elector. The course of events, too, our friend could follow as though
present. Stanislas Laski attended the Diet of Augsburg as ambassador of
Poland.* Furnished with information by his brother, our Laski possessed an acquaintance
with the progress of affairs such as no one, not even the Countess, could
acquire so reliably and so quickly. He had soon learnt that the Cardinal of
Trent, sent by the Emperor to the Pope—it was Madrucci—had been able to
accomplish nothing with Paul III., and thus the alienation of the two powers
had grown into open hostility ; he knew as early as February that the Pope was
besieging Piacenza, which (after the murder of Pier Luigi Farnese, a son of the
Pope) had been seized by the imperial commander Ferrante Gonzaga."f These
accounts, nevertheless, did not inspire our Laski with much hope, since he had
a keen eye for the understanding of worldly affairs, and, what is of greater
importance, at the same time knew how to measure the limits^of their influence
upon things spiritual. Just in those days he wrote the prophetic words, true
for all time, “ As always, so do I still in the present day think of the diets
in regard to religious affairs. If we undertake to guide and advance matters of
religion by human foresight and prudence, it is a downhill course with them,
from the moment when we think we can strengthen them with human safeguards.”
A Lasco
had not been deceived as to the final issue of the ecclesiastical business at
the Diet. “ May the Lord have His
Church in His keeping ! ” he exclaims with sadness after the proclamation of
the Interim. The Leipsic Interim, “ upon which are impressed the features of
Philip,” occasions him deep grief. He refrains indeed, out of esteem for
Melanchthon, from expressing, even in a confidential letter to a friend, the
ifeelings which the book has awakened in him ; only the one ejaculation escapes
his weary soul, “ But if all that which, as a matter of indifference
[adiaphoron], is not censured in Scripture is of such kind that we may receive
it again, what shall be said of those who have taught that one must, even at
the sacrifice of life, combat that which they now do not combat f and for how
many was this the occasion of their being in reality martyred. Oh, come, Lord
Jesus ! ”*
The imperial
messenger came to Emden also, where he alighted at the end of August, 1548, to
make a peremptory demand of submission to the Interim. The Countess was abroad
at the moment of the arrival of the messenger, on a visit to the Count Palatine
Otho Henry at Heidelberg, to consult with him on Church concerns ; A Lasco was
on the point of complying with an urgent invitation to England, to co-operate
in the ordering of the ecclesiastical affairs of that land. The Countess had
already granted him the necessary leave of absence, with a promise that he
should return to the service of the East Frisian Church. Laski deemed it the
most advisable course, though deciding with sorrowful heart, not even now to
recall his promise of a speedy departure ; he might at least
hope by his own
absence and that of the Countess to delay the decision ; and that in those
troublous days seemed in itself a gain. What a time of trial it was for all,
what perils threatened the heads of the Evangelical Church, may be inferred
from the fact that our friend could only venture to make the journey in
disguise and under an assumed name. Even while en route A Lasco addressed
consolatory letters from Antwerp, and then repeatedly afterwards from England,
to his Church under the cross. Unhappily these letters have not hitherto been
recovered. Emmius seems to have had them before him when he excerpts from them
the exhortation to the preachers only to be steadfast and of good courage. If
they are driven from house and home, their faithful superintendent has prepared
for them a place of refuge in England ; there they can live undisturbed and
welcomed, with many others who are fugitives for their faith’s sake. Only let
them faithfully endure. It is the lot of true believers in this age to endure
persecution. The last times have appeared. Satan rages in order to destroy the
kingdom of Christ; but Christ will be victorious and deliver His people, since
He is indeed the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Great and powerful, it is true, is
the Emperor, who commands; but greater and more powerful is God, who forbids.
To the Emperor we must yield obedience, but only unto the threshold of the
altar.*
The Countess had
meanwhile returned, dejected and perplexed ; for in Heidelberg too they were
unresolved what to do, and with leaden weight
grief pressed upon
all. It was a perilous venture for land and people to call down upon them the
wrath of the Emperor by refusal. And the Emperor was in dangerous proximity.
From Augsburg he had repaired to Brussels, to confer the government of the
Netherlands upon his son Philip, whom he had sent for from Spain. The latter,
at the wish of his father, had just made, one might almost say, his bridal tour
through Germany, to win beforehand the affection of this land in view of the
coming election to the empire.* At first the Countess sought by entreaties and
supplications to be spared subjection to the Interim. If the Emperor would but
have patience and consideration for a helpless widow, and suffer ecclesiastical
affairs in her poor little land to remain as they were until the decision of a
council! The Emperor, however, would not spare the woman on this point either ;
and demanded unconditional submission. Yet a further attempt from Emden in
February, 1549. So long, at least, they had been successful in delaying the
execution of the Interim. The statesman Friedrich ter Westen was sent to
Brussels to the imperial court and entrusted with the conducting of the
difficult business. He was not the man for executing it in the spirit of
Laski. In the report sent in by him we recognise the words of a statesman who
has suffered himself to be intimidated by the Emperor, and thinks nothing can
be more painful than that he and his land should be exposed to persecution for
the sake of matters of faith. Yes, he is, after all, the Sadducee which the
historian of East Friesland describes him as
being.* -He knows how, with adept art, to augment the alarm of the Countess, to
attenuate the strain upon the conscience exerted by the Interim, falsely
representing to her that all the Protestant States, with only ever fewer exceptions,
had submitted, and that it must surely appear strange that she, as a woman,
should scruple to do that for her little land which had been already done by
the mightiest Protestant rulers.
While the Countess,
terrified by the skilfully composed accounts of her ambassador at the court of
Brussels, began to waver in regard to her bearing towards the Interim, A Lasco
arrived once more in East Friesland. At Emden he remains only a few days, on
account of his travelling companion from England (Count Mansfeld), then hastens
over to Aurich (20th March, 1549), where the Countess is anxiously awaiting
him. He found her under the spell of the courtier and worldly counsellor, who
urged submission to the inflexible will of the Emperor. A Lasco had quickly
divined the state of affairs, and was prepared for the worst. “ We are here
expecting,’' he writes to a friend in England (9th of April), “ with the
greatest certainty cross and persecution, and encourage each other to the
enduring of the same in the Lord, by calling upon His holy name, that by
patience and faithfulness in bearing we may be conquerors in all that which the
Lord may determine to permit against us, to the glory of His name and to our
improvement. Assuredly the Lord cares for us, and is so mighty that He is able
to cast to the ground by a single
word of His mouth all
our enemies, however numerous they may be ; the Lord, however, is also so good,
that not a single hair can fall from our heads without His will, even though
the whole world should seek to assail us. God is just as little capable of ever
wishing us ill, as a mother to her child, or the eyelid to the eye, yea as
little as He is ever capable of ceasing to be God. He is to be praised in -all
things which He permits against us, because He never permits anything against
us but that which ministers to our salvation. To Him we have one and all
committed our cause ; with all patience we await that which He is minded to
permit against us.”#
One feels from these
beautiful words of heroic confidence in God that our friend had quickly
succeeded in inspiring with fresh power the sunken courage of his ministers.
Not upon an unfruitful soil had the rousing language of the leader fallen, as
we shall soon perceive. Alert and active on every side, he looked forth to see
how he could meet the pernicious Interim, how he could protect the Evangelical
Church against the oppression of the Emperor. Though at first only in the blue
haze of the distance, in dim outline, there seemed to present itself a means of
deliverance from the almost overwhelming power of the imperial adversary of the
Reformation, A Lasco eagerly turned his glance thither, ready'to co-operate
should there be need for his Go-operation. In this readiness, he resolved once
more to quit East Friesland, in the hope of being able to render greater
service
Like an oppressive
shroud of iron lay the power of the Emperor and his Interim upon Protestant
Germany ; but beneath it the evangelical sentiment of the people surged and
heaved uninterruptedly, and in fierce insurrection against the unbounded power
of the Spaniard and Catholic. They could not brook the contemptuous scorn with
which the Emperor had treated the two captured German princes, the less so
since they recognised in this treatment a threat of that which they had to
expect in regard to their dearest interests at the hand of this potentate.
There was an upheaval in the depths. “ Rather axe than pen ; rather blood than
ink,” these decisive words of the Margrave John of Brandenburg, with which he
refused to subscribe to the Interim, found an echo in many a prince’s heart.
And he stood by his word. The noble Duke Otho of Brunswick made, as early as
the beginning of the year 1548, the first attempt at concluding a league of
princes (the Germanic Confederation) against the tyranny of the Emperor.* It
was deemed of great importance for the after-progress to gain over specially
the Duke Albert of Prussia to the League, then further England, Poland, the old
hereditary enemy of Charles V., and other powers. In Poland Sigismund Augustus
had lately ascended the throne of his fathers. The Protestants
It was now as though
the renowned diplomatic vein in the Laski family began to display itself in our
Johannes too. For the first time was this the case, and then only as occasioned
by the prospect of being able in this way to put a stop to the oppression of
the Evangelical Church. The journey was made in secret. A Lasco had gone to
Bremen, a few days after on to Hamburg, whence he soon found an opportunity of
taking ship for Dantsic. It is unfortunately unexplained what he did during the
following eight weeks here in the renowned seaport town of his native land. It
seems to have
been mainly a time of
waiting. Laski regarded himself always as a Pole, subject to the will of his
king. He had come to Dantsic to obtain the royal permission to comply with a
call of Edward VI., if perchance his fatherland itself did not claim his
co-operation in the guidance of a hoped-for reformation.* The King of England
had himself therefore written to Sigismund Augustus assuming that, with
the new ruler, the Gospel would now find its way into Poland, and concluding
with the wish that so important a power as Laski might not be lost to his
fatherland. Laski too had written to the King and placed himself at his
disposal, if he would make use of him in an ecclesiastical ministry in
accordance with the doctrine of Christ.t In the middle of July we meet with
Laski at Konigsberg, where he remained for a few weeks. J
The name A
Lasco was no strange one to the Duke Albert of Prussia. In all the bloody
conflicts and encounters which the stout Hohenzoller, as Grand Master of the
German Order of Knights, had maintained with Poland since 1512, because he
Advances were very
early made to the East Frisian superintendent. * They are to be assigned to the
period when he was living in retirement as a private citizen in Emden, and,
suffering greatly from the rigour of the ungenial climate, was directing his
glance to the discovery of another asylum. Often already had Duke Albert applied
to him by letter ; the negotiations, however, had come to nothing, probably on
account of suspicions raised with regard to his theological standpoint, which
was not in harmony with the tendency then prevailing in Prussia. The
Netherlanders who had escaped from the persecutions of Charles V., and settled
down peacefully in Prussian Holland,' under the protection accorded to them by
the Duke, had been fiercely assailed by Speratus in his little book Ad Batavos
vagantes (1536); a like fate was encountered by our Laski also at the hands of
the Konigsberg court theologians. Several years before this A Lasco had
entrusted a manuscript copy of his Epitome of the Doctrine of the East Frisian
Church to Professor Entfelder, of Konigsberg, and Melanchthon had warned the
Duke against this work.f Vet the wish that he should take up his abode in
Prussia arose on both sides more than once after thijs, in a more palpable form
now in particular, when communications were passing with Poland, and a lively
hope was awakened of seeing his native land, not only ranged on the side of
those who were endeavouring to form a league against the Emperor, but also of
like sentiment in an ecclesiastical respect with these opponents of Charles V.
They were exceedingly stirring days for the- Church life, those few weeks which A Lasco spent at Konigsberg. Only a half-year before (27th January, 1549) Osiander, expelled from Nuremberg by reason of the Interim, had reached the Duke’s capital, and been installed as minister of the Church in the old town, in place of Magister Funck, whom the Duke had made his court-preacher. As early as the month of April, controversies had broken out. Osiander, in the theses with which he inaugurated his entrance upon the office of professor at the University, had brought out into bold relief his opposition to the mode of teaching concerning justification introduced by Luther, as a purely judicial act of God towards the believer. “To justify may mean ”—such is the declaration in these theses—“ to pronomice righteous ; according to the Gospel, it is to be understood as to make righteous. When justification is said to take place through faith, the expression is an abbreviated one ; for it is not faith, as something formal, but Christ, in whom we believe as the subject-matter of faith, who makes righteous. No one is justified without at the same time being also made alive.” * The disputatious Professor Lauterwald passionately assailed him, and now the tide of battle swayed to the one side, and now to the other, and drew all the world into sympathy, while the plague was raging fearfully in the stricken town. A Lasco dwelt at the house of Lauterwald during his stay at Konigsberg ; f in the controversy he took no part. He did not share the doctrine of Osiander. Still more painfully was he affected by the little book issued by Osiander two years afterwards against the Wittenbergers, and especially against Melanchthon. “ It has now become a fashion to sow new doctrinal differences and to assail the Wittenberg school, by which, nevertheless, the whole earth was advanced in the knowledge of the Gospel, yea, to which Osiander also, if he would only admit it, as is reasonable, is under very great obligation. But, alas! such are now the fortunes of our days,” sighs the noble man, with the clear deep glance into the smarting wounds which the Evangelical Church had inflicted upon itself in these passionate feuds, f During these theological controversies A Lasco converses with the Duke on very serious matters of faith. " I cannot express the joy which the letters of your Highness afforded me, from which it is easy to perceive how near religion lies to your heart, and how careful you are to preserve the purity of the Christian doctrine. Would that such a zeal were met with, not only in other princes, but even in the bulk of theologians (who yet wish to be taken for pillars of the Church), and that at the same time in fair alliance with that modesty which, in friendly spirit, seeks out the foundation of every doctrine, and first listens in Christian love before it pronounces its judgment, not to say its prejudice. Because your Highness acts thus in great kindness and benevolence, all truly pious persons must love such modesty and philanthropy.” By what misfortune could not a post be found for A Lasco in the vicinity of the Duke ? It is a painful providence. For the two heartily devout men have so many endearing points of contact; and an ecclesiastical figure like A Lasco would really have redounded to a higher blessing for the land, than the Funcks, and Staphylus, and Morlins, and the rest. The whole mental bent and mode of thought in our friend seemed, as it were, made for a court-preacher of the Hohenzollers.
While A Lasco in
Konigsberg was waiting, as it would seem in vain, for a letter from his king,
and was being initiated by the Duke into the secret course of the policy of the
Germanic Confederation,* letters reached him from Emden which called for his
instant return. On the 1st of August he was in Dantsic, and, after a voyage of
thirteen days from that port, again at home. The Duke was deeply concerned
about the progress of affairs in East Friesland ; a lengthy epistle of A Lasco
introduces the distant noble friend, as likewise, by a piece of good fortune,
us children of a later age, into the ever-shifting course of events.Immediately
after' the departure of Laski peremptory orders for the introduction of the
Interim without a moment’s delay had reached Emden. The Countess saw no way of
escape. Some courtiers drew up a new formulary ; one is tempted to call it the
Emden Interim. It is a gathering from various sources:
Such was the position
of affairs at the time of Laski's return. It was a joy to his heart to behold
the devoted courage of faith in his loyal pastors, the firm and lively zeal of
the citizens. Very earnestly did he appeal to the conscience of the Countess,
on account of her submissiveness to the imperial injunction. On this point the
severe Christian knew no reserve ; he spoke without fear of man, as the
advocate and servant of the Lord.
Thus A Lasco still
for a while held the wonted services in the churchyard, and weekly also did the
Coetus meet, when the superintendent would vigor
The honourable
leave-taking accorded to A Lasco, on the part of the whole community, bore
brilliant testimony to the high esteem in which the devout
and fearless man was
held. A hundred godly men and an equal number of women were deputed to prepare
a banquet on the 24th of September in honour of the departing superintendent
and of those ministers who had not submitted to the Interim, who, moreover,
were now suffered further to continue their services in the churchyard without
interruption. A parting testimonial, the gift of the whole Church, was declined
by the unselfish man, though at the time in circumstances far from affluent.
After the meal was ended, and the tables removed, the remainder of the day was
spent in earnest exhortations to perseverance in the confession of the faith
and in prayer. Then, amidst many tears, they accompanied the superintendent to
his home, and took leave of him with the kiss of peace. Nor did the Countess
forsake the man who had with such terrible and almost relentless candour shown
to her her sins. In a document still extant she bears witness to A Lasco that
for a period of more than seven years, during which he had held the oversight
of the East Frisian Church, he had proved blameless, alike in the advancing of
the pure doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as in the conduct of his
public life ; so that, on account of his faith, his piety, learning, integrity,
and unwearied diligence, to which testimony all her subjects, so far as they
have the Christian religion and piety truly at heart, would give their assent,
she would fain have retained him during all the time of her rule. But the
Emperor would no longer tolerate his presence in the land ; and, since his
farther stay would prove perilous to himself, his family, and the whole land,
she had prevailed on him to go elsewhere,
Thus our friend was
obliged to take up again the wanderer’s staff, and a second time go forth into
exile for his Lord Christ’s sake. The step may well have cost him a struggle,
as when ten years before he took leave of his beloved Poland. But no sound of
complaint escapes this spirit, so heroic in its resignation. He goes forth,
looking up to his Lord, to learn what land He will now show him. In the first
place, he directs his steps to Bremen, to repose for a while in the hospitable
parsonage of his old friend, and to abide in the vicinity of that land which
during a decennium he has regarded, with so great affection. He looked upon
himself still as the spiritual adviser of the bereaved' Church, and felt
himself bound to assist it with his counsel in this time of severe trial. A
charming letter of consolation to his ministerial brethren at Emden has come
down to us.J He cannot and will not relax in his care and sympathy for them and
the whole East Frisian Church so long as he lives. He beseeches them to
continue faithful, to keep the Church united, to exhort the members to
perseverance in their
confession, as also to endurance in the spirit of gentleness and thanksgiving.
The letter concludes with the words, “ Let us entreat of the Lord to have
rnercy upon His Church, so greatly distracted, and by His Holy Spirit so to
lead and guide us in His service, that one day, raised up with our
congregation, we may be able to hear those longed-for words, ‘ Come, ye blessed
of My Father.’ ” To others also, private persons in Emden, letters of earnest
exhortation were addressed, a very memorahle one, for instance, to his friend
Lenthius, secretary to the Countess. “ I pray thee, my Lenthius, continue in
thy post; but withal ever be mindful of that ‘ unto the threshold of the
altar.’ It is a grave thing to incur guilt in regard to the body and blood of
Christ. From the guilt of this transgression no one will one day be able to
release himself who stands in such association . with any counsels against the
Church of Christ and His office, as not according to the measure of his
vocation to testify his disapproval thereof, not to say if he wittingly and
willingly affords aid therein.”*
He had left his
family at his country-house; he wished to spare them the vicissitudes of a
homeless wandering in the midst of the winter. They remained at Abbingwehr,
commended to the faithful charge of his congregation.f
A man had actually
presented himself who, despite all the warnings of Laski that his removal was
only a temporary one, despite all the deprecatory letters from the most
diverse quarters, could set himself to obtain the office of a superintendent in
Emden, and thereby to
represent Laski as permanently relieved of his post, to the joy of the
imperial party,—Nicolai Buscoducensis ( Van den Bossche) to wit,* whose
brother, court-preacher in Denmark, we shall unhappily very soon have occasion
for becoming acquainted with. Laski cannot bring himself to believe such
procedure possible on the part of an evangelical preacher. “ If, however, he
should venture on it, God will punish him, that others may take warning.”
With regard to the
stay of Laski in Bremen but little is known to us. It is characteristic of the
man that during his sojourn in that town he received the Holy Supper at the
hand of the strict Lutheran Timann. Such an incident at that time created no
disagreement, although the Bremen clergy were accurately informed as to the
views of Laski. ' For he had at the same time explained his view at
large in a letter to the Bremen clergy, now unhappily lost, probably having
reference to a conference.") But then in 1550
people did not cherish the same rigid and harsh notions about admission to the
Table of the Lord, as was the case a few years afterwards.^
In the first, days of
April, 1550, A Lasco repaired to Hamburg. He had come to the resolution in the
course of the winter of accepting a call to London, seeing that a favourable
turn to affairs in East Friesland was not to be looked for very soon. He hoped
more easily to find an opportunity for embarking on the Elbe than on the
Weser. Here he had to
Here in Hamburg
important and long-looked-for letters reached our friend. From the King of
Poland he received the desired written testimony exonerating him from the
charge of ever having entered into any plot with him against Charles V.,
unhappily only this testimony; that other hope, namely, of being recalled to
his native land in order to preach the Gospel there, is passed over without
reference in the royal autograph. “ He desires me still to wait. Therefore I too
will not yet give up hope.” f When indeed did a Pole, in his touching love of
country, ever yet abandon such hope of return ? The letters from England
contained important political news, which he hastened to communicate to Duke
Albert.
The senders are
unknown to us; but they must have filled high posts in the State, and it is a
mark of the great confidence reposed by them in A Lasco, that they should make
communications to him of such nature that he ventures to transmit part of them
to the Duke only in cipher.
The letters were,
however, at the same time, the messengers to announce to A Lasco how greatly
his co-operation was counted on in London ; and so soon as the attack of ague
had only abated—in the first days of May—he embarked for that land, which, no
less than East Friesland, his Lord Christ had certainly assigned to him as the
scene of his abundantly blessed labours.
HOW entirely
different, after all, was the course of the Reformation at the outset in
England from that which it was on the Continent.
It was a restless
anxiety about his soul’s salvation which led the Augustin monk into the depths
of Holy Scripture; and, so soon as he had found the heart’s core of Scripture,
Jesus Christ as our only justification before God, it was the goad of God’s
truth which impelled him in heartfelt compassion to testify among his people of
that which he had himself experienced to his spiritual life ; it was this which
urged him, in glad and fearless spirit, to stand up, in presence of kaiser and
kingdom, in defence of his treasure before all the world. His word wrought like
a work pf redemption upon all the German people, who rose up for him and made
his cause their own, unconcerned about any consequences, careless what gain or
loss should arise from such action for the nation, contented with the peace
which the Gospel afforded to the spirit. Over there in England it is a violent
and disputatious king who at first couches the lance against Luther, and
rejoices in having received from Leo X. the title of Fidei Defensor in reward
for his literary passage
of arms. Rougher
indeed, but quite as befitting, was the name with which the German Reformer
dubbed the crowned head of England when, in petulant mood, he greeted him as “
mad Harry.” The King seemed bent on justifying the appellation. The passionate
desire for ridding himself of Catharine of Arragon, to whom he had been married
many long years, in order to be able to raise to the rank of queen and consort
her maid-of-honour, Anne Boleyn, gave the first impulse to his effort to free
himself from the power of the Pope, who refused the needed consent to a
divorce. Had this been the only cause, he would have been unequal to the task
of successfully carrying into effect a change involving such far-reaching
consequences. But even before the time of Henry VIII., and in particular, with
brilliant result, under the vigorous Edward IV., the power of the kingdom, and
in a corresponding degree that of the ruler, had been gradually consolidated.
Francis I. became a suitor for England’s favour, and, almost simultaneously
with him, Charles V. (1520—1521); in the influential adviser of the King,
Thomas Wolsey, who had early in life been promoted to the dignity of cardinal,
not a few—and himself among the foremost—thought they could discern the future
Pope. What bold plans were formed by the ambitious candidate, who impatiently
awaited the death of Hadrian for the fulfilment of his wish, which nevertheless
was not destined to receive its fulfilment in his favour! When the honest
Hadrian VI., weary of the papal dignity, died at the expiration of a single
year (September, 1523), Julius Medici became pope, and continued to hold that
office until the fatal die had
been cast in England,
dement VII. hesitated to declare the marriage of Henry VIII. illegal, and
thereby to brand as illegitimate the cousin of the Emperor, the Princess Mary,
who was born of this union. Henry felt himself strong enough to answer this
delay with the resolute declaration that the power of the papal see over
England was abrogated. By the renowned Act of Supremacy of the year 1534,
Parliament confirmed the royal decree to the effect that the King was the only
head upon earth of the Church of England. It was too late when Paul III., who
had just ascended the papal throne, and at once discerned all the peril for the
Romish Church, sought to mend matters. The decree accorded so fully with the
wishes of the King, as also with those’ of his people; and the English clergy
themselves had approved of this decision, partly in the hope of averting by
such assent what appeared to them the still greater evil of the Reformation in
England : in this land the object had been attained which the popes had in vain
striven to accomplish,—the union of the twofold power upon one head. For his
own kingdom Henry VIII. was king and pope.
The accomplishment of
a reformation was at first far from the thoughts of Henry. He had gained that
which he sought. All connection with the Bishop of Rome was broken off; no
Peter’s pence were suffered any longer to flow into the papal treasury ; all
ecclesiastical cases, which till then could be disposed of only in Rome, were
henceforth to be decided in England. The Church’s order was changed, the
Church’s doctrine was left untouched by the Fidei Defensor. More powerful
however, than a king,
than a whole clergy, is the spirit which sways an age, and impresses on it its
royal seal as a mark of God. Nowhere in those days could one touch an
ecclesiastical question, even though it were lying on the outermost
circumference of Church politics, without being drawn into the stream of the
Reformational movement, which ran through the whole Christian world. By
whatever imperious and violent, nay even sanguinary measures, Henry VIII., as
pope-king, sought to guard his Church against the inroads of the Reformed
doctrine, he was himself led to vacillate as regards their application, partly
by the stress of politics, partly by the varying influence of the families from
which he chose his wives in such rapid succession ; and, apart from these
considerations, the Reformation forced its way in spite of everything, because
it was animated by the Spirit of God, who breatheth where He listeth.
A foundation on which
the Reformation could work presented itself here and there in the land. Wyclifs
preaching, though now no longer heard for well nigh two hundred years past, had
not yet entirely ceased to find an echo among the populace. The people have
everywhere a wondrously faithful memory for such words. The influence of the
Lollards had been driven into obscurity in the course of time, under the
pressure of relentless persecution ; but now once more began to manifest itself
in quarters where one would hardly suspect its existence. The people eagerly
sought after the Bible ; the saying of the Doctor Evangelicus in particularly
which name Wyclif had been known, was treasured in, memory by them, namely,
that certainty is to be
found in Holy
Scripture alone. And now they received the Bible again in their mother-tongue,
and that not, as in Wyclif s day, in a translation from the Vulgate, but, as
with the other peoples of the Reformation, drawn from the living fountain of
the original language. In his exile at Antwerp the pious Tyndale wrought at the
completion of ,his great work, with twofold eagerness since his faithful
fellow-labourer John Fryth had at home died a martyr’s death (1534).* Almost
every ship which jailed from the Schelde to England carried the forbidden fruit
on board ; and there the book passed from hand to hand, everywhere scattering
the sacred seed-corn, which accomplishes that whereto it is sent. "I"
Strange and troublous
times had fallen upon the land under the government of the imperious pope-
king. Two forces were pitted against each other: on the one side the King,' who
would brook no opposition, and yet encountered a sharp opposition in his own
conscience, which on more than one occasion he seemed to combat as his
adversary; on the other side the admonitory conscience of the people in the
morning light of the Reformation, to which, however, there was as yet lacking
the interpreter and leader who, in language bold and clear and outspoken,
should with holy wrath maintain the
This more favourable
time dawned with the death of Henry VIII. (1547). England would not have been
able to endure his government much longer ; the land was now called to decide
whether it would belong to Protestantism or Catholicism. The hybrid form in
which Henry VIII. would hold it bound, complying in this, it is true, with the
wish of the people, could last no longer. In accordance with the will of the
King, the heir-apparent to the throne was his son, Edward VI, then a prince of
nine years, whose birth had cost the life of his young mother, Jane Seymour,
the King’s third and , ' dearest wife. When, immediately after the King’s
death, the will was opened, the choice of the sixteen men who were appointed to
form the council of the
regency during the
King’s minority had the effect of giving the preponderance to the party favourable
to the Reformation. This preponderance became still more decisive when these
men proceeded almost unanimously to elect the King’s uncle, the Earl of
Hertford, who had already, in accordance with the terms of the late King’s
wish, been created Duke of Somerset,* Lord Protector of the kingdom. The
principal power was now vested in the hands of two men who publicly rendered
homage to the Protestant cause, and were sufficiently strong and unimpeded to
be able to carry out their conviction, even in spite of the protests of the
opposite party. They exerted great influence upon the King, who, far in advance
of his years, willingly and with joy followed such influence. From childhood he
had been instructed in these views, and his tutors belonged to the same
Reforma- tional school. Evert at his coronation the Primate set forth to the
boy-king the example of Josiah ; like him, Edward was to destroy the image-worship
in his kingdom, and to introduce the true worship of God. Cranmer himself
regarded it as his sacred duty to smooth the way thereto for his youthful king.
Without delay the
work was set about. The bishops who were attached to the old religion were
pushed into the background, and gradually removed ; new administrators occupied
their place, partly such as had suffered imprisonment under the former King on
account of their evangelical conviction, partly such as, in order to escape it,
had fled to the Continent, and had now
found a hospitable asylum in Strassburg, Zurich, Geneva, and elsewhere. The
thanks for the asylum granted,—not in those days everywhere willingly and
freely accorded,—were rendered by the returning exiles by their obtaining the
victory in their own land for those doctrines in which they had themselves been
established during their banishment. The images, to the adoration of which the multitude
clung as to a main article of their religion, were removed from the churches,
not seldom in a rough iconoclastic fashion ; * the mass for the dead, as
likewise the denial of the cup to the laity, was interdicted; soon after the
doctrine of transubstantiation also was rejected, and a visitation of the
churches throughout the land was instituted. The disclosures made by this
visitation were, as everywhere, extremely lamentable : the people had been
retained in terrible ignorance in matters of faith; the clergy were incapable
of preaching the Gospel and shedding the light of the Word of God into the dark
night of superstition. The Archbishop issued a collection of homilies, bearing
on the principal matters of doctrine, to be read publicly in country places ; f
in addition to this, the ablest preachers were sent to assist the Church
visitors by preaching in the most diverse localities. These were only temporary
expedients ; in order to effect a ra,dical improvement, recourse must be had to
more sweeping , measures. It was necessary to provide a qualified teaching
faculty at the Univer
With the successful
progress of these essential innovations, the field of the wishes yet to be
realised on the part of the Lord Protector and the Primate gradually widened.
Cranmer saw the moment approaching in which the Reformation would hold its full
entry into England; he did not feel himself secure in answering the questions
then pressing for decision alone or only in concert with the fellow- workers of
kindred spirit in the land, and longed for the counsel and assistance of the
most eminent Reformers of the Continent. The trying state of affairs abroad in
consequence of the painful issue of the Smalcald war, and still more of the
introduction of the Interim, seemed to the Archbishop to present a favourable
opportunity for the accomplishment of his plan. He could promise a safe asylum
on the hospitable shores of England to those who had been driven from house and
home. Who in
Then followed on all
sides invitations to come to England, in what a hearty and pressing manner is
evident if we cite only a passage from a letter of Cranmer to Bucer, under date
of 2nd October, 1548 : “ In the meantime; while the storm [of the Interim] is
raging, it behoves all those who cannot put out with their vessel to the open
sea to betake themselves to the harbour. To you, therefore, my Bucer, our
kingdom will be a most safe harbour, wherein, by the favour of God, the seeds
of the true doctrine have happily begun to be sown. Come over therefore to us,
and become a labourer with us in the harvest of the Lord. You will not be of
less benefit to the universal Church of God, while you are with us, than if you
retain your present position. Moreover, you will the better be able to heal
the wounds of your distressed country [Strassburg had till then refused
submission to the Interim *] than you are now able to do in person. Laying
aside therefore all delay, come over to us as soon as possible.”f The plan
which Cranmer had before his mind in the invitation of these eminent men to
England receives additional light from his letter to A Lasco .- “ We are
desirous of setting forth in our Churches the true doctrine of God, and to hand
down to our descendants a true and explicit form of doctrine, agreeable to the
rule of Holy Scripture, thus to offer to all nations an illustrious testimony
on the part of our teachers, and one supported by the grave authority
In the execution of
such a far-reaching and important plan, it seems to us almost self-evident that
our friend is to be enrolled among this noble band, and indeed in the foremost
rank. He had within a few years accomplished a work in East Friesland such as
called forth wondering admiration. f Two men, more especially, had drawn the
attention of the Primate of England to Laski—Peter Martyr, who had known and
learnt to esteem our friend in Strassburg, and the physician Dr. William
Turner.J The latter had years before been compelled, for his faith’s sake, to
leave England, and had lived during the interval at Emden, in intimate
brotherly converse with A Lasco. Recalled by the Lord Protector in the capacity
of physician-inordinary to the King, he took a lively part in the advancement
of the Reformation, and did not fail to call attention again and again to the
important
Melanchthon
did not remove. Troublous days had indeed set in for him. The Diet of Meissen
(1st July, 1548), at which he had delivered so sharp and scathing a criticism
on the Interim,! had been followed in rapid succession by some two or three
other conventions, of which the Leipsic Interim was the outcome. If he had
repaired to England, his name would not have been associated with this “piece
of patchwork,”J to use. no stronger
Cranmer
and the Lord Protector sought to be aided with counsel; this counsel Wittenberg
refused in the most decisive hour. We cannot then wonder that the doctrine of
the Church of England has received an impress which does not originate in the
school of Luther. It might still have acquired a Lutheran impress at this time,
perhaps, with a glance at the preliminary negotiations of the year 1538, we
ought rather to say, have renewed and preserved it.
1. First Residence in
England.
Three days after the
arrival of the imperial messenger in Emden, at the end of August, 1548, A
Lasco, with the consent of the Countess, quitted East Friesland. The journey
was a perilous one ; everywhere the imperial bailiffs were on the watch to
seize the prominent leaders of the Protestants ; and A Lasco in particular
would have been a welcome booty to them. He had, moreover, to pursue his route
through hostile territory. While the Emperor had already begun to hold his
court
in Brussels, our
Pole, in disguise and under an assumed name, rode through Holland, Brabant,
Flanders. No one recognised him ; without molestation he was suffered to reach
the sea at Calais* then still in the possession of the English. Here one could
always depend on finding a ship bound for the coast of England. In the
beginning of September our friend arrived safely in London.
Laski
found already present on his arrival a captivating circle of kindred minds
from the Continent, a circle enlarging from week to week, all animated with the
earnest wish of assisting with counsel and action the Archbishop and the like-minded
men of England in their great work of reformation. In Oxford Peter Martyr had
already been labouring almost a year with marked success, and simultaneously
with him Ochino had arrived (20th December, 1547); he had been made Prebendary
of Canterbury, and found work among his numerous countrymen, fugitives from
Italy.')'
Later on we find
Bucer and his congenial fellow- labourer Paul Fagius the guests of Cranmer.
Pending the commencement of their university lectures at Cambridge, they were
zealously occupied in rendering the sacred Scriptures out of the original text
into the Latin language. | Franzisco
When A Lasco arrived
in England, Cranmer was for the moment absent from London. A Lasco awaited him
at his palace, during the first days still a little uncertain what he had to
expect from the Archbishop with regard to the ordering of the Church. “ But it
is in itself a great thing at this time to be assured of an asylum where we can
live ourselves, together with those whom the bond of the same Spirit unites
with us in the Lord, in the confession of our faith.”* One traces in these
earnest lines from England the lively satisfaction of now standing in safety
upon a coast on which the high-running surge of the Interim does not beat.
After a few days the Primate of England reached home, and hospitably received
the nephew of the former Primate of Poland in his residence at
Lambeth. A Lasco
remained his guest during a stay of nearly eight months in England, and an
intimate friendship soon sprang up between the two men. Looking back at the
time of their fellowship, Cranmer afterwards testifies to Melanchthon that
during all these months he had lived upon the most familiar and loving terms
with this most excellent man John a Lasco* These two distinguished persons
possessed many intellectual points of contact. Once they had been brought, in
virtue of these qualities, into intimate association, it could not be otherwise
than that Laski should exert an influence upon the Archbishop. Cranmer was
indeed the senior by ten years (born 1489) ; his position, too, in the State
and in the Church far eclipsed the more modest one of the Reformer of East
Friesland. But A Lasco was the man of stronger and more inflexible character;
he stood more firmly rooted in his evangelical conviction, which he had preserved
pure, and sealed at the heavy cost of banishment from his fatherland ; by
merely human considerations he never suffered himself to be influenced, free
as he was in his Lord alone ; a man of immovable courage, he lived out his
conviction without the fear of men, careless in his firm reliance upon his God,
and animated by an ardent impulse to seek, as in a sacred service of the Lord,
to give effect to this conviction. Henry VIII. would not long have hesitated
about impressing the seal of martyrdom upon such a person. Moreover, the East
Frisian Reformer had, though, it is true,
* Cranmer, Miscellaneous Writings of
(Parker Society, 1846), p. 425 : “ Johannes a Lasco, vir optimus, mecum hosce aliquod
menses conjunctissime et amantissime vixit.”
24
within a narrower
compass, approved himself in a work—and gained abundant experience in its
execution—of a nature such as that which Cranmer would just then undertake for
England. In this work the Archbishop sought coadjutors.
Proofs are at hand
that the support given by Laski to the Primate was widely felt, within even a
few months of his coming. A letter from England by a Swiss, Johann von Eschen
(Ab Ulmis, afterwards minister at Zurich), bearing date of 18th August, 1548,
relates that the Archbishop has become sluggish, and the Protestants are
greatly disappointed in their expectations. As an evidence he adduces the:
translation of a Catechism, which has appeared under Cranmer’s name, wherein
very perilous concessions to the Romish Church are to be met with.* Somewhat
over four months afterwards the same
* The title of this Catechism is, A Short
Instruction into the Christian Religion, for the Syngular Commoditie and
Profile of Children and Young People. The so called Bran- denburg-Nuremberg
Catechism, which Justus Jonas translated into Latin in 1529, forms the basis of
this work of Cranmer’s. In his reply to Gardiner (September, 1551), he was
compelled to explain that when he said, “ We receive the body and blood of
Christ,” in the administration of the Supper, the word “ spiritually ” is to be
understood. See Cranmer’s Answer to a Crafty and Sophistical Cavillation,, p.
227 and elsewhere. Compare Hardwick, Reformation, 4th edition, p. 207 seq.; Strype’s
Cranmer (Oxford, 1848), ii. p. 47, note m. (The matter is fully discussed in
the original work of Dalton.) The hasty and magisterial judgment of Ab Ulmis
reads, “ I would have you know for certain, that this Thomas has fallen into so
heavy a slumber, that we entertain but a very cold hope that he will be aroused
even by your [Bullinger’s] most learned letter. For he has lately published a
Catechism in which he not only approved that foul and sacrilegious tran-
substantiation of the Papists in the holy supper of our Saviour, but all the
dreams of Luther seem to him sufficiently well grounded, perspicuous, and lucid
” (Original Letters, p.
writer joyfully
reports to his friends at home that England is making vigorous steps in
advance. “ Thomas [Cranmer] himself”—so the writer continues —“is in a great
measure recovered from his dangerous lethargy, by the goodness of God and the
instrumentality of that most upright and judicious man Master John a Lasco.”*
Other contemporaries too were struck with the change in Cranmer’s views during
this winter (1 548-49).')'' English investigators are’ inclined to attribute
this remarkable change to the influence of Dr. Ridley, then Bishop of Rochester
Far be it from us to wish to detract aught, even in this respect, from the
eminent merits of this towering leader of the Reformation in England ; but so
long as actual facts are not adduced in support of this view, there is surely a
greater degree of probability in favour of the judgment that the main
influence was exerted by A Lasco upon the Primate of England. Why are we to
suppose that the Bishop of Rochester exerted this influence precisely in those
months during which Laski was the daily and intimate companion of the
Archbishop at Lambeth ? J Many Englishmen of the present day
* Original Letters, p. 383. The letter is
addressed to Bullinger.
f
Hardwick, History of the Christian Church during the Reformation, edition 1865,
p. 215. See the remarkable letter of Traheron to Bullinger, December 31st,
1548; Original Letters, p. 323.
J From
foreign parts also there came letters urging the lingering Archbishop to
greater zeal. I am disposed to assign to this period the letter of Calvin to
Cranmer (Calvin, xxiii. 632) to which no date is affixed; the three years there
specified are not necessarily to be restricted to the time of the accession of
Edward VI., and admit of our taking the year 1545 as the time a quo. Compare
Froude, 'History of England, iv. 196 seq.
may be indisposed to
recognise the labours of the foreigner and their influence upon the shaping of
the Church of their native land; and thence arises the wish to reduce them to
very modest dimensions ; but in those great days of the Reformation they did
not as yet apply the narrow limits of nationality to the domain of the Church.
The revival of the sciences, the study of the learned languages, had enlarged
their range of vision, and opened to the learned a common intellectual
fatherland ; the frontiers of this home domain were deepened and enlarged by
the Reformation, which encompassed the most diverse peoples with an intimate
bond of brotherhood.
The winter which A
Lasco spent in the palace at Lambeth, at the centre of the spiritual movement,
was a very important one for the progress of the Reformation in England. As
early as the preceding spring a lively discussion had arisen with regard to the
Supper* Not long before Laski's arrival Calvin had addressed a few
letters to the Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset, inciting him to the
reformation of the Church of England. He had just (25 th July) dedicated to
Somerset his Commentary on-the Epistles to Timothy.t In November Parliament
met. Cranmer was able to submit to the judgment of the House a Book of Common
Prayer, whereby the Latin prayers were to be abolished in the English Church,
and the Church’s doctrine laid down. “ Parliament now discussed the faith of
England, and laymen decided on the doctrines which the clergy were compelled to
teach.ӣ
* Kuyper, ii. 616.
f Calvin,
xiii. 18.
J Froude,
iv. 382. The earliest title of this Prayer Book
The work was the
iruit of long and mature deliberations. A considerable time before this, a
commission of sixteen bishops, supported by six laymen, had been assembled,
the Archbishops of Canterbury and York at their head, to submit the various
orders of service in the land to an examination, and out of these to frame a
new and suitable order of worship.* The sittings were held at Windsor.f The
foreign theologians took no direct part in these important labours ; we have
unfortunately not been able to meet with any document from which to infer
whether and to what extent our friend took an indirect part in these
preliminary deliberations. From some hurried lines to Calvin we can only infer
that Laski was present with Cranmer at Windsor, although confined to his bed
with a severe illness.^
Thus living
constantly in the immediate vicinity of the Archbishop, our Laski had abundant
opportunity of mingling on terms of friendship and intimacy with the leading
men of the evangelical party. With unfeigned respect and recognition the man
was received, of whom it was known that at home he had designed the highest
posts in the Church for the Gospel’s sake, and whose brilliant administration
in East Friesland was manifest to
reads thus
: The Booke of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacramentes and
Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Churche, after the Use of the Churche of
England. Lpndini in officina Edouardi Whitchurche. Cum privilegio ad
imprimendum solum. Anno dom. 1549, Mense Maji. Compare Two Liturgies
(Cambridge, 1845), p. 10 seq.
* Compare Burnet, ii. 98 seq., and iv. 272
seq. t Burnet, ii. 204.
J Kuyper,
ii. 620. This editor has rightly corrected the Vomsor ia of the original into
Winds or ics.
all. When the
celebrated Hugh Latimer delivered his third sermon before the young King, on
the 22nd March, 1549, he made mention in it of Laski also: “Johannes a Lasco
was here, a great learned man, and, as they say, a nobleman in his country, and
is gone his way again. ... I would wish such men as he to be in the realm, for
the realm should prosper in receiving of them. ‘ Who receiveth you receiveth
Me,’ saith Christ; and it should be for the King’s honour to receive them and
keep them.”* A few names to whom Laski sends salutations upon his return
introduce us in some measure to the circle of his English friends. The letter
is addressed to William Cecil, who at the age of twenty-seven was made private
secretary to the Lord Protector. Laski seems to have held much and familiar
converse with him ; his negotiations in the interest of the Germanic
Confederation \ were carried on with the Duke of Somerset, through the
intervention of Cranmer and Cecil, f He sends also his salutations to Cecil’s
wife. The young secretary had already wedded as his second wife Mildred, eldest
daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke.} In the house of Cecil, Laski had also formed
the acquaintance of Sir John Cheke, Cecil’s brother-in-law by the first
marriage, who, with Sir Anthony Cooke, was tutor to the young King. Both of these
men were warmly attached to the cause of the Reformation. §
* Sermons, p. 141. The sermon is among
those preached before the King during the Fridays of Lent, 1549.
t Kuyper,
ii. 621.
j Froude,
iv. 344. Her younger sister Anne was the mother of the renowned Francis Bacon,
Lord Verulam.
§ For some
interesting letters of the two men, though belonging to subsequent years, see
Original Letters, pp.
Mention is likewise
made of Sir Richard Morison. He was just about this time one of the King’s
visitors, six in number, who attended at the Oxford disputation between Peter
Martyr and Dr. William Tresham on the subject of the Lofd’s Supper (May 28th,
1549).* Laski also associated much with the celebrated Dr. William Turner, who
had learnt to esteem him at Emden, and had mainly contributed to his call to
England.
The leave of absence
granted to A Lasco had expired in the spring of 1549. Cranmer, and with him the
great circle of friends gained in England, pressed him to remain, and not
afresh to exchange the quiet haven, where so abundant a field of labour \was
opening to him, for the storm outside upon the rough swelling sea. But at
present he felt himself impelled with force back to the Church entrusted to his
oversight. The hour of decision was approaching ; it was to find him well
equipped upon the field.
In the middle of
March A Lasco quitted London. After an. exceedingly good passage, the ship
safely entered the mouth of the Ems, on the third day after sailing from the
English coast. His fellow- passenger was Count Mansfeld, who was conducting the
negotiations with the Lord Protector for the accession of England to the
Germanic Confederation.
139—147.
[Seven original letters of Sir John Cheke are also appended by Goodwin to his
edition of Cheke’s MS. translation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Cambridge, 1843).—Tr.]
* Schmidt, Peter Martyr, p. 92; and Foxe,
Acts and Monuments, vi. 298 seq. [Bucer wrote to John Brentz in May, 1550,
expressing his dissent from Martyr’s teaching on this subject (Original
Letters, p. 544). This letter goes far to explain the subsequent hostility
towards the fugitive congregations on the part of Brentz.—Tr.]
It was on his account
indeed that Somerset provided an able and experienced captain, who further
conveyed the Count from Emden to Bremen.*
2. Second Residence in
England.
On the 13th of May,
i5S°> our friend arrived again in London, after an interval of about a year
from the time of his quitting the English shore, f The voyage was by no means
so favourable a one as the return voyage from England in the previous year.
Thrice had the ship put off from Hamburg, and thrice was it constrained to
return, hardly reaching the high sea before it was driven by terrible storms to
make in all haste for the sheltering haven. A fresh cause of delay arose from
an attack of Laski's old trouble the ague, which thoroughly prostrated him, and
thus brought about his involuntary detention for a couple of weeks or more at
Hamburg. But this trouble was soon forgotten : his arrival had been long
awaited, and he was now received with open arms. “ His coming gave great joy to
all godly persons ; ” thus we read in a letter of those days.J He once more
took up his temporary quarters, for the space of six or eight weeks,
* Kuyper, ii. 62 r. t
Original Letters, pp. 187, 560.
j Ibid.,
p. 560. [‘‘ A Lasco arrived in England on the 13th of May.” In a letter dated
28th May, eight days later than the one from which the above extract is made,
‘Micronius gives us the first indication of A Lasco’s presence: “The
illustrious lord A Lasco told me, four days since, that he had learned for
certain that the Spanish fleet had been dispersed and destroyed by a storm, and
that this circumstance had detained the Emperor in Lower Germany” (p. 563).
Micronius himself had come over to England with Hooper in May of the previous
year.—Tr.]
in the hospitable
palace of Lambeth, with his friend the Archbishop of' Canterbury.*
It is with a keen
sense of regret that we lay down the pen at the point of A Lasco’s settlement
in England. We had ■ purposed before closing to describe
his ever-memorable work in London and to trace the influence of his Church
Order upon the afterhistory of the Reformed Church in Britain, Germany, and
Holland. The dimensions of the present work render a satisfactory account of
these labours for the time being impossible.
Hereafter it may be
our privilege to present to the English reader, in a volume of no less
interest, if of somewhat smaller compass, the fruits of his matured experience
in the organisation of the Church of the Foreigners at Austin Friars, London,
in connection with which account many other noble forms will emerge from the
obscurity of a long-vanished past. We propose to relate the history of the
dispersion of his beloved congregations on the accession of Queen Mary, and to
interweave therewith a brief narrative of the sufferings of many of our own
countrymen, while more particularly following the course of the fugitive
strangers
* In a veiy interesting letter from Martyr
to Bullinger, dated Oxford, ist June, 1550, we read(after some encomiums on
Hooper and Coverdale), “ Master a Lasco also has repaired hither, since his
Phrysia has admitted the Imperial Interim ; and, as I suspect {utque olfacio),
will be placed over the Church of the Germans in London, which is mightily
agreeable to me. He is staying at present with the Primate (apud D.
Cantuariensem).” The original letter, transcribed from the Zurich MSS., was
furnished by Burnet in his Appendix, as also in Ej>istola Tigurince
(Cantab., 1848). English in Original Letters, p. 483.—Tr.
amidst their severe
privations in Denmark and North Germany and watching their career until a
friendly asylum once more opens to them in Emden.
Such
volume would also embrace the history of A Lasco and his faithful Utenhove in
their labours for the reformation of Poland, down to the death of the former on
the 8th of January, 1560. It would, moreover, glance at the subsequent triumph
of his principles in that land by the subscribing of the Treaty of Sendomir
(1570). Meanwhile the contribution to his history, already placed before the
reader, may suffice to embalm in loving esteem the memory of one who laboured
with such precious results on our own shores, and who was faithful unto death
in the service of his Lord for the wellbeing of His Church. .