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A History of Eastern Europe
1740–1918
This page intentionally left blank
 A History of Eastern
Europe 1740–1918
Empires, Nations and Modernisation
Second Edition

Ian D. Armour

B L O O M S B U RY ACA D E M I C
 First published by Hodder Education in 2006

This edition published in 2012 by

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP, UK
and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA

Copyright © Ian D. Armour 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted
by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the
Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-84966-488-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-84966-660-2 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-84966-661-9 (ebook PDF)

This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed,
sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and
manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin, Cornwall

Cover design: Adam Yeldham

Cover images: Alamy and Raven Design

www.bloomsburyacademic.com
 Contents

List of Maps vi
Preface vii

Introduction 1
PART ONE: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 1740–1804 13
Chapter 1 Peoples, States and Societies 15
Chapter 2 War, Enlightenment and Nationalism 28
Chapter 3 The Habsburg Monarchy’s Attempt at Modernisation 41
Chapter 4 The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 60
Chapter 5 The Ottoman Empire 76
Chapter 6 Russia and Prussia as Regional Powers 89

PART TWO: NATIONALISM, REVOLUTION AND STATE

FORMATION 1804–67 103
Chapter 7 Forces of the Age: The International Scene 1804–67 105
Chapter 8 Forces of the Age: Liberalism, Nationalism and Economic
Change 1804–67 114
Chapter 9 The Habsburg Monarchy from Enlightened Absolutism
to the Ausgleich 126
Chapter 10 The Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Nation-States 150
Chapter 11 Russia and Prussia 1804–67 172

PART THREE: NATIONALISM, INDEPENDENCE AND

MODERNISATION 1867–1918 189
Chapter 12 Nation-States and Modernisation 191
Chapter 13 Dualism: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 1867–1914 200
Chapter 14 Ottoman Retreat and the Balkan Nation-States to 1914 212
Chapter 15 The Russian and German Empires to 1914 226
Chapter 16 The First World War 1914–18 238

Conclusion 249
Notes 254
Bibliography 268
Index 281
 Maps

1. Languages of Eastern Europe 16

2. States of Eastern Europe in 1740 20
3. The Three Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 68
4. Eastern Europe as of 1815 107
5. The Ottoman Empire 1856–78 151
6. The Habsburg Monarchy 1867–1918 201
7. The Ottoman Empire and the Balkans 1878–1913, Showing
Territory Gained by Other Nationalities in 1912–13 224
8. Territorial Changes 1918–23 250
 Preface

It is now over five years since A History of Eastern Europe was first published
by Hodder Arnold, and I am grateful to Bloomsbury Publishing for the
opportunity to update it for a second edition. I am also grateful to Bloomsbury
for agreeing to restore the original subtitle, which neatly summarises the
book’s underlying thematic preoccupations.
Writing a general textbook of this nature is a sure-fire antidote to academic
hubris. While the freedom to range far and wide, rummaging about in other
people’s specialisms, is in many respects liberating, the further one goes down
this route, the more obvious it becomes how limited is one’s own knowledge
and understanding. At the end of several years’ labour on this inherently
impossible packaging exercise, I could only hope, in 2006, that readers would
bear in mind the difficulties of the genre, and that students in particular
would find the book of use. As it has since been adopted as a recommended
text by several history departments teaching East European history, it appears
to be filling a particular need.
The book had its origins in my experience teaching the survey course
‘Quest for Modernity’, on Eastern Europe since 1740, at the School of Slavonic
and East European Studies (SSEES) in London between 1993 and 1996. I shall
always be grateful to Dr Mark Wheeler, who initially asked me to help with
the teaching of the course, and to the late Professor Lindsey Hughes, then
head of department, who gave me the opportunity to continue teaching it on
my own when Mark Wheeler left SSEES. At the time it struck both me and my
students that while twentieth-century Eastern Europe was already well served
by a number of texts, the preceding, but crucially formative, century and a
half or so was less adequately covered. The present text is the result.
Rather against the wise advice of one of Hodder Arnold’s readers of the
original proposal, who commented that a thematic or conceptual approach
would have made the task easier, I opted for an essentially narrative structure,
dealing with individual empires or regions in turn, in the belief that a textbook
must fulfil certain practical and informative functions, and that a primarily
undergraduate readership would profit from this most. While the structure of
the book has not been changed for this second edition, I have to some extent
expanded the discussion of nationalism, and of how multinational empires
coped with nationalism, to take account of some of the more recent literature
on these subjects. In addition, the notes and bibliography have been
substantially added to, a reflection of the volume of new work that continues to
appear in this field. I am grateful to the four anonymous readers of the revised
text, whose helpful suggestions have been incorporated as far as possible.
Preface
Many people assisted in translating the original idea into publishable form.
I am grateful to Christopher Wheeler, commissioning editor for what was then
Edward Arnold, for positively inviting me to undertake the project, and to a
succession of Hodder Arnold editors for their indulgence, notably Jamilah
Ahmed, Tiara Misquitta and Liz Wilson. Former colleagues at Staffordshire
University, especially Martin Brown and Don MacIver, were generous with
constructive criticisms, and I was indebted to the History team at SSEES
(by then part of University College London) for providing a temporary but
extremely congenial academic home during 2005–6. Thanks also go to Esther
MacKay for repeatedly putting up with me on research trips to London. At
Grant MacEwan College, now Grant MacEwan University, since 2006, I have
benefited from the stimulating and friendly company, not only of the History
team but also of colleagues from other disciplines, as well as from the excellent
resources of the institution. It is also worth noting that the second edition has
profited from being used as the set text for three successive versions of my
course on ‘Nationalism vs. Empire: The Multinational Empires of Eastern
Europe 1804–1918’; I am also indebted to the excellent work done by many of
my students on this course. The team at Bloomsbury, in particular Emily Salz
and Jennifer Dodd, has been extremely helpful as well as patient over the past
year, as this second edition took shape.
Finally, my wife Jane Leaper was a constant intellectual companion in the
writing of this book as well as a searching critic of successive chapters; her
patent scepticism as to whether I would ever finish was a major stimulus to
doing so. As the book goes into its second edition, I can only apologise to her
for the fact that it has not yet funded our early retirement. Can-Can, Kissy,
Spud and Small all helped by leaving their paw-prints on the original
manuscript; Spud and the obnoxious newcomer, Zed, continue to supply all
our cat needs.

Ian D. Armour
Edmonton, Alberta
7 July 2011
 Introduction

DEFINITION
Where is Eastern Europe? Does the term have any meaning at all, now that the
cold war has ended and the literally physical division of Europe between East
and West has disappeared? The premise of this book is that the answer to the
latter question must still be ‘yes’. Why that is so, however, depends on how
one answers the first question, on the definition of Eastern Europe.
For the purposes of this book, Eastern Europe is defined as the area stretching
from the present-day Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania south to
Greece. This includes, on an east–west axis, present-day Poland, Belarus and
Ukraine; Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania; and
Albania, Bulgaria and the states of the former Yugoslavia. It excludes, largely
on grounds of space and practicality, Finland and those parts of Russia
inhabited mainly by ethnic Russians.1
In terms of today’s political boundaries, the above definition is a geographical
one only. The governments of some of the states listed above, not to mention
their inhabitants, would object bitterly to being classified as part of Eastern
Europe. Put differently, therefore, the present work is a ‘pre-history’ of those
states which emerged in this region by, or since, 1918 and of their peoples.
It was only in the twentieth century that the concept of Eastern Europe was
formulated, when it was generally perceived that this area was different from
Western, and to some extent Central, Europe. This was not just because of the
foundation or expansion of states on territory formerly subsumed within the
much larger empires of Germany, Austria–Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman
Empire. It was also because, in economic and social terms, Eastern Europe was
increasingly perceived as backward, less industrialised and hence less modern
than much of Western and Central Europe. In strategic and political terms,
Eastern Europe in the twentieth century was an area no longer belonging
formally to any regional great power, whatever the fluctuating hegemony of
Germany, the Soviet Union or the West. In the phrase used by one scholar for
a title, Eastern Europe has been, and remains, ‘the lands between’.2
The rationale for the present work is that this East European difference was
forged in the century and a half preceding 1918, in a period when, conceptually
at least, Eastern Europe did not exist. Instead, the area was originally divided
between conglomerate, multinational empires. Yet throughout the period in
question, all these empires – and the nation-states and nationalities which
with time emerged from them – had to come to terms with their backwardness
as powers as well as their own rivalries and the way in which the nationalism
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918
of their constituent peoples complicated both internal affairs and international
relations.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out that this perception of Eastern Europe as
backward was to some extent the ‘invention’ of West Europeans who, from the
eighteenth century, were happy to see the region as the ‘complementary other
half’ of their own ‘enlightened’ civilisation.3 At the very least, students should
be aware that the very idea of ‘Eastern Europe’ is a contested concept; as Robin
Okey wittily put it, ‘Central/Eastern Europe is no place for the tidy-minded.’4
Nevertheless, the perception that the region was somehow different was
endorsed by an increasing number of East Europeans themselves. Long before
the idea of Eastern Europe became common, in other words, Eastern Europe
had a certain historical reality as a region with certain shared characteristics, as
‘a space of intersecting historical legacies’.5 It is the identifiability of those
characteristics which sets Eastern Europe apart in the period from the mid-
eighteenth century to the end of the First World War, just as it sets the region
apart in the main twentieth century.

THEMES
Such a claim might seem far-fetched, given the vast diversity of Eastern
Europe’s peoples, economic and social conditions, political systems and so on.
Yet the things that East European states and societies had in common, for all
their differences, offer a thematic unity which this introduction aims to
emphasise. A summary of these main themes will also serve to explain the
chronological span chosen for this history.
The first main theme and in some respects the dominant one is that of
modernisation or, conversely, backwardness and the stratagems chosen to
overcome it. Throughout the period in question, starting with the initial
attempts at reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, rulers and leaders of all
descriptions in Eastern Europe were aware that their states compared
increasingly ill with certain competitors.6 Early in the eighteenth century the
perceived disparities were not all that great. Prussia’s superiority over Austria
in the 1740s, for instance, was more a matter of organisational flair, concentrated
military power and individual genius than one of an innately better socio-
economic or political ‘system’. In the same way, the enlightened reforms of the
last Polish king later in the century were a response to the obvious threat
posed by huge standing armies on Poland’s borders; in other respects Poland
was not markedly inferior to its predators.
In this initial stage, modernisation was essentially about becoming more
efficient, about rationalising the financial resources of government and in
other ways making polities ‘enlightened’. By the end of the century, however,
modernity was acquiring other attributes. The French Revolution spread the
concepts of individual liberty and civil rights, giving rise to the conviction,
on the part of some, that the truly modern state was also a liberal, constitutional
one. Even more explosive a legacy of the French Revolution was the ideology

2
 Introduction
known as nationalism, to which further space will be devoted shortly. Later
still, the gradual spread of industrialisation from Britain to the European
continent, in the nineteenth century, created the ultimate template for
modernity, against which Eastern Europe has been measured ever since.
Modernisation now meant an industrialised economy, an efficient bureaucratic
structure for managing the fruits of that economy and, if not a liberal then, at
the very least a constitutional political system which was able to maintain
order within society and ensure that its energies could be directed at goals
deemed appropriate by the country’s political leadership.
The efforts to modernise made by rulers and elites in Eastern Europe ran
into increasing difficulties as the societies in question became more complex.
At the outset of our period the assumption of the so-called enlightened
absolutist rulers was that modernisation could be ordained. Precisely
because it was so rational an agenda, modernisation did not require the
consent of the governed and indeed might have to be imposed against their
will. Yet even in the eighteenth century a moderniser like Joseph II
encountered the vested interests of historic classes such as the Hungarian
nobility. The effect of the French Revolution was to complicate this picture
by introducing demands for political representation which went far beyond
those of the earlier period. In addition, what modernisation was achieved in
Eastern Europe, in economic terms, gradually contributed to a greater social
diversity in the areas affected. The rise of a native merchant class and the
slow growth of towns made possible in turn the emergence of political
opposition to East European rulers. It is characteristic of the gap between
Eastern and Western Europe that this potential liberal class was everywhere
tiny. Nevertheless it constituted both an impediment to and an argument for
further modernisation.
Equally tiny, to begin with, but nevertheless a growing presence in different
parts of Eastern Europe from at least the early nineteenth century, was an
industrial proletariat, or factory working class, which often coexisted uneasily
with the declining class of artisans or handicraft workers. The spread of
industrialisation meant that the artisans were increasingly marginalised and
impoverished, and in Eastern Europe, as elsewhere, it was largely artisans who
provided the shock troops of violent revolutions in 1848–49 and the voting-
fodder for radical political movements, either of the Left or the Right, later in
the century. The industrial working class, by contrast, concentrated in Eastern
Europe’s few big cities and certain other pockets of industry such as the
Bohemian Sudetenland, or Silesia, or in late tsarist Russia, the Ukraine and the
western borderlands of the Russian Empire, proved fertile recruiting ground
for revolutionary socialism and anarchism, ideologies dedicated to a violent
overthrowing of the entire social and political order. In response to this
phenomenon, small though it still was, governments and socio-economic elites
had two options: repress or accommodate. Rarely did they get it right, and as
a result working-class radical movements sprang up across the region, despite
its prevailing ‘backwardness’.

3
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918
Modernisation also triggered ructions among the majority of Eastern
Europe’s inhabitants, the peasant masses. By the late nineteenth century
what is often misleadingly termed ‘populism’, but is more accurately called
‘peasantism’, consisted of political movements dedicated to empowering
peasants, on the ground that they constituted the only important class in
society as a whole, the true producers on whom all else depended. Peasantism
also identified readily with the new ideology of nationalism; indeed peasantist
leaders habitually stressed that the peasants were the nation.
This raises our second major theme in Eastern Europe, the phenomenon of
nationalism. It would be fair to say that this concept, which most historians
agree emerged only in the late eighteenth century, played as little a role in
the history of Eastern Europe, in this early period, as it did elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the eighteenth century is very much the period of incubation
for the idea of the nation, an idea which takes shape, in the writings of some
European thinkers, with specific reference to the peoples of Eastern Europe.
Once formulated, nationalism in the nineteenth century increasingly took
centre stage in the affairs of East European states and societies, to the point
where the unwary student might be pardoned for thinking that the whole of
this period can be explained as the story of successive ‘national’ uprisings,
‘national’ struggles for recognition and ‘national liberations’ achieved through
the formation of ‘nation-states’, a process broadly completed, according to
this scenario, by 1918. No such interpretation could be less satisfactory as an
account of historical events; yet there can be no denying that the nineteenth
century was a period of increasingly visible nationalism.7
If we define nationalism, with some crudity, as loyalty to one’s nation, and
the strongly held conviction that membership in one’s nation is a fundamental
aspect of human identity, we are still left with the crucial question of what
constitutes a nation. It is essential to the understanding of nationalism that the
answer to this question is to be found to a large extent in artificial factors and
depends on a good deal of subjectivity. In other words, nations have been
identified according to a variety of criteria, and the decision as to whether a
nation exists has always depended on how many people subscribe to the view
that it exists. Historians and social scientists are also divided as to how far
back one can date nationalism as an identifiably political ideology, or national
consciousness as a form of group identity shared by significant numbers of
people.8
Most so-called ‘modernists’ among theorists of nationalism argue that, in
Western Europe from about 1500, it was relatively easy for the view to emerge
that the peoples living in the unitary, centralised monarchies of this region –
states with on the whole stable territorial boundaries like England, Scotland,
Portugal, Spain and France – could be identified as nations. ‘Nation’ in this
context meant the people living within a particular state; in short, it was a
political definition. As a concept to which people expressed loyalty, however,
the nation in this early modern period is still hard to identify. People’s
allegiance was still primarily to their monarch, or their religion, or to some

4
 Introduction
narrower, more regional definition of identity than the nation. It was only in
the late eighteenth century that the first conscious appeals are made for loyalty
to the idea of the nation. One sees this most strikingly in two commonly cited
examples of early nationalism. One is the formation of the United States of
America: a new entirely artificial state to which the inhabitants of the former
British colonies agreed to owe allegiance. The other is the French Republic,
which emerged from the French Revolution by 1792. For the first time in
Europe, a deliberate attempt was made by the leaders of the new Republic to
mobilise the entire population of France, all citizens of the Republic, in defence
of the nation against foreign invaders. This was still a political definition of the
nation, in that it equated the nation with the state: all loyal inhabitants of
France were deemed members of the French nation. In both cases, the point at
which significant numbers of Americans and Frenchmen started to think of
themselves collectively as a nation was a key stage in the formation of what has
been called the ‘imagined community’ of the nation.9
The applicability of this political definition of the word ‘nation’ to Eastern
Europe, in the eighteenth century, and indeed to many other parts of the
world, is much more difficult. What constituted a nation in the East European
context had no obvious political units of reference, in other words states,
by which nations could be identified. The peoples of Eastern Europe were
scattered across, and among, the huge dynastic empires into which the region
was divided: the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire,
the Habsburg Monarchy, the Ottoman Empire. None of these institutions
was clearly identified with a single people, even if the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth, at least, was often wrongly referred to even in the eighteenth
century as being exclusively ‘Polish’, and the Ottoman Empire was commonly,
if inaccurately, described as ‘Turkish’. Within the Habsburg Monarchy,
it is true, the formerly independent Kingdom of Hungary, and within it
the sub-kingdom of Croatia, retained a separate constitutional identity, and
the representatives of these units undoubtedly thought of themselves as
Hungarians and Croatians. This, however, was a national consciousness almost
entirely confined to a single social class, the nobility. In most of Eastern
Europe, by contrast, nations could not be equated with states as they were
in Western Europe, because any such potential nation-states had been
extinguished in previous centuries or had never existed.
Yet the peoples of Eastern Europe were clearly many and varied, even to the
most superficial observer; the multiplicity of spoken languages alone was
ample testimony to this diversity. As a consequence, the first attempts
to categorise the inhabitants of the region were made according to cultural
criteria, like language, rather than political criteria. The most renowned
exponent of this cultural definition of the nation was the German philosopher
Johann Gottfried Herder who, precisely because he was German, was aware
that the sources of a specific German identity were not to be sought in political
terms, since Germans lived in a wide variety of states. For Herder, language
was the most important identifier of nationality: it was something that made

5
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918
all speakers of that language different from other peoples, and because
language itself went back to the earliest origins of a community, it was also
inextricably bound up with that people’s history.10 Herder, one of the first
systematic linguistic philosophers, was an enthusiastic collector of German
folk songs, as proof of this historical cultural identity of the German nation.
He also, however, extended his principle of linguistic cultural identity to the
other peoples of Eastern Europe. On the basis of language alone, Eastern
Europe could no longer be seen as simply the territory of four huge states; it
was also a kaleidoscope of nations.
The implications of this central insight – the multinational nature of Eastern
Europe – were explosive, even if they were long-term. For clearly, if the
members of individual nations were encouraged to see themselves as separate,
even in a purely cultural sense, then this self-perception was likely to have
political consequences, and not just in the internal affairs of the multinational
states of the region. Herder was in fact the first person to use the term
‘nationalism’, in 1774, to describe the concept of loyalty to the nation, the
‘conscious cherishing’ of the nation’s language, its cultural roots, its ‘soul’.11
With time, nationalism came to mean something else: the right of the nation to
self-determination, in other words to a state of its own. The world, especially
Eastern Europe, is still living with the murderous fallout from this ideology.
How nationalism developed in Eastern Europe will be charted below. Here
it is enough merely to foreshadow this process, but with the important
caveat that nationalism as an ideology, the idea of the nation in our modern
sense, is not even thought of at the beginning of our period. Even in the
late eighteenth century, after a decade of upheaval caused by the French
Revolutionary Wars, nationalism in Eastern Europe, and arguably even
in Western Europe, was very much a minority preoccupation.12 It was a
phenomenon observable, in the main, among some members of the educated
elite of individual peoples – Hungarians, Poles, some scattered thinkers
among the other Slav peoples and the Greeks – but it was not a mass movement.
Nor could it be given the economic and hence social condition of the vast
majority of people in the region.13
The third main theme of this study is directly related to the question of
nationalism and could be regarded as nationalism’s antithesis. This is the
persistence throughout the whole period of multinational or multiethnic
states. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared before the end of
the eighteenth century, partitioned among its neighbours Russia, Prussia and
Austria. The other conglomerate empires, however, survived right down to
1918; indeed, most of them augmented their territory in Eastern Europe. Only
the Ottoman Empire suffered a progressive rolling back of its territory in the
Balkans, and even this process was not completed until the Balkan Wars
of 1912–13.
Apart from their mere physical survival, however, there are other
considerations which make the continued existence of such empires a matter
of thematic importance. These were hardly moribund concerns. Whatever the

6
 Introduction
internal problems and international weaknesses of both Russia and the
Habsburg Monarchy – and these were often severe – both states continued to
play the role of great powers and were regarded by most of their subjects as
permanent and solidly established authorities. Prussia’s control over its Polish
population was made all the more secure by its development into the German
Empire in 1871. The Ottoman Empire was frequently referred to as ‘the sick
man’ of Europe, where throughout the nineteenth century at least a series of
revolts and breakaways succeeded in whittling down Ottoman sovereignty in
the Balkans.14 But even here the ‘sick man’ epithet was misleading: not only
was the Ottoman imperium a long time dying, but repeated efforts were made
to reform it and gave it a vitality which continued to take its foes by surprise,
and which ensured that the so-called ‘Eastern question’, of how to manage this
long decline, was one of the most enduring problems of the entire period
down to 1918.
The tendency to see the nineteenth century as an ‘age of nationalism’ has
perhaps obscured this persistence of multinational empires and reinforced the
view of them as ramshackle, unviable and doomed to disintegration, history’s
losers. Without in any way succumbing to an unhistorical nostalgia for such
states, however, we should accept that it took the cataclysm of the First World
War to overthrow them entirely. Moreover, until the war, which not only
strained the resources of these states to the utmost but also opened up the
hitherto almost unimaginable prospect of their possible destruction, very few
inhabitants of Eastern Europe, with the exception of the Ottoman Empire’s
Christian subjects, thought in such apocalyptic terms. On the contrary, most
people in the Habsburg Monarchy, the German Empire and Russia were
resigned to living in them, indeed could probably imagine no alternative.
Nationalism by the end of the nineteenth century was undoubtedly a greater
force than ever before, but most peoples were not striving for independence
from the empire in which they found themselves. Rather, their political
aspirations, where they existed at all, were committed to achieving autonomy
or some other form of self-determination within the framework of the existing
state. Only a very few uncompromising nationalists were dedicated to what
they fondly referred to as ‘national’ revolution and complete independence. In
addition, the focus on nationalism has until recently obscured the persistence
of what might be called residual loyalty to the state and the dynasty; recent
research suggests that, at least in the Habsburg Monarchy, significant numbers
of subjects were proud to exhibit such ‘state patriotism’.15 Even larger
numbers, it now appears, stubbornly resisted being categorised as anything at
all: in the words of Jeremy King, ‘National indifference was an inconvenient
fact that national leaders denied and minimized.’16
Not only was the degree of popular discontent with multinational empires
relative, but the rulers of these empires, and the political and social elites
whom the rulers increasingly co-opted to advise them, did what they could to
reinforce loyalty to the state. Often this did not amount to much and we should
not exaggerate its effects. A good deal depended on the will of rulers and elites

7
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918
to promote such loyalty or even to admit that there was a problem. When
Emperor Francis I of Austria was told that a certain individual was an Austrian
patriot, he allegedly replied, ‘But is he a patriot for me?’ Francis felt he should
be able to take his subjects’ loyalty for granted; it was the first duty of any
subject.17 Other dynasts, however, were not so egotistic, and in their attempts
to bind together their diverse realms they deployed a number of stratagems.
The most obvious of these was to inculcate loyalty, to the dynasty personally
but also, by implication, to the concept of empire itself. This had mixed
results and was arguably most successful in the Habsburg Monarchy, where
Habsburgtreue, or loyalty to the Habsburgs, was not confined to Austrian
Germans (the original base of the dynasty) but was also discernible in other
nationalities, at least among certain classes and professions like the military
and the bureaucracy. In the Russian Empire and in Prussia dynastic loyalty
was much less likely among non-Russian or non-German minorities, although
Baltic Germans at least were traditionally loyal subjects of the tsar. In the
Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire fealty to the sultan could not be
taken for granted even in Muslims, whether of Turkish or non-Turkish ethnic
origin, and was even more problematical among Christians.
In the course of the nineteenth century we can see the development of what
has been termed ‘official nationalism’. This was the attempt by the empires to
promote loyalty specifically to the state, regardless of the subject’s nationality.
The most ambitious example of this state nationalism is the so-called
‘Russification’ campaign of the tsarist government in Russia in the late
nineteenth century, but which was preceded by the proclamation of an
‘official nationality’ as early as the 1830s. Similar attempts were made by the
Prussian government and by Hungarian governments after 1867, and by the
reformist but also incipiently Turkish nationalist Young Turk movement in
the Ottoman Empire after 1908. By and large this coercive approach was a
failure and merely stirred up nationalist resentment among the subject
peoples against whom it was directed. A notable side effect, however, was the
creation of a modern nationalism among Russians, Germans, Hungarians and
Turks.
The final stratagem to which the rulers of multinational empires resorted
was to promote economic development. This was generally undertaken for the
primary purpose of strengthening the state and, only secondarily, if at all,
with an eye to averting social or nationalist unrest. Nevertheless, where
modernisation was even partially achieved it had two seemingly contradictory
effects. On the one hand, the greater social variegation which came in the
wake of economic development made the emergence of nationalism all the
more likely. On the other hand, greater prosperity gave all those classes, and
nationalities, who shared in it a greater reason for regarding the status quo, in
other words the preservation of the multinational state, as acceptable, not to
say inevitable. Which of the two, nationalism or loyalty to the state, was likely,
if at all, to come out uppermost remained a moot point short of some geopolitical
upheaval, but, on balance, circumstances favoured the status quo.

8
 Introduction

ORGANISATION
With these three themes in mind, then – modernisation, nationalism and
the multinational state – the organisation of this book will become clear. The
overall structure of the three main parts is chronological, but within each of
these parts subject matter is necessarily broken down into chapters on specific
areas and states. Each part is introduced by a thematic chapter which sets the
scene and describes particular developments which span the whole or much of
the period in question.
Part One covers the eighteenth-century background. This is an essential part
of the story, since the conditions and events of this period not only help
explain subsequent developments but also illustrate each of the key themes of
the book. As far as modernisation is concerned, the eighteenth century saw
the first serious attempts made outside Peter the Great’s Russia to improve state
efficiency, with the specific aim of closing a perceived gap between East
European regimes and more modern competitors. The would-be modernisers
here were Maria Theresa of Austria and her even more determinedly
modernising sons, Joseph II and Leopold II. Some attention will also be paid to
the comparable effort made in the final decades of the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth, even though, in the end, this effort was frustrated by
partition. In this respect Poland offered a cautionary illustration to other
states, such as the Ottoman Empire, of the potential penalty for failure to
modernise.
The eighteenth century is also important, as already suggested, for an
understanding of the origins and nature of nationalism, even if its full force was
not felt until later. Some of the earliest expressions of East European nationalism
will be described, together with an explanation of the narrower, gentry-based
nationalism that distinguishes the Hungarian and Polish variants. The
incendiary potential of nationalism, as demonstrated by the French Revolution,
can also be said to be among the reasons for East European rulers’ deliberate
abandonment of modernisation, typified by the reaction of Francis I of Austria.
Finally, the eighteenth century was the first point at which all the major
multinational empires of Eastern Europe came into direct conflict with one
another. Russian encroachment on the Ottoman Empire began in earnest in
this period; the Habsburg Monarchy was not only in conflict with the Ottomans
but also became aware of the new Russian power; Austro-Prussian rivalry
became a byword; and Poland–Lithuania was ground to pieces between its
predatory neighbours.
In Part Two, the full impact of the eighteenth-century legacy in the period
between 1804 and 1867 is discussed. This impact is broadly summarised as
one of nationalism, revolution and state formation. The importance of
the Napoleonic Empire in transmitting this impact is undeniable, since the
conquests of Napoleon I, brief though they were, succeeded in turning much
of Eastern Europe upside down and had an effect long after Napoleon’s fall
in 1815.18 Although the following period was one of political reaction, it was

9
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918
clear from the revolutions of 1848 that the genie of change could not be stuffed
back into its bottle. By 1867, when the Habsburg Monarchy adopted certain
wide-ranging constitutional changes, Eastern Europe as a whole had also been
transformed by the emergence of nationalism, social as well as political
revolution, and the appearance of entirely new states.
Nationalism, from being the preoccupation of the few, was by the end of this
period increasingly seen as a mass motivator, an irresistible force of the age.
This, it should be remembered, was the perception above all of committed
nationalists, who tended everywhere to project their enthusiasm onto the
whole of society; among those peoples whose population remained largely
peasant, nationalism was still embryonic. Nevertheless, wars had been fought
in Eastern Europe, and blood spilt, in the name of the nation, and the more
this happened, the greater the number of people aware of their nationality.
This had implications for the nature of political change within existing states
and even greater implications for the viability of the international state system.
In terms of other political changes the period through to 1867 saw the long-
term effects of the French Revolution itself rippling through Eastern Europe
like the aftershocks of an earthquake. The concepts of political rights,
equality, constitutionality and even social justice became issues among at
least some classes of East Europeans. By the end of this period the form, if not
the reality, of liberal constitutionalism was more common in Eastern Europe.
In addition to political revolution, some societies of Eastern Europe were also
beginning to be exposed to the effects of economic and social change. The
fundamental precondition for this was the freeing of peasant labour from
serfdom, in the Habsburg Monarchy by 1848, in Russia by 1861 and in the
Ottoman Empire through the establishment of autonomous nation-states. This
made possible in turn the beginnings of genuine modernisation, albeit with
the gap between Eastern and Western Europe even greater than it had been in
the eighteenth century.
The final feature of this period, the emergence of nation-states, was a
phenomenon confined to the Ottoman Empire. This entailed a succession of
international crises, and was indeed accomplished in each case only as a result
of great power intervention, but was important for the intensification of
nationalism and the creation of fresh sources of international conflict.
Part Three is about nationalism, independence and modernisation through
to the end of the First World War. Put differently, this part can be seen as
taking each of our three main themes to a sort of culmination or climactic
point. Nationalism plays an increasingly eye-catching role in this third period.
This is nowhere more so than in the Habsburg Monarchy, which became a
byword for nationality disputes, and whose very existence as a great power
came into question by 1914 as a result of the fatal symbiosis between the
Monarchy’s internal problems and its foreign relations. Nationalism also put
paid to the Ottoman Empire, at least that portion of it in South-Eastern Europe.
A less well-known aspect of nationalism in this period was its effect on the
German and Russian empires. In the case of Germany this was exclusively a

10
 Introduction
Polish problem; in the case of Russia, Poles were only one of a multitude
of subject nationalities increasingly unhappy with the tsarist regime. The
increasing visibility of nationalism as a threat to these multinational states,
however, also ensured that stratagems for countering or otherwise coping
with nationalism were more conscious and more focused. It would be fair to
say that, right down to the outbreak of the First World War, this was a struggle
in which our multinational empires were holding their own, with the notable
exception of the Ottoman Empire.
Several states formally achieved independence in this period well before
1914. The First World War, however, brought formal independence for even
more states, or rather peoples, and in the process transformed the political
map of Eastern Europe into more or less the outlines it has today. The great
multinational empires disappeared, with the exception of the Soviet Union,
the revolutionary Communist regime which took over the Russian Empire.
The emergence of the so-called successor states in Eastern Europe and the
establishment of the Soviet Union were the dominant features of the political
landscape throughout most of the twentieth century.
As for modernisation, this is a part of the story which perhaps ought to be
termed anticlimactic, for the societies of Eastern Europe in this third period
remained backward by comparison with the rest of Europe. It is true that
much of Eastern Europe experienced an accelerating industrialisation and
consequently considerable social change. The vast majority of East Europeans,
however, continued to live in an agrarian economy, even if one increasingly
influenced (often negatively) by outside forces. Independence as a sovereign
state, for instance, did not necessarily avert economic dependence. In a
political sense, too, Eastern Europe remained backward. Despite the formal
existence of constitutional government in most states (even Russia had a
constitution after 1905) and the spread of political parties, governments and
political institutions were on the whole authoritarian and in many ways
unrepresentative and unresponsive to the needs of ordinary people. The
catastrophe of the First World War added widespread physical destruction,
loss of life and psychological traumatisation to the factors keeping Eastern
Europe behind.

11
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 Part One
The Eighteenth-Century Background
1740–1804
This page intentionally left blank
 1
Peoples, States and Societies

The purpose of this chapter is to describe eighteenth-century Eastern Europe

in general terms at the outset of our period. This involves, first of all, the human
geography of the region, the peoples inhabiting it. Second is a summary of the
political geography: the states of Eastern Europe, including their historical
evolution and the changing nature of their relationships with each other in this
period. Third is a survey of economic and social conditions, and the way in
which these determined political systems within individual states.

PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES

The sheer multiplicity of peoples in Eastern Europe is at first sight
bewildering. Altogether there were eight major ethnic groups settled by the
eighteenth century, speaking some two dozen languages and practising half
a dozen religions. (See Map 1.)
One of the most important points to make about the ethnography of Eastern
Europe (as of Western Europe) is that the region was settled for the most part
by successive waves of peoples arriving from outside. For centuries Eastern
Europe was used as a sort of doormat by Germanic, Slavic, Turkic and other
peoples, all seeking entry to the region, fighting, conquering or expelling
each other. Indigenous peoples, like the Greeks and Albanians, were either
conquered or pressed to the mountainous margins of the region; sometimes
territory could be reclaimed, sometimes the newcomers were assimilated by
the conquered population, as happened with the Turkic Bulgars and their Slav
subjects. The last major influx of people was the invasion of the Magyars in
the ninth century, but recurrent wars and conquests ensured that the
ethnographic balance was constantly being altered.
The results of this process were twofold. First, the peoples of the region
were, by the eighteenth century, highly intermixed, in the sense that many
areas contained numerous ethnic groups. Second, the centuries-long process
of settlement and resettlement meant that very few peoples, let alone
individuals, could claim any sort of direct, unbroken lineal descent from their
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918

Map 1 Languages of Eastern Europe

Source: ‘Languages of Europe’. Palmer, R.R. and Colton, J., 1965, A History of the Modern World, 3rd edn,
New York, 437.

ancient ancestors. The very languages that the inhabitants of the region spoke
betrayed a complex, multi-ethnic inheritance. In Eastern Europe, as elsewhere,
everyone was a mongrel.
Apart from Celtic and other early inhabitants of whom only archaeological
traces remain, the Greeks were among the longest established peoples. The
degree to which eighteenth-century Greeks, and the language they spoke,
were descended from the ancient Greeks has been contested; what cannot be
denied is that a belief in this link with the Hellenic past was to prove a powerful
element in modern Greek nationalism. More important in the context of the
eighteenth century was the fact that the Greek world was a far-flung one:
Greek settlements were to be found across the region and the largest of these
were in Constantinople and Smyrna, not in the Greek Peninsula.

16
 Peoples, States and Societies
Equally long established were the Albanians, an indigenous people originally
inhabiting the Roman province of Illyria but gradually crowded into the
mountains of the western Balkans by the arrival of new peoples. Converted in
large numbers to Islam following the Ottoman conquest, Albanians became a
favoured people in the Ottoman Balkans, and the area of Albanian settlement
slowly spread into areas bordering on present-day Albania.
On the south-eastern shores of the Baltic, the peoples collectively known
as Balts were one of the first groups of Indo-European language speakers to
arrive in Europe, around 2000 bc. Two of these peoples, the Prussians and
the Curonians, had been assimilated following the conquest of the Baltic shore
by the Teutonic Knights in the Middle Ages; they left behind their names
in the shape of the (German) Duchy of Prussia and the coastal area known as
Courland. The other two peoples, Letts or Latvians and Lithuanians, survived,
the Letts as a subject people of the Teutonic Knights and then Russia, the
Lithuanians by uniting with Poland in the fourteenth century.
Two peoples, widely separated, represented the Romance, or Latin-based,
group of languages. In the Istrian Peninsula and along the Adriatic coast lived
substantial numbers of Italians, most of them still subjects of the Venetian
Republic. On the other side of the Balkan Peninsula, the inhabitants of what
was to become today’s Romania claimed descent from the ancient Roman
colonists of Dacia. Romanian is undoubtedly a Latinate language, though one
showing heavy traces of Slavic, Turkic and other tongues.
The most numerous language group in Eastern Europe is that of the Slavonic-
speaking peoples. Originating in the area between the Dniester and Vistula
rivers, the Slavs were to begin with an undifferentiated mass of tribes, all of
whom spoke essentially the same language. From the first to the sixth century
onwards, however, the Slavs began to fan out in different directions, settling
in what is now Russia proper, in the lands further to the west, and in the
Balkans. The longer they remained settled in their respective new homelands,
the further apart grew their languages, to the point where philologists
nowadays distinguish between three main subgroups. The East Slavs speak
Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian or White Russian. The West Slavs are the
Czechs, Slovaks and Poles. The South Slavs include Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and
Bulgarians. Croats, Serbs and Bulgarians all take their names from Iranian or
Turkic peoples who imposed themselves on the Slavs already settled in the
Balkans and were then assimilated by them.
One group of peoples who have nothing in common, linguistically, with
their Indo-European neighbours are the Finno-Ugrians. This includes the
Estonians, who had arrived on the north-east coast of the Baltic with their
close relatives, the Finns, by Roman times; another related people, the Livs,
left their name to the coastal area of Livonia after conquest by the Teutonic
Knights. Much later, in the ninth century, the Magyars, or ethnic Hungarians,
burst upon the European world from the east. They rampaged as far afield as
Burgundy and northern Italy before settling down in the Pannonian Plain,
which forms today’s Hungary. In doing so, the Magyars drove a permanent

17
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918
wedge between the West and South Slavs, over several of whom they gradually
established a dominion in the early Middle Ages.
A special role had been played in Eastern Europe, for centuries, by the
Germans. The various Germanic peoples had been knocking at the doors of
the Roman Empire long before the Slavs, and by the end of the first
millennium Germanic kingdoms, including the vast domain founded by
Charles the Great (Charlemagne) in ad 800, which came to be known as the
Holy Roman Empire, were part of the state structure of medieval Europe. The
first German outpost in Eastern Europe was the Duchy of Austria, the ‘eastern
realm’ (Österreich), created in the ninth century by Charlemagne as a buffer
zone against barbarians from the east. Then, in the early Middle Ages,
German influence was extended along the Baltic littoral when the Teutonic
Knights undertook the ‘northern crusades’ against the pagan peoples of the
region, exterminating some like the Prussians, subjugating and Christianising
others. The final extension of German influence in Eastern Europe was more
peaceful: throughout the late Middle Ages, there was a steady influx of
German artisans and tradesmen, clerics and artists, many invited into
kingdoms whose rulers were acutely conscious that their realms lacked such
specialists. As a result German settlements could be found the length and
breadth of Eastern Europe, from the Baltic ports to Transylvania, from
western Bohemia to St Petersburg. Ethnic Germans were above all an urban
class, although the oldest communities, such as the Saxons of Transylvania,
were also agriculturists.
Among the latest entrants into the Balkans were the Ottoman Turks.
This was a consequence of the conquest, by the late sixteenth century, of
south-eastern Europe as far north as central Hungary by the Ottoman sultans,
even though Hungary at least had been reclaimed for Christendom by 1699.
Apart from the religious divide created by this subjection of the Balkans to an
Islamic power, the dominance of the Ottomans for so long meant that by the
start of our period a sizeable proportion of the population was ethnically
different as well. The term ‘Ottoman’ denotes the Muslim ruling class rather
than a single ethnic group; however, in so far as the Ottoman conquest brought
in its wake large numbers of ethnic Turks in the form of administrators,
soldiers and their hangers-on, it altered the demographic balance of the
Balkans substantially.
As a result of their dispersion across the Mediterranean and European world
since Roman times, Jews by the eighteenth century were to be found in many
parts of Eastern Europe, and in several cases had been there for centuries.
In most of the region Ashkenazis predominated, while in the Ottoman Empire
there had been an influx of Sephardis from Western Europe in the sixteenth
century. Virtually everywhere, with the partial exception of the Ottoman
Empire, which tolerated monotheistic religions, Jewish communities were at
best a tolerated minority within their ‘host’ society, at worst subject to
appalling and repeated indignities and persecution. Jews’ retention of a
distinctive religious rite and customs meant that they remained a class apart,

18
 Peoples, States and Societies
repeatedly subjected to restrictions on their faith, where they lived, what
occupations they could pursue. These very restrictions ensured that Jews,
wherever they settled in Eastern Europe, tended to establish themselves as a
commercial class. They made their often highly precarious livings as merchants,
as craftsmen, as bailiffs for the landowner class and, above all, as moneylenders
to rich and poor alike, and in the case of a select few lending millions to
European princes.
Suffering an even worse plight than the Jews were Eastern Europe’s Gypsies
or Roma, an Indo-European people from India who had arrived in the Balkans
via the Byzantine Empire by the eleventh century or even earlier. Gypsy
communities spread across Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, working as
metal craftsmen, musicians, even soldiers, but everywhere they were treated
as aliens, the lowest of the low, and persecution forced on them a wandering,
unsettled way of life. This in turn confirmed the Gypsies’ image as rootless,
and they remained trapped between the popular prejudice which excluded
them and the inveterate desire of local rulers to regulate them and, by forcing
them to settle, to make them taxable. In the Romanian principalities of the
Ottoman Empire, Gypsies had for a long time been treated virtually as slaves,
and although this was exceptional, the position of Gypsies elsewhere was
generally invidious.

STATES
The political geography of Eastern Europe in 1740 did not reflect the ethnic
diversity outlined above. Instead, the region was divided between seven
sovereign states, all multinational, all the product of complex historical
developments. (See Map 2.)
Least significant was the city state of Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik). Though
overshadowed throughout its long history by more powerful neighbours,
Ragusa had profited from its strategic position at the southern end of
the Adriatic and as the western end of major trade routes across the Balkans.
The Ottoman conquest of the peninsula, while it spelt economic decline
for the Venetian Republic and for much of the eastern Mediterranean, was
by contrast an opportunity for Ragusa, which benefited from the fact that
it posed no threat to Ottoman power and was at the same time a valuable
conduit for trade and diplomacy. Largely populated by Slavs, in cultural
character Ragusa had more in common with its fellow city states in Italy.
Politically it was a republic, dominated in the eighteenth century by an
oligarchy of leading merchant families.
The Republic of Venice, which still ruled over most of the Dalmatian coast to
the north of Ragusa, was also a city state in decline, though more sizeable and
a former regional great power. Much of its energies had been devoted to
combating Ottoman encroachments on its very doorstep. Venice retained its
grip on the Istrian Peninsula and the Dalmatian coast until the Ottoman threat
was past, but by the eighteenth century it too was decrepit, its commerce

19
A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918

Map 2 States of Eastern Europe in 1740

Source: ‘Europe 1740’. Palmer, R.R. and Colton, J., 1965, A History of the Modern World, 3rd edn, New York, 304–5.

evaporated and its foothold on the eastern Adriatic dependent on the goodwill
of the much more powerful Habsburg Monarchy.
Of the remaining five states in Eastern Europe, two, the Ottoman Empire and
the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, can be characterised as states on the
defensive, if not positively in decline. Both these powers, for varying reasons,
had ceased to expand in terms of territory and were in fact seen as fields for
expansion by their more predatory neighbours.

20
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St. Thomas."[280] At last Luther challenged the master of arts, with
all the erudition of the Thomists, to define what it was to fulfil the
commandments of God. The master of arts, though embarrassed,
put on a good countenance. "Pay me my fees," says he, stretching
out his hand, "da pastum." One would have said, he was going to
give a lesson in form, mistaking the guests for his pupils. "At this
foolish reply," adds the Reformer, "we all burst a laughing, and the
party broke up."
During the conversation, a Dominican had been listening at the door,
and would fain have come in to spit in Luther's face.[281] He
refrained, however, though he afterwards made a boast of it. Emser,
who had been delighted at seeing his guests battling, while he
seemed to hold a due medium, hastened to apologise to Luther for
the manner in which the party had gone off.[282] Luther returned to
Wittemberg.
 CHAP. XI
Return to Wittemberg—Theses—Nature of Man—Rationalism—
Demand at Erfurt—Eck—Urban Regius—Luther's Modesty.

Luther zealously resumed his labours. He was preparing six or seven

young theologians, who were forthwith to undergo an examination
in order to obtain a licence to teach. And what most delighted him
was, that their promotion was to be to Aristotle's disgrace. "I should
like," said he, "to multiply his enemies as fast as possible."[283] With
that view, he at this time published Theses, which deserve attention.
The leading topic which he discussed was liberty. He had already
glanced at it in the theses of Feldkirchen, but now went deeper into
it. Ever since Christianity began, there has been a struggle, more or
less keen, between the opposite doctrines of the freedom and the
slavery of man. Some schoolmen had taught, like Pelagius and
others, that man possessed in himself the liberty or power of loving
God and doing good. Luther denied this liberty, not to deprive man
of it, but, on the contrary, to make him obtain it. The struggle, then,
in this great question, is not, as is usually said, between liberty and
servitude; but between a liberty proceeding from man, and a liberty
proceeding from God. Some who call themselves the advocates of
liberty, say to man, "You have the power of doing good, and require
a greater liberty." Others, who have been called advocates of
slavery, say to him, on the contrary, "You have no true liberty; but
God offers it to you in the gospel." The one party speaks of liberty,
but a liberty which must end in slavery; while the other speaks of
slavery, in order to give liberty. Such was the struggle in the time of
St. Paul, in the time of Augustine, and in the time of Luther. Those
who say "Change nothing!" are champions of slavery. Those who say
"Let your fetters fall!" are champions of liberty.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the whole
Reformation can be summed up in this particular question. It is one
of the many doctrines which the Wittemberg doctor maintained—
that is all. It would, above all, be a strange illusion to hold, that the
Reformation was fatalism, or an opposition to liberty. It was a
magnificent emancipation of the human mind. Bursting the
numerous bands with which thought had been bound by the
hierarchy, and reviving the ideas of liberty, right, and examination, it
delivered its own age, and with it ours also, and the remotest
posterity. And let it not be said that the Reformation, while it freed
man from human despotism, enslaved him by proclaiming the
sovereignty of grace. No doubt, it wished to bring back the human
will to the Divine, to subordinate the one, and completely merge it in
the other; but what philosopher knows not that entire conformity to
the will of God alone constitutes sovereign, perfect freedom; and
that man will never be truly free, until supreme righteousness and
truth have sole dominion over him?
The following are some of the Ninety-nine Propositions which Luther
sent forth into the Church, in opposition to the Pelagian rationalism
of scholastic theology.
"It is true that man, who is become a corrupt tree, can only will and
do what is evil.
"It is not true that the will, when left to itself, can do good as well as
evil; for it is not free but captive.
"It is not in the power of the will of man to choose or reject
whatever is presented to it.
"Man cannot naturally wish God to be God. His wish is that he
himself were God, and that God were no God.
"The excellent, infallible, and sole preparation for grace, is the
eternal election and predestination of God.[284]
"It is false to say that when man does all he can, he clears away the
obstacles to grace.
"In one word, nature possesses neither a pure reason nor a good
will.[285]
"On the part of man, there is nothing which precedes grace, unless it
be impotence and even rebellion.
"There is no moral virtue without pride or sullenness, that is to say,
without sin.
"From the beginning to the end we are not the masters of our
actions, but the slaves of them.
"We do not become righteous by doing what is righteous, but having
become righteous we do what is righteous.
"He who says that a theologian who is not a logician is a heretic and
an adventurer, maintains an adventurous and heretical proposition.
"There is no form of reasoning (syllogism) which accords with the
things of God.[286]
"If the form of the syllogism could be applied to divine things, we
should know the article of the Holy Trinity, and should not believe it.
"In one word, Aristotle is to theology as darkness to light.
"Man is more hostile to the grace of God than he is to the law itself.
"He who is without the grace of God sins incessantly, even though
he neither kills, nor steals, nor commits adultery.
"He sins, for he does not fulfil the law spiritually.
"Not to kill, and not to commit adultery, externally, and in regard to
action, merely, is the righteousness of hypocrites.
"The law of God and the will of man are two adversaries, who,
without the grace of God, can never agree.[287]
"What the law wishes the will never wishes; only from fear it may
make a show of wishing.
"The law is the hangman of the will, and is subject only to the Child
who has been born unto us.[288] (Isaiah, ix, 6.)
"The law makes sin abound; for it irritates and repulses the will.
"But the grace of God makes righteousness abound, through Jesus
Christ, who makes us love the law.
"Every work of the law appears good externally, but internally is sin.
"The will, when it turns toward the law without the grace of God,
does so only for its own interest.
"Cursed are those who do the works of the law.
"Blessed are all those who do the works of the grace of God.
"The law, which is good, and in which we have life, is the law of the
love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, (Rom., v,
5.)
"Grace is not given in order that works may be done more frequently
and more easily, but because without grace there cannot be any
work of love.

"To love God is to hate oneself, and know nothing out of God."[289]
In this way Luther attributes to God all the good that man can do.
The thing to be done is not to repair, or, so to speak, to patch up the
will of man; an entirely new will must be given him. God alone could
say this; for God alone could perform it. This is one of the greatest
and most important truths that the will of man can acknowledge.
But Luther, while proclaiming the impotence of man, did not fall into
the opposite extreme. He says in the eighth thesis, "It follows not
that the will is naturally bad, that is to say, that its nature is of the
essence of evil, as the Manichees taught."[290] Originally the nature
of man was essentially good; but it turned aside from goodness, that
is, God, and is inclined to evil. Still its origin remains holy and
glorious, and is capable, by the power of God, of regaining its
original. The object of Christianity is to restore it. The gospel, it is
true, exhibits man in a state of degradation and impotence, but as
placed between two glories and two grandeurs,—a past glory, from
which he has been precipitated, and a future glory, to which he is
called. This is the truth, and man knows it to be the truth; and how
little soever he thinks of it, he easily discovers that all which is told
him of his actual purity, power, and glory, is only a lie, designed to
cradle his pride and rock it asleep.
Luther, in his theses, attacked not only the pretended goodness of
man's will, but also the pretended light of his understanding in
regard to divine things. In fact, scholasticism had exalted reason as
well as the will. This theology, in the hands of some of its teachers,
was, at bottom, only a species of rationalism. The propositions which
we have enumerated indicate this; for they look as if directed
against the rationalism of our own day. In the theses, which were
the signal of the Reformation, Luther attacked the Church and the
popular superstitions which to the gospel had added indulgences,
purgatory, and numberless abuses. In those which we have just
given he attacked the school and the rationalism which had robbed
the gospel of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, his revelation
and his grace. The Reformation attacked rationalism before it
attacked superstition. It proclaimed the rights of God before lopping
off the excrescences of man. It was positive before it was negative.
This has not been sufficiently attended to, and yet, without
attending to it, it is impossible duly to appreciate the character of
this religious revolution.
Be this as it may, the truths which Luther thus expressed with so
much energy were quite new. To maintain these theses at
Wittemberg had been an easy matter. There his influence was
paramount, and it would have been said that he had chosen a field
of battle where he knew no combatant could appear. In offering
battle in another university he gave them a greater publicity; and it
was by publicity that the Reformation was effected. He turned his
eyes towards Erfurt, where the theologians had shown themselves
so exasperated against him.
He, accordingly, sent his theses to John Lange, prior of Erfurt, and
wrote him as follows: "My anxiety for the decision which you will
give as to these theses is great, extreme, too great, perhaps, and
keeps me on the rack. I much suspect that your theologians will
consider as paradoxical and kakodoxical,[291] what I must
henceforth regard as most orthodox. Tell me how it is, and as soon
as you possibly can. Have the goodness to make known to the
Faculty of Theology, and to all, that I am ready to come and publicly
maintain these propositions either in the university or the
monastery." It does not seem that Luther's challenge was accepted.
The monks of Erfurt contented themselves with intimating that his
theses had incurred their high displeasure.
But he was desirous to send them to some other part of Germany;
and with that view bethought him of a man who plays an important
part in the history of the Reformation, and with whom the reader
must be made acquainted.
A distinguished professor, named John Meyer, was then teaching in
the university of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria. He was a native of Eck, a
village in Swabia, and was commonly called Doctor Eck. He was a
friend of Luther, who respected his talents and acquirements. Full of
intellect, he had read much, and was possessed of a very retentive
memory. To erudition he added eloquence. His voice and gesture
bespoke the vivacity of his genius. In regard to talent, Eck was in
the south of Germany what Luther was in the north. They were the
two most distinguished theologians of the period, though of very
different views. Ingolstadt was almost the rival of Wittemberg. The
reputation of these two doctors attracted crowds of eager students
from all quarters to the universities in which they taught; their
personal qualities not less than their abilities endearing them to their
pupils. The character of Doctor Eck has been assailed, but an
anecdote in his history will show that at this period, at least, his
heart was not closed against generous impressions.
Among the students whom his fame had attracted to Ingolstadt was
a young man, named Urban Regius, from the banks of an Alpine
lake. He had first studied at the university of Fribourg in Brisgau. On
his arrival at Ingolstadt, to which he had been attracted by the fame
of Doctor Eck, Urban engaged in his course of philosophy, and
gained the favour of his master. Requiring to provide for his
maintenance, he was under the necessity of taking charge of some
young noblemen, and had not only to superintend their studies and
their conduct, but also to purchase on his own account whatever
books and clothes they required. The youths dressed in style, and
kept a good table. Regius becoming embarrassed prayed the parents
to recall their sons. "Never fear," was the answer. His debts
increased, his creditors became pressing, and he was at his wit's
end. The emperor was raising an army against the Turks, and a
recruiting party having arrived at Ingolstadt, Urban in despair
enlisted. Clothed in military attire, he appeared in the ranks at the
time when the review took place, previous to their departure. Doctor
Eck coming up at that instant with several of his colleagues, was
greatly surprised to discover his student among the recruits. "Urban
Regius!" said he, fixing his keen eye on him. "Here," replied the
recruit. "What, pray, is the cause of this?" The young man told his
story. "I take the matter upon myself," replied Eck, and setting his
halberd aside, bought him off from the recruiting party. The parents,
threatened by the Doctor with the displeasure of the prince, sent the
necessary funds to defray the expences of their children, and Urban
Regius was saved to become at a later period one of the pillars of
the Reformation.
Doctor Eck occurred to Luther as the proper person to publish his
theses on Pelagianism and scholastic rationalism in the south of the
empire. He did not, however, send them to the professor of
Ingolstadt directly, but employed a mutual friend, the excellent
Christopher Scheurl, secretary to the town of Nuremberg, praying
him to send them to Eck at Ingolstadt, which is at no great distance
from Nuremberg. "I send you," says he, "my paradoxical, and even
kakistodoxical (κακιστοδοξας) propositions, as many think them.
Communicate them to our dear friend, the very learned and talented
Eck, that I may learn and know what he thinks of them."[292] These
were the terms in which Luther then spoke of Doctor Eck; such was
the friendship then subsisting between them. It was not Luther who
broke it off.
Ingolstadt, however, was not the field on which the battle was to be
fought. The doctrines on which these theses turned were perhaps of
greater importance than those which, two months after, set the
Church in a blaze; and yet, notwithstanding of Luther's challenges,
they passed unnoticed. At most, they were read within the circle of
the school, and produced no sensation beyond it. The reason was,
because they were only university propositions and theological
doctrines, whereas the subsequent theses related to an evil which
had grown up in the midst of the people, and was then causing
devastation in all parts of Germany. So long as Luther was contented
with reviving forgotten doctrines, all was silence; but when he
attacked abuses which were universally felt, every one turned to
listen.
Nevertheless, all that Luther proposed in either case was to produce
one of those theological discussions which were then so common in
universities. To this circle his views were confined. He was humble,
and his humility amounted even to distrust and anxiety. "Considering
my ignorance," said he, "all I deserve is to be hid in a corner,
without being known by any one under the sun."[293] But a mighty
hand drew him out of this corner in which he wished to remain
unknown to the world. A circumstance, independent of Luther's will,
threw him into the field of battle, and the war commenced. This
providential circumstance we are now called upon to relate.
BOOK THIRD.
 CHAP. I.
THE INDULGENCES AND THESES.
1517, 1518.

Cortège—Tezel—Tezel's Discourse—Confession—Four Graces—

Sale—Public Penance—A Letter of Indulgence—Exceptions
—Feasting and Debauchery.

At this period the people of Germany were all in motion. The Church
had opened a vast market on the earth. From the crowd of
customers, and the noise and pleasantry of the sellers, one would
have thought it a fair, only a fair held by monks. The merchandise
which they were showing off, and selling a bargain, was, as they
said, the salvation of souls.
The merchants travelled the country in a fine carriage, accompanied
by three mounted attendants, journeying in grand style, and living at
great expence. One would have said it was some high Mightiness
with his suite and officers, and not a vulgar dealer or mendicant
monk. When the cortège approached a town, a messenger was
despatched to the magistrate to say, "The grace of God and of St.
Peter is at your gates." Immediately the whole place was in motion.
Clergy, priests, nuns, the council, school-masters and their scholars,
the incorporations with their colours, men and women, old and
young, went out to meet the merchant with lighted tapers in their
hand, amid the sound of music and the ringing of bells, "insomuch,"
says a historian, "that God himself could not have been received
with greater honour." After the formalities were over the whole body
proceeded to the church. The Bull of Grace by the pontiff was
carried in front, on a velvet cushion or cloth of gold. Next came the
chief of the indulgence merchants, carrying a large wooden cross,
painted red. The whole procession moved forward, amid hymns,
prayers, and the smoke of incense. The merchant monk and his
attendants were received at the church by the pealing organ and
thrilling music. The cross was placed in front of the altar, and over it
the pope's arms were suspended. All the time it remained there the
clergy of the place, the penitentiaries and sub-commissaries, came
each day after vespers or before the salute, to do obeisance to it
with white wands in their hands.[294] This grand affair produced a
lively sensation in the quiet cities of Germany.
At these sales one personage in particular drew the attention of the
spectators. It was he who carried the great red cross, and played
the principal character. He was clothed in the dress of a Dominican,
and had an arrogant air. His voice was Stentorian, and though in his
sixty-third year,[295] he seemed still in full vigour. This man, the son
of one Diez, a jeweller of Leipsic, was called John Diezel, or Tezel.
He had studied in his native town, became bachelor in 1487, and
two years after entered the Dominican order. Numerous honours had
accumulated on his head. Bachelor in theology, prior of the
dominicans, apostolic commissary, inquisitor, hæreticæ pravitatis
inquisitor, he had discharged the office of commissary of
indulgences, without intermission, from 1502. The skill which he had
acquired as subaltern soon raised him to the office of commissary-in-
chief. He had eighty florins a month, and all his expences paid,
together with a carriage and three horses; but his perquisites (it is
easy to comprehend what they were) far exceeded his salary. In
1507 at Freiberg he gained two thousand florins in two days. If he
discharged the functions, he had also the manners of a quack.
Convicted of adultery and shameful misconduct at Inspruck, his vices
had almost cost him his life. The Emperor Maximilian had ordered
him to be put into a sack and thrown into the river; but the Elector
Frederick happening to arrive, obtained his pardon.[296] The lesson
which he thus received had not given him more modesty; for he had
two of his children along with him.
Miltitz, the pope's legate, mentions the fact in one of his letters.[297]
It would have been difficult to find in all the cloisters of Germany a
man better fitted for the traffic with which he was entrusted. To the
theology of a monk, to the zeal and temper of an inquisitor, he
united the greatest effrontery; but the thing which, above all, made
the task easy to him, was his skill in inventing extraordinary stories
to captivate the minds of the people. To him all means were good
that filled his coffers. Raising his voice, and giving free vent to his
vulgar eloquence, he offered his indulgences to every comer, and
knew better than any dealer at a fair how to set off his merchandise.
[298]

After the cross was erected, and the arms of the pope suspended
over it, Tezel mounted the pulpit, and with a tone of assurance
began to extol the value of the indulgences in presence of the crowd
who had been attracted to the church by the ceremony. The people
listened and stared on hearing the wondrous virtues of which he told
them. A Jesuit historian, speaking of the Dominicans with whom
Tezel was associated, says, "Some of these preachers failed not, as
usual, to outrage the subject which they treated, and so to
exaggerate the value of the indulgences as to make people suppose
they were certain of their own salvation, and of the deliverance of
souls from purgatory as soon as the money was paid."[299] If such
were the scholars, we may judge what the master was. Let us listen
to one of his harangues after setting up the cross.
"Indulgences are the most precious and most sublime gift of God.
"This cross (pointing to the red cross) has the very same efficacy as
the actual cross of Jesus Christ.[300]
"Come, and I will give you letters under seal, by which even the sins
which you may have a desire to commit in future will all be forgiven.
"I would not exchange my privileges for that of St. Peter in heaven;
for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the apostle by
his sermons.
"There is no sin too great for an indulgence to remit; and even
should any one (the thing, no doubt, is impossible) have done
violence to the Holy Virgin Mary, mother of God, let him pay, let him
only pay well, and it will be forgiven him.[301]
"Think, then, that for each mortal sin you must, after confession and
contrition, do penance for seven years, either in this life or in
purgatory. Now, how many mortal sins are committed in one day, in
one week? How many in a month, a year, a whole life?[302] Ah!
these sins are almost innumerable, and innumerable sufferings must
be endured for them in purgatory. And now, by means of these
letters of indulgence, you can at once, for life, in all cases except
four, which are reserved to the Apostolic See, and afterwards at the
hour of death, obtain a full remission of all your pains and all your
sins."
Tezel even made financial calculations on the subject.
"Do you not know," said he, "that when a man proposes to go to
Rome, or to any other country where travellers are exposed to
danger, he sends his money to the bank, and for every five hundred
florins that he means to have, gives five, or six at most, in order
that, by means of letters from the bank, he may receive the money
safely at Rome or elsewhere.... And, you, for the fourth of a florin,
will not receive these letters of indulgence, by means of which you
might introduce into the land of paradise, not worthless money, but
a divine and immortal soul, without exposing it to the smallest risk."
[303]

Tezel next passed to another subject.

"But more than this," said he; "indulgences not only save the living:
they also save the dead.
"For this repentance is not even necessary.
"Priest! noble! merchant! wife! young girls! young men! hear your
departed parents and your other friends, crying to you from the
bottom of the abyss, 'We are enduring horrible torments! A little
alms would deliver us; you can give it, and yet will not!'"
These words, uttered by the formidable voice of the charlatan monk,
made his hearers shudder.
"At the very instant," continued Tezel, "when the piece of money
chinks on the bottom of the strong box, the soul comes out of
purgatory, and, set free, flies upward into heaven."[304]
"O imbecile and brutish people, who perceive not the grace which is
so richly offered to you!... Now heaven is everywhere open!... Do
you refuse at this hour to enter? When, then, will you enter? Now
you can ransom so many souls! Hard-hearted and thoughtless man,
with twelve pence you can deliver your father out of purgatory, and
you are ungrateful enough not to save him! I will be justified on the
day of judgment, but you, you will be punished so much the more
severely, for having neglected so great salvation. I declare to you,
that though you had only a single coat, you would be bound to take
it off and sell it, in order to obtain this grace.... The Lord our God is
no longer God. He has committed all power to the pope."
Then, trying to avail himself of other weapons still, he added, "Know
you why our most holy Lord is distributing so great a grace? His
object is to raise up the ruined church of St. Peter and St. Paul, so
that it may not have its equal in the universe. That church contains
the bodies of the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and of a
multitude of martyrs. Owing to the actual state of the building, these
holy bodies are now, alas! beaten, flooded, soiled, dishonoured, and
reduced to rottenness, by the rain and the hail.... Ah! are these
sacred ashes to remain longer in mud and disgrace?"[305]
This picture failed not to make an impression on many who felt a
burning desire to go to the help of poor Leo X, who had not
wherewith to shelter the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul from the
rain.
Then the orator opened on the arguers and traitors who opposed his
work. "I declare them excommunicated," exclaimed he.
Afterwards addressing docile souls, and making a profane use of
Scripture, "Happy are the eyes which see what you see; for I tell
you, that many prophets and many kings have desired to see the
things which you see, and have not seen them; and to hear the
things which you hear, and have not heard them." And at last,
showing the strong box in which the money was received, he usually
concluded his pathetic discourse with this triple appeal to the
people, "Bring! bring! bring!" "These words," says Luther, "he
uttered with such horrible bellowing, that one might have thought it
was a mad bull making a rush at people, and striking them with his
horns."[306] When his discourse was ended, he came down from the
pulpit, ran towards the chest, and in presence of the people chucked
a piece of money into it, taking care to make it give a very loud
tinkle.[307]
Such were the discourses which astonished Germany, heard in the
days when God was preparing Luther.
At the termination of the discourse, the indulgence was understood
"to have established its throne in the place in due form."
Confessionals were set up adorned with the pope's arms. The sub-
commissaries, and the confessors whom they selected, were
considered to represent the apostolical penitentiaries of Rome at the
jubilee, and on each of these confessionals were posted, in large
characters, their names, surnames, and designations.
Then a crowd pressed forward to the confessor, each coming with a
piece of money in his hand. Men, women, and children, the poor,
even those who lived on alms, all found means of procuring money.
The penitentiaries, after having anew explained the greatness of the
indulgence to each individual, asked, "How much money can you
afford to part with, in order to obtain so complete a forgiveness?"
"This question," says the Instruction of the Archbishop of Mentz to
the commissaries; "this question ought to be put at this moment,
that the penitents may thereby be the better disposed to
contribute."[308]
Four valuable graces were promised to those who aided in building
the basilisk of St. Peter. "The first grace which we announce to you,"
said the commissaries, according to their Letter of Instruction, "is
the complete pardon of all sins."[309] After this came three other
graces,—first, the right of choosing a confessor, who, whenever the
hour of death should seem to be at hand, would give absolution
from all sins, and even from the greatest crimes reserved for the
Apostolic See;[310] second, a participation in all the blessings, works,
and merits of the Catholic Church, in prayers, fastings, alms, and
pilgrimages; and, third, the redemption of the souls which are in
purgatory.[311]
To obtain the first of these graces, it was necessary to have
contrition of heart and confession of the lips, or, at least, the
intention of confessing. But for the three others, they could be
obtained without contrition or confession, merely by paying.
Previous to this, Christopher Columbus, extolling the value of gold,
had said quite gravely, "He who possesses it may introduce souls
into paradise." Such was the doctrine taught by the Archbishop-
Cardinal of Mentz, and the commissaries of the pope. "As to those,"
said they, "who would deliver souls from purgatory, and procure for
them pardon of all their offences, let them throw money into the
chest. It is not necessary for them to have contrition of the heart or
confession of the lips.[312] Let them only hasten with their money;
for they will thus do a work most useful to the souls of the departed,
and to the erection of the Church of St. Peter." Greater blessings
could not be offered at a cheaper rate.
When the confession was over, and it did not take long, the faithful
hastened towards the seller. One only had charge of the sale, and
kept his counter near the cross. He carefully eyed those who
approached him, examining their air, bearing, and dress, and asked
a sum proportioned to the appearance which each presented. Kings,
queens, princes, archbishops, bishops, were, according to the
regulation, to pay twenty-five ducats for an ordinary indulgence.
Abbots, counts, and barons, paid ten. Others of the nobility, rectors,
and all who had an income of five hundred florins, paid six. Those
who had two hundred florins a-year paid one; others, only a half.
Moreover, when the tax could not be followed to the letter, full
powers were given to the commissary-apostolic, who was to arrange
everything in accordance with the dictates of "sound reason," and
the generosity of the donor.[313] For particular sins, Tezel had a
particular tax. Polygamy paid six ducats; theft in a church, and
perjury, nine ducats; murder, eight ducats; magic, two ducats.
Samson, who carried on the same traffic in Switzerland as Tezel in
Germany, had a somewhat different tax. For infanticide he charged
four livres tournois; for parricide or fratricide, a ducat.[314]
The apostolic commissaries sometimes encountered difficulties in
carrying on their trade. It often happened, both in towns and
villages, that husbands were opposed to the whole concern, and
prohibited their wives from giving any thing to these merchants.
What, then, were devout spouses to do? "Have you not your dowry,
or some other property, at your own disposal?" asked the dealers.
"In that case we may dispose of part for so sacred a purpose, even
against the will of your husbands."[315]
The hand which had given the indulgence could not receive the
money. This was prohibited under the severest penalties; for there
might be good reason to suspect that that hand would not have
been faithful. The penitent himself behoved to deposit the price of
his pardon in the chest.[316] Angry looks were given to those who
were audacious enough not to open their purses.[317]
If among those who pressed forward to the confessionals, there
happened to be any one whose crime was publicly known, though of
a kind which the civil law could not reach, he behoved, first of all, to
do public penance. For this purpose they first led him to a chapel or
sacristy, where they stripped him of his clothes, and took off his
shoes, leaving him nothing but his shirt. His arms were crossed upon
his breast, a light placed in one hand, and a rod in the other. Then
the penitent walked at the head of the procession which proceeded
to the red cross. He remained on his knees till the chant and the
collect was finished. Then the commissary gave out the Psalm,
Miserere mei. The confessors immediately approached the penitent,
and led him across the church towards the commissary, who, taking
the rod from his hand, and gently striking him thrice on the back
with it,[318] said to him, "The Lord have pity on thee, and forgive thy
sin." He then gave out the Kyrie Eleison. The penitent was led back
to the front of the cross, and the confessor gave him the apostolic
absolution, and declared him restored to the company of the faithful.
Sad mummery, concluded with a holy expression, which, at such a
moment, was mere profanation!
It is worth while to know the contents of one of those diplomas of
absolution which led to the Reformation of the Church. The following
is a specimen:—"May our Lord Jesus Christ have pity on thee, N. N.,
and absolve thee by the merit of his most holy passion. And I, in
virtue of the apostolic power entrusted to me, absolve thee from all
ecclesiastical censures, judgments, and penalties, which thou mayest
have deserved; moreover, from all the excesses, sins, and crimes,
which thou mayest have committed, how great and enormous
soever they may have been, and for whatever cause, even should
they have been reserved to our most holy Father the pope, and to
the apostolic see. I efface all the marks of disability, and all the
notes of infamy which thou mayest have incurred on this occasion. I
remit the pains which thou shouldest have to endure in purgatory. I
render thee anew a partaker in the sacraments of the church. I
again incorporate thee into the communion of saints, and re-
establish thee in the innocence and purity in which thou wert at the
hour of thy baptism; so that, at the moment of thy death, the gate
of entrance to the place of pains and torments will be shut to thee,
and, on the contrary, the gate which leads to the heavenly paradise,
will be opened to thee. If thou art not to die soon, this grace will
remain unimpaired till thy last hour arrive. In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
"Friar John Tezel, commissary, has signed it with his own hand."
How dexterously presumptuous and lying words are here
intermingled with holy Christian expressions!
All the faithful required to come and confess at the place where the
red cross was erected. The only exceptions were the sick, the aged,
and pregnant women. If, however, there happened to be in the
neighbourhood some noble in his castle, or some great personage in
his palace, there was an exemption for him;[319] for he might not
care to mingle with the crowd, and his money was worth the going
for.
If there happened to be a convent whose heads were opposed to
the traffic of Tezel, and prohibited their monks from visiting the
places where the indulgence had erected its throne, means were still
found to remedy the evil by sending them confessors, who were
commissioned to absolve them against the will of their order and the
will of their heads.[320] There was not a vein in the mine, however
small, which they did not find means of working.
At length they arrived at the object and end of the whole affair, the
summing up of the cash. For greater security, the strong box had
three keys—one in the hands of Tezel, the second in those of the
treasurer, appointed by the firm of Fugger of Augsburg, who had
been appointed agents in this vast enterprise, while the third was
entrusted to the civil authority. When the moment arrived, the
counters were opened in the presence of a notary-public, and the
whole was duly counted and recorded. Must not Christ arise and
drive these profane sellers from the temple?
The mission being closed, the dealers relaxed from their labours. It
is true the instructions of the commissary-general forbade them to
frequent taverns and suspicious places;[321] but they cared little for
this prohibition. Sin must have appeared a very trivial matter to
people who had such an easy trade in it. "The mendicants," says a
Roman Catholic historian, "led a bad life, expending in taverns,
gaming-houses, and places of infamy, what the people retrenched
from their necessities."[322] It is even averred, that in taverns they
sometimes played at dice for the salvation of souls.[323]
 CHAP. II.
The Franciscan Confessor—The Soul in the Burying-Ground—
The Shoemaker of Hagenau—The Students—Myconius—
Conversation with Tezel—Stratagem by a Gentleman—
Conversation of the Wise and of the People—A Miner of
Schneeberg.

But let us look at some of the scenes which then took place in
Germany during this sale of the pardon of sins; for we here meet
with anecdotes which, by themselves alone, give a picture of the
times. As we proceed with our narrative we deem it best to let men
speak for themselves.
At Magdebourg Tezel refused to absolve a wealthy female, unless
she would pay him one hundred florins in advance. She consulted
her ordinary confessor, who was a Franciscan. "God," replied he,
"gives the remission of sins freely, and does not sell it." However, he
begged her not to tell Tezel what advice he had given her. But the
merchant having somehow or other heard of words so injurious to
his interest, exclaimed, "Such an adviser deserves to be banished or
burned."[324]
Tezel rarely found men enlightened enough, and still more rarely
men bold enough, to resist him. For the most part he had a good
market from the superstitious crowd. He had erected the red cross
of indulgences at Zwickau, and the good parishioners had hastened
to make the money which was to deliver them chink on the bottom
of the chest. He was going away with a well-filled purse. The
evening before his departure the chaplains and their attendants
applied to him for a farewell entertainment. The request was
reasonable; but how was it possible to comply with it? the money
was already counted and sealed up. The next morning he orders the
large bell to be rung. Crowds hastened to the church, every one
thinking that something extraordinary must have happened, as the
station was closed. "I had resolved," said he, "to depart this
morning, but last night was awoke by groans. On listening I found
they came from the burying-ground. Alas! it was a poor soul calling
and entreating me instantly to deliver it from the torment by which it
was consumed. I have, therefore, remained one day more, in order
to stir up the compassion of Christian hearts in favour of this
unhappy soul. I am willing myself to be the first to give, and
whosoever does not follow my example will deserve damnation."
What heart would not have responded to such an appeal? Who
knew, moreover, whose soul it was that was crying in the burying-
ground? The people contributed freely, and Tezel gave the chaplains
and their attendants a jovial entertainment, defraying the expence
by the offerings which he had received in favour of the soul of
Zwickau.[325]
The indulgence merchants had fixed their station at Hagenau in
1517. A shoemaker's wife, taking advantage of the authority of the
instruction of the commissary-general, had, contrary to the will of
her husband, procured a letter of indulgence, and paid a gold florin
for it. She died shortly after. The husband not having caused mass to
be said for the repose of her soul, the curate charged him with
contempt of religion, and the judge of Hagenau summoned him to
appear. The shoemaker put his wife's indulgence in his pocket and
repaired to the court. "Is your wife dead?" asked the judge. "Yes,"
replied he. "What have you done for her?" "I have buried her body,
and commended her soul to God." "But have you caused a mass to
be said for the salvation of her soul?" I have not; it was
unnecessary. She entered heaven the moment of her death." "How
do you know that?" "Here is the proof." So saying, he takes the
indulgence out of his pocket, and the judge, in presence of the
curate, reads in as many words that the woman who received it
would not enter purgatory, but go straight to heaven. "If the
reverend curate maintains that a mass is still necessary, my wife has
been cheated by our most holy father the pope. If she was not
cheated, then it is the reverend curate who is cheating me." This
was unanswerable, and the accused was acquitted. Thus the good
sense of the people did justice to these pious frauds.[326]
One day when Tezel was preaching at Leipsic, and introducing into
his sermons some of those stories of which we have given a sample,
two students feeling quite indignant, rose up and left the church,
exclaiming, "It is impossible for us to listen longer to the drolleries
and puerilities of this monk."[327] One of them, it is said, was young
Camerarius, afterwards the intimate friend of Melancthon, and his
biographer.
But of all the young men of the period, he on whom Tezel made the
strongest impression unquestionably was Myconius, afterwards
celebrated as a Reformer, and historian of the Reformation. He had
received a Christian education. His father, a pious man of Franconia,
was wont to say to him, "My son, pray frequently, for all things are
freely given to us by God alone. The blood of Christ," added he, "is
the only ransom for the sins of the whole world. O, my son! were
there only three men that could be saved by the blood of Christ,
believe, and believe with confidence, that thou art one of the three.
It is an insult to the blood of the Saviour to doubt if it saves."[328]
Then cautioning his son against the traffic which was beginning to
be established in Germany—"The Roman indulgences," said he to
him, "are nets which fish for money, and deceive the simple. The
forgiveness of sins and of eternal life are not things for sale."
At the age of thirteen Frederick Myconius was sent to the school of
Annaberg to finish his studies. Shortly after, Tezel arrived in the
town, and remained in it for two years. The people flocked in crowds
to his sermon. "There is no other method," exclaimed Tezel in his
voice of thunder; "there is no other method of obtaining eternal life
than the satisfaction of works; but this satisfaction is impossible for
man, and, therefore, all he can do is to purchase it from the Roman
pontiff."[329] When Tezel was about to quit Annaberg, his addresses
became more urgent. "Soon," exclaimed he, in a threatening tone,
"soon will I take down the cross, shut the gate of heaven,[330] and
quench the lustre of that sun of grace which is now shining in your
eyes." Then resuming the gentle accent of persuasion, "Now," said
he, "is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." Then raising
his voice anew, the pontifical Stentor,[331] who was addressing the
inhabitants of a rich mineral district, loudly exclaimed, "Bring your
money, burghers of Annaberg, contribute largely in behalf of the
indulgences, and your mines and your mountains will be filled with
pure silver." In conclusion, he declared that at Pentecost he would
distribute his letters to the poor gratuitously, and for the love of God.
Young Myconius being among the number of Tezel's hearers, felt an
eager desire to avail himself of this offer. Going up to the
commissaries, he said to them in Latin, "I am a poor sinner, and
need a gratuitous pardon!" The merchants replied, "Those alone can
have part in the merits of Jesus Christ who lend a helping hand to
the Church, in other words, who give money." "What is the meaning
then," said Myconius, "of those promises of free gift, which are
posted up on the walls and doors of the churches?" "Give at least a
shilling," said Tezel's people who had gone to their master, and
interceded with him for the young man, but without effect. "I am not
able." "Only Sixpence." "I have not even so much." The dominicans
then began to fear that he wished to entrap them. "Listen," said
they to him, "we will make you a present of the sixpence." The
young man, raising his voice in indignation, answered, "I want no
indulgences that are purchased. If I wished to purchase, I would
only have to sell one of my school-books. I want a free pardon,
given purely for the love of God, and you will have to give account to
God for having allowed the salvation of a soul to be lost for a
sixpence." "Who sent you to entrap us?" exclaimed the merchants.
"Nothing but the desire of receiving the grace of God could have
tempted me to appear before such mighty lords," replied the young
man, and withdrew.
"I was much grieved," said he, "at being sent thus pitilessly away;
but I still felt within myself a Comforter, who told me that there was
a God in heaven, who, without money and without price, pardons
repenting sinners for the love of his Son Jesus Christ. As I was
taking leave of those people, I melted into tears, and, sobbing,
prayed, 'O God! since these men have refused me the forgiveness of
my sins, because I had no money to pay for it, do thou, O Lord,
have pity on me, and forgive my sins in pure mercy!' I went to my
lodging, and taking up my crucifix, which was lying on my desk, laid
it on my chair, and prostrated myself before it. I cannot describe
what I felt. I asked God to be my Father, and to do with me
whatsoever he pleased. I felt my nature changed, converted, and
transformed. What formerly delighted me now excited my disgust.
To live with God, and please him, was my strongest, my only desire."
[332] Thus Tezel himself contributed to the Reformation. By crying
abuses he paved the way for a purer doctrine, and the indignation
which he excited in a generous youth was one day to break forth
mightily. We may judge of this by the following anecdote.
A Saxon gentleman, who had heard Tezel at Leipsic, felt his
indignation aroused by his falsehoods, and going up to the monk,
asked him whether he had power to pardon the sins which were
intended to be committed? "Assuredly," replied Tezel. "I have full
power from the pope to do so." "Well then," resumed the knight,
"there is one of my enemies on whom I should like to take a slight
revenge without doing him any deadly injury, and I will give you ten
crowns in return for a letter of indulgence, which will completely
acquit me." Tezel made some objections; at last, however, they
came to an agreement for thirty crowns. Soon after the monk quits
Leipsic. The gentleman accompanied by his servants, waited for him
in a wood between Jüterboch and Treblin, and rushing out upon
him, and giving him some blows with a stick, carried off the rich
indulgence chest, which the inquisitor had with him. Tezel cries out
robbery, and carries his complaint before the judges, but the
gentleman shows the letter with Tezel's own signature, exempting
him beforehand from all punishment. Duke George, who had at first
been very angry, on seeing the document ordered the accused to be
acquitted.[333]
This traffic everywhere occupied men's thoughts, and was
everywhere talked of. It was the subject of conversation in castles,
in academies, and at the firesides of the citizens, as well as in inns
and taverns, and all places of public resort.[334] Opinions were
divided, some believing, and others expressing indignation. The
sensible portion of the community rejected the whole system of
indulgences with disgust. It was so contrary to Scripture and to
morality, that all who had any knowledge of the Bible, or any natural
light, condemned it in their hearts, and only waited for a signal to
declare their opposition to it. On the other hand, scoffers found
ample materials for raillery. The people, who had for many years
been irritated by the misconduct of the priests, and whom nothing
but the fear of punishment induced to keep up a certain show of
respect, gave free vent to their hatred. Complaints and sarcasms
were everywhere heard on the avarice of the clergy.
Nor did they stop here. They even attacked the power of the keys,
and the authority of the sovereign pontiff. "Why," said they, "does
not the pope deliver all souls from purgatory at once from a holy
charity, and in consideration of the sad misery of these souls, seeing
he delivers so great a number for the love of perishable money, and
of the cathedral of St. Peter? Why do feasts and anniversaries of the
dead continue to be celebrated? Why does not the pope restore or
allow others to resume the benefices and prebends which have been
founded in favour of the dead, since it is now useless, and even
reprehensible, to pray for those whom indulgences have for ever
delivered?" "What kind of new holiness in God and the pope is this—
from a love of money to enable a wicked profane man to deliver a
pious soul beloved of the Lord from purgatory, rather than deliver it
themselves gratuitously from love, and because of its great
wretchedness."[335]
The gross and immoral conduct of the traffickers in indulgences was
much talked of. "In paying carriers for transporting them with their
goods, the innkeepers with whom they lodge, or any one who does
any piece of work for them, they give a letter of indulgence for four,
five, or any number of souls, as the case may be." In this way, the
diplomas of salvation were current in inns and in markets like bank
bills or paper money. "Bring! Bring!" said the common people, "is the
head, the belly, the tail, and the whole body of the sermon."[336]
A miner of Schneeberg, meeting a seller of indulgences, asked,
"Must we indeed give credit to what you have often said of the
power of the indulgence, and of the authority of the pope, and
believe it possible, by throwing a penny into the box, to ransom a
soul from purgatory?" The merchant assured him it was true. "Ah!"
resumed the miner, "what an unmerciful man the pope must be, for
a paltry penny to leave a miserable soul so long crying in the flames.
If he has no ready money, let him borrow some hundred thousand
crowns, and deliver all these people at once. We poor folks will
willingly pay him both the interest and the capital." Thus Germany
was weary of the shameful traffic which was going on in the midst of
her, and could no longer tolerate the impostures of these master-
swindlers of Rome, as Luther calls them.[337] Yet no bishop, no
theologian, durst oppose their quackery and their fraud. The minds
of men were in suspense, and asked whether God would not raise
up some mighty man for the work which required to be done? This
man nowhere appeared.
 CHAP. III.
Leo X—Necessities of the Pope—Albert—His Character—Favours
the Indulgences—The Franciscans and the Dominicans.

The pope then on the pontifical throne was not a Borgia but Leo X,
of the illustrious house of Medici. He was able, frank, kind, and
gentle. His address was affable, his liberality without bounds, and his
morals, superior to those of his court. Cardinal Pallavicini, however,
acknowledges that they were not altogether irreproachable. To this
amiable character he joined several of the qualities of a great prince.
He showed himself friendly to science and art. The first Italian
comedies were represented in his presence; and there are few of his
day which he did not see performed. He was passionately fond of
music. Musical instruments resounded every day in his palace; and
he was often heard humming the airs which had been performed
before him. He was fond of magnificence, and spared nothing when
fêtes, games, theatricals, presents or rewards, were in question. No
court surpassed that of the sovereign pontiff in splendour and
gayety. Accordingly, when it was learned that Julian Medicis was
proposing to reside at Rome with his young bride, "God be praised,"
exclaimed Cardinal Bibliena, the most influential counsellor of Leo X,
"the only thing we wanted was a female court."[338] A female court
was necessary to complete the court of the pope. To religious
sentiment Leo was completely a stranger. "His manners were so
pleasing," says Sarpi, "that he would have been perfect if he had
had some acquaintance with religious matters, and been somewhat
more inclined to piety, which seldom, if ever, gave him any concern."
[339]

Leo was greatly in want of money. He had to provide for his

immense expenditure, supply all his liberalities, fill the purse of gold
which he daily threw to the people, keep up the licentious
exhibitions of the Vatican, satisfy the numerous demands of his
relations and voluptuous courtiers, give a dowry to his sister, who
had been married to Prince Cibo, a natural son of Pope Innocent
VIII, and meet the expenditure occasioned by his taste for literature,
arts, and pleasure. His cousin, Cardinal Pucci, as skilful in the art of
hoarding as Leo in that of lavishing, advised him to have recourse to
indulgences. Accordingly, the pope published a bull, announcing a
general indulgence, the proceeds of which were, he said, to be
employed in the erection of the church of St. Peter, that monument
of sacerdotal magnificence. In a letter, dated at Rome, under the
seal of the Fisherman, in November, 1517, Leo applies to his
commissary of indulgences for one hundred and forty-seven gold
ducats, to pay a manuscript of the thirty-third book of Livy. Of all the
uses to which he put the money of the Germans, this was,
doubtless, the best. Still it was strange to deliver souls from
purgatory in order to purchase a manuscript history of the wars of
the Roman people.
There was at this time in Germany a young prince who might be
regarded as in many respects a living image of Leo X. This was
Albert, a younger brother of the elector, Joachim of Brandenburg. At
twenty-four years of age he had been appointed Archbishop and
Elector of Mentz and of Magdeburg, and two years after made a
cardinal. Albert had neither the virtues nor the vices which are often
met with in the high dignitaries of the church. Young, fickle, worldly,
but not without some generous feelings, he was perfectly aware of
many of the abuses of Catholicism, and cared little for the fanatical
monks by whom he was surrounded. His equity disposed him, in part
at least, to acknowledge the justice of what the friends of the gospel
demanded. In his secret heart he was not much opposed to Luther.
Capito, one of the most distinguished Reformers, was long his
chaplain, counsellor, and confidant. Albert regularly attended his
sermons. "He did not despise the gospel," says Capito; "on the
contrary, he highly esteemed it, and for a long time would not allow
the monks to attack Luther." But he would have liked Luther not to
compromise him, and to take good care while exposing the doctrinal
errors and vices of the inferior clergy, not to disclose the faults of
bishops and princes. In particular, he was most anxious that his
name should not be mixed up with the affair. His confidant, Capito,
who had imposed upon himself, as men often do in situations similar
to his, thus addressed Luther: "Look to the example of Jesus Christ
and the apostles; they rebuked the Pharisees and the incestuous
man of Corinth, but they never expressly named them. You know
not what is passing in the hearts of the bishops; and, perhaps, there
is more good in them than you suppose." But the fickle and profane
spirit of Albert, still more than the susceptibilities and fears of his
self-love, estranged him from the Reformation. Affable, clever,
handsome, extravagant, and wasteful, delighting in the pleasures of
the table, in rich equipages, splendid buildings, licentious pleasures,
and literary society, this young Archbishop-Elector was in Germany
what Leo X was at Rome. His court was one of the most magnificent
in the empire, and he was prepared to sacrifice to pleasure and
grandeur all the sentiments of truth which, perhaps, might have
insinuated themselves into his heart. Nevertheless, his better
convictions continued even to the last to exercise some degree of
influence over him, and he repeatedly gave indications of
moderation and equity.
Albert, like Leo, was in want of money. The Fuggers, rich merchants
in Augsburg, had made him advances which he behoved to repay,
and hence, though he had managed to secure two archbishoprics
and a bishopric, he was unable to pay Rome for his Pallium. This
ornament of white wool, bespangled with black crosses and blessed
by the pope, who sent it to the archbishops as a token of their
dignity, cost them twenty-six, or, some say, thirty thousand florins. In
order to obtain money, Albert, naturally enough, bethought himself
of having recourse to the same methods as the pope. He accordingly
applied to him for the general farming of the indulgences, or, as they
expressed it at Rome, "of the sins of the Germans."
The popes sometimes kept the indulgences in their own hands, and
at other times farmed them out, in the same way as some
governments still do gaming-houses. Albert made an offer to Leo to
share the profit with him, and Leo, in agreeing to the bargain,
stipulated for immediate payment of the Pallium. Albert had been
counting on paying it out of the indulgences, and therefore applied
anew to the Fuggers, who, thinking the security good, agreed, on
certain conditions, to make the advance required, and were
appointed bankers to the concern. They were the bankers of the
princes of this period, and were afterwards made counts in return
for the services which they had rendered.
The pope and the archbishop having thus, by anticipation, shared in
the spoils of the good souls of Germany, the next matter was to
select the persons who were to carry the affair into effect. It was
first offered to the Franciscan order, whose guardian was conjoined
with Albert. But, as it was already in bad odour with honest people,
these monks were not anxious to have anything to do with it. The
Augustins, who were more enlightened than the other religious
orders, would have been less inclined to undertake it. The
Franciscans, however, being afraid of offending the pope, who had
just sent their chief, De, Forli, a cardinal's hat, a hat which had cost
this poor mendicant order thirty thousand florins, the guardian
deemed it more prudent not to refuse openly, but, at the same time,
threw all sorts of difficulties in Albert's way. They could never
understand each other, and, accordingly, when the proposal was
made to the Elector to undertake the whole charge, he eagerly
closed with it. The Dominicans, on the other hand, longed for a
share in the general collection which was about to commence. Tezel,
who was already famous in the trade, hastened to Mentz to offer his
services to the Elector. In consideration of the talent which he had
displayed in publishing the indulgences for the knights of the
Teutonic order of Prussia and Livonia, his proposals were accepted,
and in this way, the whole traffic passed into the hands of his order.
[340]
 CHAP. IV.
Tezel approaches—Luther at the Confessional—Tezel's Rage—
Luther without a Plan—Jealousy among the Orders—
Luther's Discourse—The Elector's Dream.

In so far as we know, Luther heard of Tezel, for the first time, at

Grimma, in 1516, when he was on the eve of beginning his visit to
the churches. While Staupitz was still with Luther, it was told him
that an indulgence merchant was making a great noise at Vürzen.
Even some of his extravagant sayings were quoted. Luther's
indignation was roused, and he exclaimed, "Please God, I'll make a
hole in his drum."[341]
Tezel, on his return from Berlin, where he had met with a most
friendly reception from the elector Joachim, brother of the farmer-
general, took up his head-quarters at Juterboch. Staupitz, availing
himself of his influence with the elector Frederick, had often
represented to him the abuses of the indulgences, and the
scandalous proceedings of the mendicants,[342] and the princes of
Saxony feeling indignant at the shameful traffic, had forbidden the
merchant to enter their territory. He was, accordingly, obliged to
remain on those of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, but at the same
time came as near to Saxony as he could, Juterboch being only four
miles from Wittemberg. "This great thresher of purses," says Luther,
"set about threshing[343] the country in grand style, so that the
money began to leap, tumble, and tinkle, in his chest." The people
of Wittemberg went in crowds to the indulgence market of
Juterboch.
At this period Luther had the highest respect for the church and for
the pope. "I was then," said he, "a monk, a most bigoted Papist, so
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