The German Peasants’ War

Early in 1525 a pamphlet of twelve articles was printed in the name of the peasants. Its preface denies that the gospel is the cause of revolt. The articles ask that each community may choose and dismiss its own pastor, that the tithe of grain support the pastor and the poor, and that serfdom end, “considering that Christ has delivered and redeemed us all”. They ask for game, fish, wood and common land to be free again, and the last offers to withdraw any article shown to be against the word of God. Modern editors attribute the text to Sebastian Lotzer, a furrier at Memmingen in Swabia (Twelve Articles preface and articles 1–5, 10 and 12, with the editors’ abstract).

In July 1524 the preacher Thomas Müntzer had told the dukes of Saxony that the sword was given to rulers to wipe out the godless, and that if they would not use it, it would be taken from them (Müntzer, Sermon to the Princes title and closing sections).

Martin Luther answered the articles in his Admonition to Peace. He told the princes and bishops that they had no one but themselves to thank for the rising, because they flayed and robbed their subjects (Luther, Admonition to Peace to the princes and lords (Works 4, pp. 220–221)). He told the peasants that they bore God’s name in vain, since Christians suffer wrong and do not fight for themselves (Luther, Admonition to Peace to the peasants (Works 4, pp. 225–226 and 233)), and that the demand to end serfdom turned Christian freedom into a bodily thing (Luther, Admonition to Peace on the third article (Works 4, p. 240)). Both sides were in the wrong, he wrote, and nobles and town councillors should be chosen to settle the matter (Luther, Admonition to Peace admonition to both (Works 4, p. 244)).

In May, with the rising spreading, Luther published Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants. The peasants, it says, have broken their oaths, robbed and rebelled, and covered it all with the gospel. A rebel is outside the law, and anyone who can should strike him down, secretly or openly, as one must kill a “mad dog” (Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes Works 4, pp. 248–249). A Christian ruler should first pray and offer terms and then use the sword; whoever dies on the rulers’ side may be a martyr, and Luther urges: “Stab, smite, slay” (Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes Works 4, pp. 251–253).

In the middle of May Müntzer was captured with the rebel army at Frankenhausen; a confession taken from him was printed with the date 16 May 1525, and the library that holds the pamphlet describes it as obtained under torture (Müntzer, Confession title of the pamphlet, with the library’s description). On 23 May Luther wrote that it was pitiful to be so cruel to “the poor people”, but that God willed it, so that fear might restrain them (Luther, Letters, to John Rühel, 23 May 1525). A week later he wrote that it was better for all the peasants to be killed than for the princes and magistrates to perish, and he reported that he was now being called a toady of princes (Luther, Letters, to Nicholas Amsdorf, 30 May 1525).

Luther did not withdraw what he had written. “It is enough that my conscience is clear before God,” he told a friend who passed on the criticism (Luther, Letters, to John Rühel, 30 May 1525).