The Babylonian Captivity (1520)

Abstract

The Babylonian Captivity (1520) Erik Herrmann "By the waters of Babylon we sit down and weep, when we remember thee, O Zion. On the willows there we hang up our lyres" (Ps. 137:1). Overcome with grief, Israel could not sing for their captors. They were at a loss for words. Apparently this was not a problem for Luther. Luther would sing—he would sing high and loud and the captors would know that there still was a God in Israel. "I know another little song about Rome and the Romanists. If their ears are itching to hear it, I will sing that one to them, too—and pitch it in the highest key!" Babylon was a powerful trope. The Apocalypse made it a symbol of all the decadence and prolificacy of the kingdoms of the earth, that wicked harlot of the world. In the City of God, Augustine had identified it with the worldliness of the city of man which was also epitomized by pagan Rome. Petrarch, disgusted by the worldliness of the papacy in Avignon and the consequent influence of the French crown on the Roman church, called to mind the ancient Chaldean captivity so that Avignon was the new "Babylon of the west," holding the rest of the church hostage to its excesses. When Martin Luther invoked the phrase in 1520, it was filled with such reminiscences and more. Luther's title of his most important Latin treatise was the most tragic of ironies. The people of God were not merely enslaved by a foreign, pagan power. The hierarchy of the church, the very head of the church, had itself become this pagan tyrant. Such was Luther's charge and its effect was simultaneously divisive and galvanizing. Georg Spalatin was worried that Luther's tone would [End Page 71] only exacerbate the conflict. Erasmus believed the breach was now irreparable. Bugenhagen hated the text on his first read and loved it on his second. Even King Henry VIII famously got into the fray. Although the treatise may be Luther's proverbial "mic drop," his argument and criticisms emerge from themes and precedents in late medieval theology and life. First, there is the sacramental theology and practice shaped by the rise of scholastic theology since the twelfth century. Not only were sacraments given a distinct definition and enumeration, but the main questions on the sacraments as vehicles of grace were increasingly answered through the use of philosophical concepts, especially those of Aristotle. Luther's extended critique of this scholastic development is a central feature of his argument in this treatise.1 Here, however, we will touch on two other areas of the treatise's medieval context: the growing discontent over the feudal relationships that shaped papal claims to temporal as well as spiritual authority, and Luther's appeal to elements of medieval pastoral care in sacramentology. In both cases, the evolution of the causa Lutheri is the context in which the "irreparable breach" emerges. The Context of Medieval Feudalism The expansion of the church's property and wealth as it assimilated into the structure of feudal society began gradually but was punctuated by several key moments. Crucial were the Gregorian reforms.2 The theocratic claims of nobility and monarchy along with the exercise of proprietary rights over church affairs increasingly threatened even the church's spiritual authority. Yet over against these secular abuses, Pope Gregory VII's (c. 1015–1085) claim to the papacy's universal authority was decidedly enacted by the pursuance of additional feudal relationships. Consequently, prelates and great abbots became significant land owners and as such could exercise significant temporal authority and amass wealth through its benefices by rents (or Zinsen in German) and tithes. The Avignon papacy was able to bring greater consolidation to this web of feudal relationships, and because there was no greater prelate than the bishop [End Page 72] of Rome, there was to be no greater ecclesiastical fiefdom than that of the papacy. While this also made the church susceptible to the power and pressure of noble laymen, papal privileges were such that the "spiritual citadel" handled and distributed its divine treasures in much the same way that secular lords...