Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

rumours that have reached me, via rather select channels, about a secret negotiation between Francis and the Turk Suleyman, are confirmed over the months to come. But Your Lordship is without a doubt better-informed than this his humble servant, looking across from this corner of the world in which Your generosity has allowed him to carry out his little task.

And yet, as my Lord rightly observes, the times require of us a constant and diligent vigilance, never allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed, I might add, by a fire that is smouldering beneath the ashes, preparing to explode with an unprecedented violence. I refer once again to the Anabaptist plague, which continues to claim so many victims in the Low Countries and the border towns. Merchants are coming from Holland, reporting that there are already large communities of Anabaptists in Emden, Groningen, Leeuwarden and even Amsterdam. The movement’s ranks are growing by the day, and spreading like an inkblot across the map of Europe. And this at a time when the most Christian king of France is about to succeed in his intentions to assemble in a redemptive —� albeit bizarre — alliance all the forces hostile to Charles and his untrammelled power.�

As Your Lordship knows very well, the imperial province of the Low Countries, is not a principality, but a federation of towns, connected to one another by intense commercial traffic. They consider themselves free and independent, so much so as to be able to confront Emperor Charles with obstinacy and courage. Up there, Charles V is the representative of Catholicism, and it is not difficult to read in the aversion of the population for the Church of Rome the ancient hatred that they feel for the aims of the Emperor.

At this moment, the Emperor is busy organising resistance against the Turks and resisting the diplomatic manoeuvres of the king of France. So he is unable to pay a great deal of attention to the Low Countries.

To this we must add the miserable state of the church in those lands: Simony and Profit are in undisputed control of monasteries and bishoprics, provoking the discontent and rage of the population, and leading it to abandon the Church, or to seek another one in the promises of these wandering preachers.

And consequently heresy, taking advantage of the general discontent, is managing to find new channels along which to spread.

In the judgment of Your Lordship’s servant, the danger represented by the Anabaptists is more consistent than it might at first appear: if they managed to gain the sympathy of the countryside and the commercial cities of Holland, their heretical ideas could no longer be contained, and they would travel on Dutch ships to who knows how many ports, until they would finally threaten the stability established by Luther and his men in northern Europe.

And since Your Lordship flatters Your servant with the request for an opinion, might I be permitted to say in all frankness that, in the face of the spread of Anabaptism, the advent of the Lutheran faith is a great deal more desirable. The Lutherans are people with whom it is possible to forge alliances favourable to the Holy See, as can be demonstrated by the alliance between the king of France and the German princes. The Anabaptists, on the other hand, are indomitable heretics, resistant to compromise of any kind, contemptuous of all rules, sacraments and authority.

But I do not dare add anything else, leaving all evaluation of the matter to the wisdom of my Lord, impatient to serve Your Lordship once again, with these humble eyes and the scrap of sense that God has been good enough to grant me.

I sincerely implore Your Lordship’s goodness.

Strasbourg, 20 June 1532

Your Lordship’s faithful servant

Q.

Letter sent from the city of Strasbourg, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa in Rome, dated 15th November 1533.

To my most honourable Lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa.

My most illustrious lord, I am writing to Your Lordship, after a long silence, in the hope that You will still have cause to bestow upon your faithful servant the� attention and care that you have shown him hitherto.

The facts that I wish to report to Your Lordship are, in my view, useful, and perhaps even necessary, if we are to read between the lines of events in the northern lands, which, as I have mentioned on a number of occasions, are becoming more complicated by the day.

The theatre of the facts that I am reporting with such urgency is the Episcopal principality around the city of M�nster […], on the borders between the territory of the Empire and that of Holland, now entrusted to the wise guidance of His Eminence Bishop Franz von Waldeck.

He appears to be a resolute man, most devoted to the Holy See, but also prudent and careful not to lose the power that both the Pope and the Emperor have placed within his hands. He rose to become Prince Bishop in a climate of furious arguments and conflicts with that part of the population that professes the Lutheran faith, most of the merchants, members of the guilds which control the city Council, and which he has confronted with the greatest determination.

None of this would merit so much as a moment of Your Lordship’s attention, were it not for the fact that everyone is now talking about recent events in this city, so much so that even Landgrave Philip of Hesse has seen himself obliged to send peacemakers to quell the rebellion that is occurring there.

I must confess that for some time now a name familiar to me reached my ears, returning along the course of the Rhine, bringing me the echo of fiery sermons. Until yesterday, when I received the witness of a poultry dealer who had come from M�nster and who was resident there.

This merchant spoke to me of a new Isaiah, hailed by the common people, with many followers in the inns and alleys, aware of his ascendancy over his fellow citizens, and in a position to raise them up against Bishop von Waldeck. Only then, when I had a physical description from an eye-witness, did I associate the name with the face of the man whose fame had reached me.

Bernhard Rothmann is his name, and I remembered having caught sight of him here in Strasbourg about two years ago, when his Lutheran sympathies led him to visit the most important Protestant theologians. At that time I hadn’t thought of him as a dangerous person, at least no more so than his other peers who had left the Holy Roman Church, but now I hear his name being mentioned once again, and loudly.

He is a M�nsterite preacher, about forty years old, the son of an artisan, but they say that since childhood he has shown signs of great intelligence and ability, and for that reason he was sent into the ecclesiastical life, and subsequently to study in Cologne by the churchmen who were looking after him. During that journey he passed through these parts, but also through Wittenberg, where he met Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon.�

It would appear that when he returned to his birthplace he became an official preacher, launching a most harsh attack against the Church. The merchant guilds immediately supported him, seeing him as the best possible battering-ram to break down the portals of the bishopric. Within a short space of time he won the favour of the common people and became fired with ambition.

To arrogance he seems also to bring the blasphemous eccentricity of someone who claims to administer his religion as he sees fit: my merchant described to me the very strange way in which he administers holy communion, dipping little pieces of bread in wine and serving them to the faithful. Furthermore, for some time he now he has begun to deny baptism to children.

This detail aroused my keenest suspicion, and prompted me to find out more. And indeed, interrogating the merchant and persuading him to give me any useful information that he might have, I discovered that this false Isaiah had Anabaptist sympathies.

I found out that at the beginning of the year some Anabaptist preachers came to M�nster from Holland. I have carefully jotted down their names, at least those retained by the merchant’s excellent memory. They so excited the preacher as to convert him to their false doctrine and reinvigorate his acrimony towards the bishop.

It also appears that for some months Luther has kept an eye on this character, clearly impressed by the noise that he is managing to provoke, and it is said that in various letters sent to the city Council of M�nster Luther tried to put the Protestants on their guard against a man of this kind. But it is known that the monk Martin is terribly frightened of anyone who might compete with him in popularity and oratory, threatening his primacy. However, what revived my attention more recently in this city was news which reached me to the effect that Landgrave Philip felt duty bound to dispatch to M�nster two preachers to guide this Rothman back within the banks of Lutheran doctrine. When I asked my providential merchant why Landgrave Philip had put himself to such trouble for such a little preacher, who, furthermore, does not even live within the confines of his principality, he replied by supplying me with an even more detailed account of the most recent events in M�nster.

So, as Your Lordship will be able to read, such events confirm the worst suspicions that this humble observer has expressed in his previous messages, meagre consolation for such a disaster.

The moment this Rothmann embraced the doctrine denying child baptism, many among Luther’s friends turned their backs on him, setting themselves against the man they had previously hailed. But while many as turned their backs on him, just as many must have chosen to follow him, if what I have been told corresponds, as I believe it does, to the truth.

The city was thus divided into three faiths, three parties equally remote from one another: the Roman Catholics faithful to the bishop, the Lutherans, most of them merchants, who control the city Council, and the Anabaptists, artisans and mechanical workers following Rothmann and his preachers, who had come from Holland. Not even the fact that the latter were foreigners managed to separate the mob from its preacher, and in fact, when the Council tried to expel them from the city, they were brought back in at night, and the people expelled the local preachers in their place!

Who is this man, my lord? What incredible power does he exert over the common people? One’s memory runs straight to that man Thomas M�ntzer whose acquaintance Your Lordship also made through these humble eyes.

But it is better to bring this chronicle to an end; it would seem to be a product of the imagination were I not certain of the wisdom of the man who reported it to me.

So, faced with a situation of this kind, it was considered appropriate to hold a public debate between the three different confessions on the question of baptism, lest matters degenerate into open warfare.

It was in August of this year that the best minds went into battle in the arena of doctrine. Well, my lord, Bernhard Rothmann and his Dutchmen won a resounding victory, bringing the townspeople on to their side.

On a number of occasions, Your Lordship reminded this servant of yours how the Lutherans, heretics who are strangers to the grace of God, have revealed themselves to be useful, albeit undesirable, allies, against yet worse threats to the Holy See. M�nster has once again given proof of that, producing an alliance between Lutherans and Catholics against the seductive Rothmann.

The burgomasters of the city ordered him to remain silent, and shortly afterwards they exiled