A Prelude on The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) by Martin Luther, 1483-1546 Translated by Albert T. W. Steinhaeuser WORKS OF MARTIN LUTHER: WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES Volume II (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915) INTRODUCTION In the Open Letter to the Christian Nobility Luther overthrew the three walls behind which Rome sat entrenched in her spiritual-temporal power; in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church he enters and takes her central stronghold and sanctuary - the sacramental system by which she accompanied and controlled her members from the cradle to the grave; only then could he set forth, in language of almost lyrical rapture, the Liberty of a Christian Man. The first of these three great reformatory treatises of the year 1520, as they have been called, closed with the words: "I know another little song about Rome, and if their itch to hear it I will sing it for them, and pitch it in a high key. Dost thou take my meaning, beloved Rome?" (See above, p164.) That some ears were itching to hear his little song was brought home to Luther especially by two writings, the one appearing in the summer of 1520, the other published in the previous autumn, but not reaching Wittenberg until some months later. The former came from the pen of Augustin Alveld, that "celebrated Romanist of Leipzig," against whom Luther had fulminated in The Papacy at Rome, promising further disclosures if Alveld "came again." (See Vol. I, p. 393.) He came again, this time with a Tractatus de communione sub utraque specie, -- date of dedication, June 23, 1520. "The Leipzig ass has set up a fresh braying against me, full of blasphemies"; thus Luther describes it in a letter to Spalatin, July 22, 1520. (ENDERS, Luther's Briefwechsel, II, no. 328.) The other work was the anonymous tract of a "certain Italian friar of Cremona," who has only recently been identified as Isidoro Isolani, a Dominican hailing from Milan, who taught theology in various Italian cities, wrote a number of controversial works and died in 1528. (See FR. LAUCHERT, Die italienischen literarischen Gegner Luthers, Freiburg, 1912.) The title of his tract is, Revocatio Martini Lutheri Augustiniani ad sanctam Sedem; its date, Cremona, November 20, 1519. Its beginning and close, which have epistolary character, are printed in ENDERS, II, no. 366, and one paragraph from each is translated in SMITH, Luther's Correspondence, I, no. 199. These two treaties may be regarded as the immediate occasion for the writing of the Babylonian Captivity, which is, however, in no sense a direct reply to either of them. "I will not reply to Alveld, "Luther writes on August 5 to Spalatin, "but he will be the occasion of my publishing something by which the vipers will be more irritated than ever." (ENDERS, II, no. 355; SMITH, I, no. 283.) Indeed , he had promised some such work more than half a year before, in a letter to Spalatin of December 18, 1519: "There is no reason why you or any one else should expect from me a treatise on the other sacraments [besides baptism, the Lord's supper, and penance] until I am taught by what text I can prove that they are sacraments. I regard none of the others as a sacrament, for there is no sacrament save where there is a direct divine promise, exercising our faith. We can have no intercourse with God except by the word of Him promising, and by the faith of man receiving the promise. At another time you shall hear more about their fables of the seven sacraments." (ENDERS, II, no 254; SMITH, I, no. 206.) Thus the Prelude grows under his hand and assumes the form of an elaborate examination of the whole sacramental system of the Church. He makes short work of his two opponents, and after a few pages of delicious irony, of which Erasmus was suspected in some quarters of being the author, he turns his back on them and addresses himself to a positive and constructive treatment of his larger theme, lenient toward all non-essentials, but inexorable with respect to everything truly essential, that is, scriptural. The Captivity thus represents the culmination of Luther's reformatory thinking on the theological side, as the Nobility does on the national, and the Liberty on the religious side. It sums up and carries forward all of his previous writings on the sacraments, just as, nine years later, the Catechisms gathered up and moulded into classic form his writings on catechetical subjects. Passage after passage, often whole pages, from the Resolutiones disp., the Treatise on Baptism, the Confitendi Ratio, the Treatise on the New Testament, the Treatise on the Blessed Sacrament, are transferred bodily to this new and definitive work, and find in it the goal toward which they had been consciously or unconsciously tending. The reader is referred to a fine comparative study in KOSTLIN'S Theology of Luther (English trans.), I, 388-409. The title is a reminiscence from the Resolutiones super prop. xii., of 1519. - "absit ista plus quam babylonica captivitas!" The sense in which the work is called a "prelude" is explained on page 176; the theologian in Luther could not deny the musician, he goes into battle singing and comes back with the stanza of a hymn upon his lips. The Captivity marks Luther's final and irreparable break with the Church of Rome, and it is not without a peculiar significance that in the same letter to Spalatin, of October 3rd, in which he mentions the arrival of Leipzig of Eck armed with the papal bull, he announces the publication of his book on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church for the following Saturday - October 6th. (ENDERS, II, no. 350; SMITH, I, no. 303.) While the Nobility, addressed to the German nation as such, was written in the language of the people, the Captivity, as becomes a theological treatise, is composed in Latin, just as later the Liberty, affecting the religious life of the individual, whether layman or theologian, is sent out in both German and Latin. A translation into German appeared in the following year - the work of the Franciscan, Thomas Murner (on whom see THEOD. V. LIEBENAU, Der Franziskaner Thomas Murner, Freiburg, 1913). Luther calls the Franciscan his "venomous foe" and accuses him of making the translation in order to bring him into disrepute. This charge Luther makes in his answer to Henry VIII's Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Mart. Lutherum (1521), the royal theologian's reply to the Babylonian Captivity, for which he won from the pope the proud title of "Defender of the Faith." The translation which follows is based on the Latin text as given in CLEMEN'S "student-edition" - Luthers Werke in Auswahl (Bonn, 1912-3), I, 426-512, which reproduces, though by no means slavishly, the text of the Weimar Edition (Vol. VI), which, together with the Erlangen Edition (opera var. Arg., V), has been compared. The German St. Louis Edition (Vol. XIX) has been consulted, and especially the admirable German rendering of KAWERAU in the Berlin Edition (Vol. II) as well as the careful literal translation of LEMME, Die drei grossen Reformationnsschriften Luthers vom Jahre 1520, 2. Ed. (Gotha, 1884). Like the last mentioned, WACE and BUCHHEIM'S English translation (London, 1896) is incomplete, and besides is not always accurate; the Captivity is not contained in COLE's Select Works. The catalogue of the British Museum notes no early English translation. KOSTLIN-KAWERAU'S (1903) and BERGER'S (1895) lives should be consulted; the former for the historical setting and full analysis, the latter for a fine appreciation of this as of the other two reformatory treaties of this year. For the theological development, besides KOSTLIN'S work mentioned above, and TSCHACKERT, Entstehung der luth. Und ref. Kirchenlehre (1910), compare the exhaustive article Sakramente, by KATTENBUSH, in Prot. Realencyklopdie, 3. Ed., XVII, 349-81. The treatise is here Englished in its entirety, including those portions of the section on marriage which are frequently omitted. The homeless paragraph on page 260, whose proper location is not found even in the Weimar Edition nor in Clemen, we have placed in a foot-note, following the example of Kawerau. ALBERT T. W. STEINHAEUSER ALLENTOWN, PA. ___________________________________________________________________________ This text was converted to ASCII text for Project Wittenberg by Marsha Mundinger and is in the public domain. You may freely distribute, copy or print this text. Please direct any comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary E-mail: bob_smith@ctsfw.edu Surface Mail: 6600 N. Clinton St., Ft. Wayne, IN 46825 USA Phone: (219) 452-2123 Fax: (219) 452-2126 ___________________________________________________________________________