Martin Luther
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MARTIN LUTHER: THE RELUCTANT REVOLUTIONARY<br />
PROF. M. M. NINAN<br />
<strong>Luther</strong> told the peasants...<br />
the rebels have no mandate from God to challenge their masters and, as Jesus had shown by his<br />
rebuking of Peter who had drawn the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, violence was never an<br />
option for the Christian.<br />
Vengeance and the rightings of wrongs belonged to God...<br />
<strong>Luther</strong> went through their twelve demands.<br />
The abolition of serfdom was fanciful nonsense;<br />
equality under the Gospel does not translate into the removal of social grading.<br />
Without class distinctions society would disintegrate into anarchy.<br />
By the same token, the withholding of tithes would be an unwarranted attack on the economic<br />
working of the prevailing system.<br />
May 1525<br />
<strong>Martin</strong> <strong>Luther</strong>:<br />
An Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia<br />
“To the Princes and Lords...<br />
We have no one on earth to thank for this mischievous rebellion, except you princes and lords; and<br />
especially you blind bishops and mad priests and monks... since you are the cause of this wrath of<br />
God, it will undoubtedly come upon you, if you do not mend your ways in time. ... The peasants are<br />
mustering, and this must result in the ruin, destruction, and desolation of Germany by cruel murder<br />
and bloodshed, unless God shall be moved by our repentance to prevent it…<br />
If these peasants do not do it for you, others will... I<br />
t is not the peasants, dear lords, who are resisting you; it is God Himself. ...<br />
To make your sin still greater, and ensure your merciless destruction, some of you are beginning to<br />
blame this affair on the Gospel and say it is the fruit of my teaching...<br />
You did not want to know what I taught, and what the Gospel is; now there is one at the door who<br />
will soon teach you, unless you amend your ways.<br />
<strong>Martin</strong> <strong>Luther</strong>:<br />
Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants (1525)<br />
The pretences which they made in their twelve articles, under the name of the Gospel, were<br />
nothing but lies.<br />
It is the devil's work that they are at....<br />
They have abundantly merited death in body and soul.<br />
In the first place they have sworn to be true and faithful, submissive and obedient, to their rulers, as<br />
Christ commands... Because they are breaking this obedience, and are setting themselves against<br />
the higher powers, willfully and with violence, they have forfeited body and soul, as faithless,<br />
perjured, lying, disobedient knaves and scoundrels are wont to do...<br />
They are starting a rebellion, and violently robbing and plundering monasteries and castles which<br />
are not theirs, by which they have a second time deserved death in body and soul, if only as<br />
highwaymen and murderers ... if a man is an open rebel every man is his judge and executioner,<br />
just as when a fire starts, the first to put it out is the best man.<br />
For rebellion is not simple murder, but is like a great fire, which attacks and lays waste a whole land.<br />
Thus rebellion brings with it a land full of murder and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and<br />
turns everything upside down, like the greatest disaster. Therefore let everyone who can, smite,<br />
slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful,<br />
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