DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0028
IO
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
prejudice, passion, ignorance, and greed upon their side, a
new set of conditions obtained. The men of learning and
those who had a stake in the national welfare were forced
to throw their weight into the other scale. The Diirers,
Pirkheimers, and Wimphelings who had been ardent friends
of reform could have no sympathy with the rabid com-
munism which was the necessary outcome of the inflammatory
harangues of these canting demagogues. They drew back into
privacy and nurtured their dissatisfaction alone, if they did not
openly make their peace with the Church ; preferring even its
tyranny and narrowness to the new autocracy of Luther or the
anarchy of Anabaptism.
The Reformation movement in Germany was not a revolt
against Religion or even Christianity; it was first a revolt
against the abuses which the Church sanctioned and the
superstitions she patronised, and then a resistance to the
tyranny and bigotry with which, enraged by the extravagances
of some of the Reformers, she endeavoured to maintain them.
The mystic creed of the Middle Ages loved to shroud itself in
the vague forms of legend, to shadow forth its teaching in the
fair mythology of angels and saints, and to suggest by allegory
and symbol what language ventured not exactly to propound.
Mythology was the elastic envelope which prevented the ideals
of the Church from crystallising under pressure into dogmas too
rigid for the acceptance of mankind. Mythology made growth
and change possible and enabled the faith of many to be
brought into harmony. But when mythology lost its elasticity
it could no longer perform the functions required of it. The
very same thing happened in Athens about the age of Pericles.
Mythology grew up under the fosterance of fancy, charming and
helpful to all men. Then fancy quitted her, and tale and legend
stood forth in preposterous multitude demanding to be accepted
as facts. But what had been beautiful to the fancy of the
simple became hideous when forced upon the reason of the
most cultured men the world had ever seen, and their minds
revolted against the hardening of parable into history, of dream
into fact. At the age of the Reformation the simple figure of
Faith was hidden out of sight in the trappings wherewith
bygone generations had successively clothed it. Men began to
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
prejudice, passion, ignorance, and greed upon their side, a
new set of conditions obtained. The men of learning and
those who had a stake in the national welfare were forced
to throw their weight into the other scale. The Diirers,
Pirkheimers, and Wimphelings who had been ardent friends
of reform could have no sympathy with the rabid com-
munism which was the necessary outcome of the inflammatory
harangues of these canting demagogues. They drew back into
privacy and nurtured their dissatisfaction alone, if they did not
openly make their peace with the Church ; preferring even its
tyranny and narrowness to the new autocracy of Luther or the
anarchy of Anabaptism.
The Reformation movement in Germany was not a revolt
against Religion or even Christianity; it was first a revolt
against the abuses which the Church sanctioned and the
superstitions she patronised, and then a resistance to the
tyranny and bigotry with which, enraged by the extravagances
of some of the Reformers, she endeavoured to maintain them.
The mystic creed of the Middle Ages loved to shroud itself in
the vague forms of legend, to shadow forth its teaching in the
fair mythology of angels and saints, and to suggest by allegory
and symbol what language ventured not exactly to propound.
Mythology was the elastic envelope which prevented the ideals
of the Church from crystallising under pressure into dogmas too
rigid for the acceptance of mankind. Mythology made growth
and change possible and enabled the faith of many to be
brought into harmony. But when mythology lost its elasticity
it could no longer perform the functions required of it. The
very same thing happened in Athens about the age of Pericles.
Mythology grew up under the fosterance of fancy, charming and
helpful to all men. Then fancy quitted her, and tale and legend
stood forth in preposterous multitude demanding to be accepted
as facts. But what had been beautiful to the fancy of the
simple became hideous when forced upon the reason of the
most cultured men the world had ever seen, and their minds
revolted against the hardening of parable into history, of dream
into fact. At the age of the Reformation the simple figure of
Faith was hidden out of sight in the trappings wherewith
bygone generations had successively clothed it. Men began to