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Ideas of Liberty in German Humanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Lewis W. Spitz
Lewis W. Spitz
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

In today's world the most powerful appeal of any spokesman for the West is to champion liberty against the oppressiveness of a monolithic society and the tyranny of the totalitarian state. The call for freedom appeals to the deepest aspirations of peoples and touches upon the longing of masses of individual human beings. No rellying cry is so effective in creating a durable ethos among the democratic nations and in bringing to their consciousness a sense of those values by which they live or ought to live. No idea is more useful in destroying the image of the West as the self-satisfied defender of the status quo and in dramatizing the authentic revolutionary tradition, for men live by their dreams and visions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 336 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1962

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References

1 John Acton, Lord, Essays on Freedom and Power (Boston, 1948), p. 32.Google Scholar

2 Adler, Mortimer J., The Idea of Freedom (Garden City, New York, 1958), pp. 107–161.Google Scholar These categories of freedom are singularly a propos to the humanists standing as they to in the main line western cultural tradition.

3 Alard, ed., Opera, II, 187–191.

4 Fünf Bü;cher Epigramme, Karl Hart-felder, ed. (Berlin, 1881), Ep. 1, 63, line 12.

5 Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Hans, Der Wiener Humanist Jonannes Cuspinian (Graz/Cologne, 1959), pp. 260–261Google Scholar, characterizes Cuspinian as a Realpolitiker who never gave up his high ideals and a man who was much more effective in secular affairs than Peutinger or Pirckheimer.

6 Olschki, Leonard, The Genius of Italy(New York, 1949), p. 166.Google ScholarHay, Denys, The Italian benaissance in its Historical Background (Cambridge, 1961), p. 15Google Scholar, citing the work of Rubinstein comments that in Florence the term libertas ranged in meaning farom the political independence of the city to republican self-government, but that the Cinque-cento saw the final loss of libertas in both senses.

7 Lutz, Heinrich, Conrad Peutinger. Beiträge zu einer politisohen Biographie (Augsburg, 1958), p. 319Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., pp. 139–140.

9 E. Böcking, ed., Ulrichi Hutteni Eqvitis Germani Opera (Leipzig, 1859–1864), I, 431f. In a letter to Erasmus in 1523 Hutten wrote: “To do and to suffer all things arduous and adverse on be-half of liberty is our concern!” Ibid., II, 196.

10 Cf. Sponagel, Ludwig, Konrad Celtis unddas deutsche Nationalbewusztsein (Bühl-Baden, 1939).Google Scholar The Ingolstadt Address sounded like a declaration of cultural indepedence, Conradus Celtis Protucius Oratio in Gynmasio in Ingolstadio Public Recitata, ed., Johannes, Rupprich (Leipzig, 1932).Google Scholar

11 Lord John Acton, op. cit., p. 6.

12 Imbart de la Tour, Les Origines de la réforme, II (Melun, 1946), p. 345Google Scholar: Ets'il est vrai qu'à toutes les grandes époques de la pensée s'élève un homme qui resumé les tendances de son temps, celui-ei est trouvé, c'est Ërasme.

13 Pfeiffer, Rudolf, “Erasmus und die Einheit der klassischen und der christlichen Renaissance.” Historisches Jahrbuch, LXXIV (1955), 186.Google Scholar On the image of man in the Renaissance, cf. the perceptive article, August Buck, “Die Eangstellung des Menschen in der Renaissance, cf. the perceptive article, Buck, August, “Die Eangstellung des Menschen in der Renaissance: dignitas et miseria hominis, “Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, XLII (1960), 61–75.Google Scholar On the idea of man's dignity in the Church fathers, cf. Garin, Eugenio, “La ‘dignitas hominis’ e la letteratura patristica,”Rinascita, I (1938), 102–148.Google Scholar

14 Alard, ed., Opera, I, 454. In discussing fate, Agrieola argued for an activist solution, Ibid., II, 181f. Choice is an essential prerequisite for self-determination, self-realization, and development, and Agrieola was the North's modest candidate for the role of uomo universale.

15 Weimar Ausgdbe, 391, 175–180; Luther's Works, American Edition. XXXIV (Philadelphia, 1960), 137.Google Scholar Two excellent discussions of ratio with implications for the idea of liberty are Lohse, B., Ratio und Fides. “Eine Untersuchung über die ratio in der Theologie Luthers (Göttingen, 1958)Google Scholar and Albert Gerrish, Brian, “The Place of Reason in the Theology of Luther,” Columbia University Dissertation, 1958.Google Scholar

16 The Protestant Era, (Chicago, 1957), p. 129.

17 Cf. Von Loewenich, Walter, “Gott und Mensch in humanistischer und reformatorischer Schau; Eine Einführung in Luthers Schrift, De Servo Arbitrio,” Humanitas, Christianitas (Gütersloh, 1948), pp. 65–101.Google Scholar

18 Carl Krause, Der Briefwechsel des Mutianus Bufus (Kassel, 1885), Ep. 85, p. 93.

19 Lee Woolf, Bertram, Reformation Writings of Martin Luther, I (London,1952), p. 362.Google Scholar

20 Freiheit und Form. Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin, 1912), p. 21.Google Scholar See also Dilthey, Wilhelm, Gesammelte Schriften, II (Leipzig und Berlin,1940), p. 61Google Scholar, with reference to Luther's faith-work relationship: “Die Sphäre der Werke des Glaubens ist die weltliche Gesellschaft und deren Ordnung.” The Swedish theologian, Wingren, Gustav, discusses the connection between libertas and vocatio, Luther on Vocation (Philadelphia, 1957), pp. 93–107.Google Scholar

21 In a brilliant and original study, Rice, Eugene, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 95–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, et passim, properly singles out Celtis among the German humanists for his emphasis on prisca et vera philosophia and prisca sapientia and his Ciceronian definition of wisdom as evidence of a growth of secularization. It is necessary to remember, however, that Celtis had also a religious side to his personality in a conformist sense and that he was in his non-religious phases rather untypical of the German humanists.

22 This new Renaissance and Reformation stress on action and results is epitomized in Hutten and Luther. Hutten wrote: “All we who philosophize in the shade and do not in some way proceed to do things, what we know we do not really know!” Böcking, ed., Opera, IV, 49, Missulus S. Avla Dialogvs, 1518. Luther wrote: “They are the best Christians who really with complete free will translate into action what the others read in books and teach to others,” Commentary on Romans, VII, 6, Corpllarium.

23 P. S. Allen, ed., Epistolae, XI, ep. 2328,87–92.

24 Cf. the sober reflections on this point of Butterfield, Herbert, Liberty in the Modem World (Toronto, 1952), pp.1ff.Google Scholar: Religion and the rise of individualism.