Note 1 — Chapter XII · THE REFORMATION AND FREETHOUGHT

In the circumstances set forth in the last chapter, the Reformation could stand for only the minimum of freethought needed to secure political action. Some decided unbelief there was within its original sphere;1 the best known instance being the private latitudinarianism of such humanist teachers as Mutianus (Mudt) and Crotus (Jäger), of the Erfurt University, in the closing years of the fifteenth century. Trained in Italy, Mutianus, after his withdrawal to private life at Gotha, in his private correspondence2 avowed the opinion that the sacred books contained many designed fables; that the books of Job and Jonah were such; and that there was a secret wisdom in the Moslem opinion that Christ himself was not crucified, his place being taken by someone resembling him. To his young friend Spalatin he propounded the question: “If Christ alone be the way, the truth, and the life, how went it with the men who lived so many centuries before his birth? Had they had no part in truth and salvation?” And he hints the answer that “the religion of Christ did not begin with his incarnation, but is as old as the world, as his birth from the Father. For what is the real Christ, the only Son of God, save, as Paul says, the Wisdom of God, with which he endowed not only the Jews in their narrow Syrian land, but also the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans, however different might be their religious usages.” Though some such doctrine could be found in Eusebius,3 it was remarkable enough in the Germany of four hundred years ago. But Mutianus went still further. To his friend Heinrich Urban he wrote that “there is but one God and one Goddess” under the many forms and names of Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpina, Tellus, Maria. “But,” he prudently added, “heed that you do not spread it abroad. One must hide it in silence, like Eleusinian mysteries. In religious matters we must avail ourselves of the cloak of fable and enigma. Thou, with the grace of Jupiter—that is, the best and greatest God—shouldst silently despise the little Gods. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christ and the true God. But enough of these all too high things.” Such language hints of much current rationalism that can now only be guessed at, since it was unsafe even to write to friends as Mutianus did. On concrete matters of religion he is even more pronounced, laughing at the worship of the coat and beard and foreskin of Jesus, calling Lenten food fool’s food, contemning the begging monks, rejecting confession and masses for the dead, and pronouncing the hours spent in altar-service lost time. In his house at Gotha, behind the Cathedral, his friend Crotus burlesqued the Mass, called the relics of saints bones from the gallows, and otherwise blasphemed with his host.4