Charles Beard's "Martin Luther and the Reformation in Germany, 2: Religi...

14TH-15TH CENTURY REFORM EFFORTS. Conciliar efforts at reform were many with four general themes: peace amongst Christians, war against the Turks, extirpation of heresies and the necessary reformation of the Church (41). The 5th Lateran Council, 1512-1517, under Julius II and then Leo X, accomplished nothing besides talk. It did, however, reaffirm Unam Sanctum of 1301, the reassertion to total omnipotence over Church and State. Prof. Beard notes the mystics who rather flourished under the radar: “Friends of God” and the “Brethren of the Common Life,” Gerhard Groot and Johann Tauler. The Prof. indicates that doctrinal issues recede in view of the mystical objective. Eckhart and Rysbroeck are two manifestations of mysticism, more secretive than public, and never drawing the attention of the Inquisitors. John Wesel (1410-1481), a well-trained and traveled man, arises from this context as a theology professor and sounds, if not, anticipates Lutheranism; he was the Professor of Rudolf Agricola and the famed Hebraist, Ruechlin. “They assert the sole authority of Scripture in matters of faith. They attack indulgences from both the doctrinal and the practical side. Wessel formulates a doctrine of justification by faith, though always faith that worketh by love. At the same time it is a mistake to speak of any of them as if they actually stood in the line of Luther's intellectual ancestry. It cannot be proved that he learned anything from them” (48). By 1520, Luther is forced to realized that he had been an unconscious Hussite.