The Babylonian Captivity of the Church

A Latin attack on the church's seven sacraments, answered within a year by the king of England in person.

German, a translation held here

Original title: De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium
First published: 1520(aged 37)
Original language: Latin

Overview

Martin Luther called this Latin book a praeludium, a prelude, and at the end he explained what it was a prelude to. He had heard that new papal bulls were being prepared to force him to recant; if so, he wrote, this book should count as part of his recantation, and the rest would follow shortly. It appeared in October 1520, less than a week before the bull threatening him with excommunication reached Wittenberg. Two opponents had provoked it: Augustin Alveld, a friar in Leipzig, who had attacked Luther for wanting lay people to receive the wine as well as the bread at communion, and a Dominican friar from Cremona who had published a demand that Luther recant. Luther answered both by taking on the whole sacramental system. The church counted seven sacraments; he denied the number and kept three for the time being: baptism, penance and the bread. The Lord's Supper itself, he argued, had been taken captive three times over: the cup was withheld from the laity; believers were required to hold transubstantiation, a doctrine, he says, that no Church Father taught before Aristotle's philosophy took hold in the last three hundred years; and the mass had become a good work and a sacrifice offered to God, when it is a promise God makes to the believer. Confirmation, marriage, ordination and the anointing of the dying he treats as church rites with no promise from Christ attached. By the last pages, speaking strictly, only baptism and the bread remain. Henry VIII of England answered in 1521 with a Latin defence of the seven sacraments, written with help from Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, and sent a luxurious copy to the Vatican that September. Pope Leo X gave him the title Defender of the Faith. Luther replied by calling the king a pig and a drunkard.

Key concepts

What counts as a sacrament for Luther in this book?

A sacrament is a promise from God with a sign God himself attached to it. Baptism has water and the promise of salvation; the bread has the body and blood and the promise of forgiveness. A rite without such a promise from Christ may be a good church custom, but it is not a sacrament. By the last pages, strictly speaking, only baptism and the bread meet the test.

What is a 'testament', and why does Luther call the mass one?

A testament is the promise of someone about to die, naming an inheritance and the heirs who will receive it. Christ's words at the Last Supper, 'this is my body given for you', are such a promise, sealed by his death. So the mass is something God gives and believers receive by faith. It cannot be a good work or sacrifice offered to God, because no one pays for an inheritance.

What is transubstantiation, and why does Luther reject it as an article of faith?

Transubstantiation is the teaching that the bread and wine change their whole substance into Christ's body and blood, leaving only their appearance. Luther does not deny Christ's presence. He denies that Christians must believe this explanation, which he says no Church Father taught and which rests on Aristotle's terms. Christ's body can be present while the bread remains bread, as fire is present in glowing iron.

Why does Luther say baptism never loses its power?

Because it rests on God's promise, not on the person baptised. Sin cannot sink it. Someone who falls away has jumped off a ship that sails on unharmed, and coming back means returning to the whole ship, not clinging to a plank. Penance, then, is not a second rescue but a return to the baptism already given, which is meant to shape the whole of life.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Supper Held Captive

What had the church done to the meal Christ left behind? Luther counts three chains on the Lord's Supper, and says Scripture forged none of them.

Withholding the cup from lay people, Luther argues, is godless and tyrannical, beyond the power of any pope or council. The second chain is transubstantiation, the doctrine that bread and wine stop being bread and wine, which he traces to Aristotle's rise in the schools, not to the Fathers: in red-hot iron, iron and fire coexist, so why not bread and Christ's body? The worst chain is the mass treated as a sacrifice and a good work. Christ instituted a testament, a promise made to us, to be received by faith.

eucharist
transubstantiation
sacraments
sacramental theology
church authority
religious authority
priesthood
ritual
scriptural authority
theology

Enter a dialogue

Only Where God Has Promised

What makes a church rite a sacrament? Luther's test is a promise from God joined to a sign, and once it is applied the church's seven sacraments shrink fast.

Baptism passes the test and is restored to the centre: it is a promise valid for a whole life, a ship that never breaks, even if people jump overboard. Calling penance the second plank after shipwreck, as Jerome did, implies the ship is gone and sends sinners to their own works. Religious vows, which add nothing to baptism, he would rather see abolished. Marriage existed among pagans and carries no promise, confirmation and ordination are church rites, and an anointing James meant for healing the sick was kept for the dying.

divine promise
faith
baptism
penance
repentance
confession
religious vows
anointing of the sick
works righteousness
grace
forgiveness
salvation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 127
distinct concepts: 165
by passages held, corpus-wide: #457

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “divine promise” and “faith”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 79 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
divine promise	faith	19
faith	sacraments	19
divine promise	sacraments	13
baptism	faith	12
baptism	sacraments	7
baptism	divine promise	6
church authority	faith	6
grace	sacraments	6
eucharist	faith	5
faith	grace	5
faith	religious authority	5
religious authority	sacraments	5
baptism	religious authority	4
church authority	eucharist	4
church authority	sacraments	4
divine promise	grace	4
divine promise	eucharist	3
eucharist	grace	3
eucharist	religious authority	3
eucharist	sacraments	3
baptism	eucharist	2
grace	religious authority	2
baptism	church authority	1
baptism	grace	1
church authority	religious authority	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1517 Ninety-five Theses (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum)
Where the quarrel began: an academic exercise in Latin, followed within months by the German sermon that carried its argument to lay readers.
LA
1518 Sermon on Indulgences and Grace (Ein Sermon von Ablaß und Gnade)
The German companion to the Latin Ninety-five Theses: the same quarrel over indulgences, taken out of the lecture hall and put to lay readers a few months later.
DE
1520 A Treatise on Good Works (Von den guten Werken)
Published in the spring of 1520 just ahead of the three manifestos of that year, it lays out in plain German the teaching on faith and works that they take for granted.
DE
1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung)
The first of the three books of 1520 that made the break with Rome public; The Babylonian Captivity of the Church followed in October and The Freedom of a Christian in November.
DE
1520 The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium) you are here DE
1520 The Freedom of a Christian (Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen)
Meant as a peace offering to the pope, the third of Luther's treatises of 1520 turns from the institutions of the church to the life of a single believer.
DE
1522 A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (Eine treue Vermahnung zu allen Christen, sich zu hüten vor Aufruhr und Empörung)
Written in hiding between the Diet of Worms and Luther's return to Wittenberg, in the same winter that he began translating the New Testament into German.
DE
1522 Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (Vorrede auf die Epistel S. Paul an die Römer)
A companion to The Freedom of a Christian: the same teaching on faith and works, given this time as a way into the book of the Bible it came from.
DE
1523 Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei)
A sequel that corrects its predecessor: three years after asking princes to reform the church, Luther marks the line beyond which their power over Christians stops.
DE
1529 The Large Catechism (Der Große Katechismus)
Sermons turned into a book: the catechism sermons Luther preached at Wittenberg in 1528, reworked into the fuller of his two catechisms.
DE
1529 The Small Catechism (Kleiner Katechismus)
Published a month after the Large Catechism, it gives the household the words to learn by heart, where the larger book explains them to the preacher.
DE
1530 An Open Letter on Translating (Ein Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen)
Eight years after the September Testament, and four before the complete German Bible, Luther explains how the translation was made and why he would not undo it.
DE

— or open another of their works