Frederick III of Saxony

The elector's dream

A manuscript from 1591 purports to record a dream of Frederick on about October 30, 1517 which foreshadowed Luther and the work of the Reformation. It was later widely circulated, e.g. by Adventist prophet Ellen White, as a prophetic sign of divine support for Luther and the Reformation, and to explain why Frederick III, a Catholic, protected Luther.

Protection of Martin Luther

Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar whose spiritual director was Johann von Staupitz, was ordained to the priesthood in 1507, and on the following year, in 1508, he began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg, which was located in the Electorate of Saxony, i.e., inside the territory ruled by Prince-elector Frederick III. Therefore, Luther was a subject of the elector, by living at his domains.

Luther received two bachelor's degrees, one in biblical studies on 9 March 1508, and another in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology. On 21 October 1512, Luther was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg, succeeding von Staupitz as chair of theology. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg. In 1515, he was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia, which required him to visit and oversee eleven monasteries in his province.

From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, and on the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification—God's act of declaring a sinner righteous—by faith alone through God's grace. He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification", he writes, "is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness."

After a while, Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church; in particular, he disputed the view on indulgences. Luther attempted to resolve these differences amicably, first proposing an academic discussion of its practice and efficacy.

In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money in order to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Then, on 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albrecht von Brandenburg, protesting against the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses.

In 1520, Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce all of his writings, and when Luther refused to do so, excommunicated him in January 1521.

Then, to give him the right to a fair trial, Elector Frederick ensured that Martin Luther would be heard before the Diet of Worms in 1521; after Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw at the Diet, the elector also secured an exemption from the Edict of Worms for Saxony.

The Elector then protected Luther from the Pope's enforcement of the edict by faking a highway attack on Luther's way back to Wittenberg, abducting and then hiding him for several years at Wartburg Castle after the Diet of Worms.

Luther's disappearance during his return to Wittenberg was planned by Frederick III, who had him intercepted on his way home in the forest near Wittenberg by masked horsemen impersonating highway robbers. They escorted Luther to the security of the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach, where he remained disguised as "Junker Jörg".

Frederick protected Luther to safeguard the reputation of Saxony's University and to protect Saxony from external interference; since Saxony was a electorate for the imperial throne, neither the Popes nor the Habsburg emperors were willing to affect the imperial election by pursuing the matter against Frederick.

During his stay at Wartburg, which he referred to as "my Patmos", Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German and poured out doctrinal and polemical writings.

In the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and pilgrimages to doctrines at the heart of Church practice.

In On the Abrogation of the Private Mass, he condemned as idolatry the idea that the mass is a sacrifice, asserting instead that it is a gift, to be received with thanksgiving by the whole congregation. His essay On Confession, Whether the Pope has the Power to Require It rejected compulsory confession and encouraged private confession and absolution, since "every Christian is a confessor." In November, Luther wrote The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows. He assured monks and nuns that they could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win salvation.

Last years and Wittenberg happenings

Despite actively protecting Luther from the hostile menaces against him, the elector had little personal contact with the reformer himself, but Frederick's treasurer Degenhart Pfaffinger spoke on his behalf to Luther, as Pfaffinger had supported the elector since their pilgrimage to the Holy Land together.

The pronouncements by Luther from Wartburg Castle were made the context of rapid developments at Wittenberg, of which he was kept fully informed while residing at the fortress. Andreas Karlstadt, supported by the ex-Augustinian Gabriel Zwilling, embarked on a radical programme of reform there in June 1521, exceeding anything envisaged by Luther. The reforms provoked disturbances, including a revolt by the Augustinian friars against their prior, the smashing of statues and images in churches, and denunciations of the magistracy.

After secretly visiting Wittenberg in early December 1521, Luther wrote A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion.

Wittenberg became even more volatile after Christmas when a band of visionary zealots, the so-called Zwickau prophets, arrived, preaching revolutionary doctrines such as the absolute equality of man, adult baptism, and Christ's imminent return. When the town council asked Luther to return, he decided it was his duty to act.

Luther secretly returned to Wittenberg on 6 March 1522. He wrote to the elector: "During my absence, Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word." For eight days in Lent, beginning on Invocavit Sunday, 9 March, Luther preached eight sermons, which became known as the "Invocavit Sermons". In these sermons, he hammered home the primacy of core Christian values such as love, patience, charity, and freedom, and reminded the citizens to trust God's word rather than violence to bring about necessary change.

The effect of Luther's intervention was immediate at the city. After the sixth sermon, the Wittenberg jurist Jerome Schurf wrote to the elector: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin's return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth."

Luther next set about reversing or modifying the new church practices. By working alongside the authorities to restore public order, he signaled his reinvention as a conservative force within the Reformation.

Despite his victory in Wittenberg, after banishing the Zwickau prophets, Luther would still have to fight elsewhere against both the established Catholic Church and also the radical reformers who threatened the new order by fomenting social unrest and violence.

Personal faith and issue of conversion

Frederick III was a lifelong Roman Catholic, but he might have converted to Lutheranism on his deathbed in 1525 depending on how his receiving of a Protestant communion is viewed.

The elector leaned heavily towards Lutheranism throughout his later years, guaranteeing safety for his subject and Protestant reformer Martin Luther, so that he would not receive the same fate as of Jan Huss and other pre-reformers, after he was tried for heresy and excommunicated by the Pope.

Contribution to development of classical art of riding

Frederick the Wise was one of the first German prince-electors to import horses based on the Median Nisaean breed to Germany, referring to them as “Turks.” They were bred at his stud farms in Bleesern and Torgau, making Bleesern the oldest surviving tame stud farm in Central Europe.

Frederick maintained contact with the House of Gonzaga, who bred similar horses in Mantua (the building is now known as the Palazzo Té). These horses laid the foundation for the development of equestrian art in Germany, which replaced the knightly style of riding with a stiff leg (known as à la brida or Ghisa).

Equestrian art flourished after Bleesern came under the control of the Albertine line and with the arrival of the Neapolitan riding master Carlo Theti in Dresden, during the reigns of Augustus of Saxony and Christian I.

Death and succession

Frederick died unmarried in 1525, aged 62 years old, at Lochau, a hunting castle near Annaburg (30 km southeast of Wittenberg), and was buried in the Castle Church at Wittenberg, with a grave tomb sculpted by Peter Vischer the Younger.

As he was unmarried and had no offspring, he was succeeded as prince-elector of Saxony by his brother John the Steadfast, as former duke and heir presumptive of his older brother. John had been Lutheran even before succeeding Frederick as elector, and continued with his policies of supporting the Reformation, having made the Lutheran church the official state church in Saxony in 1527.

Ancestry