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he reignited the scandalous idea that the church had used a rank forgery to shut up its critics for the last thousand years. The Donation of Constantine
was a document purported to have been written by Emperor Constantine early in the fourth century, giving all authority over Western Europe to the pope, and the church had used it for centuries to underscore the inviolability of the pope’s authority.
it had but one message to anyone who earnestly questioned the church’s teachings: Tremble and submit.
Luther now felt that he was dealing directly with the powers of hell.
He now believed what he had feared, that the church had in his own generation been overtaken by the forces of Antichrist.
During this time, Luther’s monastic practice of saying the daily hours might at last have caught up with his theology. In other words, he stopped doing them altogether.
Luther’s first major work during this time was his To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. It was published in August 1520, and Melchior Lotter presciently printed no fewer than four thousand copies, a giddily optimistic number in the world of early sixteenth-century publishing. But Lotter’s gamble was well rewarded. Within two weeks, every copy had been sold.
he brilliantly played to the concerns of the German nobles that the pope and the Italians in Rome with their typical cunning were stealing what was rightly German and tyrannizing the German faithful.
he called upon these nobles to “take back their country,”
Luther denounced the vast money-hungry bureaucracy of papal officials as “a crawling mass of reptiles”30 and said that they knew that the Germans had no choice but to put up with them.
Luther was using the new technology of printing to do an end run around the cultural elites who formed the previously impenetrable wall of ecclesiastical power.
Luther would master this new way of reaching the people and fomenting a widespread uprising against the distant, out-of-touch taskmasters.
his understanding of the “priesthood of all believers” meant the whole structure of the church was a pretense.
The idea that there was a special caste of people who alone had the privilege to preach and to pastor and to hear confession was simply not biblical. It had been invented out of whole cloth by human beings and had no basis in scripture.
He appealed to the various rulers throughout Germany, telling them they could and should throw off their shackles and be free.
Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen were two. Hutten was a colorful Humanist figure who was named poet laureate by the emperor and who despised Rome’s treatment of Germany. He said that Rome treated his Germany like some “private cow” to be milked for nefarious Italian purposes and thought that if Germany could unify its various territories and free cities into something resembling a bona fide nation, as Spain and France had done, they would be more successful in dealing with the pope’s grasping greediness.
Many other knights in German territories shared Hutten’s sentiments against greedy and overreaching Roman power and for German nationalism as a bulwark against Rome.
Later, when Luther was unsure whether Frederick would protect him, Sickingen let him know that one hundred knights stood at the ready to do so at any moment.
He more than ever felt confidence that God was with him, that the truth was unassailable, and that not to defend it would be genuine heresy,
idea of the seven sacraments as utterly subjective and without biblical basis.
The only ones instituted by Christ himself, he said, were Communion and baptism. Thus the other five—confirmation, marriage, ordination, penance, and extreme unction—were man-made
Luther’s theology had dragged a startling egalitarianism out of the Gospels and into the center of history, and history and the world would never be the same.
We cannot earn heaven by our acts, because Jesus has already done that for us. We need only accept his free gift. And if we see the magnitude of that gift, we are moved to do good things. But it is as gratitude for what God has already done in saving us, not as a way of earning our own salvation.
Once we embrace Christ, we are instantly made righteous because of his righteousness, and not because of anything we have done or could do.
it is now our gratitude to God for this free gift of his righteousness and salvation that makes us want to please him with our good works. We do them not out of grievous and legalistic duty or out of a hope to earn his favor but out of sheer gratitude for the favor we already have.
In the end, Eck prevailed, so the bull* mentioned forty-one articles that are condemned as “heretical, or scandalous, or false, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds, or repugnant to Catholic truth, respectively,”2 but because of this it is unclear precisely which of these forty-one actually rise to the level of heresy.
Only then, once the bull had been posted in the three cathedral cities of Saxony—Meissen, Merseburg, and Brandenburg—would the clock officially begin ticking down the sixty days specified in which Luther
By the end of November, then, Luther must appear in Rome to face the Inquisition, or he would instantly be branded a heretic and outlaw.
Erasmus actually met with Frederick in Cologne, and because the two were long-standing friends, he frankly offered his thoughts on the Luther business, saying Luther’s language had often been troublingly blunt and that he feared it would cause them all a great deal of harm. But he also complained of the intemperate language of the bull, and he is likely the one who eventually persuaded Frederick to do whatever he could to protect Luther.
when Frederick did finally meet with the new emperor, he persuaded him not to simply condemn Luther at the upcoming diet, which was to be held in the imperial city of Worms, but at least to give him a hearing there.
Everywhere across Germany and in other countries too, Luther’s pointed questions and answers regarding Rome were being hailed and applauded by the common folk, who had never had any kind of champion, but also by figures as august and learned as Erasmus.
Luther is known not to have saved many documents, but this letter he saved, and it was passed down through his family.
Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. —Martin Luther
he had by this time become a celebrity,
everyone knew the details of his case and wanted to see the man who was defying the pope in Rome and who would now stand before the emperor himself.
So for these people waiting to see him come through their town in his wagon, this was all something out of a fairy tale, and here was their hero, the man who stood for them and for the truth,
Many were sure he was going to his death, and told him so. When the wagon passed through Naumburg, a well-meaning cleric gave Luther a painting of Savonarola, who was burned at the stake in 1498 for doing much of what Luther was now doing. What Luther made of this well-meant but strange and macabre token is not recorded.
That Luther was in some ways the first celebrity of modern culture had everything to do with the extraordinary reach of his publications,...
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How it must have flattered them that this genius of great influence was speaking to them and representing their concerns before pope and emperor. It was simply unprecedented.
As Luther’s wagon approached the city, some sixty horsemen appeared to escort Luther and his entourage through the city gates and into the city’s heart. They were led by the Humanist Crotus Rubianus, who had studied with Luther at Erfurt all those years ago and who was now the rector of the university.
Once inside the city, Luther must have been deeply moved at what he saw. The Erfurt streets were everywhere lined with admirers. Some had even climbed walls and up onto rooftops to catch a glimpse of this famous figure who had once lived and walked among them.
Spalatin was by this time already in Worms, and having taken in the atmosphere there, he was gravely concerned for Luther. So he wrote to his friend advising him not to come, saying that condemnation and then death seemed the only possible outcome. But Luther was resolute. He had set his face toward Worms;
All who have written of it say that it was a spectacle for the ages. Trumpets from the cathedral announced Luther’s arrival, and two thousand people thronged to greet him.
The tremendous reception Luther got upon his entry into Worms deeply peeved the papal nuncio Aleander, and he blamed the emperor for allowing it.
Luther was a German hero.
Aleander was amazed that not only did all of the people root for Luther, but they seemed well acquainted with the details of his case.
while there, Luther entertained one impressive guest after the other. A number of counts and lords came, along with several princes.
Some of the most powerful people in the world were here. The seven electors themselves were here, plus innumerable archbishops and princes and dukes and other nobles, all decked out in their sumptuous and bejeweled best, replete with gaudy golden chains and befeathered hats, and all of them stood agape at the curious spectacle of this humble monk walking into their midst, who in turn goggled back at them, doubtless staggered by the sheer breadth and wealth of dignitaries here assembled.
this would have been the first time that Luther and Frederick had ever laid eyes on each other.
They would again see each other in the chamber the following day, and then never again. They communicated only through letters, and never spoke.
