Unsurprisingly, the following summer Luther was officially condemned by Pope Leo himself, in a papal bull called Exsurge Domine (Arise, O Lord). In response, Luther burned a copy of the bull outside Wittenberg’s city gates. And so the battle lines were drawn. In a work written that same year, Luther called the “Romanists”—Leo, his supporters, and, in effect, anyone else who disagreed with him—“the fellowship of antichrist and the devil,” who had “nothing of Christ but the name.”
