A World Lit Only by Fire

by William Manchester

All Christians were forbidden to listen to him, to speak to him, or even to look at him. In any community contaminated by his presence, religious services were to be suspended. He was declared a fugitive from the Church; kings, princes, and nobles were commanded to banish him from their lands or deliver him to Rome. He responded with a series of caustic pamphlets. Then, told his books were being burned in Rome, he decided upon a dramatic act of defiance. At his suggestion, his faculty colleagues invited Wittenberg’s “pious and studious” undergraduates to gather outside the city’s Elster gate the next morning, December 10. A bonfire had been prepared. Cheering students emptied the university’s library shelves and ignited the pile. Finally Luther, with his own hands, cast a copy of the papal bull into the flames, murmuring: “Because you have corrupted God’s truth, may God destroy you in this fire.” The blaze continued until nightfall. The following day Luther assembled them again. This time he announced that any man who refused to renounce the authority of the Holy See would be denied salvation. “The monk,” Durant later wrote, “had excommunicated the pope.”