PAGE 12
Martin Luther
by
The letter sent summoning Luther to Worms was an exceedingly guarded document. It addressed the excommunicated heretic as “honorable, beloved and pious,” and begged him to accept the company and safe-conduct of the bearer to Worms and there kindly explain to the Emperor the import of his books and doctrines.
This letter might have been an invitation to a banquet, but Luther said it was an invitation to a holocaust, and many of his friends so looked upon it. He was urged to disregard it, but his reply was, “Though the road to Worms were lined with devils I’d go just the same.”
No more vivid description of Luther’s trial at Worms has been given than that supplied by Doctor Charles Beard. This man was neither Catholic nor Protestant, so we can not accuse him of hand-illumining the facts to suit his fancy. Says Doctor Beard:
Towards noon on the Sixteenth of April, Fifteen Hundred Twenty-one, the watchers on the tower gate of Worms gave notice by sound of trumpet that Luther’s cavalcade was drawing near. First rode Deutschland the Herald; next came the covered carriage with Luther and three friends; last of all, Justus Jonas on horseback, with an escort of knights who had ridden out from Worms to meet them. The news quickly spread, and though it was dinner-time, the streets were thronged, and two thousand men and women accompanied the heretic to his lodging in the house of the Knights of Saint John. Here he was close to the Elector, while his companions in his lodging were two Saxon councilors. Aleandro, the Papal Nuncio, sent out one of his servants to bring him news; he returned with the report that as Luther alighted from his carriage a man had taken him into his arms, and having touched his coat three times had gone away glorying as if he had touched a relic of the greatest saint in the world. On the other hand, Luther looked round about him, with his demoniac eyes, and said, “God will be with me.”
The audience to which Luther was summoned was fixed for four P.M., and the fact was announced to him by Ulrich von Pappenheim, the hereditary marshal of the Empire. When the time came, there was a great crowd assembled to see the heretic, and his conductors, Pappenheim and Deutschland, were obliged to take him to the hall of audience in the Bishop’s Palace through gardens and by back ways. There he was introduced into the presence of the Estates. He was a peasant and a peasant’s son, who, though he had written bold letters to Pope and Prelate, had never spoken face to face with the great ones of the land, not even with his own Elector, of whose good-will he was assured. Now he was bidden to answer, less for himself than for what he believed to be the truth of God, before the representatives of the double authority by which the world is swayed. The young Emperor looked at him with impassive eyes, speaking no word either of encouragement or rebuke. Aleandro represented the still greater, the intrinsically superior, power of the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ. At the Emperor’s side stood his brother Ferdinand, the new founder of the House of Austria, while round them were grouped six out of the seven Electors, and a crowd of princes, prelates, nobles, delegates of free cities, who represented every phase of German and ecclesiastical feeling.
It was a turning-point of modern European history, at which the great issues which presented themselves to men’s consciences were greater still than they knew.
The proceedings began with an injunction given by Pappenheim to Luther that he was not to speak unless spoken to. Then John von Eck, Official-General of the Archbishop of Trier, champion of the Leipzig deputation, first in Latin, then in German, put, by Imperial command, two questions to Luther. First, did he acknowledge these books here present–showing a bundle of books which were circulated under his name–to be his own; and secondly, was he willing to withdraw and recall them and their contents, or did he rather adhere to and persist in them? At this point, Schurf, who acted as Luther’s counsel, interposed with the demand, “Let the titles be read.” The official, in reply, recited, one by one, the titles of the books comprised in the collected edition of Luther’s works published at Basel, among which were the “Commentaries on the Psalms,” the “Sermon of Good Works,” the “Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer,” and besides these, other Christian books, not of a contentious kind.