Luther: A Life by John M. Todd
Chapter 11: Worms and Wartburg
Luther’s lodgings immediately became the focus of interest in Worms.
To his meal came old friends, including Spalatin; and following them came newer friends and a hundred other people, so that he was ‘greeted and visited through the whole night by many counts, barons, gilded knights and nobles, ecclesiastical and lay’. About midday following, came Ulrich von Pappenheim, Master of the Imperial Cavalry, along with the Herald, to warn Luther to be ready to appear before the
Emperor at 4 p.m. Returning at that hour, the Herald took Luther out by the garden and through into the next house occupied by the Count Palatine and then by back streets to the audience chamber, to try to avoid the crowds who kept gathering in the hope of catching a glimpse of the famous man, some sitting on the roofs to gain their purpose. With Luther went the Wittenberg lawyer, Jerome Schurf, and his two close priest friends, Nicholas Amsdorf and Justus Jonas, until recently Rector at Erfurt from where he had joined the party.
Luther, in his normal Augustinian habit, tonsure recently shaven, thick- set, a little gaunt for his thirty-seven years, made obeisance to the
Emperor and the Emperor’s representative, the Archbishop of Trier. The Archbishop’s Chancellor Johann von Eck (another Eck), then addressed Luther, pointed to a pile of books and asked Luther very briefly whether they were his and whether he wished to retract any of them. This blunt approach surprised Luther. His lawyer jumped in immediately and requested that the titles of the books be read out. It was a motley
collection of Luther’s German and Latin works, but it included both the German Appeal to the Nobility and the Latin Prelude to the Babylonian Captivity. While they were being read out, Luther and Schurf had a quick word together. Luther then replied, speaking first in German then
in Latin. He asked for time to consider his answer, ‘because this is a question of faith and the salvation of souls’. It was at first sight an odd reply, apparently unexpected by the Emperor and his advisers who went into a huddle to decide what to do about it. But Schurf had given Luther the obvious advice. Only now had they learnt for certain the mood of the Emperor — Luther, it was clear, had been summoned solely to recant. It was best, then, to take time over preparing his exact reply.
They were told that Luther could have twenty-four hours, though that should be regarded as a special kindness since he should have come prepared to answer. He was abjured not to come with a written
statement but be ready, at the same time tomorrow, to answer verbally.
The next day the hearing was resumed in another, bigger room, which soon became overcrowded and too hot. The Electors, the Estates, and many others were there as well as the Emperor and his advisers. It was six o’clock before they started and by then Luther was feeling ill and was in a great sweat. However, as soon as proceedings began the adrenalin flowed and he was able to speak to the brief which he and Schurf had worked out. It took about a quarter of an hour in German and nearly the same in Latin, and was recorded in writing by both friends and enemies; part of Luther’s own script has survived.
It was a prepared speech which Luther had more or less learnt off by heart:
Most serene Emperor, most illustrious princes, most clement lords. . . deign to listen graciously to this my cause — which is, as I hope, a cause of justice and of truth. If through my inexperience I have either not given the proper titles to some, or have offended in some manner against customs and court etiquette, I ask you kindly to pardon me, as a man accustomed not to courts but to the cells of monks. I can say
nothing about myself but that I have taught and written up to this time with simplicity of heart, as I had in view only the glory of God and the sound instruction of Christ’s faithful.
The quiet, persuasive, intellectual voice flowed gently and deliberately on, emotion held only partially in check, visible in the changing
expressions on his face — ‘frivolous’ expressions, said one Spanish reporter.
Addressing himself to the two questions, he said that there
was not much doubt about the first one. Obviously his books were his books, unless someone had slipped in some of someone else’s.
The second question was more difficult, because he had written three kinds of books. 1.‘Simple gospel works — if he were to renounce these he would ‘condemn the very truth upon which friends and enemies equally agree’. 2. Books against the papacy and the concerns of the papists. He asked what was wrong with such works, when everyone knew that the papal tyranny did so much harm to the Christian world and especially to ‘this illustrious nation of Germany.’ 3. ‘I have written a third sort of books against some private and (as they say) distinguished individuals — those, namely, who strive to preserve the Roman tyranny and to destroy the godliness which I teach.’
Against these latter people, he confessed he had been more violent than his religion or his profession demanded — but then he did not set
himself up as a saint, nor was he disputing about his life but about the teaching of Christ. His books against such people could not be
renounced without renouncing the battle against the tyranny of anti- Christ. Finally, he repeated that he was always ready to be shown that his doctrines were wrong.
Then, although the substance of the reply was complete, Luther added a more personal kind of comment. They could see, he said, that he had thought long and hard about these things. If disturbance and dissension arose because of his teachings, that was a case for rejoicing because Christ did indeed say ‘I have come to bring not peace but a sword’ — Christianity was no easy option. They should not, then, condemn the Word of God, ‘lest the reign of this most noble youth, Prince Charles (in whom after God is our great hope) become unhappy and inauspicious’.
He ended: ‘I do not say these things because there is a need of either my teachings or my warnings for such leaders as you, but because I must not withhold the allegiance which I owe to Germany. With these words I commend myself to your most serene majesty and to your lordships, humbly asking that I should not be allowed to become hateful to you because of the scheming of my enemies. I have finished.’ Luther, although sometimes naive, and exercising poor judgment politically, was never careless of political fact. Man’s task always involved attention to immediate responsibilities and loyalties, and the use of appropriate and reasonable policies. So, the effect of his actions was not something which could be left aside, nor ‘the allegiance which I owe to
Germany’. He was well aware, just as Aleander was (as the Emperor himself could hardly be) of the genuine danger of violent social
disruption. It was true that nothing would tend towards the prevention of this more than a movement of genuine reform. Reform was precisely what was required, reform of institutions so deeply involved in the injustices and so deeply implicated as causes of the sheer poverty and misery, the resentment and the envy which were the boiling origins of a likely social revolution.
The Chancellor of Trier then answered Luther in a speech which kept to the high level of debate and rhetoric set by Luther himself. It was an effective reply from the orthodox papal position. The Emperor, he said, would be willing to consider making a distinction between the harmless and the harmful, of Luther’s writings, but Luther was only doing what every heretic always did, the Waldensians, the Beghards, the Poor Men of Lyons, etc.; they all turned to Scripture, and they all wished it to be interpreted in their sense. He mocked a little: ‘Do not, I entreat you, Martin, do not claim for yourself that you are the one and only man who has knowledge of the Bible, who has true understanding . . . Do not place your judgement ahead of so many distinguished men . . . as wiser than others.’ Then he became more confident still, and finally
threatening: ‘What the doctors have discussed as doctrine the Church has defined as its judgement, the faith in which our fathers and ancestors confidently died and as a legacy have transmitted to us. We are
forbidden to argue about this faith by the law of both pontiff and emperor. . . both are going to judge those who with headlong rashness refuse to submit to the decisions of the Church. Punishments have been provided and published.’ He then told Martin to answer clearly and simply and not with a ‘horned’ (cornutum) reply.
The two poles were far apart. The Chancellor, as its obedient and humble, believing servant, was defending an organisation which claimed to act from 1500 years of tradition on its own authority as the vice general of God. The friar, speaking from his own struggles with the meaning of the Word of the Gospel, listened to in his inner being,
worshipped daily in the liturgy in his own local church, himself a product precisely of the same 1500 years, was convinced that the
authorities in the organisation had made great errors and that they must be brought back to what he felt he now knew to be the evident Christian faith.
Since then Your Serene Majesty and Your Lordships seek
a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the
testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, may God help me, Amen.
The hour was late, the light poor, the air foul, and the moment of truth occurred in an atmosphere of bathos, which turned speedily to some confusion. The Emperor was rising to leave. The crowd began to chatter and to move to the door —clearly there was no more to be said. The irritated Chancellor wanted the last word. He shouted that Martin must put his conscience aside and that he could never prove Councils had erred. Martin shouted that he could; he and his party began to move to the door. Martin in a state of enormous relief at having given the witness clearly and without hesitation. As he turned to his friends, he raised his two arms in the gesture of a victorious medieval knight. As they left, a clique of Spanish courtiers jeered and gestured. Luther retired,
exhausted, to supper and to some malmsey wine, a great crowd of supporters accompanying him noisily through the streets.
Late that evening or early the following morning, young Habsburg took his pen and wrote in French his own response, a famous paragraph, redolent of imperial Christianity’. Von Eck and the Emperor were in close consultation about the Luther case, and there were items of similarity between Eck’s speech at the hearing of Luther and the Emperor’s piece — but the Emperor’s words had the clear stamp of personal conviction with an authoritarian, slightly impatient note about them. He lost no time. The statement was written out, dated 19 April, signed and addressed to the meeting of the Diet on that day immediately following the day of Luther’s hearing:
You know that I am descended from the most Christian emperors of the German nation, from the Catholic kings of Spain, the Archdukes of Austria and the dukes of Burgundy. . .After death they left us by natural right and heritage these holy Catholic observances, to live
according to them and to die according to their example . .