LUTHER
446
LUTHfiB
wish to 1)0 rccoiicilod with her, or over to hold any
communion with her. Let her condemn and bum
my books; I, in turn, unless I can find no fire, will con-
d^nn and publicly bum the whole pontifical law, that
swamp of neresies" (De Wette, op. cit., I, 466).
The next step, the enforcement of the provisions of the Bull, was the duty of the civil power. Tnis was done, in the face of vehement opposition now manifesting it- self, at the Diet of Worms, wnen the young newly-crowned Charles V was for the first time to meet the assem- bled German Estates in solemn deliberation. Charles, though not to be ranked with the greatest characters of histoi^, was *'an honourable Christian gentleman, striving in spite of physical defect, moral temptations, and political impossibihties, to do his duty in that state of life to which an unkind Providence had called him " (Armstrong, ** The Emperor Charles V ", II, Lon- don, 1902, 383). Great and momentous questions, national and religious, social and economic, were to be submitted for consideration — but that of Luther easily became paramount. The pope sent two legates to represent him — Marino Camcioli, to whom the
Solitical problems were entrusted, and Jerome Alean- er, who should grapple with the more pressing re- ligious one. Aleander was a man of brilliant, even phenomenal, intellectual and linguistic endowments (Hausrath, "Aleander u. Luther", Berlin, 1897, 49),
- 'a man of the world almost modern in his progressive
ideas" (Armstrong, op. cit., 1, 61), a trained statesman, not altogether free from the zeal and cunning " which at times enter the game of diplomacy. Like his staunch supporter, the Elector George of Saxony, he was not only open-minded enough to admit the de- plorable corruption of the Church, the grasping cupidity of Roman curial procedure, the cold commer- cialism and deep-seated immorality that infected many of the clerg>', but, like him, he was courageous enough to denounce them with freedom and point to the pope himself. His problem, by the singular turn of events, was to become the gravest that confronted not only the Diet, but Christendom itself. Its solution or failure was to be pregnant with a fate that involved Church and State, and would guide the course of the world's history. Germany was living on a politico-religious volcano. All walks of life wore in a convulsive state of unrest that boded ill for Church and State. Luther by his inflammatory denunciation of pope and clergy let loose a veritable hurricane of fierce, uncontrollable racial and religious hatr^, which was to spend itself in the bloodshed of the Peasants' War and the orgies of the Sack of Rome; his adroit juxtaposition of the rela- tive powers and wealth of the temporal and spiritual estates fostered jealousy and fed avarice; the chican- ery of the revolutionary propagandists and pamph- leteering poetasters lit up the nation with rhetori- cal fireworks, in which seoition and impiety, artfully garbed in Biblical phraseology and sanctimonious platitudes, posed as *' evangelical " liberUrand pure patriotism; the restive peasants, victims of oppression and poverty, after futile sporadic uprisings, lapsed into stifled but sullen and resentful malcontents; the tmredressed wrongs of the burghers and labourers in tJ^e populous cities clamoured for a change, and the viotuns were prepared to adopt any method to shake off disabilities daily l)ecoming more irksome; the in- creasing expense of living, the decreasing economic ad- vancement, goaded the impecunious knights to desper- ation, their very lives since 1495 being nothing more tlum a struggle for existence (Maurenbrecher, '*Stu- dien u. Skizzen", 246); the territorial lords cast en- vious eyes on the teeming fields of the monasteries and the princely ostentation of church dignitaries, and did not scruple in the vision of a future German autonomy to treat even the "Spanish" sovereign with dictato- rial arrogance or tolerant complacency. The city of Worms iti^'lf was within the grasp of a reign of lawless- ness, debauchery, and murder (^Janssen, op. cit., 11,
162). From the bristling Ebemburg, Sickiugen's
lair, only six miles from the city, Huttcn was hurling
his truculent philippics, threatening with outrage and
death the legate (wnom he had failed to waylay), the
spiritual princes and church dignitaries, not sparing
even the emperor, whose pension as a bribe to silence
had hardly Wsen received. Germany was in a rei^ of
terror; consternation seemed to paralyze all mmds.
A fatal blow was to be struck at the clergy, it was
whispered, and then the famished knights would
scramble for their property. Over all loomed the
formidable apparition of Sickingcn. He was in Ale-
ander's opinion "sole king in Germany now; for he has
a following, when and as large as he wishes. The
emperor is improtccted, the princes are inactive; the
prelates quake with fear. Sickingcn at the moment is
the terror of Germany before whom all quail " (Brie-
ger, "Aleander u. Luther", Gotha, 1884, 125). "If
a proper leader could be found, the elements of revolu-
tion were already at hand, and only awaited the sigpal
for an outbreak (Maurenbrecher, op. cit., 246).
Such was the critical national and local ferment, when Luther at the psychological moment was pro- jected into the foreground by the Diet ot W^orms, where "the devils on the roofs of the houses were rather friendly . . . than otherwise" (Cambridge Hist.y II, 147), to appear as the champion against Roman corruption, which in the prevailing frenzy became the expression of national patriotism. " He was the hero of the hour solely because he stood for the national opposition to Rome" (ibid.. 148; cf. Strobel, "Leben Tnomas Miinzers ", Nuremoerg, 1795, 166). His first hearing Ijefore the Diet (17 April) found him not precisely in the most confident mood. Acknowl- edging his works, he met the further request that he recall them by a timid reply, "in tones so subdued that they could hardly be heard with distinctness in his vicinity ' ' , that he be gi ven time for reflection . His assurance did not fail him at the second hearing (18 April) when his expected steadfastness asserted itself, and Ins refusal was uttered with steady compK)sure and firm voice, in Latin and German, that, unless convinced of his errors by the Scriptures or plain reason, he would not recant. * * I neitner can nor will recant any- thing, for it is neither safe nor right to act against one's conscience ", adding in German — " God help me, Amen." The emperor took action the next day (19 April) by personally writing to the Kstates, that true to the traditions of his Catholic forefathers, he placed his faith in the Christian doctrine and the Roman Church, in the Fathers, in the councils representing Christendom, rather than in the teaching of an in- dividual monk, and orders Luther's departure. "The word which I pledged him", he concludes, "and the promised safe-conduct he will receive. Be assured, he will return unmolested whence he came" (Forst^mann, " Neues Urkundenbuch", I, Hamburg, 1842, 75). All further negotiations undertaken in the meantime to bring about an adjustment having failed, Luther was ordered to return, but forbidden to preach or publish while on the way. The edict, drafted (8 May) was signed 26 May, but was only to be promul- gated after the expiration of the time allowed in the safe-conduct. It placed Luther under the ban of the enipire and ordered the destruction of his writings.
It may not be amiss to state that the historicity of Luther's famed declaration before the assembled Diet, " Here I stand. I can not do otherwise. So help me, God. Amen ", has been successfully challenged and rendered inadmissible by Protestant researches. Its retention in some of the larger biographies and his- tories, seldom if ever without laborious qualification, can only be ascribed to the deathless vitality of a sacred fiction or an al>sence of historical rectitude on the part of the writer (Burkhardt, " Theologische Studien und Kritiken", 1869, 517-531; Archiv ftir Refonnationsgeschichte, VI, 248; Elter, "Luther und
