Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/429

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day is at hand. I expect that you have long since received copies of the letters you ask for.

Bernard Adelmann writes that the Bishop of Augsburg^ at Eck's suggestion would have proceeded against him [Adel- mann] and others, had not the Dukes of Bavaria intervened. Thus that restless man rages. Adelmann also writes that he has heard from credible authority that the Parisian th^ ologians have decreed that all the articles condemned by the bull are quite Christian except two which they consider dis- putable.* We have heard the same from the Low Countries- God grant that it be so !

The Cardinal of Mayence has publicly forbidden my book^ at Magdeburg. The citizens of Halberstadt burned thenv and so did the Franciscans of Cottbus. The ass Alveld writes^ against me again,' but I despise him and do not care to read him. Farewell and pray the Lord for me.

Martin Luther, Augustinian.

361. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. TO FREDERIC, ELECTOR

OF SAXONY.

Reichstagsakten, ii. 468, German. Worms, December 17, 1520.

We recently wrote you from Oppenheim. [Here follows the contents of the previous letter of November 28, no. 342.] But in the meantime we have received credible information that the said Luther has come under the Pope's ban, and that all places where he is fall under the papal interdict, and that those who treat with him fall under the said hard papal ban, and we have considered that if the said Luther should come here with you, error might arise therefrom and foreign nations might animadvert on the Holy Empire and the estates, all of which, as you can see for yourself, ought to be pre- vented. And in order to prevent it we earnestly b^ you to request the said Luther to recant all that he has written against the Pope's Holiness and the See of Rome and the

^Christopher von Stadion, Bishop of Augsburg, in October, 1520, made diffi- culties about publishing the bull, but did so in December. He was a patron of Erasmus.

2This was a false rumor.

'This refers (not, as Enders thinks, to the Sermon on Marriage, bat) to two unall Sermonen iiber die Beichte (confession), published by Alverd in 1520 against Luther's Babylonian Captivity, L. Lemmens: Alveld, 60, no. 3.

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