2. The Diet of Worms, 1521; Luther’s Attitude
The Diet had been assembled at Worms around the Emperor since January 27, 1521.
Charles V showed himself in religious questions a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church, to which indeed he was most devotedly attached. He was not, however, always well-advised, and the multitudinous cares of his empire frequently blinded him to the real needs of the Church, or else made it impossible for him to act as he would have wished.
On February 13, 1521, in the presence of the Princes and the States-General of the Empire, Hieronymus Aleander, the Papal Legate accredited to the Diet, delivered the speech, which has since become historic, on the duty of the Empire to take action against Luther as a notorious, obstinate heretic, definitively condemned by the supreme Papal Court. He did not fail to point out, that “it was a fact of common knowledge that Luther was inciting the people to rebellion and that, like the heretics of Bohemia, he was destroying all law and order in the name and semblance of the Gospel.”[143]
On March 6 Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet at Worms, the Emperor furnishing him with an escort and guaranteeing his safe return. Encouraged by the latter promise, secure in the favour of his own sovereign, and assured of the support of the Knights, he decided to comply with the summons.
The thought of bearing testimony to his newly discovered Evangel before the whole country and enjoying the opportunity, by his appearance in so public a place, of rousing others to enthusiasm for the work he had undertaken urged him on. Severe bodily ailments from which he was suffering at that time did not deter him. His illness, he declared, was merely a trick of “the devil to hinder him”; on his part he would do all he could to “affright and defy him.” “Christ lives, and we shall enter Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the powers of the air.”[144] To Spalatin we owe an echo from one of Luther’s letters at that time: “He was determined to go to Worms though there should be as many devils there as there were tiles on the roofs.”[145]
The journey to Worms resembled a sort of triumphal progress, owing to the festive reception everywhere prepared for him by his friends, and in particular by the Humanists.
His arrival at Erfurt was celebrated beforehand by Eobanus Hessus in a flattering poem. On April 6 the Rector of the University, Crotus Rubeanus, with forty professors and a great crowd of people, went out to meet him when he was still three leagues from the city. The address delivered by Rubeanus at the meeting expressed gratitude for the “Divine apparition” which was vouchsafed to them in the coming of the “hero of the Evangel.”[146]
On the following day Luther preached in the Church of the Augustinians. He spoke of good works: “One erects churches, another makes a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella or to St. Peter’s, a third fasts and prays, wears a cowl or goes barefoot ... such works are of no avail and must be done away with. Mark these words: All our works are worthless. I am your justification, says Christ our Lord, I have destroyed the sins with which you are loaded; therefore believe only that it is I alone who have done this and you will be justified.” Luther fired invectives against the intolerable yoke of the Papacy and against the clergy who “slaughtered the sheep instead of leading them to pasture.” Himself he represents as persecuted by the would-be righteous, the Pope and his Bull, on account of his teaching which was directed against the false self-righteousness arising from works.[147]