"You will therefore burn them, or in some other way destroy them entirely.
"As to authors, poets, printers, painters, sellers or buyers of placards, writings, or paintings, against the pope, or the Church, you will lay hold of their persons and their goods, and treat them according to your good pleasure.
"And if any one, whatever be his dignity, shall dare to act in contradiction to the decree of our imperial Majesty, we ordain that he shall be placed under the ban of the empire.
"Let every one conform hereto."
Such was the edict signed in the Cathedral of Worms. It was more than a Roman bull which, though published in Italy, might not be executed in Germany. The emperor himself had spoken, and the Diet had ratified his decree. All the partisans of Rome sent forth a shout of triumph. "It is the end of the tragedy," exclaimed they. "For my part," said Alphonso Valdez, a Spaniard at the emperor's court, "I am persuaded it is not the end but the beginning."[590] Valdez perceived that the movement was in the Church, in the people, in the age, and that though Luther should fall, his cause would not fall with him. But no one disguised to himself the imminent, the inevitable danger to which the Reformer was exposed, while the whole tribe of the superstitious were seized with horror at the thought of the incarnate Satan whom the emperor pointed out to the nation as disguised under a monk's frock.
LUTHER WITH HIS PARENTS.
The man against whom the mighty of the earth were thus forging their thunders had left the Church of Eisenach, and was preparing to separate from some of his dearest friends. He did not wish to follow the road of Gotha or Erfurt, but to repair to the village of Mora, his father's birth place, that he might there see his grandmother, who died four months after, his uncle, Henry Luther, and other relations. Schurff, Jonas, and Suaven, set off for Wittemberg; Luther mounted his vehicle with Amsdorff who remained with him, and entered the forest of Thuringia.[591]
The same evening he reached the village of his fathers. The poor old peasant clasped in her arms this grandson who had just been showing front to the emperor Charles and pope Leo. Luther spent the next day with his family, happy in substituting this tranquil scene for the tumult at Worms. On the following day he resumed his journey, accompanied by Amsdorff and his brother James. In these lonely spots the Reformer's lot was to be decided. They were passing along the forest of Thuringia, on the road to Wallershausen. As the carriage was in a hollow part of the road, near the old church of Glisbach, at some distance from the castle of Altenstein, a sudden noise was heard, and at that moment five horsemen, masked and in complete armour, rushed upon the travellers. Luther's brother, as soon as he perceived the assailants, lept from the vehicle, and ran off at full speed without uttering a word. The driver was for defending himself. "Stop!" cried one of the assailants in a stern voice, and rushing upon him threw him to the ground.[592] A second man in a mask seized Amsdorff, and prevented him from coming near. Meanwhile the three other horsemen laid hold of Luther, keeping the most profound silence. They pulled him violently from the carriage, threw a horseman's cloak upon his shoulders, and placed him on a led horse. Then the other two quitted Amsdorff and the driver, and the whole lept into their saddles. The hat of one of them fell off, but they did not even stop to lift it, and in a twinkling disappeared in the dark forest with their prisoner. They at first took the road to Broderode, but they soon retraced their steps by a different road, and without quitting the forest, made turnings and windings in all directions, in order to deceive those who might attempt to follow their track.[593]
LUTHER ATTACKED AND CARRIED OFF.
Luther, little accustomed to horseback, was soon overcome with fatigue. Being permitted to dismount for a few moments, he rested near a beech tree, and took a draught of fresh water from a spring, which is still called, Luther's Spring.[594] His brother James always continuing his flight arrived in the evening at Wallershausen. The driver in great alarm had got up on his vehicle, into which Amsdorff also mounted, and urging on his horses, which proceeded at a rapid pace, brought Luther's friend as far as Wittemberg. At Wallershausen, and Wittemberg, and the interjacent country, villages, and towns, all along the road, news of Luther's having been carried off were spread, news which, while it delighted some, filled the greater number with astonishment and indignation. A cry of grief soon resounded throughout Germany—"Luther has fallen into the hands of his enemies!"