DEBATES WITH JOHN ECK AND BURNS THE PAPAL BULL
The discussion began June 27th and closed July 15, 1519. This is the first time Luther ever met a controversialist of European fame. Eck came to Leipzig from his triumphs at the great debates at Vienna and Bologna, and was and felt himself to be the hero of the occasion. Eck’s intention was to force his opponent to make some declaration which would justify him in charging Luther with being a partisan of the medieval heretics, and especially of the Hussites. He continually led the debate away to the Waldenses, the Wycliffites, and the Bohemians. The audience was swayed with a wave of excitement when Luther was gradually forced to admit that “the Hussite doctrines are not all wrong.” Throughout the debate Eck’s deportment was that of a man striving to overcome his opponent rather than one striving to win a victory for the truth. There was as much sophistry as good reasoning in his arguments; he continually misquoted Luther’s words or gave them a meaning they were not intended to convey.
“Triumphant, lauded by his friends, and recompensed with favor and honor by Duke George, Eck departed from the debate.” He had done what he had meant to do. He had made Luther declare himself. In his estimation, all that was needed was a papal bull against Luther, and the world would be rid of another pestilent heretic. He had made him the central figure around which all the smoldering discontent could gather. As for Luther, he returned to Wittenberg, disgusted and full of melancholy foreboding. This did not prevent him preparing and publishing for his people an account of the discussion, which was eagerly read and gained for him great favor. In some respects the Leipzig debate was the most important point in the career of Luther. It made him see for the first time what lay in his opposition to indulgences. It made the people see it, too. His attack was no criticism, as he had at first thought, of a mere excrescence on the medieval ecclestiastical system. He had struck at its center: at its ideas of priestly mediation which denied the right of every believer to immediate entrance into the very presence of God.
Great men now came to the support of Luther, including Philip Melanchthon, one of the greatest scholars of the age. The conflict between Rome and Luther became one of life and death. In September, 1520, Eck again appeared in Germany with a papal bull against Luther, dated June 15th. It condemned as heresies forty-one propositions extracted from his writings, ordered his works to be burned wherever they were found, and summoned him on pain of excommunication, to confess and retract his errors within sixty days, and to throw himself upon the mercy of the pope. This bull fight brought Luther to a step decisive beyond recall. He met this threat of violence with unshakable courage. He at once “carried the war into the heart of the enemy’s territory. In the presence of a vast multitude of all ranks and orders, he burned the papal bull, and with it the decree, the decretals, the Clementines, and extravagants, the entire code of Romish canon law, as the root of all the evil, December 10, 1520.”
When the news spread that a poor monk had burnt the pope’s bull, a thrill went through Germany, and, indeed, throughout all Europe. Papal bulls had been burnt before Luther’s day, but the actors had for the most part been powerful monarchs. This time it was done by a monk with nothing but his faith and courage to back him.
Rome had now done its utmost to get rid of Luther by ecclesiastical measures, and had failed. If he was to be overthrown, if the new religious movement and the national uprising which indorsed it were to be stifled, this could only be done by the aid of the supreme secular authority. The Roman court now turned attention to the emperor.
Emperor Maximilian died January 12, 1519, and after some months of papal intriguing, his grandson, Charles, the King of Spain, was chosen to be his successor. Troubles in Spain prevented his leaving that country at once to take possession of his new dignities. He was finally crowned on October 20, 1520, and opened his first German diet, at Worms, January 22, 1521.
After the coronation, and especially after the burning of the pope’s bull, every step was toward Worms. The decision of the Roman court had not settled the case as to Luther; the bull was slow in getting itself executed; very many thought it were better not executed. Men’s minds were not at rest—they wished for some other tribunal to which the case might be referred; in the absence of a general council, the highest authority in the Roman Church, they thought of the emperor and the diet, the highest authority in the State. But if Luther were to appear before the diet, it was not at all clear what the diet was to demand of him or to do with him. There was no need that judgment should be passed upon him; the pope had already condemned him. It was not necessary that the diet should order his execution; the bull made it the duty of any prince to do that without any order. He might be required to retract his teaching, but that had already been done by the bull. If the diet should undertake to hear his cause, that would be a virtual denial of the pope’s supremacy, and an acknowledgment of the justice of Luther’s complaint that he had been condemned unheard. Both parties felt that for the diet to do anything was a reflection on the pope; and yet it was evidently necessary for the diet to do something.
The emperor, too, felt the difficulty. He was a politician from his youth, and his conduct toward the pope, even from the first, was affected by political considerations; but apart from these things, there was sufficient reason for his hesitation and vacillation. He was influenced now by one party now by the other or, as is likely, now by his own independent judgment and now by what seemed to be required of him by his position as the civil head of the Church. On November 28, 1520, he wrote to the Elector of Saxony, directing him to bring Luther to Worms, “in order to give him there a full hearing before the learned and competent persons,” and promising that no harm should come to him; in the meantime, the elector was to require of Luther to write nothing against the pope. The emperor was acting on the suggestion of the elector, but between the time of this suggestion and the time of the elector’s receiving the letter things had been changed—by the burning of his books he had been treated as a condemned heretic. This offended the elector, and he wrote the emperor declining to require Luther’s presence at the diet. The emperor, too, had changed; he had begun to realize that Luther was under the papal ban, and that any place in which he might be was declared under the interdict. Luther, therefore, could not be permitted to come to Worms. If he would not retract what he had said against the papacy he was to stay at home until the emperor should have opportunity to confer with the elector personally.