[8] Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1100).
[9] Frederick II (1212-1250), grandson of Barbarossa and last of the great Hohenstaufen Emperors. He died under excommunication.
[10] Pope Julius II (1503-1513). Notorious among the popes for his unscrupulous pursuit of political power, he was continually involved in war with one and another of the European powers over the possession of territories in Italy.
[11] Luther's recollection of the figures was faulty.
[12] The term "Romanist" is applied by Luther to the champions of the extreme form of papal supremacy. C. Vol. I, p. 343 f.
[13] i. e., The three rods for the punishment of an evil pope.
[14] Spuknisse, literally "ghosts." The gist of the sentence is, "the Romanists have frightened the world with ghost-stories."
[15] Olegötze—"an image anointed with holy oil to make it sacred"; in modern German, "a blockhead."
[16] Lay-baptism in view of imminent death is a practice as old as the Christian Church. The right of the laity to administer baptism in such cases was expressly recognized by the Council of Elvira, in the year 306, and the decree of that Council became a part of the law of the Church. The right of the laity to give absolution in such cases rests on the principle that in the absence of the appointed official of the Church any Christian can do for any other Christian the things that are absolutely necessary or salvation, for "necessity knows no law." Cf. Vol. I, p. 30, note 2.
[17] The canon law, called by Luther throughout this treatise and elsewhere, the "spiritual law," is a general name for the decrees of councils ("canons" in the strict sense) and decisions of the popes ("decretals," "constitutions," etc.), promulgated by authority of the popes, and collected in the so-called Corpus juris canonici. It comprised the whole body of Church law, and embodied in legal forms the mediæval theory of papal absolutism, which accounts for the bitterness with which Luther speaks of it, especially in this treatise. The Corpus includes the following collections of canons and decretals: The Decretum of Gratian (1142), the Liber Extra (1234), the Liber Sextus (1298), the Constitutiones Clementinae (1318 or 1317), and the two books of Extravagantes ,—the Extravagantes of John XXII, and the Extravagantes communes. The last pope whose decrees are included is Sixtus IV (died 1484). See Catholic Encyclop.,IV, pp. 391 ff.