Category: Martin Luther and the Reformation

Luther’s conduct on April 17 seemed strange, both to those who attended the diet and to those who reflect on it five hundred years later. Why didn’t Luther give an immediate answer to the question about his willingness to recant his writings? After all, Luther had to have expected the question was coming. At the…

The next morning Luther received word that he was to appear at 4:00pm for a special hearing at the bishop’s residence, where the emperor was staying.[1] Though not an official meeting, it remained a setting with which the monk from Wittenberg was not at all familiar. No one could have blamed him for being nervous…

That Luther decided to go to Worms gives some indication of how he read the invitation from Emperor Charles. He did not think he was being called solely to recant what he had written, but to provide “information about certain doctrines” and discuss what he taught from the Scriptures. On April 2, he left Wittenberg…

It’s important to note that the emperor had extended an invitation. He had not issued a command under threat of punishment. In other words, Luther did not have to appear before the gathering of the Holy Roman Empire. In fact, a good argument could have been made that Luther should decline the invitation. Those who…

While the books were burning, Luther decided to throw into the fire the papal bull that threatened to excommunicate him. From a letter Spalatin wrote to Elector Frederick on December 3, Luther had at least a week earlier “decided to burn the bull publicly in the pulpit unless they mend their abuses.”[1] He burned the…

Pope Leo X issued a formal decree, dated June 15, 1520, condemning the errors of Martin Luther and his followers. Popularly known as Exsurge Domine (Arise, Lord), from the Latin words with which it began, the papal bull specifically listed forty-one errors to be found in the writings of Luther and his followers. Pope Leo…

The writer to the Hebrews, in the closing chapter of his book, offered his readers this encouragement: “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith” (Heb 13:7 NIV). Most likely, he wanted his readers to call to mind those who…

The leaders of the Holy Roman Empire would be meeting in Germany a few short weeks after Pope Leo X had excommunicated Luther. Emperor Charles V, the twenty-year-old who had just begun his reign in Germany in October 1520, arrived in Worms in early January 1521. Elector Frederick of Saxony, whose territory included Wittenberg, met…