Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  In Worms itself, there was little fasting or contemplation. Many of the delegates saw the diet as an opportunity to drink, wench, and tourney, and even during Lent they gorged on mutton, boar, pigeons, eggs, and cheese. The guards of princes confiscated wood for fuel, and fights broke out over food as supplies dwindled. “There is racing and jousting almost every day,” Prince Frederick complained to his brother; “otherwise everything makes very slow progress.”

  From the opening session, the delegates intently studied Charles V—and were disappointed. His inability to understand the High German in which the diet was conducted made him seem stiff and remote. Most matters of substance were referred to a commission, from which decisions never seemed to emerge. “The court is so utterly parlous and wretched that no one who has not seen it would believe it,” an Austrian wrote home. “The emperor is a child; he takes no action on his own but is under the thumb of some Netherlanders who concede to us Germans neither honor nor any good quality.”

  Charles’s top priority was the planned expedition to Rome, and the discussion of its financing and execution consumed many sessions. When it came to the delegates’ demands for curbing Rome’s usurpations, however, he appeared indifferent. He was far more receptive to Aleander’s appeals to act against Luther. With the envoy’s help, Charles had an edict drafted that banned Luther and his books. When it was submitted to the diet, though, the delegates summarily rejected it. No countryman of theirs, they declared, should face such a judgment without first receiving a hearing.

  They were strongly influenced by the growing ferment on the streets, which was fed by the Flugschriften pouring into Worms. The town had recently gotten its first printing press, which was turning out inflammatory dialogues and lampoons. Many of the pamphlets celebrated Karsthans—an idealized, upright man of the soil with an instinctive grasp of the Gospels. Passed from hand to hand, these ephemera gave voice to popular complaints about tithes and the endless fees demanded by parish priests. The mood was captured by a pamphlet showing side-by-side images of Luther holding a book and Hutten clutching a sword. “To the Champions of Christian Freedom,” it declared.

  Luther’s own books were being brought into Worms from the spring fair in Frankfurt, taking place not forty miles away. By this time, half a million copies of his works were in circulation in the empire, and their sheer profusion seemed to attest to an urgent desire for change among the German people. “The whole of Germany is in full revolt,” Aleander reported to Rome. “Nine-tenths raise the war cry ‘Luther,’ while the watchword of the other tenth who are indifferent to Luther is ‘Death to the Roman Curia.’” Nothing else was bought in Worms “except Luther’s books, even in the imperial court.” He himself, Aleander added, had been made an object of such hatred by the burning of Luther’s books that it was at great peril that he remained in Germany:

  You won’t believe me until (May God prevent it!) I am stoned or torn to pieces by these people, who, if they meet me on the street, always put their hands to their swords or grind their teeth, and, with a German curse, threaten me with death. . . . Mindful of what may happen, I now commend my soul to God’s mercy, and ask from his Holiness full absolution.

  Despite the growing agitation against the Church, Aleander refused to modify his position in any way. “Heretics,” he wrote, in words that could serve as an epigram for the age, “must be punished with an iron rod and with fire, and if they persist in their contumacy, their bodies must be destroyed that their souls may be saved.”

  For his determination, Aleander was rewarded with an invitation to address the diet on February 13, 1521. It was his last chance to win over the delegates to the urgent need to silence Luther. Battling a fever, he worked through the night on his speech. Lasting three hours, it made a more forceful case against Luther than the bull of excommunication itself had. Through Luther, Aleander declared, Jan Hus had been summoned back to life. Like all heretics, he appealed to the Holy Scriptures while rejecting those parts that did not support him. He challenged the pope’s authority and declared that Germans should wash their hands in the blood of papists. Aleander concluded by demanding the adoption of an edict that would proclaim Luther a Hussite and proscribe his writings and order them burned.

  Two days later an imperial edict to that effect was submitted to the diet. It caused a storm. The normally restrained Frederick almost came to blows with the margrave of Brandenburg, and the usually taciturn elector of the Palatinate bellowed like a bull against the proposed decree. If Luther were condemned without a hearing, the estates declared in their reply, the people would rise up in the streets.

  After many raucous sessions, a compromise was worked out: Luther would be called to Worms, but only so that he could recant. No debate or discussion would be allowed. Remarkably, though, the summons that was drafted made no mention of recantation. It simply stated that Luther’s presence was requested “to obtain information about certain doctrines and certain books which formerly originated with you”; he was to be granted a safe-conduct lasting twenty-one days from the time it reached him. Curiously, the letter addressed him as “Honorable, dear, and pious Sir!”—no way to summon a heretic, the horrified Aleander thought. Though completed on March 6, 1521, the document was not signed by the emperor until a week or so later. In the meantime, Charles went ahead and—without the diet’s consent—ordered the earlier edict banning Luther and his writings posted throughout the empire.

  The summons was entrusted to the imperial herald, Kaspar Sturm. On March 16, Sturm—bearing a square yellow banner emblazoned with the black two-headed eagle that symbolized imperial power—set off on horseback on the long ride across Germany to Wittenberg. In the streets, taverns, and pews of Worms, one subject reigned: Would Luther come?

  26

  Judgment at Worms

  In Wittenberg, arrangements were under way for Holy Week, and at the town church Luther prepared his congregation for this period of solemn reflection before Easter. His routine, however, was shattered by the arrival of yet another furious broadside, this one from Ambrosius Catharinus, a Dominican canon lawyer in Italy. Catharinus attacked Luther for his godless and pestilential views, with special fury aimed at his doctrine of Scripture alone. Because the Bible is not always clear, he declared, it requires the Church to provide the proper interpretation, and he called on Luther to repent.

  “Good Heavens! what an inept, stupid Thomist!” Luther jeered to Spalatin in early March 1521. “He almost kills us, first with laughing, then with boredom. I will answer him briefly and thus move the Italian beast’s bile.” For Luther, writing short was much harder than writing long, and as his word count mounted, so did his rage. The Answer to the Book of Our Esteemed Master Ambrosius would be Luther’s most sulfurous tract yet, with page after page of vitriol directed at Catharinus, the pope, and the synagogue of Satan, i.e., the Church. Dilating at length on the books of Daniel and Revelation, he declared that the Roman Antichrist and his apologists would perish in a maelstrom of fire, hail, and blood. Only the faithful remnant would survive the calamity that God planned to visit on a world sunk in sin. This new apocalyptic note in Luther’s writings no doubt reflected the threat of annihilation he now faced. In the coming years, he would repeatedly return to it, thus implanting in Protestant thinking a preoccupation with the onset of the last days—a tendency that would feed fanaticism and set off periodic violent eruptions.

  Lucas Cranach (with Luther’s help) designed a series of woodcuts that reflected the virulence of the anti-Roman feeling in Wittenberg. They contrasted the merciful ministry of Christ with the depraved practices of the Antichrist, i.e., the pope. One pair showed Christ washing the feet of his disciples and the pope’s feet being kissed; another juxtaposed Christ’s crown of thorns with the papal tiara. This would become the famous Passional Christi und Antichristi, a potent visual tool for spreading the gospel—and hatred of Rome—among the unlettered.

  About March 26, 1521—five days or so before Easter—there was a c
ommotion at the town gates. Kaspar Sturm, the imperial herald, had arrived after a breakneck journey across Germany. Directed to the Augustinian cloister, he delivered to Luther the letter from the emperor, requesting his presence in Worms, and the twenty-one-day safe-conduct. Luther was greatly relieved to see that the summons made no mention of recantation; at last, it seemed, he was going to get the hearing he had so long sought. The town fathers procured from Christian Döring, a local goldsmith who also ran a carriage business, a partly covered wagon and horse to carry Luther and those who would accompany him: the theologian Nikolaus von Amsdorf, the Augustinian friar Johann Petzensteiner, and a young Pomeranian nobleman named Peter von Suaven.

  As he prepared to leave Wittenberg, Luther felt sure he was going to his death. Though he had a safe-conduct, the fate of Jan Hus showed how easily it could be disregarded. “My dear brother,” he said to Melanchthon, “if I do not come back, if my enemies put me to death, you will go on teaching and standing fast in the truth; if you live, my death will matter little.”

  On April 2, 1521, the little “Saxon cart” (as Luther called it) crossed the Elbe and headed south. Leading the way was the herald Sturm, who, bearing the imperial coat of arms, was to make sure Luther arrived safely. As they proceeded through the springtime countryside, something extraordinary happened. In towns and villages along the way, ordinary people came out to greet the intrepid friar who had been excommunicated by Rome and who was now on his way to face the emperor. Sturm (who, it turned out, was fiercely anticlerical) encouraged such displays, and as the wagon continued on, Germans young and old, educated and illiterate, fell in line behind it, following in reverent silence to the next town, where a new group appeared. In the inns where Luther and his party stayed, crowds pressed in to wish him well. By the time he reached Naumburg, a picturesque town in the Saale valley, the trip had taken on the feel of a triumphal march.

  As the party approached Weimar, however, there was a more ominous moment. An acquaintance from Wittenberg returning from the Rhineland informed Luther of the publication of the imperial edict that had been issued at Worms. Soon, Luther saw the document itself, staring down at him from town gates. Reading that his works were to be banned, confiscated, and destroyed, he became furious. Had his writings been condemned even before he was to have the chance to defend them? Many friends and advisers urged him not to continue, but when asked by the herald if he wished to do so, Luther, trembling, said that he did.

  As Erfurt neared, his anxiety grew. Theologians devoted to the old ways remained strong at his former cloister and university, and he worried about the reception he would receive. Several miles from the city, however, a party of forty men on horseback rode out to greet him and escort him into town. In the city itself, thousands poured into the streets in the hope of getting a glimpse of him. During his stay, Luther was honored as a distinguished son of the university and of the Augustinian Hermits, and a humanist poet regaled him with four elegies celebrating his achievements.

  Arriving on Saturday evening, the party decided to spend Sunday in Erfurt, and Luther was asked to preach at the cloister church. The place was so packed that the balcony at one point creaked ominously, causing a nervous stir, but Luther put everyone at ease by saying it was only the Devil trying to stop him. In this same church, Luther had once spent many lonely hours struggling to recite the Psalter with sufficient ardor to please God; he now sought to convey the liberating vision of the faith-based gospel he had developed in the years since. Good works undertaken for one’s own salvation have no merit, he declared. Priests and monks pray the canonical hours, say Mass, and pray the rosary, yet in their hearts they feel such great envy that if they could choke their neighbor and get away with it, they would. No doubt many in the audience would reject such assertions, Luther said, but, he added, “I will tell the truth, I must tell the truth, even though it cost me my neck twenty times over.” He left with his neck intact. The new prophet was much honored in his old home—a sign of how profoundly public opinion in Germany was shifting his way.

  Luther’s progress across Germany was being carefully followed in Worms, and the closer he got to the city, the tenser the mood there became. A messenger from Spalatin came to warn him not to continue, but he had no intention of turning back. “I am coming, my Spalatin, although Satan has done everything to hinder me,” he wrote on April 14, 1521. Despite getting sick during the journey, and despite the odious mandate issued by Charles, he observed, “Christ lives, and we shall enter Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the power in the air. . . . So prepare the lodging.”

  On the morning of April 16, as Luther and his party approached Worms, a great crowd, some on horseback and some on foot, went out more than two miles to meet him and escort him into town. The mood there was highly charged. The most talked-about man in Europe, the fearless reformer who had given voice to the anti-Roman rage rising in the land, was approaching St. Martin’s gate. At ten in the morning, the watchman in the cathedral spire, catching sight of the party, let loose a trumpet blast, and within minutes thousands of people had filled the narrow streets by the gate. The first to enter Worms was the herald, followed by the two-wheeled cart bearing Luther and his three companions. At the sight of the insurgent friar in his cowl and tunic, a surge of excitement passed through the crowd. Immediately after the cart came Justus Jonas, along with the group of nobles and knights who had gone out to meet Luther—some one hundred horsemen in all. The procession rode along the Grosse Kämmererstrasse, which was lined with excited onlookers, until it reached the side street on which the Hostel of the Knights of St. John stood. Because he was under the ban, Luther could not stay at the Augustinian cloister and so instead was to lodge at the hostel, sharing a room with two Saxon officials. As he stepped out of the cart, a priest embraced him and touched his gown three times, as if venerating the relic of a saint. “God will be with me,” Luther said as he surveyed the crowd.

  After dining with Spalatin and a dozen or so friends, Luther was overwhelmed with visits from counts, barons, knights, and others come to pay their respects and offer encouragement. Philip of Hesse, a young landgrave who would became a key figure in the Reformation, asked Luther about his startling statement in The Babylonian Captivity that a woman whose husband was impotent could take another. Luther declined to discuss the matter. He was suffering from indigestion and needed time to prepare for his appearance.

  On the day after Luther’s arrival, Ulrich von Pappenheim, the imperial marshal, came by at midday to inform him that he was to appear at four o’clock that afternoon before his imperial majesty, the princes, and the rest of the estates. The interrogator was to be Johann von der Eck, the general secretary of the archbishop of Trier (and not the same Eck who had confronted Luther at Leipzig). This was not a good sign, for Eck had presided over the burning of Luther’s books in Trier. His selection had been arranged by Aleander, who, remarkably, did not plan to attend the session; since the Holy See had already excommunicated Luther, he did not want by his presence to confer legitimacy on the proceedings. Eck, however, was staying in the same house as Aleander, and the nuncio carefully prepared him for the encounter. The key was to make sure that Luther did not give a speech but simply responded to specific questions. The session was to take place not at the diet’s regular site in the town hall but at the bishop’s palace next to the cathedral. Aleander, who for weeks had been collecting Luther’s books, sent them over there.

  As the appointed hour approached, Pappenheim along with Sturm escorted Luther to the bishop’s palace. To avoid the crowds that lined the main route (and to prevent a possible attack), Luther was led out through the garden to the adjoining house and through some back streets to a side door of the palace. But his presence could not be kept secret. From every window faces looked down, and many had climbed onto rooftops in the hope of seeing him. When Luther reached the palace, the guards had to use force to keep the crowd from entering along with him. An uproar broke out at the main entrance whe
n it became clear that he was entering by a side door.

  Accompanied by Jerome Schurff, a Wittenberg lawyer, and his friends Amsdorf and Jonas, Luther entered the small upper room that had been chosen for the meeting and to his astonishment found himself standing before Charles V, the man on whom he had for so long focused his hopes and anxieties. Next to the emperor were his brother Frederick, the archduke of Austria; four cardinals; and assorted nobles, knights, town officials, and ambassadors ready to send reports back to their sovereigns. The room was so crowded that officers with pikes and halberds stood by to maintain control. It was one of the great moments in European history: the Kaiser—heir to a long line of Catholic sovereigns; scion of the house of Hapsburg; the lord of Austria, Burgundy, the Low Countries, Spain, Naples, the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, and a vast new empire taking shape across the Atlantic, who, attired in the rich robes of state, embodied the unity of Christendom’s temporal and spiritual realms—facing the stiff-necked friar who, raised amid sooty mines and belching smelters, stood in his threadbare habit, his tonsure freshly shaved, his face hollowed by sleepless study, his head and shoulders stooped, and his knees bent in a show of monkish obeisance. Stone benches had been placed against the walls the length of the room, but most of the crowd stood, and all strained for their first look at the Augustinian rebel from the eastern edge of the empire who had caused such a furor in Christendom.