A World Lit Only by Fire (31 page)

As new worlds of common speech struggled to be born, the humanists, with their veneration for antiquity, had actually played
the role of obstructionists, fiercely criticizing Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio for writing in vernacular Tuscan, or Italian.
The tide was beginning to run against them; sixteenth-century Italian intellectuals like Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Castiglione
published in both Tuscan and Latin. In some parts of Europe—France, Castile, Portugal, and to a lesser degree England —
public documents were appearing in vernacular.

Elsewhere in Europe, however, those to whom Latin was gibberish—everyone, that is, except the higher clergy, the learned,
and affluent noblemen—could not decipher a word of official pronouncements, laws, manifestos issued by their rulers; of
the liturgies, hymns, and sacred rites of the Church; or, of course, of either Testament of the Bible. Contemporary books
were equally unintelligible to them; so were political pamphlets. There were exceptions: the works of John Gower, Geoffrey
Chaucer, and William Langland in England, and, across the Channel, those of François Villon. Villon, however, was virtually
unique. Other Frenchmen, believing that serious “literature” could not be written in a common language, overloaded their work
with Latinisms and were ridiculed as
grands rhétoriquers
.

In Luther’s homeland Sebastian Brandt’s
Das Narrenschiff
was a lonely masterpiece; even so, Brandt was no humanist and his work no triumph of the Renaissance; it was instead the
last embodiment of medieval thought. The Germans had developed a vernacular literature, but the books published by Gutenberg’s
successors were light entertainment—folktales, epics of ancient kings, the fantasies of Brunhilde—old wine, of poor vintage,
rebottled for a people who could not even fathom the sermons read by their parish priests, let alone the tremendous issues
raised in Wittenberg three years earlier and now keeping the new Holy Roman emperor awake nights.

Furthermore, and this was decisive for Luther, most Saxon, Austrian, Hessian, Pomeranian, Bavarian, Silesian, Brandenburg,
and Westphalian nobles—the minor princes who would determine his fate during the coming winter—were equally handicapped.
Only the wealthy could afford Latin teachers for their heirs. There were rich men in central Europe now, but they were in
commerce; and trade, by tradition, was barred to the aristocracy. Von Hutten’s vitriolic leaflets were as meaningless to them
as to their peasants. But like the peasantry, they could be reached through the tongue they had learned as children. Latin
was precise, balanced, logical; a feast for scholars. But Luther knew he could be more effective, more eloquent, more moving
—and would possess a far larger megaphone—if he addressed his people in simple German,
einfach Deutsch
.

H
IS FIRST APPEAL
in German,
Sermon von den guten Werken
, was issued in June 1520, a few days after the pontiff’s
Exsurge Domine
bull was proclaimed in Rome. It was followed by three defiant tracts, beginning with
An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation
—in full,
An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate
—and ending with
Von der Freiheit eines Christenmanschen
(
Of the Freedom of a Christian Man
). In sum, they constituted an untempered (and often intemperate) assault on the Roman Catholic Church in all its guises,
sacraments, theological interpretations, and conduct of Christian affairs on earth.

Each vehemently assaulted the papacy (“Hearest thou this, O pope, not most holy of men but most sinful? Oh, that God from
heaven would soon destroy thy throne, and sink it in the abyss of hell!”), and all constituted naked appeals to German patriotism.
Rome’s greatest crime, if we are to judge it by these indictments, was neither scriptural nor theological; it was the exploitation
of Germans, and particularly their economy, by Italian imperialists. Each year, Luther estimated, over 300,000 gulden found
their way from Germany to Rome. He wrote: “
We here come to the heart of the matter
.”

Earlier, when he had posted his theses on the Castle Church bulletin board, readers left with the impression that indulgences
had been the heart of the matter. Since then he had attacked four of the seven sacraments, defending baptism, communion, and,
usually, contrition, but rejecting the others along with the doctrine of transubstantiation. Now his grievances were more
comprehensible to Fuggers than theologians. “How comes it that we Germans must put up with such robbery and such extortion
of our property at the hands of the pope? … If we justly hang thieves and behead robbers, why should we let Roman avarice
go free? For he is the greatest thief and robber that has come or can come into the world, and all in the holy name of Christ
and St. Peter! Who can longer endure it or keep silence?”

Not Martin Luther. He wanted papal legatees to be expelled from the land, German clergymen to renounce their loyalty to the
Vatican, and a national church established, with the archbishop of Mainz as its leader. His thoughts were now ranging far
beyond the pale, into territory never before explored by theologians, or at least theologians outside Rome. On October 6,
1520, while Aleandro and Eck were making their unpleasant tour of Germany, posting bulls damning him and watching them be
torn down, he published a manifesto in Latin
and
German charging that the Church founded by Jesus Christ had suffered a thousand years of imprisonment under the papacy, shackled
and corrupted in morals and faith. He denied that marriage was a sacrament and said any wife married to an impotent man should
sleep around until she conceived a child, which she could pass off as her husband’s. If he objected, she could divorce him,
though Luther thought bigamy more sensible than divorce. At the end he repeated his defiance: “I hear a rumor of new bulls
and papal maledictions sent out against me, in which I am urged to recant. … If that is true, I desire this book to be part
of that recantation.”

After reading this, Von Miltitz, astonishingly, still believed in the possibility of a reconciliation between the apostate
monk in Wittenberg and the pontiff in Rome. On October 11, 1520, the young Saxon priest, now a spokesman for the pope, appeared
in Wittenberg with a proposition: he would try to have the bull withdrawn if Luther would write the pope, denying malice in
his assaults and presenting a reasonable case for reforms. Luther agreed, and in his letter he did, in fact, ask Leo to take
none of his polemics personally (“Thy blameless life [is] too well known and too high to be assailed”). This, however, followed:

But thy See, which is called the Roman Curia, and of which neither thou nor any man can deny that it is more corrupt than
any Babylon or Sodom ever was, and which is, as far as I can see, characterized by a totally depraved, hopeless, and notorious
wickedness—that See I have truly despised. … The Roman Church has become the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless
of all brothels, the kingdom of sin, death, and hell. … They err who ascribe to thee the right of interpreting Scripture,
for under cover of thy name they seek to set up their own wickedness in the Church, and, alas, through them Satan has already
made much headway under thy predecessors. In short, believe none who exalt thee, believe those who humble thee.

Luther was now beyond redemption. This was the language of a fanatic, and deep in the bowels of the Curia papal clerks and
chamberlains began, in their timeless way, to prepare his
Decet Romanum pontificem
—his absolute excommunication. Whether saboteurs were still entrenched there is unknown, but the bull was not ready for
the pontiff’s signature until late January 1521, and four months later, when Luther and the Holy Church finally parted, no
copies of it had reached Germany.

In reality it would be only a technicality; the first bull had branded him an outlaw, banishing him from Christendom, and
by both law and custom he should have been a runaway, the quarry of every European ruler. The fact that all were looking the
other way—or that Rome wasn’t prodding them—was no excuse in Aleandro’s eyes. Seething over the injustice of it, he decided
to corner the chief scofflaw, Frederick III the Wise, elector of Saxony. He found him in Cologne on October 23, 1520. The
elector was in a foul mood. He had expected to be in Aachen, where Charles V, only twenty years old, was receiving the sacraments
as Holy Roman emperor—the last of the line, as it would develop, with any genuine hope of achieving the medieval dream:
a unified empire embracing all Christendom. Frederick shared the dream, had voted for Charles (without being bribed), and
had been looking forward to the coronation all year. But he was nearly sixty, a great age then, and had always been an enthusiastic
gourmand. Now he was paying the price. Immobilized by gout, he lay sprawled in an inn on the outskirts of the University of
Cologne, attended by a professor of medicine, glaring at his swollen foot and groaning.

He received Aleandro ceremoniously; his respect for papal nuncios was great, and after ruling Saxony for thirty-four years
he had learned to rally when called upon for decision. But he was not called the Wise for nothing. He knew how to distribute
responsibility. After Aleandro had pleaded with him to arrest Luther, the elector said he wanted advice, which, fortunately,
was available; Erasmus was lecturing nearby. Frederick sent for him, knowing the great humanist then shared his view of Luther
and could express it more eloquently.

Erasmus did. An arrest of Luther was unjustified, he told Aleandro, because everyone knew that monstrous misconduct had shredded
the Church’s reputation, and attempts to mend the holy garment should be encouraged, not punished. The elector asked him what
he considered Luther’s major blunders. Wryly, Erasmus replied that he had made two: “He attacked the popes in their crowns
and the monks in their bellies.” As to
Exsurge Domine
, he doubted the bull was genuine. The pope was a gentle man; it did not sound at all like him. According to Pastor, the Catholic
historian, Erasmus said he suspected a conspiracy in the Curia. Frederick then gave Aleandro his decision. Luther, he said,
had appealed the bull; meantime he should remain free.

He added—and this exasperated the nuncio—that if it came to a trial, the court would sit in Germany, not Rome. Hurrying
to Aachen, Aleandro appealed this matter to the new emperor, Charles, who, to his consternation, confirmed Frederick. Charles
didn’t like it. The powers of his new office were overshadowed by his role as king of Spain, where the situation was unlike
that in Germany, and the Church’s challengers were few and weak. Spanish prelates would never put up with a sovereign tolerant
of heresiarchs. Furthermore, war between Spain and France was imminent, and he was trying to negotiate an alliance with the
Vatican, an arrangement which would include papal funds for his armies. Finally, as a condition of his election in Frankfurt
am Main, he had agreed that no German could be convicted without a fair hearing in his own country. The emperor therefore
had no choice. Luther, he said, would have to be tried before an imperial diet, which would convene in Worms on January 27,
1521.

S
ITTING ON THE LEFT BANK
of the Rhine, some ten miles northwest of Mannheim, the ancient city of Worms (pronounced
Vurmz
) was rich in Roman, ecclesiastical, and folk history; its destruction by the Huns had been immortalized in
The Nibelungenlied
, and only twenty-six years earlier Maximilian had presided over the most recent diet to be held there, proclaiming, as its
ultimate achievement, “perpetual public peace” (
ewiger Landfriede
).

Now the irony of those words lay heavy over the eminent assemblage gathering in response to the imperial decree—the empire’s
archbishops, bishops, princes, counts, dukes, margraves, and representatives of free cities, one of which Worms itself had
been for nearly four centuries. Their mood now was anything but peaceful. To the dismay of the twenty-year-old emperor, they
were obsessed with one topic: the fate of Martin Luther. Charles intended to try the heretical professor here (and meant to
see him convicted), but that had not been his purpose in convening the Reichstag. He wanted to mobilize the people for the
coming conflict with France and to strengthen the empire’s administration, moral discipline, and ties with the Vatican, whose
support he needed to shield Hungary from the infidel Turks.