228 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
self carried on his couch into the sessions of the consistory. With considerable difficulty the bull of excommunication was drawn up in May, and after several amendments com. pleted June 15, 1520.1
Nearly three years had elapsed since the publication of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses. In the mean time he had attacked with increasing violence the very foundations of the Roman Church, had denounced popery as an antichristian tyranny, and had dared to appeal from the Pope to a general council, contrary to the decisions of Pius II. and Julius II., who declared such an appeal to be heresy. Between the completion and the promulgation of the bull, he went still further in his “ Address to the German Nobility,” and the book on the “ Babylonian Captivity,” and made a reconciliation impossible except by an absolute surrender, which was a moral impossibility for him. Rome could not tolerate Lutheranism any longer without ceasing to be Rome. She delayed final action only for political and prudential considerations, especially in view of the election of a new German Emperor, and the influential voice of the Elector Frederick, who was offered, but declined, the imperial crown.
The bull of excommunication is the papal counter-manifesto to Luther’s Theses, and condemns in him the whole cause of the Protestant-Reformation. Therein lies its historical significance. It was the last bull addressed to Latin Christendom as an undivided whole, and the first which was disobeyed by a large part of it. Instead of causing Luther
1 Ranke (I. 298) dates the bull from June 16; Walch (XV. 1691) from June 24; but most historians (Gieseler, Kahnis, Késtlin, Lenz, Janssen, Her- — genrother, etc.) from June 15. The last is correct, for the bull is dated ‘*MDXX. xvii. Kal. Julii.”’ According to the Roman mode of reckoning backwards, counting the day of departure, and adding two to the number of days of the preceding month, the Kalende Julii fall on June 15. Ranke probably overlooked the fact that June had only twenty-nine days in the Julian Calendar. Janssen refers to an essay of Druffel on the date of the bull in the ‘‘Sitzungsberichte der Bayer Academie,’’ 1880, p. 572; but he does not give the result.
ὃ 47. THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION. 229
and his friends to be burnt, it was burnt by Luther. It is an elaborate document, prepared with great care in the usual heavy, turgid, and tedious style of the curia. It breathes the genuine spirit of the papal hierarchy, and mingles the tones of priestly arrogance, concern for truth, abomination of heresy and schism, fatherly sorrow, and penal severity. The Pope speaks as if he were the personal embodiment of the truth, the infallible judge of all matters of faith, and the dispenser of eternal rewards and punishments.
He begins with the words of Ps. 74:22: “ Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily. Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.” He calls St. Peter, St. Paul, and the whole body of the saints, to aid against “the boar out of the wood” and “the wild beast of the field” that had broken into the vineyard of the Lord, to waste and destroy it (Ps. 80:13). He expresses deep sorrow at the revival of the Bohemian and other heresies in the noble German nation which had received the empire from the Pope, and shed so much precious blood against heresy. Then he condemns forty-one propositions selected from Luther’s books, as heretical, or at least scandalous and offensive to pious ears, and sentences all his books to the flames. Among the errors named are those relating to the sacramental and hierarchical system, especially the authority of the Pope and the (Roman) Church. The denial of free will (liberum arbitriwm) after the fall is also condemned, though clearly taught by St. Augustin. But Luther’s fundamental doctrine of justification by faith is not expressly mentioned. The sentences are torn from the connection, and presented in the most objectionable form as mere negations of Catholic doctrines. The positive views of the Reformer are not stated, or distorted.
For the person of Luther, the Pope professes fatherly love and forbearance, and entreats him once more, by the mercies