§ 48. LUTHER BURNS THE POPE’S BULL. 247
attentare presumpserit, indignationem Omnipotentis Dei ac Beatorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum ejus se noverit incursurum.
Dat. Rome apud S. Petrum anno incarnationis Dominice Milesimo Quingentesimo Vigesimo. XVII. Kls. Julii. Pontificatis Nostri Anno Octavo.
Visa. R. Milanesius. Albergatus.
Impressum Rome per Iacobum Mazochium De Mandato S. D. N. Pape.}
§ 48. Luther burns the Pope’s Bull, and forever breaks with Rome. Dec. 10, 1520.
Literature in § 47.
Luther was prepared for the bull of excommunication. He could see in it nothing but blasphemous presumption and pious hypocrisy. At first he pretended to treat it as a forgery of Eck.2. Then he wrote a Latin and German tract, “ Against the Bull of Antichrist,” 8 called it a “cursed, impudent, devilish bull,” took up the several charges of heresy, and turned the tables against the Pope, who was the heretic according to the standard of the sacred Scriptures. Hutten ridiculed the bull from the literary and patriotic standpoint with sarcastic notes and queries. Luther attacked its contents with red-hot anger and indignation bordering on frenzy. He thought the last day, the day of Antichrist, had come. He went so far as to say that nobody could be saved who adhered to the bull.*
In deference to his friends, he renewed the useless appeal from the Pope to a free general council (Nov. 17, 1520),
1 Subscriptions are omitted by Cocquelines and Raynaldus.
2 «ὁ Ich hore auch sagen, Dr. Eck habe eine Bulle mit sich von Rom wider mich gebracht, die ihm so Ghnlich sei, dass sie wohl méchte auch Dr. Eck heissen, so voll Liigen und Irrthum sie sein soll ; und er gebe vor, den Leuten das Maul zu schmieren, sie sollen glauben, es sei des Papsts Werk, so es sein Liigenspiel ist. Ich lasse es geschehen, muss des Spiels in Gottes Namen warten; wer weiss, was godttlicher Rath beschlossen hat.” Von den neuen Eckischen Bullen und Liigen.
8 Widder die Bullen des Endchrists, Weimar ed. vol. VI. 613-629.
* He wrote to Spalatin, Nov. 4 (in De Wette, I. 522): ““ Impossibile est salvos fieri, qui huic Bulle aut faverunt, aut non repugnaverunt.” He told his students, Dec. 11: ‘‘ Nisi toto corde dissentistis a regno papali, non potestis assequi vestrarum animarum salutem.”
248 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
which he had made two years before (Nov. 28, 1518); and in his appeal he denounced the Pope as a hardened heretic, an antichristian suppresser of the Scriptures, a blasphemer and despiser of the holy Church and of a rightful council.
At the same time he resolved upon a symbolic act which cut off the possibility of a retreat. The Pope had ordered his books, good and bad, without any distinction, to be burned; and they were actually burned in several places, at Cologne even in the presence of the Emperor. They were to be burned also at Leipzig. Luther wanted to show that he too could burn books, which was an old custom (Acts 19:19) and easy business. He returned fire for fire, curse for curse. He made no distinction between truth and error in the papal books, since the Pope had ordered his innocent books to be destroyed as well. He gave public notice of his intention.
On the tenth day of December, 1520, at nine o’clock in the morning, in the presence of a large number of professors and students, he solemnly committed the bull of excommunication, together with the papal decretals, the canon law, and several writings of Eck and Emser, to the flames, with these words (borrowed from Joshua’s judgment of Achan the thief, Josh. 7:25): “ As thou [the Pope] hast vexed the Holy One of the Lord, may the eternal fire vex thee!” ?
The spot where this happened is still shown outside the Elster Gate at Wittenberg, under a sturdy oak surrounded by an iron railing.®
1 Walch, XV. 1909 sqq. Erl. ed., XXIV. 28-35; and Op. Lat., V. 119- 131. The appeal was published in Latin and German.
2 The ‘‘ Holy One”’ refers to Christ, as in Mark 1:24; Acts 2:27; not to Luther, as ignorance and malignity have misinterpreted the word. Luther spoke in Latin: ‘‘ Quia tu conturbasti Sanctum Domini, ideoque te conturbet ignis eternus.’? The Vulgate translates Josh. 7:25: ‘‘ Quia turbasti nos, exturbet te Dominus in die hac.’’ In the Revised E. V., the whole passage reads: ‘‘ Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burnt them [in Hebrew oni] with fire after they had stoned them with stones.”’
3 A tablet contains the inscription: ‘‘ Dr. Martin Luther verbrannte an dieser Statte am 10 Dec. 1520 die papstliche Bannbulle.”