818 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
Luther did none of these things except the second, and this only in part. To prevent his entering Bohemia, Rome made provision to have him seized on the way.
ὃ 58. The Ban of the Empire. May 8 (26), 1591.
After Luther’s departure (April 26), his enemies had full possession of the ground. Frederick of Saxony wrote, May 4: * Martin’s cause is in a bad state: he will be persecuted ; not only Annas and Caiaphas, but also Pilate and Herod, are against him.” Aleander reported to Rome, May 5, that Luther had by his bad habits, his obstinacy, and his “ beastly ” speeches against councils, alienated the people, but that still many adhered to him from love of disobedience to the Pope, and desire to seize the church property.
The Emperor commissioned Aleander to draw up a Latin edict against Luther! It was completed and dated May 8 (but not signed till May 26). On the same day the Emperor concluded an alliance with the Pope against France. They pledged themselves “to have the same friends and the same enemies,” and to aid each other in attack and.defense.
The edict was kept back till the Elector Frederick and the Elector of the Palatinate with a large number of other members of the Diet had gone home. It was not regularly submitted to, nor discussed and voted on, by the Diet, nor signed by the Chancellor, but secured by a sort of surprise.” On Trinity Sunday, May 26, Aleander went with the Latin and German copy to church, and induced the Emperor to sign both after high mass, “with his pious hand.” The
1 Aleander reports, May 5: ‘‘ Poi me fu commesso per Cesar et el Consilio (the imperial council), che io stesso facesse el decreto, con quelle pix justificationi si potesse, accioche il popolo se contentasse.”’
2“ Das Edict,’’ says Ranke (i. 342), “ward den Sténden nicht in threr Versammlung vorgelegt ; keiner neuen Deliberation ward es unterworfen ; unerwartet, in der kaiserlichen Behausung bekamen sie Kunde davon, nachdem man nichts versdumt, um sie giinstig zu stimmen; die Billigung deaselben, die nicht einmal formell genannt werden kann, ward ihnen durch eine Art von Ueberraschung abgewonnen.”
§ 58. THs BAN OF THE EMPIRE. 319
Emperor said in French, “Now you will be satisfied.” — “Yes,” replied the legate in the same language, “but much more satisfied will be the Holy See and all Christendom, and will thank God for such a good, holy, and religious Emperor.” !
The edict is not so long, but as turgid, bombastic, intolerant, fierce, and cruel, as the Pope’s bull of excommunication.? It gave legal force to the bull within the German Empire. It denounces Luther as a devil in the dress of a monk, who had gathered a mass of old and new heresies into one pool, and pronounces upon him the ban and re-ban.? It commands the burning, and forbids the printing, publication, and sale, of his books, the sheltering and feeding of his person, and that of his followers, and directs the magistrates to seize him wherever he may be found, and to hand him over to the Emperor, to be dealt with according to the penal laws against heretics. At the same time the whole press of the empire was put under strict surveillance.*
This was the last occasion on which the medizval union of the secular empire with the papacy was expressed in official form so as to make the German emperor the executor of the decrees of the bishop of Rome. The gravamina of the nation
were unheeded. Hutten wrote: “I am ashamed of my fatherland.” ®
1 Dispatch of May 26. Brieger, I. 224. The edict appeared in print on the following Thursday, May 30, and on Friday the Emperor left Worms,
2 Aleander himself calls it more terrible than any previous edict (cosi horribile guanto mai altro editto), June 27, 1521. Brieger, I. 241. Ranke says (I. 348): “18 war so scharf, so entschieden wie moglich.”’
8 Die Acht und Aberacht. The Acht is the civil counterpart of the ecclesiastical excommunication and excludes the victim from all protection of the law. The Aberacht or Oberacht follows if the Acht remains without effect. It is in the German definition die véllige Fried- und Rechtslos- oder Vogelfrei-Erkldrung. The imperial Acht is called the Reichsacht.
4 See the edict in full in Walch, XV. 2264-2280. It was published officially in Latin and German, and translated into the languages of the Dutch and French dominions of Charles. Aleander himself, as he says, prepared the French translation.
5 Letter to Pirkheimer, May 1, 1521: ‘‘ Me pudere incipit patrie.”’ Opera 11. 59.