We may say "the general indignation," for Germany was thor oughly prepared for this revolt. She had many flourishing cities, and a high general level of education for that time ; the printing press had long been active ; several editions of the vernacular Bible had been published, and very many little books of popular piety. The Greek and Latin classics were being studied busily, and in a far less pagan spirit than in Italy. The Inquisition, again, was comparatively inoperative in Germany ; there was little chance of its nipping any doctrine in the bud before it had time to gain popular support. And, lastly, the weakness of the central Govern ment was favourable to Luther; it was the patronage of a few local princes that sheltered his movement in its first stages.
The political complications were here very great; the empire contained more than 30o separate states, small and great, which often rendered little more than nominal obedience to the emperor. Luther was first summoned to Rome and then commanded to present himself before the papal legate at Augsburg (Oct. 1518). Finding that the legate practically demanded submission without discussion, Luther published his account of the interview as an appeal to the German people (Acta Augustan). Leo X. then sent an envoy, Miltitz, who was so tactful that a reconciliation might conceivably have been effected but for the Leipzig disputa tion on the papal primacy and supremacy (June 1519), to which Luther was challenged by the Dominican friar Johann Eck. Luther, in his months of preparation for this debate, discovered how many forgeries there were among the documents which seemed to tell most against him ; and Eck, by driving him to the admission that not all the tenets of the Hussite heretics were wrong, widened the breach still farther. The younger university
teachers were now on Luther's side ; and, encouraged by the grow ing approbation of all classes among the laity, he began to appeal unhesitatingly and unceasingly through the pulpit and the press.
In three great treatises (152o) he took up a position from which he never after retreated on any essential point. For he had a positive programme ; a national Church, free from papal inter ference; inspection of monasteries; limitation of holy-days and pilgrimages, and marriage for the priesthood as the best remedy for the standing disgrace of concubinage.
Leo X. met this programme with a bull (Exsurge Domine, June 152o) in which he condemned 41 propositions attributed to Luther. One of these is all the more significant because the con demnation was repeated in other papal letters : Luther had said "It is against the will of the [Holy] Spirit that heretics should be burned." The pope condemns even the least harmful of these 41 propositions as "scandalous or offensive to pious ears or calculated to lead simple minds astray": those who hold or preach any of them are henceforward excommunicate and liable, unless they repent, to all the pains and penalties of heresy. This bull was entrusted to Luther's enemy Eck; but it overshot the mark. Universities and bishops would not or dared not publish it, and Luther received encouragement from many quarters.
He was now excommunicate, and his writings were solemnly burned; he retaliated by burning the papal decretals with equal publicity. Luther had great virtues and great faults; but at this crisis even his faults had a value for the world; for his courage and self-assertion precipitated the crystallization of a thousand thoughts and impulses with which society had gradually become saturated, but which had remained in solution until now.
This Church quarrel now became the most burning question in all German politics. The young Emperor Charles V. was crowned in Oct. 1520, and fixed January for his first Diet, at Worms. He had followed the fight, and was determined to uphold the traditions of his ancestors. The princes insisted that Luther should not be placed under the ban of the empire without being heard in his defence; he was therefore summoned under a safe conduct. He decided to go, "even though there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on the house-roofs." Nearly 2,00o people came out from the city to welcome him. He was brought before the Diet (April 17) and asked whether he would retract his books and their con tents; he requested a day to consider his answer. His reply on the 18th was clear and decided : "The duty that I owe to my Germany will not allow me to recant." Pressed still farther: "It is impos sible for me to recant unless I am proved to be in the wrong by the testimony of Scripture or by evident reasoning." Pressed farther again, while the torches began burning down to their sockets, as to the infallibility of general councils (the infallibility of the pope was not yet a necessary article of faith) he replied that these had sometimes erred by contradicting Holy Scripture, and he could prove it. At this, the emperor made a sign to break up the meeting.