LUTHER APPEARS BEFORE THE DIET OF WORMS

ALREADY the news of Luther’s journey had reached Worms. The friends of the pope had thought that he would not obey the emperor’s summons. Albert, cardinal archbishop of Mentz would have given anything to stop him on the road. New intrigues were put in motion to attain this result.

As soon as Luther arrived in Frankfurt, he took some repose, and afterwards gave intelligence of his approach to Spalatin, who was then at Worms with the elector. This was the only letter he wrote during his journey. "I am coming," said he, "although Satan endeavored to stop me on the road by sickness. Since I left Eisenach I have been in a feeble state, and am still as I never was before. I learn that Charles has published an edict to frighten me. But Christ lives, and I shall enter Worms in despite of all the gates of hell, and of the powers of the air. Have the goodness, therefore, to prepare a lodging for me."

The next day Luther went to visit the school of the learned William Nesse, a celebrated geographer of that period. "Apply to the study of the Bible, and to the investigation of truth," said he to the pupils. And then putting his right hand on one of the children, and his left upon another, he pronounced a benediction on the whole school.

If Luther blessed the young, he was also the hope of the aged. Catherine of Holzhausen, a widow far advanced in years, and who served God, approached him and said: "My parents told me that God would raise up a man who should oppose the papal vanities and preserve His Word. I hope thou art that man, and I pray for the grace and Holy Spirt of God upon thy work."

These were far from being the general sentiments in Frankfurt. John Cochlocus, dean of the church of Our Lady, was one of the most devoted partisans of the papacy. He could not repress his apprehensions when he saw Luther pass through Frankfurt on his road to Worms. He thought that the Church had need of devoted champions. It is true no one had summoned him; but that mattered not. Luther had scarcely quitted the city, when Cochloeus followed him, ready (said he) to sacrifice his life in defense of the honor of the Church.

The alarm was universal in the camp of the pope’s friends. The heresiarch was arriving; every day and every hour brought him nearer to Worms. If he entered, all might perhaps be lost. Archbishop Albert, the confessor Glapio, and the politicians who surrounded the emperor, were confounded. How could they hinder this monk from coming? To carry him off by force was impossible, for he had Charles’s safe-conduct. Stratagem alone could stop him. These artful men immediately conceived the following plan. The emperor’s confessor and his head chamberlain, Paul of Amsdorff, hastily quitted Worms. They directed their course towards the castle of Ebernburg, about ten leagues from the city, the residence of Francis of Sickingen – that knight who had offered an asylum to Luther. Bucer, a youthful Dominican, chaplain to the elector-palatine, and who had been converted to the evangelical doctrine by the disputation at Heidelberg, had taken refuge in this "resting place of the righteous." The knight, who did not understand much about religious matters, was easily deceived, and the character of the palatine chaplain facilitated the confessor’s designs. In fact, Bucer was a man of pacific character. Making a distinction between fundamental and secondary points, he thought that the latter might be given up for the sake of unity and peace.

The chamberlain and Charles’s confessor began their attack. They gave Sickingen and Bucer to understand that Luther was lost if he entered Worms. They declared that the emperor was ready to send a few learned men to Ebernburg to confer with the doctor. "Both parties," said they to the knight, "will place themselves under your protection." "We agree with Luther on all essential points," said they to Bucer; "it is now a question of merely secondary matters, and you shall mediate between us." The knight and the doctor were staggered. The confessor and the chamberlain continued: "Luther’s invitation must proceed from you," said they to Sickingen, "and Bucer shall carry it to him." Everything was arranged according to their wishes. Only let the too credulous Luther go to Ebemburg, his safe-conduct would soon expire, and then who would defend him?

Luther had arrived at Oppenheim. His safe-conduct was available for only three days more. He saw a troop of horsemen approaching him, and at their head soon recognized Bucer, with whom he had held such intimate conversations at Heidelberg. "These cavaliers belong to Francis of Sickingen," said Bucer, after the first interchange of friendship; "he has sent me to conduct you to his castle. The emperor’s confessor desires to have an interview with you. His influence over Charles is unlimited; everything may yet be arranged. But beware of Aleander!" Jonas, Schurff, and Amsdorff knew not what to think. Bucer was pressing; but Luther felt no hesitation. "I shall continue my journey," replied he to Bucer; "and if the emperor’s confessor has anything to say to me, he will find me at Worms. I go whither I am summoned."

In the meanwhile, Spalatin himself began to be anxious and to fear. Surrounded at Worms by the enemies of the Reformation, he heard it said that the safe-conduct of a heretic ought not to be respected. He became alarmed for his friend. At the moment when the latter was approaching the city, a messenger appeared before him, with this advice from the chaplain: "Do not enter Worms!" And this from his best friend – the elector’s confidant – from Spalatin himself! . . . . But Luther, undismayed, turned his eyes on the messenger, and replied; "Go and tell your master that even should there be as many devils in Worms as tiles on the housetops, still I would enter it!" Never, perhaps, has Luther been so sublime! The messenger returned to Worms with this astounding answer. "I was then undaunted," said Luther, a few days before his death; "I feared nothing. God can indeed render a man intrepid at any time; but I know not whether I should now have so much liberty and joy." "When our cause is good," adds his disciple Mathesius, "the heart expands, and gives courage and energy to evangelists as well as to soldiers."

At length, on the morning of the sixteenth of April, Luther discovered the walls of the ancient city. All were expecting him. One absorbing thought prevailed in Worms. Some young nobles, Bernard of Hirschfeldt, Albert of Lindenau, with six knights and other gentlemen in the train of the princes, to the number of a hundred (if we may believe Pallavicini), unable to restrain their impatience, rode out on horseback to meet him, and surround him, to form an escort at the moment of his entrance. He drew near. Before him pranced the imperial herald, in full costume. Luther came next in his modest car. Jonas followed him on horseback, and the cavaliers were on both sides of him. A great crowd was waiting for him at the gates. It was near midday when he passed those walls, from which so many persons had predicted he would never come forth alive. Everyone was at table; but as soon as the watchman on the tower of the cathedral sounded his trumpet, all ran into the streets to see the monk. Luther was now in Worms.

Two thousand persons accompanied him through the streets of the city. The citizens eagerly pressed forward to see him: every moment the crowd was increasing. It was much greater than at the public entry of the emperor. On a sudden, says an historian, a man dressed in a singular costume, and bearing a large cross, such as is employed in funeral processions, made way through the crowd, advanced towards Luther, and then with a loud voice, and in that plaintive, measured tone in which mass is said for the repose of the soul, he sang these words, as if he were uttering them from the abode of the dead: –

(At last thou'rt come, long looked-for one, whom we have waited for in the darkness of the grave.)

Thus a requiem was Luther’s welcome to Worms. It was the court fool of one of the dukes of Bavaria, who, if the story be true, gave Luther one of those warnings, replete at once with sagacity and irony, of which the history of these individuals furnishes so many examples. But the shouts of the multitude soon drowned the de profundis of the cross-bearer. The procession made its way with difficulty through the crowd. At last, the herald of the empire stopped before the hotel of the knights of Rhodes. There resided the two councilors of the elector, Frederick of Thun and Philip of Feilitsch, as well as the marshal of the empire, Ulrich of Pappenheim. Luther alighted from his car, and said as he touched the ground: "God will be my defense." "I entered Worms in a covered wagon, and in my monk’s gown," said he at a later period. "All the people came out into the streets to get a sight of Friar Martin."

The news of his arrival filled both the Elector of Saxony and Aleander with alarm. The young and graceful Archbishop Albert, who kept a middle position between the two parties, was confounded at such boldness. "If I had possessed no more courage than he," said Luther, "it is true they would never have seen me at Worms."

Charles V immediately summoned his council. The emperor’s privy-councilors hastily repaired to the palace, for the alarm had reached them also. "Luther is come," said Charles; "what must we do?"

Modo, bishop of Palermo, and chancellor of Flanders, replied, if we may credit the testimony of Luther himself: "We have long consulted on this matter. Let your imperial majesty get rid of this man at once. Did not Sigismund cause John Huss to be burned? We are not bound either to give or to observe the safe-conduct of a heretic." "No!" said Charles, "we must keep our promise." They submitted, therefore, to the reformer’s appearance before the diet.

While the councils of the great were thus agitated on account of Luther, there were many persons in Worms who were delighted at the opportunity of at length beholding this illustrious servant of God. Capito, chaplain and councilor to the Archbishop of Mentz, was the foremost among them. This remarkable man, who, shortly before, had preached the gospel in Switzerland with great freedom, thought it becoming the station he then filled to act in a manner which led to his being accused of cowardice by the Evangelicals, and of dissimulation by the Romanists. Yet at Mentz he had proclaimed the doctrine of grace with much clearness. At the moment of his departure, he had succeeded in supplying his place by a young and zealous preacher named Hedio. The Word of God was not bound in that city, the ancient seat of the primacy of the German Church. The gospel was listened to with eagerness; in vain did the monks endeavor to preach from the Holy Scriptures after their manner, and employ all the means in their power to check the impulse given to men’s minds: they could not succeed.

But while proclaiming the new doctrine, Capito attempted to remain friendly with those who persecuted it. He flattered himself, as others did who shared in his opinions, that he might in this way be of great service to the Church. To judge by their talk, if Luther was not burned, if all the Lutherans were not excommunicated, it was owing to Capito’s influence with the Archbishop Albert. Cochloeus, dean of Frankfurt, who reached Worms about the same time as Luther, immediately waited on Capito. The latter, who was, outwardly at least, on very friendly terms with Aleander, presented Cochloeus to him, thus serving as a link between the two greatest enemies of the reformer. Capito no doubt thought he was advancing Christ’s cause by all these temporizing expedients, but we cannot find that they led to any good result. The event almost always baffles these calculations of human wisdom, and proves that a decided course, while it is the most frank, is also the wisest.

Meantime, the crowd still continued round the hotel of Rhodes, where Luther had alighted. To some he was a prodigy of wisdom, to others a monster of iniquity. All the city longed to see him. They allowed him, however, a few hours after his arrival to recruit his strength, and to converse with his most intimate friends. But as soon as the evening came, counts, barons, knights, gentlemen, ecclesiastics, and citizens, flocked about him. All, even his greatest enemies, were struck with the boldness of his manner, the joy that seemed to animate him, the power of his language, and that imposing elevation and enthusiasm which gave this simple monk an irresistible authority. But while some ascribed this grandeur to something divine, the friends of the pope loudly exclaimed that he was possessed by a devil. Visitors rapidly succeeded each other, and this crowd of curious individuals kept Luther from his bed until a late hour of the night.

On the next morning, Wednesday the seventeenth of April, the hereditary marshal of the empire, Ulrich of Pappenheim, cited him to appear at four in the afternoon before his imperial majesty and the states of the empire. Luther received this message with profound respect.

Thus everything was arranged; he was about to stand for Jesus Christ before the most august assembly in the world. Encouragements were not wanting to him. The impetuous knight, Ulrich Hutten, was then in the castle of Ebernburg. Unable to visit Worms (for Leo X had called upon Charles V to send him bound hand and foot to Rome), he resolved at least to stretch out the hand of friendship to Luther; and on this very day (April 17) he wrote to him, adopting the language of a king of Israel: " ‘The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee; send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion. . . . Grant thee according to thine own heart, and fulfill all thy counsel.’ Dearly beloved Luther! my venerable father! . . . fear not, and stand firm. The counsel of the wicked has beset you, and they have opened their mouths against you like roaring lions. But the Lord will arise against the unrighteous, and put them to confusion. Fight, therefore, valiantly in Christ’s cause. As for me, I too will combat boldly. Would to God that I were permitted to see how they frown. But the Lord will purge His vineyard, which the wild boar of the forest has laid waste. . . . May Christ preserve you!" Bucer did what Hutten was unable to do; he came from Ebernburg to Worms, and did not leave his friend during the time of his sojourn in that city.

Four o’clock arrived. The marshal of the empire appeared; Luther prepared to set out with him. He was agitated at the thought of the solemn congress before which he was about to appear. The herald walked first; after him the marshal of the empire; and the reformer came last. The crowd that filled the streets was still greater than on the preceding day. It was impossible to advance; in vain were orders given to make way; the crowd still kept increasing. At length the herald, seeing the difficulty of reaching the town hall, ordered some private houses to be opened, and led Luther through the gardens and private passages to the place where the diet was sitting. The people who witnessed this, rushed into the houses after the monk of Wittenberg, ran to the windows that overlooked the gardens, and a great number climbed on the roofs. The tops of the houses and the pavements of the streets, above and below, all were covered with spectators.

Having reached the town hall at last, Luther and those who accompanied him were again prevented by the crowd from crossing the threshold. They cried, "Make way! make way!" but no one moved. Upon this the imperial soldiers by main force cleared a road, through which Luther passed. As the people rushed forward to enter with him, the soldiers kept them back with their halberds. Luther entered the interior of the hall; but even there every corner was crowded. In the antechambers and deep recesses of the windows there were more than five thousand spectators, – Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and others. Luther advanced with difficulty. At last, as he drew near the door which was about to admit him into the presence of his judges, he met a valiant knight, the celebrated George of Freundsberg, who four years later, at the head of his German lansquenets, bent the knee with his soldiers on the field of Pavia, and then charging the left of the French army, drove it into the Ticino, and in a great measure decided the captivity of the King of France. The old general, seeing Luther pass, tapped him on the shoulder, and shaking his head, blanched in many battles, said kindly: "Poor monk! Poor monk! thou art now going to make a nobler stand than I or any other captains have ever made in the bloodiest of our battles! But if thy cause is just, and thou art sure of it, go forward in God’s name, and fear nothing! God will not forsake thee!" A noble tribute of respect paid by the courage of the sword to the courage of the mind! "He that ruleth his spirit [is greater] than he that taketh a city," were the words of a king (Prov. 16:32).

At length the doors of the hall were opened. Luther went in, and with him entered many persons who formed no portion of the diet. Never had man appeared before so imposing an assembly. The Emperor Charles V, whose sovereignty extended over great part of the old and new world; his brother the Archduke Ferdinand; six electors of the empire, most of whose descendants now wear the kingly crown; twenty-four dukes, the majority of whom were independent sovereigns over countries more or less extensive, and among whom were some whose names afterwards became formidable to the Reformation – the Duke of Alva and his two sons; eight margraves; thirty archbishops, bishops, and abbots; seven ambassadors, including those from the kings of France and England; the deputies of ten free cities; a great number of princes, counts, and sovereign barons; the papal nuncios – in all two hundred and four persons; such was the imposing court before which Martin Luther appeared.

This appearance was of itself a signal victory over the papacy. The pope had condemned the man, and yet there he stood before a tribunal which, by this very act, set itself above the pope. The pope had laid him under an interdict, and cut him off from all human society; and yet he was summoned in respectful language, and received before the most august assembly in the world. The pope had condemned him to perpetual silence, and yet he was now about to speak before thousands of attentive hearers drawn together from the farthest parts of Christendom. An immense revolution had thus been effected by Luther’s instrumentality. Rome was already descending from her throne, and it was the voice of a monk that caused this humiliation.

Some of the princes, when they saw the emotion of this son of the lowly miner of Mansfeldt in the presence of this assembly of kings, approached him kindly, and one of them said to him: " ‘Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.’ " And another added: " ‘When ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, the spirit of your Father shall speak in you.’ " Thus was the reformer comforted with his Master’s words by the princes of this world.

Meanwhile the guards made way for Luther. He advanced and stood before the throne of Charles V. The sight of so august an assembly appeared for an instant to dazzle and intimidate him. All eyes were fixed on him. The confusion gradually subsided, and a deep silence followed. "Say nothing," said the marshal of the empire to him, "before you are questioned." Luther was left alone.

After a moment of solemn silence, the chancellor of the Archbishop of Treves, John ab Eck, who was the friend of Aleander and who must not be confounded with the theologian of the same name, rose and said with a loud and clear voice, first in Latin and then in German: "Martin Luther! his sacred and invincible imperial majesty has cited you before his throne, in accordance with the advice and counsel of the states of the holy Roman empire, to require you to answer two questions: First, Do you acknowledge these books to have been written by you?" At the same time the imperial speaker pointed with his finger to about twenty volumes placed on a table in the middle of the ball, directly in front of Luther. "I do not know how they could have procured them," said Luther, relating this circumstance. It was Aleander who had taken this trouble. "Secondly," continued the chancellor, "Are you prepared to retract these books, and their contents, or do you persist in the opinions you have advanced in them?"

Luther, having no mistrust, was about to answer the first of these questions in the affirmative, when his counsel, Jerome Schurff, hastily interrupting him, exclaimed aloud: "Let the titles of the books be read!"

The chancellor approached the table and read the titles. There were among their number many devotional works, quite foreign to the controversy.

Their enumeration being finished, Luther said first in Latin, and then in German:

"Most gracious emperor! Gracious princes and lords!

"His imperial majesty has asked me two questions.

"As to the first, I acknowledge as mine the books that have just been named: I cannot deny them.

"As to the second, seeing that it is a question which concerns faith and the salvation of souls, and in which the Word of God, the greatest and most precious treasure either in heaven or earth, is interested, I should act imprudently were I to reply without reflection. I might affirm less than the circumstance demands, or more than truth requires, and so sin against this saying of Christ: ‘Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.’ For this reason I entreat your imperial majesty, with all humility, to allow me time, that I may answer without offending against the Word of God."

This reply, far from giving grounds to suppose that Luther felt any hesitation, was worthy of the reformer and of the assembly. It was right that he should appear calm and circumspect in so important a matter, and lay aside everything in this solemn moment that might cause a suspicion of passion or rashness. Besides, by taking reasonable time, he would give a stronger proof of the unalterable firmness of his resolution. In history we read of many men who by a hasty expression have brought misfortunes upon themselves and upon the world. Luther restrained his own naturally impetuous disposition; he controlled his tongue, ever too ready to speak, he checked himself at a time when all the feelings by which he was animated were eager for utterance. This restraint, this calmness, so surprising in such a man, multiplied his strength a hundredfold, and put him in a position to reply, at a later period, with such wisdom, power, and dignity, as to deceive the expectations of his adversaries, and confound their malice and their pride.

And yet, because he had spoken in a respectful manner, and in a low tone of voice, many thought that he hesitated, and even that he was dismayed. A ray of hope beamed on the minds of the partisans of Rome. Charles, impatient to know the man whose words had stirred the empire, had not taken his eyes off him. He turned to one of his courtiers, and said disdainfully, "Certainly this man will never make a heretic of me." Then rising from his seat, the youthful emperor withdrew with his ministers into a council room; the electors with the princes retired into another; and the deputies of the free cities, into a third. When the diet assembled again, it was agreed to comply with Luther’s request. This was a great miscalculation in men actuated by passion.

"Martin Luther," said the Chancellor of Treves, "his imperial majesty, of his natural goodness, is very willing to grant you another day, but under condition that you make your reply viva voce, and not in writing."

The imperial herald now stepped forward and conducted Luther back to his hotel. Menaces and shouts of joy were heard by turns on his passage. The most sinister rumors circulated among Luther’s friends. "The diet is dissatisfied," said they; "the papal envoys have triumphed; the reformer will be sacrificed." Men’s passions were inflamed. Many gentlemen hastened to Luther’s lodgings: "Doctor," said they, with emotion, "what is this? It is said they are determined to burn you!" "If they do so," continued these knights, "it will cost them their lives!" "And that certainly would have happened," said Luther, as, twenty years after, he quoted these words at Eisleben.

On the other hand, Luther’s enemies exulted. "He has asked for time," said they; "he will retract. At a distance, his speech was arrogant; now his courage fails him. . . . He is conquered."

Perhaps Luther was the only man that felt tranquil at Worms. Shortly after his return from the diet, he wrote to Cuspianus, the imperial councilor: "I write to you from the midst of the tumult [alluding probably to the noise made by the crowd in front of the hotel]. I have just made my appearance before the emperor and his brother. . . . I confessed myself the author of my books, and declared that I would reply tomorrow touching my retractation. With Christ’s help, I shall never retract one tittle of my works."

The emotion of the people and of the foreign soldiers increased every hour. While the opposing parties were proceeding calmly in the diet, they were breaking out into acts of violence in the streets. The insolence of the haughty and merciless Spanish soldiers offended the citizens. One of these myrmidons of Charles, finding in a bookseller’s shop the pope’s bull with a commentary written by Hutten, took the book and tore it in pieces, and then throwing the fragments on the ground, trampled them underfoot. Others having discovered several copies of Luther’s writing on the Captivity of Babylon, took them away and destroyed them. The indignant people fell upon the soldiers and compelled them to take to flight. At another time, a Spaniard on horseback pursued, sword in hand, through one of the principal streets of Worms, a German who fled before him, and the affrighted people dared not stop the furious man.

Some politicians thought they had found means of saving Luther. "Retract your doctrinal errors," said they; "but persist in all that you have said against the pope and his court, and you are safe." Aleander shuddered with alarm at this counsel. But Luther, immovable in his resolution, declared that he had no great opinion of a political reform that was not based upon faith.

Glapio, the Chancellor ab Eck, and Aleander, by Charles’s order, met early on the morning of the eighteenth to concert the measures to be taken with regard to Luther.

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