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of the Catholic establishment there closed its ranks and its minds, refusing to discuss compromise. In Rome, a German archbishop called for heresy proceedings against Luther, and the Dominicans demanded his immediate impeachment. Dr. Johann Eck, vice chancellor of Ingolstadt University and perhaps the most eminent theologian in central Europe, attacked the theses in a leaflet, Obelisks, accusing their author of subverting the faith by spreading “poison.” The Curia’s censor of literature, concurring, issued a Dialogue reaffirming “the absolute supremacy of the pope,” and Jakob van Hoogsträten of Cologne demanded Luther be burned at the stake.

Instead he kept scratching away with his pen. In April 1518, the month after Eck’s blast, he published Resolutiones, a curious brochure whose ostensible purpose was to assure the Church of his orthodoxy and submission. In a copy sent to the pontiff he offered “myself prostrate at the feet of your Holiness, with all I am and have. Quicken, slay, call, recall, approve, reprove, as may seem to you good. I will acknowledge your voice as the voice of Christ, residing and speaking in you.” Yet this inscription was wholly inconsistent with the text that followed. Resolutiones implicitly denied the pontiff’s supremacy, suggesting he was answerable to an ecumenical council. The pamphlet went on to slight relics, pilgrimages, extravagant claims for the powers of saints, and the holy city (“Rome … now laughs at good men; in what part of the Christian world do men more freely make a mock of the best bishops than in Rome, the true Babylon?”). He declared the very foundation of the Curia’s indulgences policy—stretching back over three centuries—null and void. The monk of Wittenberg was growing ever more confident, and as his confidence grew, so did his feelings of independence.

Leo was stunned. Abandon indulgences? Just as his pontificate was approaching bankruptcy? He was rebuilding a cathedral, waging wars, funding elaborate dinner parties while trying to keep Raphael, Lotto, Vecchio, Perugino, Titian, Parmigianino, and Michelangelo in wine. The Curia, juggling budgets, was swamped with bills. And now a German monk—a mere friar—had the audacity to condemn a prime source of Vatican revenue. The Holy Father summoned Martin Luther to Rome.

The invitation was declined. Acceptance might mean the stake—there were plenty of precedents for that. At the very least Luther might be assigned to an obscure Italian monastery, where, within a year, he and his cause would be forgotten. Instead he appealed to Frederick the Wise, submitting that German princes should shield their people from extradition. The elector agreed. He liked his controversial Augustinian. (One reason was that Luther’s Wittenberg duties included keeping the university’s books; unlike Leo, he had never resorted to red ink.) And

Pope Leo X (1475–1521)

Maximilian’s advice, which Frederick sought, was decisive. The Habsburg emperor had only five months to live, but he had lost none of the political shrewdness which had forged an intricate dynastic structure, making his family dominant in central Europe. He was keeping a close watch on the interplay of German politics and religion. “Take good care of that monk,” Maximilian wrote the elector. Handing Luther over to the pontiff, he explained, could be a political blunder. In his judgment, anticlerical sentiment was increasing throughout Germany.

Almost immediately an imperial diet, or Reichstag, confirmed him. The emperor, in summoning his German princes to Augsburg, was responding to a request from Rome. Leo had told him he was planning a new crusade against the Turks and wanted a surtax to support it. The diet rejected his appeal. The action was highly unusual, but not unprecedented; Frederick, after collecting a papal levy from his people, had decided to keep it and build the University of Wittenberg. His peers had been heartened. All the Vatican wanted from the princes, it seemed, was money, money, and more money. In their view the confirmation fees, annates, and costs of canonical