A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [75]
AFTER MUCH THOUGHT, Leo agreed. Luther’s summons to Rome was canceled. Instead, in the autumn of 1518 the pontiff ordered him to confer with a papal emissary—Tommaso de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, general of the Dominicans—in Augsburg. On October 7 Luther arrived there with an imperial safe-conduct in his pocket. By now his life was in jeopardy, though Cajetan was no threat. The cardinal was a man of honor; he possessed a formidable intellectual reputation and had published a tremendous nine-volume commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologica. Their meeting, however, was barren of results, and since neither principal had been told its purpose, it ended in fiasco. Luther had come prepared to discuss an agenda of reforms, but the cardinal was an enforcer of ecclesiastical discipline. Considering his scholarly background, it seems odd that he ignored Luther’s professorial appointment. Instead he acted in his role as a Dominican general, viewing the Wittenberg monk merely as a member of the lower clergy, who, having pledged obedience to prelates, could not criticize them publicly. The only issue, Cajetan said, was the sentence to be meted out.
He had, in fact, already reached his decision: the offender must immediately issue a public retraction and solemnly swear never again to question papal policy. Luther bluntly refused. His eminence, incensed, dismissed the impenitent priest and ordered him never to reappear in his presence unless he was on his knees, delivering an unconditional recantation. Then, alone, Cajetan scrawled a vehement denunciation of Luther and sent it at once, by special messenger, to Frederick the Wise.
Servants, watching this, reported it to Saxon councillors—in that age spies were ubiquitous; every European monarch maintained espionage rings in every other royal court, and the largest and most skillful were embedded deep in the Vatican. Rumors to the contrary, Cajetan did not actually try to arrest Luther, but concern for the monk’s safety was genuine. After a reliable source reported plans to take him to Italy in chains, he was bundled out a side door, concealed in a farmer’s cart, and hurried out of the city. It had been close; the trap had been about to spring. Cajetan wrote Frederick again, demanding that Luther be sent to Italy at once under armed guard. The elector refused. The monk was safe for the moment, but his situation was that of a fugitive living in a country which has decided, at least for the moment, not to extradite him.
Safely back in Wittenberg, he wrote a lively account of his confrontation with the cardinal and circulated it throughout Germany. To one friend he wrote: “I send you my trifling work that you may see whether or not I am right in supposing that, according to Paul, the real Antichrist holds sway over the Roman court.” Luther and his Lutherans were growing more intemperate in their language, and their private references to the pope were growing more irreverent. The pontiff again invited him to Rome for confession, offering to pay for the trip; Luther again decided that his security would be tighter in Wittenberg. The monk’s peril had grown. The Holy Father and his prelates were omnipotent in the judgement of heresy. Every European sovereign was bound by law to deliver into their hands anyone branded an apostate by the ecclesiastic hierarchy. Lately the pope had become wary of exercising that right. As the prestige of the Holy Roman Empire weakened, it had become obvious that