A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [86]
Erasmus did. An arrest of Luther was unjustified, he told Aleandro, because everyone knew that monstrous misconduct had shredded the Church’s reputation, and attempts to mend the holy garment should be encouraged, not punished. The elector asked him what he considered Luther’s major blunders. Wryly, Erasmus replied that he had made two: “He attacked the popes in their crowns and the monks in their bellies.” As to Exsurge Domine, he doubted the bull was genuine. The pope was a gentle man; it did not sound at all like him. According to Pastor, the Catholic historian, Erasmus said he suspected a conspiracy in the Curia. Frederick then gave Aleandro his decision. Luther, he said, had appealed the bull; meantime he should remain free.
He added—and this exasperated the nuncio—that if it came to a trial, the court would sit in Germany, not Rome. Hurrying to Aachen, Aleandro appealed this matter to the new emperor, Charles, who, to his consternation, confirmed Frederick. Charles didn’t like it. The powers of his new office were overshadowed by his role as king of Spain, where the situation was unlike that in Germany, and the Church’s challengers were few and weak. Spanish prelates would never put up with a sovereign tolerant of heresiarchs. Furthermore, war between Spain and France was imminent, and he was trying to negotiate an alliance with the Vatican, an arrangement which would include papal funds for his armies. Finally, as a condition of his election in Frankfurt am Main, he had agreed that no German could be convicted without a fair hearing in his own country. The emperor therefore had no choice. Luther, he said, would have to be tried before an imperial diet, which would convene in Worms on January 27, 1521.
SITTING ON THE LEFT BANK of the Rhine, some ten miles northwest of Mannheim, the ancient city of Worms (pronounced Vurmz) was rich in Roman, ecclesiastical, and folk history; its destruction by the Huns had been immortalized in The Nibelungenlied, and only twenty-six years earlier Maximilian had presided over the most recent diet to be held there, proclaiming, as its ultimate achievement, “perpetual public peace” (ewiger Landfriede).
Now the irony of those words lay heavy over the eminent assemblage gathering in response to the imperial decree—the empire’s archbishops, bishops, princes, counts, dukes, margraves, and representatives of free cities, one of which Worms itself had been for nearly four centuries. Their mood now was anything but peaceful. To the dismay of the twenty-year-old emperor, they were obsessed with one topic: the fate of Martin Luther. Charles intended to try the heretical professor here (and meant to see him convicted), but that had not been his purpose in convening the Reichstag. He wanted to mobilize the people for the coming conflict with France and to strengthen the empire’s administration, moral discipline, and ties with the Vatican, whose support he needed to shield Hungary from the infidel Turks.
The prospects for papal appropriations were dimmed even before the first session opened. To the emperor’s horror—and the rage of Aleandro—“the great body of the German nobles,” writes a Catholic historian, “applauded and seconded Luther’s attempts.” Aleandro himself reported that the air was thick with leaflets denouncing Rome. One, written in Von Sickingen’s castle at Ebernburg, a few miles from Worms, was from the irascible Ulrich von Hutten. Hutten demanded that the nuncio and his Roman entourage leave German soil: “Begone, ye unclean swine! Depart from the sanctuary, ye infamous traffickers! Touch not the altars with your desecrated hands! … How dare you spend the money intended for pious uses in luxury, dissipation, and pomp, while honest men are suffering hunger? The cup is full. See ye not that the breath of liberty