A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [87]
Alarmed, the new emperor’s confessor—Jean Glapion, a Franciscan—met privately with Frederick’s chaplain, Spalatin. Glapion believed a confrontation with Luther under these circumstances would be disastrous for the Church. The only solution lay in compromise. In his opinion, he confided, many Lutheran calls for ecclesiastical reform were justified; indeed, he had warned Charles V that he would face divine punishment if Catholicism was not purged from such “overweening abuses.” In five years, he promised, imperial power would be used to sweep them away. But Luther had not been blameless—his Babylonian Captivity had made Glapion feel “scourged and pummeled from head to foot.” Some sort of recantation would be necessary. Spalatin sent the Franciscan’s proposition to Wittenberg by horseman; in three weeks the rider returned with a blunt rejection.
In any event, neither the Franciscan nor his august penitent could speak for the pontiff, and Aleandro, who could, was in no mood to bargain. On March 3, appearing before the diet, the nuncio demanded the immediate condemnation of Luther. He was turned down, however, on the ground that “the Wittenberg monk,” as the accused was now known throughout Germany, was entitled to a hearing. Accordingly, another swift horseman was dispatched to Saxony, this one bearing an imperial invitation to testify. Charles added: “You need fear no violence nor molestation, for you have our safe-conduct.”
This assurance was received skeptically in Wittenberg. Just such a pledge, it was remembered, had been Hus’s undoing. And in fact the emperor’s old tutor Adrian of Utrecht, now a cardinal, was urging an encore—he wanted Charles to break his word, arrest Luther as he approached the diet, and send him to Rome. The emperor refused, but Spalatin, informed of the ruse by spies, rushed a warning to Saxony. Luther ignored it: “Though there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roofs, I will go there.” On April 2 he left home—a crowd including forty professors cheered him off—and two weeks later a band of German knights clattering alongside in full armor, brandishing sharpened swords, escorted him to the diet. People lining the streets cheered the spectacle. Aleandro was deeply offended. Yet in light of Adrian’s abortive plot, the precaution does not seem to have been excessive.
The diet setting was spectacular: the monk, appearing in his simple plain robe, faced his inquisitor, Johann von der Ecken, a functionary of the archbishop of Trier, and behind him, the court. This body comprised, first, a panoply of prelates in embroidered, flowered vestments and, second, secular rulers and their ambassadors in the most elaborate finery of the time —short furred jackets bulging at the sleeves, silk shirts with padded shoulders, velvet doublets, brightly colored breeches, and beribboned, bejeweled braquettes, or codpieces. (They were of course padded. It would have been ignoble for a nobleman not to appear to be what the Germans called grosstiftung: grossly well endowed.) Titled laymen wore coronets, tiaras, diadems; young Charles, presiding on a throne as supreme civil judge, wore his imperial crown; prelates wore miters, and burghers furred and feathered hats.
Luther’s head was uncovered and tonsured. Nevertheless he was the commanding figure there, and everyone seemed to realize it. But when Ecken gestured sweepingly toward a table piled with the monk’s published works and ordered him to retract the heresies in them, Luther, for the first time in his public life, hesitated. Nodding slowly, he acknowledged the tracts. As to the retraction … he faltered and asked for time. The emperor granted him a day. That night several members of the diet surreptitiously visited his simple lodging, and Hutten sent a note from Von Sickingen’s nearby castle. All begged him to hold his ground.
And in the morning he did. When Ecken again demanded repudiation, Luther replied that those passages describing clerical abuses were just. At that point the multilingual Charles cried: “Immo!”—“No!” Luther personally