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Luther at Augsburg, 1518: New Light on Papal Strategies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 March 2019
Abstract
Leo x’s brief Cum nuper, which authorised Cardinal Cajetan to put Luther on trial but did not restrict debate between them, was sent not on 11 September 1518, as has been generally believed, but on 2 November. It referred to a lost brief countermanding the order of 23 August for Luther's arrest: this brief instead offered a safe conduct to Rome. However, Luther's abrupt departure from Augsburg prevented this offer from being made. Exsurge Domine (1520), which convicted Luther without trial on inflated charges of heresy, made the false claim that he had rejected an invitation to Rome.
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Footnotes
Translations of Latin texts in this article are my own, unless otherwise acknowledged.
References
1 The English word ‘monk’, unlike the German Mönch and French moine, does not have the general meaning of ‘religious’, that is, ‘a member of any religious order, whether monastic or mendicant or other’.
2 Martin Luther to Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, 31 Oct. 1517, WAB i. 110–12. Luther also wrote to the bishop of his diocese, Brandenburg, which was in the province of Magdeburg. The fullest account of the pertinent events is to be found in Brecht, Martin, Martin Luther, I: His road to reformation, 1483–1521, trans. Schaaf, James L., Philadelphia, Pa 1985Google Scholar.
3 In large part this has been due to the mistranslation of redimere (‘acquire’) as ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’. Luther took up the danger of simony (buying spiritual benefits or preferments) only briefly, in commenting on thesis 42 in his Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute: WA i. 599. The translation in LW xxxi. 201 reads: ‘It must be a free gift [donatio] or it will become a clear case of simony and a foul transaction [venditio, lit. ‘sale’].’ But the translation betrays Luther when it goes on to render ‘quando dicitur’ as ‘when the indulgence sellers say’ (making Luther assert that indulgences are consciously and deliberately being sold). Many of these problems have been eliminated in the translation of the theses by Wengert, Timothy J. in The annotated Luther, i, Minneapolis, Mn 2015, 51–4Google Scholar, published separately as Martin Luther's Ninety -Five Theses, Minneapolis, Mn 2015.
4 These points are especially set forth in theses 5–13 and 20–6.
5 Leo x to Gabriel della Volta, Literae tuae, 3 Feb. 1518, DCL ii. 19–23, esp. p. 21.
6 Müller, Karl, ‘Luthers römischer Prozess’, ZKG xxiv (1903), 46–85Google Scholar.
7 Kalkoff, Paul, Forschungen zu Luthers römischem Prozess, Rome 1905Google Scholar, and ‘Zu Luthers römischem Prozess’, ZKG xxv (1904), 90–147, 273–90, 399–459, 503–603Google Scholar; xxxi (1910), 48–65, 368–414; xxxii (1911), 1–67, 199–258, 408–56, 572–95; xxxiii (1912), 1–72; the last instalments of this study, from xxxii. 199 onwards, were issued in book form as Zu Luthers römischem Prozess: der Prozess des Jahres 1518, Gotha 1912.
8 Pastor, Ludwig, History of the popes, trans. Kerr, Ralph Francis and others, St Louis 1923–69, vii. 361–403Google Scholar.
9 Tavuzzi, Michael, Prierias: the life and works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, 1456–1527, Durham, NC 1997, 77Google Scholar.
10 ‘Ego, … urbis et orbis domini nostri spontaneo munere inquisitor ac perinde sive ordinarie sive delegato jure inspectantibus ad fidem judex’ (‘I, inquisitor of the city and the world by the free gift of our lord, and therefore both ordinary and delegated judge in matters concerning the faith’): Silvestro Prierias, Replica … ad fratrem Martinum Luther (Nov. 1518), DCL i. 109–28, esp. p. 117.
11 Tavuzzi, Prierias, 55–9, 68–9, and also his Renaissance inquisitors: Dominican inquisitors and inquisitorial districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527, Leiden 2007. For Tetzel see Paulus, Nikolaus, Johann Tetzel als Ablassprediger, Mainz 1899, 3Google Scholar: he considers the report that Tetzel was previously inquisitor in Poland to be a mistake.
12 Silvestro Prierias, In praesumptuosas Martini Lutheri conclusiones de potestate Papae Dialogus, DCL i. 52–107, esp. p. 117.
13 Kalkoff, Forschungen, 51–2.
14 Müller, ‘Luthers Prozess’, 46–7. At Augsburg, Luther would claim, in effect, that the citation did not specify his errors. Luther clearly did not take seriously the strictures of Prierias's Dialogue (which was sent along with the citation), and neither did Cajetan.
15 Luther, Sermo de virtute excommunicationis, WA i. 638–43.
16 Emperor Maximilian to Leo x, 5 Aug. 1518, DCL ii. 42–4.
17 Leo x, Postquam ad aures, to Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, 23 Aug. 1518, DCL ii. 62–6. The brief survives only in Luther's own account of events in Augsburg: Acta Augustana (Nov. 1518), DCL ii. 62–6; LW xxxi. 286–8. Luther's commentary on it follows at DCL ii. 66–9; LW xxxi. 289–92. He did not see it until after he had left Augsburg, and he deemed it a forgery: DCL ii. 66–9; LW xxxi. 289–92 at pp. 6–8).
18 Leo x, Postquam ad aures, 62–4.
19 Ibid.
20 ‘On account of his evil speech and his heretical writings against us and the Apostolic See he was a notorious heretic, and out of abundant caution was declared to be such by the auditor general of the Apostolic Chamber at the instance of the fiscal procurator’: Leo x, Cum nuper, 2 Nov. (see Appendix 1 below).
21 William Durand, Speculum judiciale (1289), bk 3, part i, rubric De notoriis criminibus, §8, sections 10–12, Basel 1574 edn (Aalen 1975), ii. 50–1. See Müller, ‘Luthers Prozess’, 61–6.
22 Müller, ‘Luthers Prozess’, 64. Müller believes that Ghinucci's declaration simply ended the inquiry into publica fama, the prerequisite for starting an inquisition itself, and the question of Luther's being actually declared a heretic would await the pope's judgement (p. 67). Much of Müller's argument is given in Pastor, History of the popes, vii. 369–70. I see it rather as an actual conviction, which of course the pope could reverse; and I discount the distinction between haereticus declaratus and haereticus condemnatus made by Ulmann, Heinrich in ‘Studien zur Geschichte des Papstes Leo x’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft x (1893), 1–13 at p. 12Google Scholar, often repeated by subsequent scholars. See Müller, ‘Luthers Prozess’, 67: he cites Leo in Exsurge, ‘declarantes, … condemnamus’: DCL ii. 400; but the declaration entails the condemnation.
23 ‘eum sub fideli custodia retineas, donec a nobis aliud habueris in mandatis, ut coram nobis et sede Apostolica [sistatur]’: Leo, Postquam ad aures, 64. The final verb first appears in the 1545 edition of the Acta Augustana: WA ii. 23.
24 Leo, Postquam ad aures., 64.
25 Alexander iv, Cum contumacia, Sext 5.2.7, CIC ii. 1071.
26 Leo x to Cajetan, Cum nuper, 2 Nov. 1518: Sacrum theatrum Dominicanum, ed. Vincenzo Maria Fontana, Rome 1666, 346 (text and translation in Appendix 1 below).
27 Kalkoff, Forschungen, 57–8. Kalkoff maintains that Fontana got both the day and the month wrong, reading arabic 11 as roman ii and 7bris as 9bris.
28 See, for instance, Pastor, History of the popes, vii. 372; Borth, Wilhelm, Die Luthersache (Causa Lutheri), 1517–1524, Lübeck 1970, 50Google Scholar; Hennig, Gerhard, Cajetan und Luther: ein historischer Beitrag zur Begegnung von Thomismus und Reformation, Stuttgart 1966, 44Google Scholar; Hendrix, Scott H., Luther and the papacy, Philadelphia, Pa 1981, 54Google Scholar; Brecht, Martin Luther, i. 250; Wicks, Jared, ‘Roman reactions to Luther: the first year (1518)’, Catholic Historical Review lxix (1983), 521–62Google Scholar at pp. 538–9; DCL ii. 60–1; Charles Morerod, Cajetan et Luther en 1518: édition, traduction, et commentaire des opuscules d'Augsbourg de Cajetan, Fribourg 1994, i. 34; Kohnle, Armin, Reichstag und Reformation: kaiserliche und ständische Religionspolitik von den anfängen der Causa Lutheri bis zum Nürnberger Religionsfrieden, Heidelberg 2001, 28Google Scholar; Spehr, Christoper, Luther und das Konzil: zur Entwicklung eines zentralen Themas in der Reformationszeit, Tübingen 2010, 72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Connor, Michael, Cajetan's biblical commentaries: motive and method, Leiden 2017, 45–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 ‘illumque moneres ut, si super his se excusare et coram nobis comparere vellet, nos cum (licet audiri non mereretur) clementia nostra paratos esse, etiam sibi praestita securitate, benigne audire’: Leo x, Cum nuper.
30 ‘tamen crederes non ab re forsan fore, si causa ejus … per te istic audiri et terminari posset’: ibid.
31 Leo x, Exsurge Domine, DCL ii. 354–411 at pp. 394–6.
32 Leo x to George of Saxony, Redditae nobis, 5 July 1520, in Akten und Briefe zur Kirchenpolitik Herzog Georgs von Sachsen, Leipzig 1905, ed. Felician Gess, i. 127–9 at p. 127. It is possible, however, that Leo was referring here to something that may have been offered through Miltitz.
33 Cardinal Giulio de' Medici to Cajetan, 3 Oct. 1519: Kalkoff, Forschungen, 129.
34 Medici to Cajetan, 7 Oct. 1518, in ‘I manoscritti Torrigiani’, ed. Cesare Guasti, Archivio Storico Italiano iii/24 (1876), 5–31, esp. p. 23.
35 Luther's appeal to the pope: DCL ii. 118–26 at p. 123.
36 They are listed in chronological order in Hennig, Cajetan und Luther, 46–7 (for the correction of no. 11 from 12 Oct. to 14 Oct. see n. 42 below). They are edited, with French translations, by Morerod, Cajetan et Luther, i. 181–423, in the order printed by Cajetan in 1523. For English versions see Jared Wicks, Cajetan responds: a reader in Reformation controversy, Washington 1978, 47–91.
37 Luther's appeal to the pope: DCL ii.124.
38 Clement vi, Unigenitus (1343), Extravagantes communes 5.9.2: CIC ii. 1304–6.
39 Luther, Acta Augustana, 89.
40 Ibid. 101.
41 ‘Tandem eo ventum est, ut praescribat articulos quibus revocare, quid et sapere debeam. Et hucusque pendet negocium. Sed mihi non est spes neque fiducia in eum’: Luther to Spalatin, 14 Oct. 1518, WAB i. 213–15 at p. 215 (‘In the end it was decided that [the Legate] would draw up the articles I should recant, and he would set forth the teaching I should hold. This is the status of the case thus far. Yet I am not hopeful, nor do I trust him’: LW xlviii. 86).
42 For the correct date of q. 11 (= q. 17 in his edition) see Morerod, Cajetan et Luther, 422 n. 531. The mistaken date of 12 October comes from the 1575 edition.
43 Luther, Acta Augustana, 102.
44 In the first, he speaks of his opponents on the subject of indulgences ‘who have raised me up into this tragedy’ (‘qui me in hanc tragoediam suscitaverunt’): DCL ii. 113.
45 H. A. Kelly, The matrimonial trials of Henry VIII, Stanford 1976, 135–6. The cardinals were commissioned to hold an inquisition against Catherine and Henry viii as joint defendants on a charge of having entered into an incestuous marriage.
46 Luther's appeal to the pope, DCL ii. 124–5. For the different kinds of apostoli see Durand, Speculum, bk iv, pt 2, rubric De appellationibus, §3 (De apostolis), sections 1–6; and see section 11, for making appeals when the judge is not available: ii. 195–7.
47 Cajetan to Frederick, 25 Oct. 1518, DCL ii. 128–31, esp. p. 129.
48 Ibid. 130.
49 Leo x, Cum nuper, 2 Nov. 1518.
50 Doubtless referring especially to Ein Sermon von Ablass und Gnade (WA i. 239–46), printed in March 1518, where, however, many of his positions are stated mildly and tentatively. See the translation in Wengert, Martin Luther's Ninety -Five Theses, 41–8.
51 Cajetan to the Elector Frederick, 25 Oct. 1518, 130–1.
52 Leo x to Cajetan, Cum postquam, 9 Nov. 1518, DCL ii. 191–202. See Pastor's summary: History of the popes, vii. 379.
53 Leo x to Luther, Summopere nobis placuit, 29 Mar. 1519, DCL ii. 238–40. The bland letter to the pope that Luther drafted in January (DCL ii. 236–7), later printed with the place and date of Altenburg, 3 March 1519, was never sent.
54 Pastor, History of the popes, vii. 387.
55 Tavuzzi, Prierias, 106. Prierias attended the consistories of 23 May and 1 June 1520.
56 See Wicks, Jared, ‘Opponents, Roman Catholic’, Oxford encyclopedia of Martin Luther, ed. Nelson, Derek R. and Hinlicky, Paul R., New York 2017, iii. 33–48 at p. 37Google Scholar.
57 Pastor, History of the popes, vii. 396–8.
58 Müller, ‘Luthers römischer Process’, 64 (no. 2), 81.
59 Leo x, Exsurge Domine, 368.
60 Ibid. 386.
61 Roland Bainton points out that the same formula had been used a hundred years earlier in the condemnation of John Hus at the Council of Constance (1415): Here I stand: a life of Martin Luther, New York 1950, 147Google Scholar.
62 Leo x, Exsurge Domine, 394–6.
63 The automatic excommunication incurred for appealing to a future council did not qualify (though some curialists doubtless disagreed).
64 Pius ii, Execrabilis (18 June 1459), specifies the punishment as that due to the favourers of heretics, while Julius ii, Suscepti regiminis (1 July 1509), though purporting to repeat Pius’ decree, says it is the punishment of actual heretics, and he adds that such offenders are to be held as true schismatics: Bullarium, diplomatum, et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum Taurinensis editio, ed. Francesco Gaude, Turin 1857–72, v. 149–50 (Pius ii), 479–81 (Julius ii). Neither pope defines offenders as heretics. Curialists who held that appealing to a council was proof of heresy would have to apply it not only to Luther and his notary but also to all the members of the University of Paris, which made such an appeal in March of 1518 (DCL ii. 227–8 n. 41).
65 Leo x, Exsurge Domine, 396.
66 Ibid. 396–402.
67 Luther, Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam: WA vi. 597–612 at pp. 599–600.
68 Ibid. vi. 605.
69 Leo x, Decet romanum pontificem (3 Jan. 1521), DCL ii. 457–67 at pp. 462–3.
70 Ibid. ii. 463–4.
71 McNally, Robert E., ‘The Roman process of Martin Luther: a failure in subsidiarity’, in Coriden, James A. (ed.), The once and future Church, Staten Island 1971, 111–28Google Scholar, esp. pp. 112–13.
72 See n. 44 above.