In the above statements there is a mixture of truth and falsehood. Various particulars, discreditable to both Rome and Mayence, had reached Luther by a sure hand; for others he drew on his own imagination.[902]

As early as 1519 he says in his memoranda for the negotiations with Miltitz: “The Pope, as his office required, should either have forbidden and hindered the Bishop of Magdeburg [Albert] from seeking so many bishoprics for himself, or have bestowed them upon him freely as he had himself received them from the Lord. But as the Pope encouraged the Bishop’s ambition and gratified his own greed for gold by taking so many thousand gulden for the palliums, i.e. for the Bishops’ mantles, and for the dispensation, he had, I said [this is Luther], forced and instigated the Bishop of Magdeburg to coin money out of the Indulgence.... Then I became impatient with such a lamentable business, and also, more especially, with the greed of the Florentines, who persuaded the good, simple Pope to do as they wished, and drove him into the greatest danger and misfortune.”[903] Luther was well-informed regarding what was going on in Rome, probably owing to his having friends at the Court of Albert. He refers in 1518 to an “epistola satis erudita” from Rome which had come into his hands, and which inveighed in the strongest terms against the Florentines who surrounded the Pope, as the “most avaricious of men”; “they abuse,” so he writes, “the Pope’s good nature in order to fill the bottomless pit of their passionate love of money.”[904]

With regard to the statement, that Archbishop Albert had petitioned the Pope for the Indulgence in order to pay off the debt he had incurred by receiving the See of Mayence in addition to that of Magdeburg and also the expenses of the pallium, it has now been ascertained (the fact is certainly no less to Rome’s discredit) that, in reality, it was the Roman authorities, who, for financial reasons, offered the Indulgence to the Archbishop; Albert was to receive from the proceeds a compensation of 10,000 ducats, which sum, in addition to the ordinary fees, had been demanded of him on the occasion of his confirmation as Archbishop of Mayence on account of the dispensation necessary for combining the two Archiepiscopal Sees; one half of the proceeds of the Indulgence was to be made over to him for the needs of the Archdiocese of Mayence, the other half was to go towards the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, for which object a collection had already commenced in other countries and was being promoted by the preaching of the Indulgence.

Regarding the whole matter we learn the following details.

When Bishop Albert of Brandenburg, the brother of the Brandenburg Elector, Joachim I, was chosen Archbishop in 1514 by the Cathedral Chapter of Mayence he was faced by great difficulties, financial as well as ecclesiastical. Was it likely that he would obtain from Rome his confirmation as Archbishop of Mayence, seeing that he was already Archbishop of Magdeburg and at the same time administrator of the diocese of Halberstadt? Would it be possible for him to raise the customary large sum to be paid for his confirmation and for the pallium, seeing that the Archdiocese of Mayence, owing to two previous vacancies in rapid succession, had already been obliged to pay this sum twice within ten years, and was thus practically bankrupt? The sum necessary, which was the same in the case of Treves and Cologne, amounted on each occasion to about 14,000 ducats. With regard to the confirmation-fees for the See of Mayence and the expenses of the pallium, the Elector Joachim, who, for political reasons, was extremely anxious to see his brother in possession of the electoral dignity of Mayence, promised to defray the same, and thus the Mayence election took place on March 9. The Archbishop-elect borrowed, on May 15 of the same year, 21,000 ducats from the Fuggers, the great Augsburg bankers—no doubt with his brother’s concurrence—in order to be able to meet at Rome the necessary outlay for his confirmation and pallium.

Grave doubts, however, were entertained in the Papal Curia as to whether, according to canon law, the above bishoprics might be held by the same person. Two of the offices in question were archbishoprics, and, hitherto, in spite of the prevalence of the abuse of placing several croziers in one hand, two archbishoprics had never been held by one man. Besides, the candidate was only in his twenty-fourth year.

An undesirable way out of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary dispensation for holding the three ecclesiastical dignities presented itself. An official of the Papal Dataria informed the ambassador from Brandenburg, that if Albert could be induced to pay 10,000 ducats beyond the customary fees “this should not be looked upon as a composition [tax], as His Holiness, in return for the same, would grant a ten-year Plenary Indulgence in the shape of a Jubilee in the diocese of Mayence.”[905] This proposal emanated from the Papal officials, Leo X himself as yet refusing to hear anything about the money question. After lengthy negotiations the proposed plan was accepted by the principals on both sides in the following amended shape: The Indulgence, one half of the proceeds of which was to be devoted to the building of St. Peter’s, and the other to the Archbishop of Mayence, was to be proclaimed for eight years, not only in the diocese of Mayence, but throughout the ecclesiastical provinces of Mayence and Magdeburg as well as in the domains of the house of Brandenburg (i.e. throughout almost the half of Germany, owing to the vastness of the province of Mayence); the proceeds were to be divided into two parts in the manner mentioned above, as alms for the erection of St. Peter’s and as an income for the Archbishop of Mayence. The Pope, in his simple goodness of heart, was gradually induced, by political considerations, to agree to the proposal. On July 19 the matter was finally decided in Consistory. Thus no actual indemnity was paid for the dispensation (as Luther asserted) beyond the Indulgence money and the alms for building. Pope Leo X confirmed the supplica in question on August 1, 1514. The public Indulgence Bull, however, Sacrosancti Salvatoris, is dated March 31, 1515.

The branch house of the Fuggers at Rome at once paid the sum of 10,000 ducats to the Pope. As the other fees for confirmation and the pallium had already been paid, the induction of Albert as Archbishop of Mayence took place on August 18, 1514, no difficulty being raised as to his retaining the two other Sees.

Every Catholic at the present day will agree with H. SchrÖrs that “this manner of acquiring benefices with the assistance of an Indulgence was unworthy and reprehensible.”[906] It brings before our eyes an instance of the ecclesiastical abuses prevalent just before the Reformation, and which cannot be sufficiently deplored. “Although Albert’s confirmation may not have been, strictly speaking, simoniacal,” says a learned Catholic reviewer of Schulte’s works,[907] “yet there is a strong suspicion of simony about it; at any rate, it was an extremely discreditable business, and we may well look upon it as a Divine Judgment that the Mayence Indulgence should have been the immediate occasion of the great religious upheaval for which many other factors had been paving the way.” “The greater part of the blame rests with the Hohenzollern brothers, who approached the Curia with such an exorbitant demand for the cumulation of benefices.”[908]

“Looked at in itself, the allocation of Indulgences, like that for St. Peter’s, is to some extent justified by the fact, that it was customary in the Middle Ages to make the granting of privileges an opportunity for the giving of special alms, and that the position of the Papacy, as head of the Church, gave it the right to share in the privileges of its members. On this was based the whole system of taxes levied by the Curia on the bestowal of any office, inasmuch as the tax was really a part of the income of the Curial officials; whereas, however, Rome had hitherto been content with one-third of the proceeds of an Indulgence, this was now increased to one-half.”[909] “Nor was it right if, as was probably the case, the Indulgence-preachers did not explain to the people how one part of their alms was to be disposed of, but left them in the belief that it was all to be devoted to the object announced [i.e. the rebuilding of St. Peter’s].”[910]

Finally, the too frequent tendering of Indulgences towards the close of the Middle Ages must be noted as a regrettable abuse. The collections made for Indulgences granted for all sorts of ecclesiastical purposes were so numerous, that loud complaints were raised by the Rulers about the heavy burden thus imposed upon their people.

The Indulgence for St. Peter’s followed many others and was first started under Pope Julius II. In this case the importance to the whole of Christendom of the erection of a new church over the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles may have afforded some justification. Originally intended to last only for twelve months, the Indulgence was extended from year to year.

As regards its administration, Papal commissaries had been appointed for the proclamation of the Indulgence and for making the collections. Thus the Franciscan Observantines under the Vicar-General of the Order were entrusted with the so-called Cismontane provinces, comprising Italy and the Slavonian regions to the east of Europe, including Hungary, the German portions of Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia and Prussia and likewise Switzerland. In Switzerland the preacher was the celebrated Franciscan Bernardin Samson. Other special commissaries were distributed throughout the west of Europe, according to the political divisions; thus we find them established by Papal appointment in Spain, Brittany, the British Isles, Savoy, Burgundy, Scandinavia, and in the Spanish colonies in America.

There had been some delay in introducing this arrangement into Germany as the country was already exhausted by large collections made for the Teutonic Order and the armies which it had been compelled to raise for the defence of the Catholic countries and Christian civilisation, and also by other taxes. In 1514 the time seemed, however, to have arrived. In this year, the same in which the bargain was struck with Albert of Brandenburg, a Chief Commissary, in the person of a cleric at the Papal Court, Gianangelo Arcimboldi, was appointed for the provinces of Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, Bremen, BesanÇon and other dioceses; Mayence, on the other hand, with the other portions of Germany before mentioned, was reserved for Albert as Commissary-General.

The Chief Commissary appointed sub-commissaries and preachers. Tetzel was chosen by Albert of Mayence as sub-Commissary. He had, before this, acted as sub-Commissary (1505-6) for the preaching of the Indulgence on behalf of the Teutonic Order in the dioceses of Merseburg and Naumburg, and later had worked in many other parts of Germany for the same Indulgence. In 1516 he had been appointed by Arcimboldi as sub-Commissary and preacher in the diocese of Meissen. It was in the beginning of 1517 that Archbishop Albert took him into his service as sub-Commissary and preacher for the dioceses of Halberstadt and Magdeburg.[911] In this capacity he came in the spring, 1517, to JÜterbog, in the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. While subordinate to Archbishop Albert he was at the same time, like his employer, under the orders of a Roman Commission; all the Chief Commissaries, Albert as well as Arcimboldi, were subordinate to a Papal Commission, at the head of which was the Pope’s Master of the Treasury.

The appointment of Albert as Chief Commissary had been made under the impression that the standing of this powerful German Prince of the Church would contribute to the success of the undertaking, and influence even those who were not in favour of the scheme. Yet Albert’s own envoys, when the handing over the Indulgence was first mooted, openly declared that they were not inclined to agree to accepting the Indulgence as “discontent, and perhaps something worse, might be the result,”[912] a fear which events were sadly to justify.

In the end the yield did not reach expectations; this is plain from the accounts now available. The “hundred thousand gulden” which Tetzel was said to have collected in one year are a mere fiction. This tale was spread abroad in 1721 by J. E. Kapp, and before that by J. Wolfius (1600), and would appear to date from a chance word let fall by Paul Lang, the Benedictine (1520).[913] We are, however, in possession of more authentic details since an exact account was kept.

This account of the collections was made in the following manner: the money-boxes were opened and the contents counted in the presence of witnesses, and the statement of the amount certified by a notary. Representatives of both parties—Archbishop Albert and the Fugger bank—were present, and kept an account, half of the proceeds being paid by the Fuggers to the Curia at Rome for St. Peter’s, and the other half to the Archbishop of Mayence. It was a good thing and a guarantee against mismanagement, that, at any rate in the case of the Mayence Indulgence and that for St. Peter’s, a reliable banking-house of world-wide fame and conducted on business principles (even though Luther styles the Fuggers cut-purses), should have thus undertaken the supervision of the accounts, however distasteful it may seem to have left to bank officials the distribution of the Indulgence-letters from the very commencement of the preaching.

How much did the proceeds amount to? The Mayence Indulgence was preached only from the beginning of 1517 to 1518, the rise of the religious conflict interfering with its continuance. Schulte has, however, put us in possession of two considerable statements of accounts concerning this period, taken from the archives of the Vatican. That of May 5, 1519, deals with the Papal half of the Indulgence money which flowed in from the various dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Mayence during 1517 and 1518, and was handed over by the house of Fugger. This half amounted to 1643 gulden 45 kreuzer. A like sum was handed over to Albert, as has been proved by Schulte from a document in the State archives at Magdeburg. The other statement of account is dated June 16 of the same year and places the sum total of the money received from the ecclesiastical province of Magdeburg at 5149 gulden, according to which each half amounted to 2574½ gulden. If we assume these sums, viz. 8436 gulden, to have been the gross proceeds of the Indulgence enterprise, and if we take into consideration the charges, comparatively high, for those engaged in the work, then the amount cannot be described as large. Nor would the Archbishop of Mayence have received entire the 4218 gulden constituting his share, as, according to an arrangement made with the Emperor, he had been obliged to make him a yearly payment of 1000 gulden from the net profits. Thus only 3218 gulden would have remained to him. This would have compensated him but poorly for the enormous payments he had made to Rome. As regards the sums mentioned we must bear in mind the vast difference between the value of money then and now; the buying value of money, at a moderate estimate, was then three times greater than to-day. Since the researches undertaken by Schulte, other accounts, not included in the above, concerning the revenues produced by the Indulgence have been discovered, “a proof that an exact estimate of the whole proceeds of the Mayence-Magdeburg Indulgence is as yet out of the question.”[914]

Another fable which owes its origin to the anti-Catholic inventions of the sixteenth century has it that Leo X did not devote the results of the Mayence Indulgence to the building of St. Peter’s, but poured them into the already well-filled coffers of his sister Maddalena, who had married a Cibo. There is no proof for this assertion. Felice Cortelori, the well-known keeper of the Vatican archives, declared, even in his day, that he was unable to find any confirmation of this story, which should therefore be rejected as fabulous, and Schulte, as a result of his own investigations, agrees with him.[915]

Owing to the abuses and the change in public opinion, the amalgamation of spiritual and temporal interests, as it appeared in the Indulgence collections, became untenable in the course of the sixteenth century. The Council of Trent did well, though rather late in the day, in relegating, as far as possible, the system of Indulgences to the spiritual domain, its original and special sphere, that of benefiting souls. But one who knows how to view the movement of the times and the development of the Church’s life from the standpoint of history, will be able to put its true value upon this apparently strange union of the temporal and spiritual in the Indulgence system of the Late Middle Ages, and will give due consideration to the fact, that in those days the spiritual and temporal domains were more closely connected than at any other period. They were thrown into mutual dependence, each supporting the other; that disadvantages as well as benefits resulted, was of course inevitable.

The preaching of Indulgences in accordance with the spirit of the Church, when rightly carried out, might be compared with popular missions of the present day. Besides the less desirable preachers many able and zealous men came forward wherever the cross, or the so-called Vesper-Bild, was erected as a sign of the preaching of the Indulgence. The crowds who streamed together, listened to the admonitions of speakers previously unknown to them and usually belonging to some Order, with more attention than at the ordinary religious services; many were led to a sense of their sins and to amend their life, as they could not receive the Indulgence without an inward change of heart; they were also glad to take advantage of the presence of strange confessors provided with ample faculties, to unburden their consciences by a good confession. The alms seemed little to them in comparison with the spiritual gain. And as hundreds came and experienced a similar spiritual renewal, their very multitude fired them with a common impulse to persevere in what was good. The researches of historians have hitherto been directed too much towards the abuses and outward disorders which accompanied these popular practices, which were for so long a great help to religion. It would be no loss if in future, so far as the special accounts which have been handed down admit, historians were to dwell more on the ordinary and little-noticed good results effected by Indulgences since they were first started.[916]

In the fragment of a lost letter from Nuremberg we find him writing of his journey on October 3-4, 1518, to his Wittenberg friends whom he wishes to encourage to remain steadfast. Faint-hearted people, so he says, had tried to dissuade him from continuing his journey, “but I stand fast; let the Will of the Lord be done; even at Augsburg, even in the midst of His enemies, Christ still reigns ... Christ shall live though Martin and every other sinner perish; the God of my Salvation shall be exalted. Farewell and be steadfast, stand upright because it is necessary either to be rejected by man or by God, but God is true and every man a liar.”[918] He certainly did not treat the matter lightly. To attribute hypocrisy to him, as though he merely played a part, would be to do him an injustice. It is true there are recent writers who look upon him as a mere comedian, but it would be nearer the mark to compare him to John Hus on his journey to the Council of Constance. Like him, he looked forward to death without any inclination to recant. The thought passed through him, he once said later: “Now I must die,” and he pictured to himself “what a shame that would be for his parents.”[919]

The two letters he addressed to Spalatin and Melanchthon a few days after his arrival in Augsburg and before his first examination, gave proof of the strange mystical tendency which also appears in the fragment mentioned above; they show how he overcomes the inward voice which urges him to submit, and also the importunities of his anxious friends; they also show how, even then, he was prepared to take a certain step, should the demands appear to him too great: “I shall assuredly appeal to a General Council.”[920] He admits that he was “wavering between hope and fear” and, in order to stimulate his own courage, he draws a picture in these letters of two of the terrifying qualities of these “Italians” before whose representative (i.e. Cajetan) he is to defend himself.

We must try to place ourselves in his position and to appreciate his prejudices.

In the first place, he relentlessly accuses his adversaries of avarice and greed in everything; unfortunately his knowledge of the Indulgence business had furnished sufficient cause for reproaches and complaints against the Church authorities in that respect.[921] Secondly, he finds fault with the “ignorance” of his opponents, and here he undoubtedly excites himself quite wrongly and unnecessarily over their supposed senseless and one-sided Scholasticism. In his letter to Melanchthon he exclaims, as though to reassure himself: “Italy lies in Egyptian darkness, her animosity to learning and culture is unbounded. So greatly do they misapprehend Christ and all that is Christ’s. And yet these are our teachers and masters in faith and morals. The anger of God is thus fulfilled in us where He says: ‘I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’ Good-bye, my Philip, and turn aside God’s anger by holy prayers.” The supposed want of sympathy with learning and culture of which Luther accuses the Italians in this letter to Philip Melanchthon is surely most untrue, and was no doubt intended to strengthen Melanchthon, the weak and wavering Humanist, in his allegiance to Luther’s party, for Luther, notwithstanding his anxieties, had not lost his cunning. The reproach against Italy and Rome, where at that time Humanism was flourishing as nowhere else, can at most only apply to the stiffness of the old debased Scholasticism, and perhaps to a certain backwardness in biblical studies. Such blemishes afforded him a welcome handle. “I will rather perish,” he assures Melanchthon, the enthusiastic scholar, “than withdraw my true theses and help to destroy learning.” “I go, should it please the Lord, to be sacrificed for you and your young men.”

He still clings to the idea of being one with the Church in his theological views. “If they can prove to me that I have spoken differently from what the Holy Roman Church teaches, I will at once pronounce sentence against myself and beat a retreat, but,” he adds, “there lies the knot.”[922] A knot tied by himself. Strange, indeed, is the method he proposes for cutting it: “If that Cardinal [Cajetan] insists on the private opinions of St. Thomas more strongly than is compatible with the doctrine and authority of the Church, I shall not yield to him until the Church withdraws from her earlier standpoint upon which I have taken up my position.”

How greatly the applause with which he was meeting everywhere worked upon him psychologically, confirming him in his resistance, came out clearly at Augsburg.

It was only on this journey and at Augsburg itself that he became aware what a celebrity his action had made him. He alludes to this in the above-mentioned letter to Melanchthon, where he also reveals a flattering self-complacency: “The only thing that is new and wonderful here is, that the town rings with my name. All want to see the man who, like a new Herostratus, has kindled such a big blaze.”

Duke George of Saxony, so we are told in this new and adorned version of the incident, “had applied to the Vicar-General of the Augustinians, Staupitz, requesting that he would procure for him an honest and learned preacher,” and Staupitz thereupon sent him Luther “with a letter of recommendation in which he described him as a highly gifted young man of proved excellence, both as regards his studies and his moral character.” As a matter of fact, however, it is only known that Luther happened to be in Dresden on July 25, 1518, on his way back from the Heidelberg Chapter. As he usually did, he took advantage of the opportunity afforded him of preaching. Of the letters of Duke George or of Staupitz history knows nothing.

The sermon was delivered in the castle (“in castro”) in the presence of the Court on the aforesaid day, which was a Sunday, and also the Feast of James the Greater.[945] The text was taken from the Gospel for the Feast in which our Saviour says to James and his brother: “Ye know not what ye ask” (Matt. xx. 22). On this text Luther, doubtless in his customary burning words, described “the foolishness of people in their prayers, and what the true object of prayer should be.” This is what he himself tells us.[946] He introduced among other things into the sermon a story about three virgins, which, he says, was “quite theological.” According to another account, he did not lose the opportunity of expressing the ideas which dominated him, namely, that those who listen to the Word of God with an attentive mind are true disciples of Christ, chosen, and predestinated for life everlasting, and that we must overcome “the fear of God”; he no doubt laid particular stress on faith and depreciated good works. It does not seem necessary to assume that there were two different sermons. “The evangelical certainty of Salvation, as against the traditional righteousness by works,” so runs the latest legendary account, “shone forth from his words more plainly than was agreeable to the Duke.”

Duke George was, and remained, a good Catholic. His opinion of Luther’s sermon is characteristic: “I would have given much money not to have heard it,” so he says, “because such discourses make men presumptuous.” This he repeated several times at table with great displeasure. The occasion which gave rise to this remark was that Barbara von Sala, a lady of the Court who was present, praised the sermon as most reassuring, and added that if she could hear such a sermon again she would die with a quiet mind.

At the Court much was said in disparagement of the sermon and the preacher, certain conversations of Luther in the town seeming to have contributed to this. The Prior of the Augustinian monastery at Dresden wrote afterwards to Luther telling him that many found fault with him as unlearned and arrogant, etc., that the sermon in the castle was made the ground for all sorts of reproaches; that it was also said that his story of the three virgins had been directed against three particular ladies at the Court, which surely was not the case. Shortly after, when preparing for the Disputation at Leipzig, Luther must evidently have feared that the Duke was not favourably disposed, for he wrote begging that, if he had displeased him, he would “graciously pardon everything.” The Duke replied that he was not aware of “any displeasure ever conceived by us against you.” Duke George, who was zealous for reform, was much in favour of Luther’s Indulgence theses and, after having come to an understanding with Eck, he sanctioned the Disputation at Leipzig notwithstanding the objections of the Bishop and the theological faculty.[947]

We know some details concerning Luther’s behaviour in the town, and the violent attacks on Thomas of Aquin and Aristotle, to which he gave vent, in the presence of some of the Leipzig theologians, at a dinner in Emser’s house. Luther, as he himself says, there defended the proposition, that “neither Thomas nor all the Thomists put together had understood a single chapter of Aristotle,” undoubtedly an extraordinary statement, yet one which, stripped of its cloak of hyperbole, is quite in Luther’s style. Not a single Thomist, he said on the same occasion, knew what was meant by keeping God’s Commandments.[948] A young Leipzig Master in the ensuing Disputation attacked him fiercely on this score, and declared later that he had stopped his mouth so completely that he was unable to say a word. A Dominican who was standing at the door listening angrily to the attacks upon the great Doctor of his Order, afterwards admitted that he had hardly been able to restrain himself from rushing into the room and spitting in Luther’s face.

This is all that the sources contain regarding Luther’s stay at Dresden. There is no justification for the proceeding of certain Protestant narrators who magnify the so-called “trial sermon,” and utilise Luther’s sojourn to make him utter unique predictions of the future. Other events of those years might with much greater truth be represented as momentous, particularly the Heidelberg Disputation from which Luther was then returning.

The first utterance, so well revealing his low and cowardly standard, Luther is said to have given vent to at Dresden in 1518, telling Emser that if only a Prince would shield him, he would do his worst against the Church. But is Emser here really referring to words spoken by Luther himself? What he actually says is this: “Many people know that one of his Order had often and in divers places been heard to say that if he [Luther] only knew of a Prince who would have backed him, he would give Pope, Bishop and Parsons a fine time of it.”[951] In these words we have accordingly not an utterance of Luther’s own, but merely one of a brother monk. Neither is Dresden given as the place where this was said; on the contrary, the Augustinian referred to was heard to say these words in many different places. What he repeatedly said certainly does not redound to Luther’s credit, neither does it agree with the high-spirited defence of the truth which is generally attributed to him by Protestants. Whether the Augustinian spoke from a thorough knowledge of Luther, and whether what he said really renders words which Luther had spoken, cannot be determined. At any rate, the manner in which Luther acted in order to gain and retain the protection of the Elector, through the intermediary of Spalatin, gives some weight to the words.

The other statement said to have been made by Luther was as follows: “Let the devil do his utmost, the business was not begun for God’s sake and, for His sake, shall not be ended.” This Emser says he actually heard from Luther himself;[952] he tells Luther: “I warned you three times in a fraternal spirit and begged you for God’s sake to spare the poor people to whom you were certainly giving great scandal by this matter, and you at last answered me: ‘Let the devil, etc.’”

It is, however, very doubtful whether Luther would have said so plainly that his cause in the controversy had not been begun, and should not cease, for God’s sake (which is what Emser takes him as meaning). In his reply to Emser Luther declares he had meant something quite different by what he said and we have no right to set aside his explanation. He relates that the words were said to Emser in the Chancery of the castle at Leipzig on the occasion of the Disputation of 1519, but really of the opposite party who wished to do him “harm” by the proposed Disputation; Eck, who had “begun the Disputation,” Emser and the Leipzig theologians had a mind to injure thereby his teaching; “my words applied to them,” “not to myself,” those of “ours who were standing by” are my witnesses;[953] besides, he writes, he would have been “possessed” had he said: “I did not begin this in God’s name”; but, because in saying this he regretted “that the opposite party sought honour rather than the truth,” he said it “with sorrowful words and a sad mind.” Emser nevertheless stood to his version[954] and declared that Luther, far from speaking sadly, had said the words with eyes sparkling with anger; besides, Luther had had no right to say anything of the kind about Emser and the Leipzig theologians, as they had not then set on foot any measures against him.

It is quite likely that Emser gave Luther the threefold warning he speaks of above. But that Luther should have replied to the exhortation “to spare the poor people,” etc., by the strange statement that “the matter had not been begun for God’s sake” is so utterly unlikely that he was probably right in denying it in his reply to Emser.[955] We may safely assume that Emser was a little confused in his recollection of the interview; in his conversation in the castle at Leipzig he may have spoken of Luther’s action generally and of the Disputation in particular, whereupon Luther, thinking only of the Disputation, may well have said: “Let the devil,” etc.; which Emser, in the excitement of the dispute, took to refer to Luther’s action as a whole.

At any rate, Luther’s fear of giving scandal, according to his own letters, was not nearly so great as he makes out in his reply to Emser. Here, in the very passage under discussion, he overwhelms Emser with abuse, a fact which does not awaken confidence in his statements: “That man would indeed be a monster, even worse than Emser himself, who did not heartily grieve to cause annoyance to the poor people.” He calls his opponent a “poisonous, shameless liar,” a “murderer,” who spoke contrary to his own “heart and conscience.” “My great and joyful courage cuts you to the quick”; “Ecks, Emsers, Goats, Wolves and Serpents and such-like senseless and ferocious beasts” would have raved even against Christ Himself. In the same breath he declares, that in his behaviour up to that time “he had never once started a quarrel”; everything unfavourable that had been said of him was based merely on lies, which had been invented about him “these three years” and had become a crying scandal.