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General SummaryMARTIN LUTHER, despite his busy life as professor, preacher, translator of the Bible, and leader of the Reformation, was so voluminous a correspondent that the complete collection of those of his letters which have been preserved fills no less than ten volumes. He could never have imagined that his private letters would sometime see the light of day, else we should not have had in them so frank a revelation of his personality. Luther’s correspondence mirrors the man — his faults and petty weaknesses, as well as his fine spiritual nature, his intrepid will, and his devotion to truth as he saw the truth. Luther had many friends, among them John Lang and George Spalatin, who had been his fellow-students in the University of Erfurt, and Philip Melanchthon. Some of his letters to these men, together with the letters which he addressed to the archbishop of Mayence, Pope Leo X, and the emperor Charles V, present a fascinating account of the early days of the Reformation.
232. To Pope Leo X2
Necessity once more compels me, the most unworthy and despicable creature upon earth, to address your Holiness. Therefore, would you, in Christ’s stead, graciously bend your fatherly ear to the petition of me, your poor sheep. The esteemed Karl von Miltitz, your Holiness’s treasurer, has been here and has complained bitterly to the elector Frederick of my insolence toward the Roman Church and your Holiness, and has demanded a recantation from me.
When I heard this, I felt aggrieved that all my efforts to do honor to the Roman Church had been so misrepresented,
and considered foolhardiness and deliberate malice by the head of the Church.
But what shall I do, most holy father? I am quite at sea, being unable to bear the weight of your Holiness’s wrath or to escape from it. I am asked to recant and withdraw my theses. If by so doing I could accomplish the end desired, I would not hesitate a moment.
But my writings have become far too widely known and have taken root in too many hearts — beyond my highest expectations — now to be summarily withdrawn. Nay, our German nation, with its cultured and learned men, in the bloom of an intellectual reawakening, understands this question so thoroughly that, on this account, I must avoid even the appearance of recantation, much as I honor and esteem the Roman Church in other respects. For such a recantation would only bring it into still worse repute and make every one speak against it.
It is those, O holy father, who have done the greatest injury to the Church in Germany, and whom I have striven to oppose — those who, by their foolish preaching and their insatiable greed, have brought your name into bad odor, sullying the sanctity of the sacred chair and making it an offense. It is those who, in revenge for my having rendered their godless endeavors abortive, accuse me to your Holiness as the originator of their plots. Now, holy father, I declare before God that I have never had the slightest wish to attack the power of the Roman Church or your Holiness in any way, or even to injure it through cunning. Yes, I declare openly that there is nothing in heaven or on earth which can come before the power of this Church, except Jesus Christ alone — Lord over all. Therefore do not believe those malicious slanderers who speak otherwise of Luther. I also gladly promise to let the question of indulgences drop and be silent, if my opponents restrain their boastful, empty talk. In addition, I shall publish a pamphlet exhorting the people to honor the Holy Church, and not ascribe such foolish misdeeds to her, or imitate my own severity, in
which I have gone too far toward her, and by so doing I trust these divisions may be healed. For this one thing I desired, that the Roman Church, our mother, should not be sullied through the greed of strangers, nor the people led into error, being taught to regard love as of less importance than the indulgences. All else, seeing it neither helps nor injures, I regard of less importance.
If I can do anything more in the matter I am willing to do it.1
2 Currie, , No. xxxv.
1 Written from Altenburg, March 3, 1519.
Chicago: Currie, ed., Latters in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 499–500. Original Sources, accessed November 24, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=J7LIDYTR66UGTBT.
MLA: . Latters, edited by Currie, Vol. xxxv, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, pp. 499–500. Original Sources. 24 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=J7LIDYTR66UGTBT.
Harvard: (ed.), Latters. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.499–500. Original Sources, retrieved 24 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=J7LIDYTR66UGTBT.
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