In Our Time - The Diet of Worms

Episode Date: October 12, 2006

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Diet of Worms, an event that helped trigger the European Reformation. Nestled on a bend of the River Rhine, in the South West corner of Germany, is the City of Worms. It’s one of the oldest cities in central Europe; it still has its early city walls, its 11th century Romanesque cathedral and a 500-year-old printing industry, but in its centre is a statue of the monk, heretic and founder of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. In 1521 Luther came to Worms to explain his attacks on the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the gathered dignitaries of the German lands. What happened at that meeting, called the Diet of Worms, tore countries apart, set nation against nation, felled kings and plunged dynasties into suicidal bouts of infighting. But why did Martin Luther risk execution to go to the Diet, what was at stake for the big players of medieval Europe and how did events at the Diet of Worms irrevocably change the history of Europe? With Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University; David Bagchi, Lecturer in the History of Christian Thought at the University of Hull; Reverend Dr Charlotte Methuen, Lecturer in Reformation History at the University of Oxford.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, nestled on a bend of the river Rhine in the south-west corner of Germany is the city of Worms or Worms. It's one of the oldest cities in central Europe.

It still has its early city walls, its 11th century Romanesque cathedral and a 500-year-old printing industry. But in its centre is a statue of a monk, branded as a heretic, the founder of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. In 1521, Luther came to Worms to explain his attack on the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and the gathered dignitaries of the German lands. What happened at that assembly, called the Diet of Worms, was key to a movement which tour countries apart, set nation against nation, felled kings and plunged dynasties into suicidal bouts of infighting. But why did Martin Luther?

risk execution to go to the diet. What was at stake for the big players of medieval Europe and how did events of the Diet of Worms irrevocably change the history of Europe? With me to discuss the diet of worms of the Reverend Dr. Charlotte Methuen, lecturer in Reformation History at the University of Oxford. David Barci, lecturer in the history of Christian thought at the University of Hull, and Durban McCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. Devin McCulloch, in the spring of 1521,

Martin Luther, who had been excommunicated, answered the summons of his emperor to explain his actions. He left the theology faculty at Wittenberg University of the city of Vorms. Can you tell us why he went and give us some flavour of the journey? Well, happy days for Luther. This was a triumphal progress across the empire. Suddenly he was a celebrity. And people crowded to see him.

A priest touched the hem of his garment as he entered the city of Vorms. And that gives you a flavour of, although the fact that he's a happy, days. They are also dangerous days. He is going up to forms almost in the manner of Christ toward his crucifixion and he made that comparison. This is a journey

on behalf of God and it's a journey to present the case of truth to the emperor at the most august assembly of the empire. Having defied the Pope and called the Pope the Antichrist, which was one thing to do and being excommunicated, he was sort of safe in Saxony

as a theological, professor of theology Why did he go? He went first because he felt he had to. He had to present his message. He went because the emperor had summoned him under a safe conduct. He went because he felt that he had to represent truth for God and perhaps die in the process. A hundred years before, a man who had led a reformation in Bohemia

had also had a safe conduct to a great assembly, an assembly of the church, and had been burnt despite that safe conduct. So Luther realized that this was a tremendously dangerous situation, but he must go. He must leave the security of Saxony and believe that his patron, the elector of Saxony, would keep him safe alongside the emperor. The elector of Saxony, Frederick III,

also called Frederick the Wyes, who plays a big role in this. But why had Luther fallen out so spectacularly with the Pope and given him so. a hiding in the works he'd published. The origin is something which is so central to Christianity that it's the issue about which you have to make a stand. How can you be saved?

Luther called himself back to a theology, a way of thinking about salvation, which said that only God can save us. We cannot do anything for our salvation. The issue was about the indulgences, which were a way of saying to us that we can do something about our salvation. Luther had simply said what he felt any good Catholic Christian should say, that indulgences were a cheat that only God can save us.

There's nothing we can do for our salvation. He'd said that message in public, and it seemed so obvious to him that no one could contradict it. But the Pope and the authorities of the church had told him to shut up. And so the issue for him was salvation. The issue for the authorities was obedience. He had gone on proclaiming that message against constant commands from Rome to be quiet. But the indulgence issue was a very powerful issue for the people and for Luther. Fundamentally, the Pope was saying you can buy salvation if you pay me, the Pope,

in this case to keep building St. Peter's, in some cases to get off fasting in Lent and so on and so forth. The buying of salvation was something about which he was greatly dignified. That's right. And of course, in theory, it was much more complicated than that. The indulgence doesn't buy your salvation. But that's how people thought of it. And that's how the sales campaign which had pushed this particular indulgent had presented it. And Luther was outraged by that. You and I, he felt, and so had Paul before him in the Bible, cannot do anything for our salvation, least of all by it. We are in the hands of God. So the indulgence was an offence against God. So this stirred up, it was both political because he had the German princes on his side who nobody wanted to pay these things, nobody very much wanted to pay these things. So it went straight into the political sphere.

David Bouchy, in 1520, the year before the diet was called, it had been a very momentous year for Luther. He published three short books and got himself excommunicated. What did the books say to take on from Dermott said to cause such offence? Dermott mentioned the central thing, Salvation, but can we go a little bit further? Yes, these are the three treatises of 1520, which strictly speaking appear after the condemnation of the papal bull.

So Luther is digging an even deeper hole for himself and finally buries himself in the eyes of the Pope by burning the papal bull in December. But between June when the bull comes out and December when he burns it, the papal is. Sorry, the papal letter in this case of condemnation. And between those two dates, Luther produces three treatises. The first in June, the address to the Christian nobility of the German nation on the Reformation of the Church, which is exactly what it says. It's an appeal to the Emperor Charles V, the new emperor, the young emperor, which there are many hopes are being set. And Luther also joins in with this idea that this is the man to,

finally to reform the church in Germany. What Luther does, very cleverly, is to combine a traditional criticism of the church, which is of Rome, I should say, which is that it's been abstracting money in very large amounts from German lands. And combines that with a fairly solid theological grounding. So he's bringing together a political protest.

for the first time with a theological basis. The theological basis being that all attempts to reform the church, to get rid of the abuses, which are leading to the flow of money from Germany to Italy, have failed. Because the Pope has surrounded himself with three walls, the first is that only the Pope can summon a council, secondly that only the Pope can interpret the Bible.

And thirdly, most importantly, perhaps, though it was first in his own order, that the church teaches that the laity is a second-class Christian. The two-tier idea that if you're a pope, cardinal, bishop, monk, none, you are automatically saved. If you were a lay person, you had to work for it or pay for it. Yes, to the extent that in some superstitious circles, it was a good idea to, if you were a lay person, to be laid to rest in a coffin in a monk's cowl on the grounds that this would somehow give you a safer passage.

So what about the other trick? What else was in these three short? These three trees? That's the first one. The second one was even more revolutionary. It was a, this was the Babylonian captivity of the church. It was an overarching criticism of the sacramental system of the church.

Luther radically perished. down the number of sacraments of the church from seven to two or maybe three, baptism, Eucharist and perhaps confession. And again, he combines a radical theological critique of the sacraments with criticism of the abuses that the sacramental system has led to. And the next with the final treatise? And the final one, the most ironic of his treatises from December, the freedom of a Christian. where Luther is answering objections to his doctrine, justification by faith alone, and saying there is a place in Christian life for works,

and it's an essential place, but works are not necessary for salvation. So this was obviously radical enough for not only the war, and he was declared a heretic. Yes. But that had to be confirmed by going, by the emperor himself, the new young empire, still in his teams, of the biggest Christian empire

they had ever been, and this was the first diet he'd summoned Charlotte Methuen. What did the Pope think of Luther going, as Dermann said, in such triumphant? Because we'd have to keep this in our minds, that this man was travelling, took him about a month, didn't we?

To travel across from Wittenberg of Orms, and it was a triumphal position. He was received in cities with great dignity. This was a monk. It wasn't a king, an emperor, bishop or anything, and away he went. So what was Pope Leo the 10th, who was trying to raise masses of money

to continue the building? of St. Peters. What did he think about this? I'm not sure we know really exactly what Pope Leo the 10th was thinking about it, but I think what we do know is that his nuncio in Vorms had very mixed feelings

about, or had very mixed motives for wanting Luther to be there and not to be there. On the one hand, the invitation to Luther to come was made, I think, in the Aliander's understanding, and Nuncio's understanding on the grounds that if

Luther came, he would condemn himself out of his own mouth in Vorms. And that was kind of contradicted by the triumphal passage that Luther had. But of course, they didn't know what the triumphal passage was going to look like when he invited Luther to come to Vorms. So from that point of view, I don't think we can't, we can't judge by what they might have been thinking before. Why do you think it was such a triumphal passage? I mean, as that's been said by David, these treatises were quite complicated, theoretically

and so on. This man is in Wittenberg, and yet all through Germany, they are receiving him. They were a triumphal passage. It was used by Dermann to set the scene and by you brought it up again, and I've mentioned it once or twice because you've all said it in your notes and books out and that sort of stuff. How did it spread so fast? This man from a very severe sect, Augustinian Eremites, after all, went through Europe like a conquering hero. Because I think he was touching a real nerve, especially within Germany, a lot of anti-papal feeling within Germany. There was not just worry of concern about indulgencies.

There was huge worry about the fact that German livings, German church livings were being given to Italian princes, that money that German princes, that German secular princes felt ought to be flowing into their coffers, was actually flowing into the coffers of Rome and into the coffers of the church. And so I think there was a real sense

amongst the political elite that things were seriously wrong financially, there was a real sense amongst the lay people that they were being asked to pay for something that they shouldn't have to pay for, a growing sense, that there was something seriously wrong. And one of the reasons that Luther started writing in German, I mean, David didn't say,

but the first and the third treatises in 1520 are written in German. Now, that's quite extraordinary for an academic at the time to be writing in the vernacular. But one of the reasons Luther started to write in German is because his 95 thesis were translated illegally into German without his authorisation. And in 1518 and 1519, he starts to write in German.

And the printing press means that those writings can be spread very rapidly. And the printing press is powerful at... The Protestant's have... The printing press, most flueblets, which are being produced in Germany in the early 16th century, produced by Protestants, by they're not called Protestants yet, but by those who are supporting Luther's cause.

And so it becomes a way of spreading his ideas. And they're spread not just in the written world, there's amazing pictures, cartoons, caricatures of how churches look under, when an indulgence is being preached, which makes the connection

between an indulgence being preached and Jesus going in and turning over the tables in the temple. So he defended the paper. and they thought that if they could get him to Varmes under the new emperor, a new yearn emperor, he would confirm the decision that he was a heretic and he would be burnt. And they thought by coming there, he'd get him to use a, to treat an analogy. I'm sorry about that. But there's one man I want to key in here before you take the thing on. And this is Frederick the Wides, Frederick the 3rd, the elector of Saxony, one of the seven electors who in fact had elected the new emperor, seven of them had.

And he was, Roman Catholic, he was a protector of Luther. He was a great patron, long-term patron of Dura and Kranach the Elder, an enigmatic man. A great collector of relics as well. Yes. So how did, just to cut to the chase, why did he protect Luther as much as he did? Well, I think, I'm not sure that it's specifically protecting Luther at the beginning, but one of the issues that Frederick, for one of the reasons why Frederick agrees to

vote for the emperor for Charles V. Is that he gets Charles V to agree that if he's elected emperor, then he will assure the empire that nobody will be condemned without trial. So this, in a sense, they've got to try Luther because that's been one of the conditions of Charles' election. The election is full of deals. There's also a deal going on in 1519, 19, during the election. during the election, that Luther

will not be tried just by canon lawyers. He must be tried by people who understand the issues. And this is again Frederick, though. And this is again Frederick. What's he nosing in for in this way? Well, Frederick wants to the electors and the princes of the empire to have more power. Right. So is using Luther?

He's using Luther. Yes. Worms is part of the diet of Worms is part of a very long progress of diets which are about reforming the systems of the empire. So it's the culmination of a process which gives more power to the territorial princes, of whom the electors are the most important, because the seven electors elects the emperor. Dermott, can you tell us the diet had been running for several weeks?

He ran from January until about June. No, it ran for, but it had been run for several weeks before Luther came, is what I'm going to say, shall I. It ran in eventually for about six months. Can you give listeners an idea of what business was done? to be conducted over these six months, why it was so important? Well, there is so much business at the time, apart from Luther. And one is the fact that Europe as a whole, apart from the empire, is threatened by the Turks. And there's a constant need to try and raise forces against the Turks.

And they are a real threat. And you might call this a clash of civilizations. It was that Christendom might actually disappear and be overwhelmed by this great empire from the East. So that may have been the thing on most people's mind, certainly on the emperor's mind, because the emperor has a worldwide vision. He's got an empire in America, he's got frontiers to defend his Spain, not just the empire. And a war with France. A war with France.

So there are so many different issues. And yet Luther's issue sort of pushes its way through in this business, the issue of the obedience of one monk to the two great powers of medieval Europe, the Pope and the emperor, already. this monk had defied one of those great powers, the Pope. Now, the great urgent question was, would he defy the emperor as well? Would he stand up to this great universal figure of the medieval world? The great universal figure is 18 or 19 years old, isn't it, the new emperor? Ah, but the office is greater than the man. I know, I'm not running him down.

I'm just saying that it just adds to the occasion for me, that there you have this man of the greatest power in Christendom. He's a teenager. A teenager in the middle, devoutly a son of the church, hugely conscious of his universal role. He was told by his advisers that he may be the culmination of all time. He may be the man who will sort out the world. It will lead it to a new great reformation. Think of the responsibility for a rather serious-minded, rather unimaginative 19-year-old.

But also a 19-year-old who speaks no German. I think that's actually a really important point, that all that Charles is. getting at the diet has to be mediated to those who can communicate with the only German-speaking, some of the princes. And of course he's speaking the language of the hated enemy, French, born and brought up in the low countries. So he speaks French in the diet and everything has to be translated. We've got about 70 or 80 princes at this diet, don't we have different sorts, independent people, from cities in Germany, from principalities, of course, principalities, bishop, archbishops and so on,

with their retinues. we have a massive gathering there and yet we're going to concentrate obviously on Luther here the Turkish issue, the issue of titles of various sorts, this was Charles' chance to give out the deeds to new bishoprics

and that all over. One amazing patronage is going. Not just give out the deeds, I should make the appointment and that's important for Luther because it means that a lot of people with very high church interest are there and it also means that the whole issue about papal interest and whether or not

these high church positions are going to go to the German nobility or to the Italian nobility. They're very high on people's agendas and that's important because I think it means that the anti-papal feeling amongst the princes is quite high. Can I cut though to David, David Archie, to Luther. He turns up what's the line up for and against him in this assembly? Can you give us some, can you manage to encapsulate that? It's not that easy to look back at the people who are there and to put them all into camps for or against,

so it is certainly the case in with some of them. The overall impression, certainly that Catholic observers, such as the nuncio gives, is that there's a great deal of support for Luther. But this is not, I think we've got to be aware this isn't blanket support. There supports some aspects of what. Luther has been saying, but not all. And the revolutionary treatises of 1520 that I mentioned

is the first sign that Luther's influence base is being eroded, because he's going a bit too far for some people. The idea of reform up until this time had been set very firmly within a mould set by Erasmus. That was to get rid of the abuses, but not to challenge any of the doctrinal basis of the church. And, um, I'm a very well. A lot of the deals going on at Forbes were about how one separates out the good stuff in Luther and the bad stuff, condemning the bad stuff, but somehow preserving the truth of what he's saying. David, can you take it? So he goes into this hall. They keep him waiting for most of the day, then towards the end of the day he goes in to be questioned and tried. What happens then? Can we just concentrate on the event now for a few minutes? Well, he's shown here a large pile of his books and asked if he can defend them.

He's confronted by. I mean, all these ambassadors and cardinals and all in front ofine. He goes in in his monks' row, presumably. Yep. Yep. Well, the empress there. Allianne, the Pope's representative, is there to say the elect to the princes. The Archbishop of Trier is there.

The elector of Brandenburg. George of Saxony, who's an interesting person because he's Friedrich's cousin, and he's very for church reform, but he's very anti-Luther. Frederick Barden, who becomes later. So they're all there? They're all there.

So you've got some people there. There's a small group of commission that's been chosen to sort of hear Luther's case, about half of whom are for him and about half of whom are more against him. So coming back to you, Dermann, what happened? Well, there he is, confronted by his books, as a way of showing what a heretic he is,

and he simply admits they're all his. And interrogated by one of his great intellectual opponents, That's Eck, isn't it? Yarn Eck, who he'd had a spat with him. Yes, Leipzig. Yes, and in effect lost, Eck had managed to get him into a corner and made him identify with that bohemian heretic

of a hundred years before Jan Hus. And Luther had had to say, Huss was not all bad. And that's a tantamount to admission of heresy. But the councils could make a mistake, which also put some of the people who were for the conciliate movement for the idea that councils had the authority in the church off Luther.

He gets in late afternoon, April 7, 1521, he's faced by all his books and Vanek. And Vanek says, did you write these books? Do you recant expecting, wanting a yes and a yes? I wrote these books on I recant. He said of which Luther said, I want a day to think about this. Now, why did he say that? I think, because this is such an important moment of his life. He could face death by giving the wrong answer.

Yes, he had written the books. Yes, he stood by them. And now, in effect, he's being asked to say, I was wrong, and I wish to crave mercy from the church. And that's what he's got to think about. Could he say that? And in the end, we find out the following day, he could not say that. So take us to the next day, then, Charlotte, as briefly as you, as is decorous.

Well, they come back in the next day into a bigger hall. The second day is much bigger, a much bigger event. And that's when Luther makes his speech, which has often been characterized or caricatured as, here I stand I can do no other. It's pretty clearly he didn't say that, but the essence is that he said, yes,

I do stand by this. And he expected it. I haven't got it in front of me. It was not honourable and not practical to go against your conscience. But it said, here I stand on previous occasions, hadn't he?

Never mind, that's what we remember it by. He didn't say it, but it's what we knew. He didn't say there, but he said it as brilliant. He does seem to have said God help me. Amen. And that's expanded by one of his later biographers, about 40 years later, into the famous phrase, Here I Stand, I can do no other. But I read in your note, Charlotte, that you said, he'd said, here I stand at previous, in previous debates. No, that wasn't me. Must be somebody else. Let's get on with that. We've got him in the hall and he's doing exactly what I didn't want him to do. Yes, exactly. And exactly what he must have thought would lead to him being burnt.

because he has the expectation from Jan Hus that Jan Hus had not had his safe conduct on it. So he leaves. And then the emperor takes a day to decide what to do. I'm sorry, I'm probably going on a bit too much. I think it's very important. I mean, he addresses this large gathering in a way that Eck and those who were against him

had manoeuvred. him into a position where they thought he could not possibly do this. But he did, he gave a great speech and defence of himself. Can you just give us a flavour of that one of you? David, do you want to do this? Luther's speech. Well, yeah, just the three points he made. Three sorts of books.

Yes, he says there are three types of books that have been presented that I'm being asked to recant. The first are books of Christian instruction and pious devotion, which no Christian could possibly want to, to recant. The second are those which attack the exactions and claims of the Roman

papacy, which it would be dangerous to retract because that would be in effect to defend those same exactions. And the third category book, this is where he gives away little, those written against defenders of the papacy, people like Eck, in fact. And these, perhaps, he says,

I've written with more venom than befits my my calling. But still, he then says, I'm not going to attract them, even so. So that's what he's left with.

He doesn't step back at all. And he's quite clear that he says that if he can be shown to have spoken against scripture by use of scripture, then he's prepared to attract. But unless somebody can show him by use of scripture that he's spoken against scripture, then he stands by it. And what was the reaction then,

that he'd said all this then? And he concluded, and what happened then? Well, the emperor now has to make a decision as to what to do, and Luther has been given a day to decide what to do. He has done it. Now the emperor goes away and waits to make a decision. So we have yet another knight at which the entire estates of Germany wait on one man

to see what the future holds. Will the emperor condemn him alongside the pope? Will the emperor then send him to him to? the flames or will he not? Is the more a further examination of Luther than the emperor decides, the emperor decides what, let's finish the story. I mean, we know the ending but it's nice to be told it.

But the emperor does a very honourable thing but also a very decisive thing. He says two things. One is that Luther is now an outlaw of the empire, empire. He is a heretic. And the other thing he says is that still

Luther's safe conduct will be honored, he will leave the diet without arrest. So it's a very odd situation. Back to Frederick the Weiss who we mentioned earlier in the program, the elector of Saxony at the University of Wittenberg,

in which at the University of Wittenberg, Luther was a pressure of theology. He had an influence there, as I understand it, with the emperor on that matter. Very much so. And the elector is determined that Luther should survive, and that's the pressure on the emperor. And more specifically, there's

there's a promise which the emperor has made to Frederick that Luther will get a hearing by a panel of learned theologians. Does that happen? And this has not happened yet. So what happens after these momentous events in public is a series of meetings that Luther has with a much smaller commission, which has made up very fairly of half pro-Luther and half anti-Luther. and they attempt to get him to recant by disputing with him. The papal party had been very clear that Luther was not going to be allowed to dispute publicly to turn vaughance into another Leipzig and get another public relations victory.

So the disputation was going to carry on behind a lot doors. This goes on for two, three days, but again, Luther does not. retract anything that he's said and the thing fizzles out. And a twist in this strange and momentous event, is that safe passage is granted, but it's just to the outskirts of the city of Worms. And it could need not apply afterwards. So Luther crosses a boundary, a geographical boundary,

and he's kidnapped. People think it's either the emperor or the Pope, but it's Frederick the wise. This is the perfect solution. He is literally kidnapped and taken to a castle and kept there, For 12th, 10 months. The perfect solution, because there is no solution to this. Here's an outlaw.

He ought to be arrested. And instead, he disappears, kidnapped by who knows whom. Well, we know it was Frederick. We know now. But people at the time did not. A vast astonishment in Germany. Where is Luther? And there he is holed up in a castle disguised as Juncker-Yorg.

I'm writing a German New Testament. Living under a staircase. I mean, it really gets better and better, doesn't it? I mean, it's... Due my territory, this. This is, of course, when his constipation comes on, the famous constipation which is supposed to cause the Reformation. It's just being stuck in a castle.

You would, wouldn't you? Well, under a circus. No, but seriously, why, again, that's Frederick the Weiss taking extreme measures to protect him. I'm fascinated. Obviously, Ruther is the main man in this discussion. I'm not going out of horrible for us to use, but there you go. He's been used, it's alive, we can't do anything about it. But Frederick the Wise did all this again.

Why did he do all? protecting himself at this point. How is he doing that? Because one of the provisions, both of the Pope's condemnation and of the edictor forms, the Emperor's proclamation, is that not only Luther as a heretic is now an outlaw, but also anyone who protects him, anyone who gives him succour, anyone who gives him shelter or food.

Now, we know that Luther eventually, and Luther knows eventually he's going to go back into the protection of Frederick the Wise, but this cannot be publicly known. Frederick cannot afford that to be known because otherwise he'd be in contempt of the emperor and of the diet. So Frederick is protecting Luther, certainly, but he's also protecting his own reputation

as a loyal member of the empire. I just find it very strange indeed, why is Frederick doing this? Because he never implemented the Reformation in his life in Saxony. He allowed it to be implemented in certain towns in Saxony. but what is the motive? I just really don't understand what...

Charlotte, you're shaking your head at all. Well, I mean, I think it is very confusing, but I think for Frederick it is partly about territorial independence within Germany. The fact that Frederick, for instance, has not allowed the indulgences to be promulgated in Saxony. That was partly because he wanted to get his own money

from similar practices, but he wouldn't allow that to happen. He wouldn't have the Papal Bull preached in Saxony. This is partly a... about Frederick the Wise being able to determine what happens in his own territory. And that seems to me to be one of the very fundamental results of the Diet of Worms, in fact, is that somehow not in word and not in theory, but in practice,

it has been to come established that a prince has that kind of religious power in his own territory. Let's now talk about the aftermath. One aftermath, I'll slip him now, is that at this castle to which he was taken, and he began to translate the Bible into German, which was a great event, defining event. But did what happened at Wormes play generally in the Empire and what effect did it have on Luther? Kind of a general, an overall view,

so he goes from Worms, he's kidnapped, what does everybody say, what's happened now that people take on board? People have heard him speak. I mean, it's quite clear, for instance, that the person who's going to become the Duke of, of Schlieg-Holstein and later the king of Denmark, is profoundly influenced by what he's heard.

So many people have heard his message. Exactly. Because especially with this second condemnation where he makes this for the second day, where it's a much bigger room, they've packed a lot of people in. So people have heard him speak. There are a lot of merchants as well at Worms.

It's not just a political event. It's also a sort of trade event where people come together to find out what's going on. And so those people take Luther's message out into the empire. So I think it was a profoundly a mission event, we would call it now. But I think there's a much more profound result about this. And it's a great question which haunted Europe over the next century, the next century or so. Resistance or obedience.

What Luther has now done at the Diet of Worms is resist the two great powers of the medieval world, the Pope, now the emperor. And you might say that he's obeying a basic biblical command. It is better to obey God than man. that's a command in the book of acts. That you might say then is Luther's destiny. But over the next few years, he finds that obedience is actually something that God wants as well. When the peasants rebelled in 1525, Luther's reaction was that they had done something profoundly evil

and that they must be suppressed, executed, tortured. And he suddenly realized there's another great biblical command. Abbey the powers that are there because they are ordained of God. Romans chapter 13, verse 1. And you might say that the rest of the Reformation is a struggle between those two great principles. Abbey God rather than man, but obey the powers that God has put there. And Luther, who is not a very logical man, has to battle with that for the rest of his life. And I must say, doesn't make a great success of it.

You must have said that Worms is, in many ways, the high point of Luther's life. And many of the biographers of Luther in the past have stopped there because this is a wonderful position where you have this, unknown monk standing at, withstanding the great powers of the empire. After that, it becomes a much less attractive person. He attacks Erasmus. He loses that support. After Worms, he condemns the peasants, as Dermot said.

Can we stay with the peasants a bit? Yes. You call it the farmers, everyone. You call it the farmers' revolt. I know you're bursting to tell everybody. It's the farmer's brought. So explain why it's farmers. And then let's discuss this idea that these,

people had been inspired by Luther. He was their hero. He was their leader. And they rose up... He was their hero. He wasn't their leader. No, he was that's important. I called them farmers because it's a better translation. They were inspired by him.

And they rose up in rebel and he turned on them. Yeah, exactly. I call them farmers because they're better. I think it's a better translation of the bower than the peasants, which rather makes you think of the sort of the underlings. And these were yeoman farmers. These are people who,

probably quite often own land or have some kind of title to land but they have no political representation whatsoever. It's very, very noticeable that they are not represented at the diet. There's no way that they can have their voice heard. And so these are people with a justifiable political, a political complaint and they find in Luther's message the idea that I can, through reading the Bible myself, can understand my salvation, can understand how I might be in the message.

inspired to discover what God wants for me. They discover in that a message of revolt, of rebellion. And the farmer's uprising, as I tend to call it, supposed to the peasant's war, is partly inspired, no doubt at all, but it's partly inspired by Luther's theology. You see that in their statement. So what was the consequence of his condemnation? What did it do for his reputation? What did it do for their movement?

Well, I'd say huge disappointment. vast disappointment. You can say the Reformation reaches a real crisis in 1525 to 6 because those country people who heard that exciting message suddenly found that in a sense

they've been let down and much of the rest of the story of the Reformation is the way in which either it's going to be a spirited reformation revolution or is it going to be led by magistrates by princes. Luther's point

why he condemned those farmers Charles's absolutely right about that correct. there is that these people have not been ordained by God to rule. They have no right to assert themselves politically. That was their crime against God. And only princes can rebel against other princes. So resistance is a matter of God telling authorised people to rebel. But this isn't very much in contradiction with his idea that priesthood could be bestowed on anyone. If a group of people landed on an island and elected someone in or out of wedlock, he said. But that's, I think, although Luther is trying to say there is no division between ecclesiastical and secular, as far as, as far as your access to salvation is concerned, he still doesn't want to say that ecclesiastical freedom breaks down secular hierarchies. And so, I mean, this whole theory, the theology of order is very, very important for Luther. It's not, it's not just after 1525. It's already there in embryo, I would say, in 1520.

the whole idea that he expands in the freedom of the Christian that if you're a shoemaker, if you're called by God to be a shoemaker, you'll call by God to be the best shoemaker you can be. If you're called by God to be a preacher, you're called by God to be the best preacher you can be, but it doesn't give you better access to salvation. Right. David, you were taking us on the downward track of Luther,

so we've heard Pesley's Rehobald. And after that, yes, I was going to mention, of course, his infamous anti-Jewish writings. That's in 43. Towards the end of his life. Before that, he writes a treatise, which is very much philosemitic.

But as he becomes disillusioned, perhaps, but certainly as he expects the imminent end of the world and expects or expected Jews to convert on mass to Christianity, and it hasn't happened. He gets very frustrated at that. He writes, as I understand it, a violent anti-Semitic book, which was taken up by pushed into print again

by the Nazis, and used extensively that. Yes, that's right. Luther was idolized by the Nazis, not just as a German hero, but also for his, and perhaps particularly, for his anti-Semitic writings.

Luther did not, envisage the concentration camps, but certainly he called for the burning of Jewish homes and businesses. And so he was used as a blueprint for the 1930s. Can we come back to, sorry,

can we come back finally as we're coming towards the end of this program, which is a pity, but there you go. Come back finally to the theological question. What was the big theological shift which then, as it were, underlay so much that happened over the next centuries in various complicated political theological battles, not in the Europe or around the world.

Can you just try to summarize that for us? The one great success in Luther's career is to establish a basic principle about the Western form of Christianity in its Protestant form, and that is justification by faith alone, a technical term. What it means is you and I cannot do anything

for our salvation. God does it all. we are given a gift of faith by God in His Word that is the only route to salvation. That remains at the basis of Protestantism. And it's a great liberating thing because it means you're not caught up in desperately trying to do things for salvation.

It gives you a big problem because you then ask, well, why should I bother being good or perhaps more important, why should I bother not being bad if God is going to do it all for me? And that's a troubling little question for all Protestants. But this remains the principle of Protestant. And it is liberating because it leaves you alone in front of God.

And I think even as Christianity may have been stripped away from much of Western culture, that remains the distinctive product of the Reformation. You and I are individuals in front of our fate. We may call all that fate God. But that is at the center of the achievements of Western civilization over the last 400 years. Final word, Charlotte? No. No, there isn't much time, is it's not fair. Well, I'll just have a flannel a bit.

Well, I thought that was terrific. So that's the flanning I'm going to do. Thank you very much, David McCulloch, David Parchey and Charlotte and Methuen. And next week we'll be talking about early Chinese science and what's called the Needham question. All will be revealed next Thursday. Thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4.

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