Translated from Latin.
Martin Luther to the Godly Reader.
1 We read Joh. 12, 4. 5. that Judas Ischarioth was displeased when he saw that so much ointment was poured out, which Magdalene lavished on the body of Christ, while he very devoutly pretended that such a great treasure could have been distributed much more holy among the poor. This was, of course, a splendid and admirable appearance of godliness in such a rejected and unworthy man, so that the other apostles, seduced by these splendid words, also believed (but in apostolic simplicity), But later they saw (as John says) that he had been a thief and had lied so sacredly because of stealing, and that it was necessary to take care of the many poor (de ecclesia pauperum curanda).
The Roman pope imitated this more than too eagerly. After he had seen that great treasures were poured out on the body of Christ (that is, his church) by the faithful, even good-hearted Magdalene, that is, the believing souls and Christian princes, in order to maintain the servants of the church and to feed the members of Christ in the misery of this life, so he was seized with the most senseless frenzy to steal and rob, and also began to cry out through all the decrees and writings of his flatterers that he had his purpose in providing for all the churches, that he was commanded to feed the sheep of Christ. Under this pretense, which is not only like that of Ischarioth, but more than angelic, he proceeded to steal the goods of the whole church by this lie.
and to usurp it, although, according to the lies of the devil himself, the father of lies, no more impudent and impure lie under the sun has ever been put forward than that the Roman bishop is the shepherd of the whole Church.
(3) And this lie of Judas was without danger to the apostles, because in ignorance they believed the deceitful words according to the duty of love (which believes everything), and they also would not have wanted to die trusting in his words. But our Roman Ischarioth has so dressed up his lie for us Christians that we would not only be in danger of our salvation if we did not worship it as an article of faith, but that the certain condemnation already existing and decided by a judgement would already have swept us away long ago. And he took pleasure in the credulous and foolish simplicity of the faithful, in which he was free to make fun of them as he pleased with his papal manner of speaking (stilo curiali). For (if you wish) go through the histories and take care whether a page has ever gone out from the court of the pope, yes, two lines (versus) of Christian doctrine or at least of the holy ten commandments, since in the meantime storms and seas have flooded the whole church with decrees and bulls of prebends, bishops' coats of office, dignities and other quite worldly antics without ceasing, without end, without measure.
4. although we have seen, grasped and felt all this for so many centuries, that hard and insolent mouth of the Roman whore nevertheless dares to boast that it wants to feed the sheep of Christ and all the churches, and that it wants to make the sheep and all the churches to be the sheep of Christ.
*This writing was, as Seckendorf (nist. Duttioranismi Inp. I, ssot. 15. ยง 32, p. 41) and Walch (Einleitung zum XVIII. Bande p. 26 report, the edition of the Epitome of Prierias organized by Luther is printed; but the Erlangen edition (oxp. var. arZ. II, 109) says that the same is not found in the Munich copy of the Wittenberg edition. Nor is it included in the Wittenberg collection of Luther's writings, but only in the Latin Jena one of 1556, Dom. I, toi. 72, from which it is taken over into the Erlangen edition (opp. var. arZ. II, 110 ff.). We, like Walch, have omitted the scripture itself and translated Luther's epilogue according to the Jena edition.
twists the word "pasture" with devilish and furious malice to mean that he is free to tyrannize and rage temporally and physically in the affairs of the believers to the ruin of the souls. As if the souls of the faithful were really well fed when they are forced, instead of the pure word of God by which they are nourished to eternal life, to devour the dung, the manure and the unflattering collections of the bulls and decrees of the supremacy, dignity, power and similar tyrannical monstrosities by which the belly of the pope and his food are glorified in this world and raised against God for those who are lost. And, God would that it were only the excrement and filth of the worst of men, and not the incurable poison of serpents and the eggs of basilisks (that I use the word of Isaiah [Cap. 59, 5.]), which kill by the mere sight.
(5) To suffer or even eat this filth would have been a sufficient misery of the human race, but to accept it as an article of faith necessary for salvation, and to trust in it and die as if it were an obedience conducive to life, this is the extreme evil and sign of the last times, of which Paul foretold that they would be very dangerous and horrible. This belongs only to the purple-clothed harlot, the mother of fornication and the abomination of the earth, the spiritual Babel, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of JEsu, which is carried by the scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy. For so he [John] describes the court of the pope, and so indeed is the kingdom of the pope. So great a hell of so great evils has a false bell [explanation] of this word "pasture" been able to introduce into the world, teaching that it must not be understood from the teaching of the gospel, which the Jschariothic popes do not even touch with the tip of their finger, but from the power to rule, and have not shied away from Christ, who by his word forbids ruling in the church [Luc. 22, 25. f.]: You are not to rule like the pagans, but you are not to rule like them.
Shall serve one another, and Peter [1 Ep. 5:3.], "Not as ruling over the people, but become models of the host."
Accordingly, if you compare the Roman Ischarioth with other tyrants in the world who have been, are or can be, you will see that those have been almost only shadows of tyrants, but the tyrannical body itself is the Roman idol. The historians relate whimsical things of the tyranny of Attila, king of the Huns, who called himself the scourge of GOD and the terror of the earth's circle, and of Tamerlan, tyrant of the Scythians, who boasted that he was the wrath of GOD and the desolation of the world. But these were only an image and a game against the Roman court. For they were only a calamity for a short time and, what was best, their raging could be endured with a good and safe conscience and unharmed faith in Christ. But the Roman Attila and Tamerlan, with constant and everlasting rage, devastated the churches of God and not only destroyed goods and bodies, but also suppressed and eradicated the faith in Christ and a good conscience with his very pernicious decrees, by which he was indeed and for too long the supreme terror of the world, the wrath and scourge of God. The former frightened the world with the sword, the faith in Christ remained unharmed: the latter, under the pretense of the name of God, frightened and ruled everything with the lie and forced to worship it as righteousness and truth.
(7) With these evils the man of sin and the child of perdition is not satisfied, nor his anger turned, but still his outstretched hand (as it is written of Antiochus) seeks to rule over two kingdoms and arrogates to himself the rule over the Roman Empire. He seeks this with no less lies. For after the Roman bishop Carl the Great had declared himself Roman emperor by anointing and coronation, admittedly against his will, the following popes, since they had received hope through this example, did not cease throughout the ages to arrogate to themselves the power to confer the imperial throne, which
460 v. L. ii, iis-121, 19. Luther's epilogue to d. Treatise of the Nannis. W. xvm, 251-254. 461
they wanted, and to consider themselves entirely the liege lords, but emperors and kings as their vassals [liegemen]; but they themselves were really and with full right the lords over all lords, the kings of kings, the judges of thrones, as they let themselves be heard through their flatterers.
8. And the effect of error succeeded, through the invented ban, then through lying signs and wonders of Satan, until with the use of every kind of deceit, fraud, artifice, unworthiness and wickedness they robbed the kings of much, and what they could not rob, stole what they could not steal, extorted with ungodly worship and ceremonies, finally even stepping on the necks of the kings themselves and killing them with the sword and devastating the world with murder and war.
There is a letter of a good man, Jakob Meyer, chancellor of Mainz, to the Cardinal Aeneas Sylvius, in which he complains about the tyranny of the pope and his court. But Aeneas Sylvius, as a man who was not only a Welshman, but also a Cardinal, possessed twofold, and indeed tremendously great, courtliness, namely Welsh and Cardinal, and answered his friend so harshly that he claimed it was right and not tyranny, whatever the Pope was raging in Germany, and dared to claim that Germany owed it to the Roman See that it had the Roman Empire, that it had become so civilized from a horrible and barbaric country, that it now flourished so far and wide, since it had formerly been enclosed by narrow borders: in short, he makes Germany almost a creature of the pope; therefore she must be patient and grateful to her Roman plunderer.
(10) This man of Welsh conceit and courtliness believed that the Histories were neither read nor kept by the Germans, since it is sufficiently known from all the Histories that Carl the Great not only received nothing from the Roman bishop, but on the contrary gave him much, so that on the contrary the Roman bishop owed Carl precisely the preservation of his see, since he
Carl returned it to him after he had defended it against the king of the Lombards. For Carl already held Germany, France and Lombardy before the papal coronation. He did not even want to accept the mere title of emperorship as a gift from the pope, but from the emperor at Constantinople, so that he would not owe anything to the pope, but the pope owed him everything.
But this historical truth did not prevent the Roman tyrants from proclaiming themselves with constant frenzy as the bestower of the imperium, so that, if it so happened and the course of time permitted it, they would finally put on the crown themselves, destroy all kings and regain the old Roman empire, and thus transfer to themselves the honor acquired through foreign labor and gain the thing itself for the given title. This is how much wit these worthless wretches think they have.
12. From the number of these people I present you (dear reader) this prophet of Viterbo for reading and also for laughing at, so that you may see what they have aspired to, what they have been crying for, what the monsters of the Roman fief (lernae) have opened their mouths for, what church they have striven to feed, what kingdom of God and what righteousness thereof they have sought, so that when you have seen this, you may learn to despise without danger the lies of the pope which have been spread in the church under Christ's name.
(13) For from this you will understand that the priest, who is entirely a lie and a son of the liar, the devil, must not be believed in a syllable, even if he swears by three hundred gods.
For there is nothing in the court of the pope but to deceive, to lie, to rob, to fornicate, and to be a knave (lupinari, vulpinari - to be wolfish and sinful), which they now call "doing Roman" (Romanari), and that under the name of Christ, that is, with abominable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; therefore his end has now begun to come. Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
462 D Br.-W. 1,356 f. IV. Luther's dispute with Dungersheim. W. XVIII, p8I f. 463