May 9, 1523.
Translated from the Latin by M. Frick.
To the most illustrious and invincible prince, Lord Henry, King in England and France, Lord in Ireland, our beloved lord and uncle.
1. most noble and invincible king, especially dear lord and uncle, hail, bestow
We are happy to have both in the heavenly and earthly kingdoms, as well as all kinds of services before. Among many other things that arrived to us on the very day when His Serene Highness the Ambassador arrived (but it was April 30), nothing more pleasant and gratifying has come to us.
*) This document is found in Cypriän's "Nützliche Urkunden", Theil II, p. 285.
**This letter, except for Walch's edition, was only available in Latin and was published by Emser at the same time as the letter of King Henry VIII to the Dukes of Saxony reported in No. 75.
res can come to hand, than Your Grace's letter, to our cousins and to us at the same time, partly, because this gave us to recognize that we are still in the memory of that king, who is closely related to us both in lineage and blood (which blood relationship the older it is, The older it is, the more glory it brings to our family), as well as in power, loyalty, steadfastness, reputation, prudence, justice, bravery and all other sciences required in times of war as well as in times of peace, he is not inferior to any of the Christian kings; partly because this letter included such things, which, as they are to be remembered, befit a king who loves Christian harmony: Therefore it is also the duty of princes, who wish to be Christians not only in name but also in deed, to comply with and accept them with the greatest joy. Since we have at all times endeavored to be in the number of such princes, to be considered as such and to remain in it, we have not read through Your Serene Highness's letter aimed at this end without peculiar pleasure.
2. For at first, Your Serene Highness justly complains that the following of the Lutheran doctrine, after a small beginning, has increased to such an extent that through him (Lutherum) not only the pure Christian doctrine is now and then falsified, but also all divine and human ordinances of the ancients, This will undoubtedly lead to the obvious destruction of Christianity, although Luther wants to excuse his rebellious actions with the appearance of evangelical doctrine.
3. Thereafter, Your Serene Highness, according to her truly royal magnanimity, publicly testifies that she does not care about the private disgrace with which he has offended her royal dignity in his writing, which is filled with unreasonable blasphemies; but much more that this audacious man has dared to abstain from the same malicious insults neither against the imperial majesty nor against other German princes, by which boldness he clearly shows that he is dealing with how Christianity may be brought to contempt of the laws and the divine and human ordinances in all states, be disrupted by civil and domestic wars by means of an untamed freedom of the mob, and wear itself out by murder and manslaughter. Therefore be astonished
Your Serenity not a little, if the German princes would see through the fingers of such a great disgrace, with which their nation is occupied.
4 Because this evil also hits us the closest, Your Serene Highness admonishes us as lovingly as seriously that, since the matter can still be helped, we should resist with all our might the damage that is only increasing and has not yet reached the highest level, which would be pleasing to God and beneficial to the Christian Church, and would also bring honor to us and our country.
(5) If we now, as far as we are concerned, answer these points perhaps more circumstantially than the extensive royal proceedings allow, your Royal Highness will hopefully overlook this, both in view of our respect for his royal dignity, with whom we have long wished to converse in writing, and also because of the importance of the matter. For since this trade is of great importance and, we may almost say, connected with general danger, one cannot be so brief about it against such a great king. For as there has been no sect in the Christian religion for several hundred years, which has deceived many learned and honest men under an honorable pretense, and which has crept in much more quickly than one would have thought, and has spread almost in all Christian lands, so there has never been a concern so close to our hearts as how we would like to ward off this very sect, as soon as it became suspicious, and, after it has now and then become prevalent, to put a stop to it.
6. For four years have already passed since we granted Johann Eck, Luther and Carlstadt, as the most distinguished generals at the so unfortunate meeting, permission to engage in a scholarly battle in our university city of Leipzig over certain points of Lutheran doctrine, for no other intention than that, if both sides' arguments were diligently examined, the truth would be brought to light, the quarrels 1) would be settled by a judicial pronouncement of the high schools of Paris and Erfurt, and the disputes that had arisen would be resolved. But because Luther, as the progress 2) of the matter is well known
1) The following is transposed by us. In Walch's old edition, it says: "The disputes of the high schools in Paris and Erfurt were settled by a judicial decision, etc.".
2) xroxsssus is in Latin, but should probably be xro6688U8 or xroAr688U8.
As he had been rejected by the court, did not trust the judgement 1) very much and burned with the desire to confuse everything, he preceded the court's verdict and, before he received the victory, sang songs of triumph in various published writings. And certainly, if it had been in our power, we would never have let the edition of the books he produced afterwards go unpunished to the printers, since we would soon have learned to see what the man was up to in a seditious way and where he would finally fall if he was not opposed. For since he recognized that all honest-minded people wish only this, that some abuses in the church be improved according to the strictness of the old service, he began his tragedy under this guise with great applause of the spectators on the scene of the whole world; But not long after, when he attempted to tear down that which could not be attacked and set in motion without damaging our religion, men of understanding easily perceived that a fox was hidden under the sheep's clothing. Now, however, after this man has gone so far in his outrageous audacity that he has not only attacked people of mediocre standing, who are, however, quite famous for their learning and holiness, with his malicious pen, but has also, which no one would easily have suspected, shot the reins of his blasphemy against the most noble king in England, he has given off clear signs of his insolent nature and malicious disposition.
7 And we cannot express how badly we have spoken of its impudent writing. For as soon as we received news of it, we both forbade by written orders that it should neither be sold nor read in our country, and also imposed a severe prison sentence on the bookseller who first offered it for sale. The more we approved of Your Serene Highness's book, in which she speaks the word of the sacraments introduced in the Christian church against Luther with as serious sayings as dainty words, the more we resented that the defense of truth is paid for and repaid with nothing but blasphemies of the rebellious monk. How far, however, we approved of Your Serenity's writing and how useful we considered it for everyone is clear from the fact that we have translated it from Latin into German and have
1) In Latin: in juäwiurn sentsutia instead of suäivuM.
by book printers in our country. However, we have also learned here that what is generally said is true, that there is no book so bad that one does not have some advantage from it, because since Luther's booklet completely reeks of all kinds of the most outrageous blasphemies, as well as of evil damage, this booklet, because it is nowhere built on solid grounds, clearly shows (as also Your Serene Highness writes) that its author, apart from nonsensical blasphemies, has nothing by which he can protect himself.
8 We cannot fail to praise Your Serene Highness's peculiar prudence and gentleness, as she does not consider it worthy of her royal dignity, nor does she consider it necessary, in order to win the trade, to enter into a new dispute with such a bad man, who has been deprived of the defense of thorough arguments, but who alone is equipped with a malicious tongue. Your Serene Highness is also unaware of the suspicion which, as she writes, she has in her heart of the German princes. For just as Your Serene Highness, according to her innate virtue and royal goodness, magnanimously throws to the winds the blasphemies heaped against Your Royal Highness, but at the same time considers it something unpleasant that the princes of the empire and even the emperor himself should be dragged through by him as those who have broken the peace, so, in turn, the injustice done to Your Highness is just as painful to all noble-minded German princes as if it had been done to them themselves. At least, as far as we are concerned, we consider that all arrows of injustice, which are unleashed against a prince, are not directed against the person of a single prince, but against the status of all princes, 2) indeed, of the entire nobility.
9. Not to mention that we, most noble King, would not wish to suppress the publication of the diatribe altogether, if it were possible for us to do so, this gives us no small relief that, since we are attacked before other princes of the empire in Luther's writings and sermons, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly, we have this in common with the most praiseworthy hero, Emperor Charles, of that name the Fifth, to whose word we consider it an honor to adhere rigidly, and Henry the Eighth, the most powerful king in England, with whom we would rather be scolded than praised by Luther's shameful followers. For the latter, neither with threats nor blasphemies, shall ever bring it so far that we should not proceed to
2) prinoixsm should be: xrinoipurru
to do what a pious and Christian prince is entitled to do. And o that it would not be probable, what your royal highness thinks, that in view of the examples of Muhamed and Hus, one would even have to proceed, that the evil, if one does not prevent the harmful seed soon in the beginning, then, when it has gained the upper hand, cannot be eradicated, But just as the one separated all of Asia and a good part of Europe, and the other separated Bohemia from the church, so also Luther is now first taking over the German peoples, but soon the other Western nations as well, with a new violence introduced by sedition in such a way that one will not be able to drive it out afterwards.
(10) Although we certainly cannot know what other German princes will do about this (we do hope that each one will observe his duty for himself), and this fire has already spread so far that it is said to have seized the minds of the foreigners as well, we do not want to admit that anyone can justifiably complain that we are to blame for not dampening the fire of this evil. For since Luther himself has no dwelling in the lands that are under our rule, 1) but rather flees them far and wide and stays outside my territory, we may not take any action against him. However, we seek to repel the writings of this man, as well as the harmful enemies, from our cities and from our borders in every way and manner, which we do so diligently that, since the German translation of the New Testament (of which Your Serene Highness' letter also reports) recently went out in print against our suspicion, we have brought all the copies of this book, as many as we can, into our country, and therein we have sent them to all the countries of the world, We took back all copies of this book, as many as had been brought into our country and sold in it, for our own money from those who had bought them, because we already had the idea at that time, and the careful reading of the books made it sufficiently clear that Luther had taken upon himself this work of translation merely so that he could turn the whole of the Scriptures, translated for his own benefit, into an affirmation of his teachings by means of such trickery. Because he saw that it would not do for him to confirm his inconsistent and strange opinions with the opinions of the old divine scholars, from whose teachings and life Luther deviates by far, he took it upon himself to abuse the simplicity of the Scriptures, which can sometimes be drawn to a completely strange and contradictory understanding, in such a way.
1) in Latin: (iornicilium HON ündknt instead of kadsat.
(11) What more cunning and clever plan could he have devised to capture the minds of the simple than to deliver the entire New Testament Scripture, which he had interpreted in a new way according to his own opinion and annotated, into the hands of the rabble as a fishing rod hidden among the food? Otherwise he would have persuaded either no one at all, or only the most stupid, that the necessity of good, as well as of evil, depends on God. What doctrine, since even the pagans cannot bear it in their worldly ways, should we Christians, for whom the doctrine of faith shines so brightly, suffer the same from Luther? If we once assume with Luther that everything happens by necessity, then we will learn that all the power of the human mind, all the argument, all the law according to which a reward is awarded to the good and a punishment to the bad 2) is in vain and futile. For as far as we can see, this is the main source of the Lutheran errors; we mean divine providence, which, according to the fatal necessity of some worldly wise men, he wrongly understood, from which the other doctrines flowed as rivulets, namely, that free will is nothing; of the blind reason of men; of the contempt of good works, in short, of the rejection both of all customs and of other human ordinances.
(12) These things, since they are of such a nature that they can reverse the common nature of the whole world, we do not want to say our Germany, and have already been condemned by the worldly wise and Viklefites and rejected by a general curse, you, dearest king, well remember that they should be forbidden with all diligence, or at least kept locked up in the Bohemian mountains. For we would have to be ashamed of ourselves, since our ancestors considered it an honor to ward off the contagious evil of the Viking doctrine from their subjects with all kinds of weapons and even at the risk of their property and lives, if we, who are to follow them in virtue as well as in government, were to let this evil grow again through our negligence. Especially because it is as clear as daylight to believe nothing less than what those boast, that Luther was driven to write by the Spirit of Christ. For what does the spirit of Luther have in common with the spirit of Christ, lest we write harshly against him? Christ everywhere praises gentleness and patience; Luther, however, apart from the fact that he is opposed to irascibility, blasphemy, and such like affectations, does not praise gentleness and patience.
2) In Latin: xlknnm for HOKNN.
The fact that the people of the country let the reins shoot out also sows a seed of unruliness and sedition among the rabble.
Accordingly, Your Highness must not doubt in the least our sincere love for them, nor our diligence in putting a stop to this pernicious mob. For we will make a special effort in accordance with our immense admiration of their virtues and the requirements of the old blood relationship. We will do our utmost to please Your Serene Highness, and with all our strength we will endeavor to diligently provide for everything that either we ourselves, or Your Serene Highness and her equals, deem useful for the tranquility of the Christian Church. And the matter may begin
If the church's will is to run as it will, we at least want to make it so that, if everything turns out to the detriment of the entire church, it will still be recognized that we have not lacked the will, but rather only the ability. Your Royal Highness, Most Sublime. King, be at ease in Jesus Christ, our Savior, who will always keep her free from all harm and protect her in the most perfect honors and comforts. Let us be recommended to her. From our city Quedlinburg the 9th of May in the year after Christ's birth 1523.
Your Royal Highness
George, Duke of Saxony 2c.