Martin Luther

Sixteenth-century magisterial assessments of Martin Luther can be divided into two areas: his person and his teachings. Given the indisputable charisma of the Wittenberg reformer, the rapid escalation of Catholic polemics against him, and the uneven coalescence of official Roman reaction to the events in Saxon Germany between 1517 and 1530, these two aspects are not always neatly divided. Thus the papal bull that sought Luther's recantation and proposed his excommunication, Exsurge Domine (1520), introduced both evaluations while the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent (1545 - 63) produced no explicit reference to Luther personally in their judgments against his theology. Nonetheless, these twin verdicts promoted an initially decisive and later probative locomotion of official Catholic teaching against the professor of Bible from the young University at Wittenberg.

Pope Leo X's bulls of excommunication represent the first explicit magisterial rejection of Luther and his thought. Exsurge Domine (1520) and Decet Romanum Pontificem (1521) respectively declared and condemned him as a heretic. While Pope Adrian VI's instruction to Chieregati in 1522 at Nurnberg is often quoted as a frank admission of the church's need for reform, and thereby construed as tacit toleration of Luther by Leo X's successor, the fact that the bulls of excommunication deserve strict priority is evidenced by Pope Adrian's additional remarks: "What concerns faith is to be believed on account of divine authority and is not to be questioned…" You may add that almost everything in which Luther departs from the consensus is already condemned by various councils. What general councils and the universal Church have approved as matters of faith must not be called into question" (Adrian VI 1969, 124 -125).

Luther's departure from the consensus determined by the curia was typified in his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum ) of 17 October 1517, commonly known as the Ninety-five Theses . Acting according to an evangelical theology that had emerged from his lectures in Bible at Wittenberg since 1513 and reacting to the recent indulgencepreaching of John Tetzel, OP, (1465 - 1519) in Juterborg and Zerbst near Wittenberg, Luther submitted the theses to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1490 - 1545). The archbishop had authorized this preaching to finance curial fees for the multiple episcopal offices that made him the most powerful churchman in the Holy Roman Empire. Intended to begin an academic disputation, Luther's theses, as stated in a companion letter to Albrecht, were to remedy a gross misunderstanding of the Catholic faith among the people that the indulgence-preachers promoted. By that preaching, Luther emoted to Albrecht, "O great God! The souls committed to your care, excellent Father, are thus directed to death" (Luther 1963, 46).

Luther never received an answer directly from Albrecht who had received them on 17 November 1517 and, after consultation with his advisors, mapped a three-pronged circuitous reply. On a local level Albrecht moved to establish a consultation with theologians about substantive issues. Further, he directed the North German bishops who were meeting at Halle to restrain Luther. Finally, after silence from the theological faculty at Mainz and inaction by the German bishops, he directed a dossier to Pope Leo X (1475 - 1521; pope from 11 March 1513) in mid-December for the more authoritative processus inhibitorius . The theological faculty of Mainz had declined an opinion on the increasingly popular theses, writing to Albrecht on December 17 that to debate the extent of papal power was forbidden by canon law .