Diet of Worms

In the spring of 1521 the young emperor Charles V held an imperial assembly, or diet, in the Rhineland city of Worms, and it was there that the Wittenberg monk Martin Luther refused before the princes of the Empire to take back his writings. The diet sat from late January to 25 May 1521 and ended with the Edict of Worms, which declared Luther a heretic and an outlaw. It marked the first open break of the Protestant Reformation with the authority of Church and Emperor.

Luther had come to the notice of church authorities after his Ninety-five Theses, written in 1517, were published and spread. In June 1520 Pope Leo X issued the bull Exsurge Domine, which listed 41 alleged errors in Luther's teaching, and in January 1521 Luther was excommunicated. He was then summoned to appear before the diet. His ruler, Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, secured a promise of safe passage to and from the city. The guarantee mattered: a century earlier Jan Hus had been condemned and put to death at Constance in 1415 even though he too had been promised safe conduct.

Luther reached Worms on 16 April 1521. The next afternoon he was brought before the assembly in the bishop's palace, where Johann von Eck, an official of the Archbishop of Trier, spoke for the Emperor. A pile of about 25 books was laid out, and Luther was asked two questions: were they his, and would he retract what they contained? His lawyer, the Wittenberg canon lawyer Jerome Schurff, asked for the titles to be read aloud. Luther asked for time to consider a proper reply and was given until the following afternoon.

On 18 April he returned, confirmed that all the books were his, and gave a longer answer. He sorted his works into three kinds. Some dealt with faith in ways even his opponents accepted, and these he would not reject. Others attacked abuses in the Church and the papacy, and withdrawing them, he argued, would only strengthen tyranny. A third group attacked individuals; he regretted their harsh tone but not their substance. Unless he were shown from Scripture to be wrong, he said, he could not recant. Tradition adds the famous words "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise", though whether he spoke them exactly is uncertain.

Luther was not arrested at Worms, since his safe conduct still held, and he set out for home. Fearing for his life, Frederick arranged a staged ambush on the road and had him carried off to Wartburg Castle, where Luther lived in disguise as a knight from early May 1521 to early March 1522. On 25 May Charles issued the Edict of Worms. It banned Luther's writings, condemned him as a heretic and a public enemy, and placed him under the imperial ban, so that anyone could kill him without penalty.

The diet also dealt with the government of the Empire. Because Charles also ruled Spain and the Netherlands and was often absent, he named deputies, and his younger brother, Archduke Ferdinand, was given charge of the Austrian hereditary lands. Ferdinand would succeed Charles as emperor after his abdications in 1556.

The Edict was never enforced in Germany, where Luther had wide popular support and the protection of several princes. In the Habsburg Netherlands, ruled directly by Charles, it was applied more harshly: two Augustinian monks from Antwerp, Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, would not abjure Luther's teaching and were burned in Brussels on 1 July 1523. Later diets at Nuremberg in 1522 and 1524 tried and failed to carry out the judgement against Luther.

Our 1500 and 1530 maps show the Holy Roman Empire in the years when Luther's challenge spread through its cities and principalities.