Luther as threat to the papacy

On 31 October 1517 the Augustinian friar (not monk),Footnote ¹ Martin Luther, professor of theology at the small University of Wittenberg, sent a letter to Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, solicitously informing him of the faulty ways in which indulgences were being offered, in his name, in his provinces of Mainz and Magdeburg.Footnote ² Further doubts concerning indulgences, he said, could be seen in the enclosed proposal for a disputation (the Ninety-Five Theses). Luther was not complaining about the simoniacal selling of indulgences, as is often thought.Footnote ³ Rather, he held that they were being ‘oversold’, in the sense of claiming more efficacy for them than they possessed. Specifically, he maintained that they were at most remissions of punishments imposed by popes and other prelates, not of punishments due by God's justice; and therefore they had no effect on easing the pains of souls in purgatory.Footnote ⁴

The views that Luther expressed here obviously gave cause for concern, and Albert immediately brought the matter to the attention of the Roman curia. Rome's first reaction was to try ‘diplomacy’. The pope, Leo x, wrote in February 1518 to the head of the Augustinian friars, Gabriel della Volta of Venice, telling him to intervene, ‘to try to placate the man’. If he acted quickly, the pope believed, it would not be difficult to put out the flame that had just started to burn.Footnote ⁵ But then it was decided to appoint a commission to summon Luther to Rome for trial on suspicion of heresy. The following account deals with this and subsequent events in Augsburg, which historians believe were controlled by two papal briefs addressed to Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, papal legate to the Diet of Augsburg: Postquam ad aures, dated 23 August (1518), and Cum nuper, sent on 11 September. However, Cum nuper, which is edited and translated in Appendix 1 below, was actually sent on 2 November, and so had no effect at all on the proceedings in Germany. However it reveals that an earlier brief was indeed sent in September, with quite different instructions.

Trial in Rome aborted, Luther convicted

The workings of criminal prosecution (using inquisitorial procedure) with regard to Luther were first clarified by Karl Müller in 1903,Footnote ⁶ and expanded upon by Paul KalkoffFootnote ⁷ and Ludwig Pastor.Footnote ⁸ First, the Dominican friar Sylvester Mazzolini, called Prierias from his home town of Prierio, as Master of the Sacred Palace, was given the task of assessing Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, doubtless fulfilling the duty of censor librorum recently assigned to his office.Footnote ⁹ The pope had also given Prierias the special function of ‘inquisitor of the city and world’, as Prierias would later tell Luther, which automatically made him both ordinary and delegated judge over everyone in matters of faith.Footnote ¹⁰ He had previously served as inquisitor for the faith (‘inquisitor haereticae pravitatis’) of Brescia from 1508 and of Milan from 1511; John Tetzel was in fact currently official inquisitor in Germany. The usual concern of such judges at that time was not religious dissent but diabolical sorcery.Footnote ¹¹

Prierias quickly produced and printed his Dialogue on the presumptuous conclusions of Martin Luther on the power of the pope, which began with principles leading to the conclusion that anyone who denied the efficacy of the Roman Church in the matter of indulgences was a heretic.Footnote ¹² In due course, the local fiscal procurator, Mario di Perusco, brought charges against Luther on three heads: (1) suspicion of heresy; (2) undermining church authority; and (3) irreverence towards the keys. The pope responded by appointing a commission, consisting of his auditor general, Bishop Jerome Ghinucci, and Prierias himself, to serve as joint inquisitors (judices et auditores). Around the middle of June they issued a citation to Luther to appear in Rome within sixty days of its reception.Footnote ¹³ The text of the citation has not survived, but we have Luther's characterisations of it in his appeals and elsewhere, telling of Perusco's general charges, the appointment of Ghinucci and Prierias and other details.Footnote ¹⁴

But then something occurred to short-circuit the process and condemn Luther out of hand. He had given a sermon on the subject of excommunication on May 16, which was not immediately published,Footnote ¹⁵ but a biased summary of it by someone in the audience began to circulate. A copy reached the Emperor Maximilian in Augsburg, who was moved to write to the pope on 5 August, urging him to take action against Luther.Footnote ¹⁶

We know what happened in Rome from the brief, Postquam ad aures, which the pope sent to Cardinal Cajetan on 23 August 1518.Footnote ¹⁷ Leo starts with an account of the first proceedings against Luther: when it came to his ears that Friar Martin had made various heretical statements and published conclusions in Germany, in order to correct his rashness, the pope commissioned Bishop Jerome Ghinucci to summon Luther to make response on points of faith; and, as the pope was informed, Ghinucci had issued the citation.Footnote ¹⁸ Leo does not mention Prierias so perhaps he had stepped down from the commission at some point after the citation was sent, leaving Ghinucci as sole judge.

Then, however (the pope continues), it came to his notice that the said Martin, pertinaciously persisting in heresy, had published other conclusions and scandalous pamphlets containing several other heresies and errors, as a result of which ‘the matter is notorious before us both by repute and by permanence of fact [tum ex fama, tum et facti permanentia], and inexcusable’. Ghinucci had accordingly declared him a heretic.Footnote ¹⁹ In summing up this event later, the pope stated that this action followed upon the demand of the fiscal procurator.Footnote ²⁰

The kind of notoriety invoked here was explained by William Durand in his Speculum juris. It needed no trial, and no citation, except to hear the sentence, and it admitted of no appeal.Footnote ²¹ Such a judgement could be very arbitrary, of course, and ran great risk of injustice, especially when, as in this case, there was apparently no effort made to ascertain the ‘fact’ that appeared so obvious to the pope: namely that this new incriminating material was actually by Luther. Later on, when Luther was tried at the Diet of Worms, the first order of business was to obtain from him an acknowledgment that the books in evidence were actually by him.Footnote ²²

As a consequence of Luther's conviction, Cajetan was ordered without delay to ‘force and compel’ Luther to appear before him, resorting to both the ecclesiastical and the secular arm; he was to be held in custody until further instructions for sending him to Rome were received.Footnote ²³ Or, if Luther should appear before the cardinal willingly and repentant, Cajetan was to receive him back into the unity of the Church. However, if he failed to show up and eluded capture, the cardinal was authorised to excommunicate him and his adherents and treat them as heretics.Footnote ²⁴ According to canon law, however, this could occur only after the excommunication had been in place for over a year without being absolved.Footnote ²⁵

Conciliation in Augsburg or safe conduct to Rome

What followed after this has been completely misunderstood, because the next extant brief of Leo to Cajetan, Cum nuper, which was actually sent on 2 November,Footnote ²⁶ was wrongly redated to 11 September by Paul Kalkoff in 1905.Footnote ²⁷ This dating has been accepted by all historians ever since, along with Kalkoff's conclusion that Cajetan was immediately authorised to put Luther on trial in Augsburg. It is also frequently, and mistakenly, asserted that Cum nuper forbade Cajetan to enter into discussion with Luther.Footnote ²⁸

A careful reading of the brief shows that, before it was sent, there had been an exchange of letters, namely new instructions received by Cajetan from the pope, and a reply in return received by the pope from Cajetan, which of course could not have taken place between 23 August and mid-September, given the 600 miles that lay between Rome and Augsburg. A one-way journey usually took a dozen days or more.

Specifically, after reminding Cajetan that he had written to him previously (‘alias’), telling about Luther's conviction and the order for his arrest (the purport of Postquam ad aures, 23 August), the pope says that he told him further to invite Luther to Rome: ‘that you inform him that, if he were willing to excuse himself in these matters and to appear before us, though not meriting an audience, out of our clemency we were prepared, even with a guarantee of protection, to hear him kindly’.Footnote ²⁹

In other words, a less coercive strategy had been hit upon. No longer was he to be treated as a notorious convicted heretic, with the only judicial action remaining being his sentencing. Rather, emphasis was now to be upon the effort to persuade him to withdraw from his extreme positions, and, failing that, he was to be offered free conveyance to Rome, under safe conduct, to make his excuses to the pope in person. These, then, were the instructions under which Cajetan was operating when Luther arrived in Augsburg.

After the cardinal received these orders, Leo reminds him in Cum nuper, Cajetan wrote back to the pope, suggesting that it might be better for him to put Luther on trial in Augsburg.Footnote ³⁰ It was to this suggestion that the pope finally replied on 2 November, much too late, giving him permission to go ahead with the trial.

Some idea of the content of the invitation that was to be offered to Luther can be gleaned from the reference to it in the bull Exsurge Domine, two years later, when the pope falsely claimed that the offer had actually been made, and had been contemptuously rejected by Luther:

Shortly after releasing the bull on 15 June 1520, the pope described the invitation to Rome to Duke George of Saxony:

A consequence of the new strategy was that the conviction of Luther as a notorious heretic (which Luther did not find out about until later, when he saw Postquam ad aures) was voided or suspended, and the citation to Prierias and Ghinucci in Rome was reinstated, with the term for appearance extended, as Cajetan would inform Luther.

When were the instructions about the invitation to Rome sent? Doubtless in the first week or two of September, because by the beginning of October Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the papal secretary of state, expected to have received an acknowledgment of receipt from Cajetan; he wrote on 3 October to inquire whether he had received the dispatch in the matter of Friar Martin that had been sent to him.Footnote ³³ Medici enlarged upon the matter in another letter four days later, on 7 October (which happened to be the very day on which Luther arrived in Augsburg): ‘In the said matter of Friar Martin, Your Lordship should deal with it as you see fit; and, as for the dispatch that was sent to you, you can follow whatever course you judge best; it was decided herein that in notorious and public matters there is no need for any ceremony or citation.’Footnote ³⁴

Cajetan must already have sent a citation to Luther, following the orders of the 23 August brief, Postquam ad aures, overriding the citation to Rome; but, lest he give the game away (that Luther was to be arrested), he would have phrased the summons in such a way as to suggest that the trial was being transferred to Augsburg, with himself as judge-inquisitor. This would have been in keeping with Luther's own desire for a change of venue to Germany, for which he had been lobbying through the Elector Frederick. This is what Luther stated in the appeal to the pope that he composed in Augsburg.Footnote ³⁵

Cajetan's acknowledgement of receiving the instructions from Rome, an acknowledgement that contained his request that he himself try Luther in Augsburg, would therefore have reached Rome only after Medici had sent off his letter of 7 October; and the pope and his advisors would wait until 2 November to reply to the cardinal's request in the affirmative, in Cum nuper, allowing him to pass judgement on Luther.

The instructions about the Rome invitation must have arrived in Augsburg before 25 September, because on that day Cajetan finished the first of a series of quaestiones disputatae contesting propositions of Luther in scholastic format.Footnote ³⁶ In each quaestio, Luther's opinion is first stated and arguments in its favour are listed, followed by arguments against. Then comes Cajetan's response opposing the proposition, along with answers to the original arguments in favour of it.

Discussion in Augsburg interrupted and continued

By 8 October, the cardinal had finished ten of the quaestiones, and on 12 October he and Luther met formally for the first time. Luther expected a straightforward trial. But Cajetan told him that if he did not make a simple revocation, or else did not appear before the two judges, Prierias and Ghinucci, within the (new) term fixed in his citation, the cardinal would be inclined to bind (‘vellet innodare’) him and his supporters with a sentence of excommunication, saying that he was authorised to do so by the Holy See.Footnote ³⁷

When Luther asked him what errors he had committed, as a first response Cajetan singled out the subject of his q uaestio 8 (finished on 7 October), namely, Luther's denial in thesis 58 that indulgences drew on the treasury of Christ's merits; this went counter to Clement vi’s decretal Unigenitus.Footnote ³⁸ Then he cited the subject of q uaestio 2 (finished on 26 September), the explanation that Luther had given of thesis 7 in his Resolutiones, that unless the penitent in confession had faith (that is, believed for certain) in Christ's forgiveness, he would not be forgiven. Cajetan said that this was an error that should be repudiated; for no one going to confession could be certain of receiving grace.Footnote ³⁹

Luther gave a brief reply on the following day, and then, on the next day, 14 October, he returned with a longer written response to the two objections, which the cardinal agreed to send to the pope. But then, after some discussion, Cajetan became exasperated with Luther and curtly ordered him to make a retraction, or else leave his presence and not return. Luther complied: ‘When I heard this and realised that he was firm in his position and would not consider the Scripture passages, and since I had also determined not to retract, I left, with no hope of returning.’Footnote ⁴⁰

This is what Luther says in the Acta, but a clearer picture emerges in the letter that he wrote to George Spalatin at the end of that day (14 October). Cajetan's outburst, Luther claims, came after he had scored a textual point against the cardinal concerning Unigenitus. But after lunch Cajetan summoned John Staupitz and attempted with much flattery to have him convince Luther to recant. It was decided at the end of discussion that Cajetan would present articles for revocation along with statements of correct doctrine, and that is where the case rested; but Luther adds that he does not have confidence in the cardinal.Footnote ⁴¹ He also adds that he has no intention of recanting anything, as would be clear in the appeal that he was preparing.

However, Cajetan himself had hope of a good outcome, as he would later state to the Elector Frederick, and proof of this is that he resumed composing his quaestiones on that very day, 14 October. But this fact (of immediate resumption) has been obscured by the misdating of the first quaestio to two days earlier, 12 October.Footnote ⁴² The correct chronology is:

Invitation to Rome precluded by Luther's abrupt departure

Everything was pre-empted, however, when, after several days of silence on the cardinal's part, Luther left in the middle of the night, on the advice of friends, on hearing of an alleged boast by Cajetan that he had a mandate to put Luther and Staupitz in prison.Footnote ⁴³ He left behind an appeal to the pope, notarised on 16 October, and two letters to Cajetan, dated 17 and 18 October.Footnote ⁴⁴ Luther could have addressed his appeal directly to the pope, as Catherine of Aragon would successfully do a decade later, appealing from Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio to Clement vii (the former Cardinal de’ Medici).Footnote ⁴⁵ Or he could have addressed his appeal to Prierias and Ghinucci for transmission by Cajetan, recusing them as his judges, specifying his other grievances and requesting a formal response, apostoli (‘apostles’), which they would be required to grant, whether dimissorii (granting the appeal) or refutatorii (refusing it). Instead, he chose to describe them as ‘pretensed judges’, acting on the the pope's ‘pretensed commission’ and to adopt instead the course of presenting his appeal to ‘honest persons’, when the pertinent judges were not available; he requested apostoli testimoniales from the notary, which he produced in the form of one or more public instruments. Though he asked for apostoli from ‘anyone who is willing and able to give them’, neither lower nor higher court was obliged to respond.Footnote ⁴⁶ The public posting of the appeal on the door of the Augsburg cathedral on 22 October did not constitute or add to its legal status but only secured publicity for it.

Cajetan summed up his encounters with Luther in a letter to the Elector Frederick written on 25 October. After welcoming Luther in a fatherly way, he says, he told him that he would be questioned according to solid Scripture and the sacred canons, and, if he ‘acknowledged himself’ (that is, admitted his errors) and took precautions about ‘not returning to the vomit’, he would bring the case to a close, on the authority of Pope Leo. He then showed him and paternally explained that his disputations and sermons were against apostolic teaching and contradicted both Scripture and solid church doctrine.Footnote ⁴⁷

After discussions with associates of Luther, Cajetan continues, he hoped all would be well (‘bene sperarem omnia’), but then Luther and his party left, having deceived him. He left behind a letter excusing himself, but did not revoke the evil statements (maledicta) that he had made and scandals that he had inflicted on the Church.Footnote ⁴⁸

Cajetan had obviously not felt the need to raise the possibility of a visit to the pope under safe conduct, because he had become committed to being able to settle matters there at Augsburg. When Luther saw the assertion in Exsurge Domine that he had rejected the offer of a safe journey to Rome, he vehemently denied it, as we will see.

Cum nuper authorises trial

While Cajetan was dealing with Luther in this way in Augsburg, the cardinal's response to the pope's instructions about inviting Luther to Rome would have been the subject of discussion at the papal curia, specifically the alternative proceedings that he proposed: that he himself be empowered to put Luther on trial and to judge him guilty or not guilty there at Augsburg. It finally decided that this was indeed a good suggestion, and, on 2 November, Pope Leo commissioned Cajetan to undertake it:

This brief, Cum nuper, ordering Cajetan to put Luther on trial, would have crossed in the post with the cardinal's account of the fiasco at Augsburg, the content of which can be gathered from Cajetan's letter to Frederick. His final assessment was that, even though Luther had put forth his views (dicta) as matters for disputation, he had asserted them affirmatively in sermons, and reportedly confirmed them in the vernacular tongue.Footnote ⁵⁰ Some of his statements were against the teaching of the Holy See, while others were damnabilia, matters for condemnation. He asked Frederick to send Luther to Rome, or at least exile him from his territories. He should know that he, Cajetan, washed his hands of the matter, and that the case would now be prosecuted in Rome. He had written to the pope and reported Luther's fraudulent behaviour.Footnote ⁵¹

But Cajetan was mistaken about how Rome's would respond. Far from deciding to prosecute the case, the pope and his advisors let the matter fall into abeyance, except for one thing, clarifying the question of indulgences. Leo quickly addressed a bull to Cajetan, Cum postquam, dated 9 November, giving a brief explanation of indulgences, which the cardinal was directed to promulgate widely, to counter statements that had been spoken ‘less correctly’ (‘ea quae minus recte dicta essent’).Footnote ⁵²

At the end of March 1519, misled by Carl Miltitz about Luther's willingness to revoke his statements, Pope Leo sent a conciliatory brief, Summopere nobis placuit, to Luther. In it he said that he now understood what provoked him to write and make statements ‘less correctly’ (using the same phrase, minus recte, that he had used in his bull on indulgences). Leo rejoiced that Luther was now ‘prepared to revoke all in writing’ and ‘to explain his error’ to princes and others. He welcomed him to Rome to make the submission that he feared to make before Cardinal Cajetan.Footnote ⁵³

Condemnation without trial, 1520

It was not until the beginning of the next year, on 9 January 1520, that the case against Luther was re-opened. A commission of theologians appointed on 11 February, led by Cardinals Cajetan and Peter Accolti, which lasted until mid-March, recommended a moderate approach, making ‘a careful distinction between the degrees of objection to be taken to the new doctrines’, disapproving them without condemning Luther himself.Footnote ⁵⁴ Leo rejected this strategy, perhaps under the influence of John Eck, who had recently arrived from Germany. Prierias also participated.Footnote ⁵⁵ Eventually, a rather disorderly list of forty-one objectionable statements made by Luther was agreed upon.Footnote ⁵⁶ It was decided not to summon Luther to trial again, but simply to give him sixty days to recant everything. It was also decided not to explain what was wrong with each statement, as Cajetan wanted, but simply to condemn them all indiscriminately, as Eck proposed, although the main reason for doing so seems to have been that it would have taken too much time to explain the objections. It was resolved to cite Luther's erroneous propositions verbatim, but this resolution was only imperfectly carried out.Footnote ⁵⁷

The result was set forth in a papal bull, Exsurge Domine, issued on 15 June 1520. The pope first says that for some time he has heard of errors, and read some of them with his own eyes (in effect declaring them notorious),Footnote ⁵⁸ which are ‘either heretical, or false, or scandalous, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds’, disseminated by certain frivolous persons in the illustrious nation of Germany.Footnote ⁵⁹ He includes some of them, giving their gist (‘tenor’), and then condemns them again in the same terms.Footnote ⁶⁰ The result of this procedure is that none of these statements is asserted to be actual heresy.Footnote ⁶¹ The pope then announces that many of these errors are to be found in the writings of Martin Luther, and therefore he condemns all of his works that contain them.

Leo goes on to assert that Luther contemptuously rejected the original citation that was sent to him, which, of course, was not true. He then claims that he made every effort to treat him kindly, specifically by inviting him under safe conduct to visit the Roman curia, which he also rejected with contempt.

The pope adds that Luther had remained contumacious and had sustained censures for over a year.Footnote ⁶² In so saying, Leo (or the large committee that authored the text) was claiming to have observed the law with regard to suspects who refused to respond to official citations in matters of faith. The law of contumacy did not apply in Augsburg because the essential element of being excommunicated and remaining so for a year was missing. Here the year-long period was present, but the excommunication was still lacking, despite the claim of Luther's having been under censures.Footnote ⁶³

The bull fails to mention that, far from being contemptuous of the citation to the Roman tribunal, Luther lodged a respectful appeal to the pope himself. Leo ignores this appeal and conflates it with the other appeal that Luther eventually made. ‘What is worse’, Leo charges, ‘on hearing of the citation’, Luther appealed to a future council, in violation of the constitutions of Pius ii and Julius ii, an offence incurring ‘the punishment of heretics’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Therefore, he continues, ‘we could proceed against him as if (tanquam) notoriously suspect in faith, indeed, truly heretical, and move without further citation or delay to his condemnation and conviction, as if a heretic, and to the severity of each and all of the aforementioned punishments and censures’.Footnote ⁶⁵ Again, multiple censures are claimed, all amounting, it seems, to a state of notoriety.

Nevertheless, Luther is given another chance: as yet another concession to him, he is granted a further delay of sixty days, in order that he may return to the Church and be reconciled. If he does not comply, Leo says, he condemns him and his adherents (using the present tense, ‘condemnamus’), declaring them, like arid branches, to have been and to be notorious and pertinacious heretics, to be treated as such. And then all of Luther's writings, even those not containing the aforesaid errors, are to be shunned and burned.Footnote ⁶⁶

Here the pope goes beyond what the law provided for in punishing persons under excommunication for failure to appear in a matter of faith, which was to treat them as ‘as-if heretics’. He pronounces them to be actual heretics, and notorious ones at that. He goes even further against established canon law in applying this designation not only to Luther, but also to his followers. By rights, they should at most have been declared liable to a charge of ‘vehement suspicion of heresy’, in offering support to a heretic.

Luther's reactions

In the first of Luther's written responses to the charges of Exsurge Domine, namely, Against the execrable bull of the Anti Christ, of late October 1520, in addition to mocking the grab-bag characterisation of the offences (he says it is equivalent to saying, ‘Some are heresies, we think, some are errors, some are scandalous, but we don't know which, what kind, or how much’),Footnote ⁶⁷ he indignantly rejects the pope's claim that he had invited him to Rome. He suspects that the real authors of the bull were John Eck and his associates, and he says that the story of the offer of a visit is particularly ridiculous. They claim that, in addition to all the other great considerations that they heaped upon him, they promised him the wherewithal to go to Rome. ‘I know who the maker of this glorious lie is’, Luther says. It is Cardinal Cajetan, who, born and raised to tell lies, now that he is securely back in Rome, pretends that in Augsburg he promised him money to go to Rome, whereas the cardinal himself when he was there was so poor that there was fear he would starve his household to death. However, Luther says, let them send him money now, and he will go. He will turn down the safe conduct, but the money they pay will have to be enough to hire an army, say 20,000 foot-soldiers and 5,000 horse, to protect him in that deadly city.Footnote ⁶⁸

Luther wrote this well after the expiry of the sixty-day period granted to him, and after another several weeks, on 10 December 1520, he responded with a ceremonial burning of Exsurge. The following month, on 3 January 1521, Pope Leo issued the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, announcing that Martin has contemptuously refused to renounce his errors and come to him. ‘And, now that he is declared a heretic’, those ‘who publicly and notoriously follow the pestiferous and heretical sect of the said Martin’ have incurred the penalties listed in Exsurge and are now ‘deservedly to be considered as heretics’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Moreover, since all this is manifest and notorious, and the pope hereby declares it to be so, it is in need of no proof, warning, or citation; he further declares Martin and his followers to have fallen under the censures of excommunication as well as anathema and eternal malediction, and confiscation of all goods and deprivation of honours, and the penalties of lese majesty.Footnote ⁷⁰

What began on a local level in Germany could have been adjudicated locally.Footnote ⁷¹ But, of course, if Luther did not like his treatment there, he would undoubtedly have appealed to the pope. As it was, the matter went to the pope immediately, and he and his advisors vacillated between strategies of persuasion and coercion. Because of a mistaken dating of Leo's brief Cum nuper, the fact that Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg was in a persuasive rather than coercive cycle has been overlooked. It was for this reason that he was preparing detailed debates with Luther. In spite of his initial frustration with Luther's recalcitrance, he became confident that he could win him over. This was doubtless a vain hope, because Luther likewise stated his determination not to concede any of his positions.

However, if Luther had not withdrawn from the ‘tragedy’ that he was forced into in Augsburg,Footnote ⁷² the discussions would doubtless have continued well into November, and, when Cum nuper, sent on 2 November, finally arrived, Cajetan could have turned the proceedings into a formal inquisition. He would naturally have proceeded in the way that he desired the pope to proceed later on in Rome. That is, he wished the erroneous statements to be carefully defined, not simply declared to range between heresy and rashness (with everything together adding up to heresy).

If Luther had actually been tried in Ausgburg and condemned on the errors delineated by Cajetan, and had refused to capitulate, the cardinal might not have been able to discipline him physically, because of the imperial safe conduct that Luther carried, but he could have excommunicated him and imposed other spiritual penalties. Similarly, if Luther had been summoned to Rome in 1520 and tried in proper canonical form, whether in praesentia or in absentia, it would have won the papacy plaudits for equity and due process. As it was, mendaciousness and heavy-handed expediency won the day, and made a dangerous situation much worse than it might otherwise have been.