XXXV
TO POPE LEO X.
Luther’s conciliatory letter to the Pope.
March 3, 1519.
Most Holy Father. Necessity once more compels me, the most unworthy and despicable creature upon earth, to address your Holiness. Therefore, would you, in Christ’s stead, graciously bend your fatherly ear to the petition of me, your poor sheep. The esteemed Herr Karl von Miltitz, your Holiness’s treasurer, has been here, and complained bitterly to the Elector Frederick, in your Holiness’s name, of my insolence towards the Roman Church and your Holiness, and demanded a recantation from me.
When I heard this I felt aggrieved that all my efforts to do honor to the Roman Church had been so misrepresented, and considered foolhardiness and deliberate malice by the Head of the Church.
But what shall I do, most holy father? I am quite at sea, being unable to bear the weight of your Holiness’s wrath or to escape from it. I am asked to recant and withdraw my theses. If by so doing I could accomplish the end desired, I would not hesitate a moment.
But my writings have become far too widely known, and taken root in too many hearts — beyond my highest expectations — now to be summarily withdrawn. Nay, our German nation, with its cultured and learned men, in the bloom of an intellectual reawakening, understands this question so thoroughly that, on this account, I must avoid even the appearance of recantation, much as I honor and esteem the Roman Church in other respects. For such a recantation would only bring it into still worse repute, and make every one speak against it.
It is those, O holy father, who have done the greatest injury to the Church in Germany, and whom I have striven to oppose — those who, by their foolish preaching and their insatiable greed, have brought your name into bad odor, sullying the sanctity of the sacred chair, and making
