Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/112

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
70
Thirty-Five Years of Luther Research

sense he used this word at Worms: — he demands to be convinced through the words of Holy Scriptures or through such conclusions as necessarily must be deducted from what has been stated in Scriptures, before he will retract.

It is by no means certain what Luther's concluding remarks were. The well known word, "Here I stand, I cannot otherwise; God help me! Amen," are only to be found in a few, not especially trustworthy, sources. Lately K. Mueller,60 especially, investigated what the original might have been, after it had already been the object of researches — for instance, by Koestlin, Kolde, Burckhardt, et al. According to Mueller these concluding words consisted very likely in only, "God help me! Amen." These hardly sound as defiant as those formerly accepted, but the main thought in Luther's speech is not these words, but that which precedes them, and of that we are absolutely certain. Thus we see Luther now as the herald of a freedom of conscience conditioned alone by the Word of God, a man who has ushered in a new era.

How Frederick the Wise through masterful silence and delays in decisions protected Luther and how Aleander worked toward the proclamation of the Edict of Worms, can be understood best through the study of Kalkoff,60 although Brieger has also done his share in this direction. Kalkoff has also described the influence exercised upon the events by Capito, and, therefore, by the Archbishop Albrecht. He also has proven that it was none other than the humanist, Herman von der Busche, who was the moving factor in the proclamation of the "Lutherans," through which the attempt was made to counteract the edict on the 20th of April. When the edict, under a questionable date, had been published with the appear-