Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/242

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drawing up your condemnation are appointed, with a certain number of other persons necessary for giving judgment; the method in which those whose opinions go counter to the Church are treated is shown, and some precedents are given. You are held up to hatred first on account of the Bohemian heresy and your approval of Hussite dogmas; then poets and cultivators of polite literature are accused, my friend Hutten being mentioned by name, some of whose songs on Florentine fraud are cited.* As an additional proof of the immediate peril of the Church, the new and daily increasing study of Latin and Greek is cited. Then the Pope is diligently admonished in this dangerous state of affairs to lose no time, but to force the University of Paris and ours at Erfurt to pro- nounce sentence ; for if he delays, it is said that he will soon lose Thuringia, Meissen and the Mark,* and soon after that, other regions in which the people are embracing with all their heart your "heresy" as Eck calls it. The physician did not remem- ber the rest, and I can't tell you what I don't know, but you can guess that it was something like what went before. As it is no small matter, keep it deep in your mind, but keep it quiet so as not to endanger me and the physician. When next spring I come again into Germany, I can show my contempt for the false apostles who devour us and smite us on the face ; but here I must dissemble. As a reward for his debate, Eck asked to be appointed chief inquisitor over three dioceses, but now he has changed his mind and asks for the parish of Ingolstadt, and in the aforementioned letter he takes the Pope severely to task for not quashing someone else's claim on the parish in favor of himself who has suffered so much for the Church. Salute Carlstadt. In haste. . . .

191. LUTHER TO SPALATIN. Enders, ii. 218. (Wittenberg), November i, 15 19.

Greeting. Please thank Mark Schart,* dear Spalatin, for

^Epifframmata Hutteni ad Crot, Rub. de statu Romano ex urbt missa. Huttgni Opera, ed. Bocking, iii. 278.

rrbe Duchy of MeiMen, around the city of that name, was the core of Duke George *8 dominion of Albertine Saxony; the Mark is Brandenburg. These districts remained Catholic for twenty and sixteen years respectively after the date of this letter.

  • A noble retainer of Frederic the Wise, who granted him fiefs in 1496 in

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