The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 589 thieves with the gallows, bandits with the sword, heretics with fire ; why should we not, with far greater propriety, attack with every kind of weapon these very masters of perdition, the cardi- nals and popes." "The die is cast," he writes to a friend; "I despise Rome's wrath as I do her favor ; I will have no recon- ciliation or intercourse with her in all time to come. Let her condemn and burn my writings. I will, if fire can be found, publicly condemn and burn the whole papal law." Luther had gained the support of a German knight named Luther"s and Ulrich von Hutten, who was an ardent enemy of the popes. appeaHothe He and Luther vied with one another during the year 1^20 in German ^ J -J people attacking the Pope and his representatives. They both pos- sessed a fine command of the German language, and they were fired by a common hatred of Rome. Hutten had little or none of Luther's religious fervor, but he was a born fighter and he could not find colors dark enough in which to picture to his coun- trymen the greed of the papal curia, which he described as a vast den, to which everything was dragged which could be filched from the Germans. Of Luther's popular pamphlets, <^he first really famous one Luther's was his Address to the German Nobility, in which he calls upon the'Gernlan the rulers of Germany, especially the knights, to reform the ^o^^^^^y abuses themselves, since he believed that it was vain to wait for the Church to do so. He explains that there are three walls behind which the papacy had been wont to take refuge when any one proposed to remedy its abuses. There was, first, the , claim that the clergy formed a separate class, superior even to the civil rulers, who were not permitted to punish a churchman, no matter how bad he was. Secondly, the Pope claimed to be o^. superior even to the great general assemblies of the Church, called councils, so that even the representatives of the Church itself might not correct him. And, lastly, the Pope assumed the sole right, when questions of belief arose, to interpret with authority the meaning of the Scriptures ; consequently he could not be refuted by arguments from the Bible. Address to l/
