0:00

Thank you for listening to

0:02

The Rest Is History. For

0:04

bonus episodes, early access, ad-free

0:07

listening and access to our

0:09

chat community, sign up at

0:11

restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. Before

0:17

we get back to the show,

0:19

Dominic, you and I are relentless

0:21

perfectionists, are we not? And

0:23

that's why we would like your help in

0:26

trying to make The Rest Is History

0:28

better. Even better, Tom, even better. So

0:30

what we're doing is we are launching

0:32

a colossal survey of our listeners so

0:34

that you can tell us what you

0:36

think of the show. Would you

0:38

like to hear more of Tom's impressions? Would

0:41

you like to hear more episodes about history's greatest

0:43

monkeys? Would you, and

0:45

I imagine you would, would you

0:47

like to hear more episodes about

0:49

British parliamentary politics in the middle

0:51

of the 1970s? And you know

0:53

what your answer to that should

0:55

be. So please go to therestishistory.com/survey

0:57

and let us know. And we

0:59

would also like to know more

1:02

about you, where you're from, how

1:04

you found us, all that kind

1:06

of stuff. So basically

1:08

everything about you, please. Yeah.

1:10

But listen, the survey is actually completely

1:12

anonymous. We love making The Rest Is

1:14

History. We want to keep doing it

1:17

for a long time and we want

1:19

to make sure that we are giving

1:21

you the listeners exactly what,

1:23

well, almost exactly what you want. Yeah.

1:25

We're not going to give you completely

1:27

what you want, but we'll give you

1:29

some of what you want. That is

1:31

absolutely right. So if you could spare

1:33

just five minutes of your time, and

1:35

I promise it won't take any longer

1:37

than that, just head to therestishistory.com/ survey.

1:41

That is therestishistory.com/

1:46

survey. Thank you very much.

2:00

I included my letter when I gathered

2:02

from various reports as well as the hasty

2:04

running of the people that

2:06

the great master of heretics

2:08

was making his entrance. I

2:11

sent one of my people out and he told

2:13

me that about a hundred mounted soldiers had escorted

2:15

him to the gate of the city. Sitting

2:18

in a coach with three comrades, he

2:20

entered the city at ten in the

2:22

morning, surrounded by some eight horsemen and

2:25

found lodgings near his Saxon prince.

2:29

When he left the coach, a priest embraced

2:31

him and touched his habit three times and

2:33

shouted with joy as if he had the

2:35

relic of the greatest saint in his hands.

2:39

I suspect he will soon be said to work

2:41

miracles. This Luther, as

2:43

he climbed from the coach, looked

2:45

around in the circle with his

2:48

demonic eyes and he said, God

2:51

will be with me. And

2:53

he stepped into an inn where

2:55

he was visited by many men, ten

2:58

or twelve of which he ate with. And

3:01

after the meal, all the world

3:03

ran there to see him. So

3:07

Tom, that was Hieronymus Alexander, the papal

3:09

legate, and he was reporting on Martin

3:11

Luther's arrival in the city of Thems,

3:13

which was the city on the banks

3:16

of the Rhine, on the

3:18

16th of April, 1521. The

3:21

funny thing about that passage, I mean, when

3:23

you read it, it's very kind

3:25

of a Pharisee describes the coming

3:27

of Jesus. I mean, the

3:30

twelve people eating with him. It's

3:32

remarkable that Hieronymus Alexander did

3:34

not notice the parallel hanging there in

3:36

the air or maybe he did. Well,

3:38

as we'll find out, Luther gets given

3:40

excellent accommodation in verbs and

3:43

Alexander doesn't. And it

3:45

may be that he's a bit cross about

3:47

the discrepancy in accommodation that's going on. But

3:50

this is one of the great scenes in European history,

3:52

isn't it? And as

3:54

you said yesterday, to English speakers,

3:56

it's always been a cause of amusement, the

3:59

diet of words. So a diet

4:01

is a kind of, it's an assembly

4:03

of the various leaders from across the

4:05

empire who get summoned by the

4:07

emperor himself. But obviously the

4:09

idea of eating worms. I mean we,

4:11

in our chocolate episode, we talked about

4:13

how in the 17th century it was

4:15

recommended that you should add worms to

4:17

chocolate. Gall of eel. Gall of eel.

4:20

Yeah. But worms particularly. And

4:22

more recently, the gravel voiced manager

4:24

of Everton Football Club, Sean Deitch.

4:27

He called a press conference, didn't he? For the

4:29

record, I definitely don't eat worms. He

4:31

did. Our producer Tony told us

4:34

that a great anecdote about him.

4:36

Well, because he was the manager of Burnley

4:38

at the time when he made this. Yeah,

4:40

Tony is a Burnley fan. He said that

4:42

Sean Deitch, a superstitioner, a ritual of his,

4:44

that after every match he stops at McDonald's

4:46

for a coffee. Tony thought

4:48

this was an absolutely extraordinary

4:50

detail, but we didn't greet it

4:52

with the rapture and excitement that he'd just open.

4:55

Yeah, because I mean if he'd stop for, you

4:57

know, coffee and... Oh, load of

4:59

worms, please. Right. That would

5:01

have been interesting. But anyway, listen, let's not

5:03

get sidetracked. So, Tom. Let's just

5:05

put this into context, because last week we

5:08

talked about the rise of Martin

5:10

Luther from obscurity to European celebrity.

5:13

So European fame. This monk

5:15

born in 1483 who either

5:17

does or does not nail

5:20

his attack on indulgences to

5:23

the door of the church in Wittenberg. There's

5:25

then a series of kind

5:27

of confrontations and debates with representatives

5:30

of Catholic orthodoxy, if

5:32

that's not a contradiction to that, where

5:34

he's going further and further and becoming more and

5:36

more radical in his attack

5:39

on the establishment. He

5:41

has gone through, we talked last time,

5:44

he's gone through this almost kind of

5:46

conversion experience, the experience of being born

5:48

again, his reformation moment as it is

5:50

called, where he becomes convinced that

5:54

only through the experience of the Bible

5:56

and through faith alone can

5:58

you achieve salvation. And

6:01

now we are heading for one

6:04

of history's titanic

6:06

confrontations, a great

6:08

showdown. So it's two

6:10

years, as you say in your notes here, so

6:13

it's two years after another showdown we talked

6:15

about which was that between Enan Cortes and

6:18

the Aztec emperor Montezuma outside Tenochtitlan

6:20

on the causeway. This is two years

6:22

later, but arguably this is,

6:24

I mean, it's less dramatic, but

6:27

it's, would you argue it's more important

6:29

or as important maybe? The meeting

6:31

of Cortes and Montezuma is symbolically important

6:34

for what it portends. But I think

6:36

the meeting here, I mean, it really matters what the result

6:38

of it is. And the

6:41

meeting of the old world and the new

6:43

is obviously off the scale in terms of

6:45

the strangeness of it. But there is a

6:47

strangeness here as well, because Luther as well

6:50

as being a condemned heretic, I mean,

6:52

he is also a very humble stock.

6:54

He is from a

6:56

humble mining village, his ancestors are

6:58

peasants. And the emperor Charles

7:01

V is a Habsburg and he is the

7:03

ruler of probably the largest empire of the

7:05

world, you know, certainly European world to see,

7:08

because he's got all these vast European possessions.

7:10

He's the Holy Roman Emperor, he's got Spain,

7:12

he's got the Netherlands, all kinds of stuff.

7:14

But he's also getting this empire

7:17

in the new world. So

7:19

it is an amazing moment. But

7:22

it's also, it really matters in the history

7:24

of the Reformation, because Luther

7:26

by this point is the most famous

7:28

man in Germany. He is

7:31

the star professor at

7:33

the University of Wittenberg. And

7:38

the question now is what is going to be

7:40

done with him. He's been condemned, but

7:42

it seems that the

7:44

mass of German opinion is on his side.

7:47

And more generally, a key figure in the

7:49

politics of the empire is on his side.

7:51

And that is Frederick the

7:53

Wise, the Elector of Saxony. And

7:56

he is the man who was founded Wittenberg

7:58

University, and he doesn't... want to see his

8:01

star professor go, you know, literally go up

8:03

in smoke. And so he is

8:06

the one who negotiates to have Luther's

8:09

case heard not in Rome, where he

8:11

would undoubtedly be condemned

8:13

and burned, but in

8:15

Germany, and to have it heard

8:17

not by the representatives of the

8:19

church itself, but by the Emperor.

8:22

And listeners may be wondering, well, how is

8:25

he able to force this through? And

8:28

the answer is that Frederick is in a very

8:30

strong position. So we talked about

8:32

how he is one of the seven electors. Yeah.

8:34

And Charles, he was elected

8:36

in the summer of 1519, and was elected

8:41

unanimously. And that really, really

8:43

mattered. And Frederick had held his cards close to

8:45

his chest, he hadn't revealed until the last moment

8:47

who he was going to vote for. And

8:49

so, you know, Charles feels in

8:51

his debt. And the

8:54

evidence of this is that money

8:56

starts to flow into Frederick's coffers. I

8:58

mean, whether it's a bribe or not,

9:00

I mean, maybe not, maybe it's kind

9:02

of cast as a repayment or whatever.

9:04

But definitely relations are, you know, are

9:06

being couched in monetary terms. But they've

9:08

also been couched in matrimonial terms. So

9:11

Frederick's nephew has been engaged to

9:13

Charles's sister. And although they never

9:15

actually marry, the fact that they

9:18

are kind of in

9:20

laws for this period, I mean, that

9:22

also matters. And then of course,

9:24

on top of that, there is the geopolitical

9:26

context, which is that the Turks are at

9:29

the gates. And it's Charles's

9:31

responsibility as Emperor to construct

9:34

a united front. And Saxony is very

9:37

rich because of its silver mines. And

9:39

there is that reason as well why Charles doesn't want to

9:42

alienate Frederick. So just on Charles and the election, because I

9:44

think it's nice to have a little bit of context, his

9:47

main opponents in that election, so his

9:49

rivals, everyone thinks he's probably going to

9:51

get it because his grandfather Maximilian had

9:53

been the Emperor and it's kind of

9:55

been a little bit of a Habsburg

9:57

bauble for the last couple of generations.

10:00

But his rivals are Francois, the

10:03

first of France. But

10:05

also our own Henry VIII, Tom. How

10:08

different history might have been. Now, as

10:11

you said, Charles wins a unanimous victory.

10:13

Interestingly, though, we talked last time about

10:15

kind of proto-nationalism. This is an age

10:17

often thought of as being before nationalism,

10:19

but national sentiments do exist. Charles

10:22

wins in the election partly because he says,

10:24

I'm the most German candidate. Well,

10:26

he speaks German to his horse, doesn't he? Right.

10:29

He's a genuinely, really, really interesting figure.

10:31

He's not as well known in Britain

10:34

or the English-speaking world as he is in

10:36

continental Europe, where he's a

10:38

massive, transcendent kind of historical

10:41

figure. So he became, what

10:43

is he? He's 20 when

10:45

he meets Luther. Yeah. He's

10:47

born in 1500. Born in 1500 in Ghent,

10:49

which is now in Belgium, which was then part

10:51

of his kind of Netherlands possessions.

10:54

He's the son of Philip the Fair of

10:56

Burgundy and Joanna the Mad of

10:59

Castile. Crazy name,

11:01

crazy girl. Yes, that's very good. He's

11:03

incredibly well educated. He speaks lots of

11:06

different languages. So the famous saying is

11:08

he speaks Spanish to God, Italian to women, French

11:10

to men, and German to his horse. And

11:13

he has a enormous jaw, famously the

11:15

Hapsburg jaw. And he's

11:18

a very, you know, he's

11:20

intelligent and thoughtful, but he's

11:22

also very introverted, gloomy, suspicious,

11:25

cautious. And

11:27

he's obviously only just come in

11:29

as Holy Roman Emperor. And he

11:32

has this massive disparate role.

11:34

Nightmare situation. He's facing the

11:37

Ottomans. Yeah. But also

11:39

to maintain unity as King of

11:41

Spain, as ruler of the Netherlands

11:43

and Burgundy, as ruler of

11:46

this mad patchwork of the Holy

11:48

Roman... That's a tough, tough job.

11:50

And he can see that the

11:52

schism between people who back Luther

11:54

and people who are loyal to

11:56

the established church, I mean, is

11:58

really threatening. And so he wants to

12:01

somehow try and resolve that while also

12:03

keeping Frederick on board. And so this

12:05

is why he agrees that he will

12:07

summon Luther to hear him at Viernst.

12:09

And so the summons arise from Charles

12:11

in Wittenberg on the 26th of March.

12:14

And Luther is instructed to answer with

12:16

regard to your books and teachings. And

12:18

he is given three weeks to comply.

12:21

And he also, Dominic, receives a

12:23

personal assurance from the emperor of

12:26

safe conduct. And listeners

12:28

to earlier episodes will appreciate

12:30

that this may not be

12:32

entirely reassuring to Luther because

12:35

there is a salutary example

12:37

of a professor accused of

12:39

heresy being summoned by

12:41

the imperial authorities to make a case of

12:43

being given a safe conduct. And that is

12:45

Jan Hus, who goes to

12:47

Constance in 1414 and despite his safe

12:49

conduct ends up being burnt.

12:52

And that's the Bohemian reformer

12:54

or would-be reformer who people

12:56

saw as the sort of

12:58

precursor to Luther. And

13:00

Luther had said he'd been pushed into

13:02

a corner by Johann Eck. And

13:05

he had said, you know, I believe a

13:07

lot of Hus's stuff. So that parallel must

13:09

be hanging over him. Absolutely. And as he's

13:11

going there, he says to a companion, we

13:14

are all Husites and did not realize it.

13:16

So he's now overtly identifying himself with Hus.

13:20

And he'd been a monk, he'd been

13:22

a very devout Catholic, so he would

13:24

have seen Hus as a heretic. He's

13:26

in a monastery where one of the

13:28

figures who condemns Hus is buried by

13:31

the altar. But now,

13:33

essentially, he's totally reversing his understanding

13:35

of history. He's seeing Hus as

13:37

the goodie and he's seeing

13:39

the papacy as the baddie. And

13:42

I think that he is going

13:44

to Verms thinking that he

13:47

might well be burnt. I mean,

13:49

he cannot help but have this lesson from

13:51

history weighing him down. And

13:56

it's incredibly brave of him to do it. You

13:58

Know, it's not a given. The. He

14:00

will get away with this phrase. So

14:02

he leaves Wittenberg and he he has

14:04

his lawyer who is the professor of

14:07

law at Vicksburg hero Nemesis who we've

14:09

already mentioned he's a guy he's always

14:11

trying to kind of slightly stop next.

14:14

Big, quite as forthright. his as

14:16

Lisa tends to be safe and

14:18

they set out and they have

14:20

a see that right conspicuous on

14:22

the road because Charles Sufis has

14:24

sent his herald a title hospice

14:26

term and he leads this wagon

14:28

with Lutherans, chef and various. Other people

14:31

from Pittsburgh and the Herald. he has

14:33

the Imperial Eagle of Germany on his

14:35

sleeves and so every time they go

14:37

on the road and they come into

14:40

town huge excitement because looser is I

14:42

mean he's a massive massive celebrity by

14:44

this point and great fun said Lisa

14:46

because these going through places where he

14:49

was agitated to he arrives in efforts

14:51

were he'd been a student and huge

14:53

party strain for him. He gives a

14:55

sermon and seventy people crowd into the

14:58

church that people are worried it's going

15:00

to collapse. To be like you donate

15:02

turning up with paleo and everyone ah also

15:04

sees than sale come out to hear you

15:06

buy property would happen some I think that

15:08

would happen they were lifesaver the rest is

15:11

history or down a roof be great but

15:13

I think also obviously. It's.

15:15

Nerve wracking as well. Say when he gets

15:17

the ice about which is the fault bug

15:19

that great caso. but it's were Lisa had

15:22

been at school. He. So frustrated

15:24

by panic attacks that he has to be

15:26

bled. My and Lisa blades the devil for

15:29

this they threw is haunted by the sense

15:31

that ones that to persecute him of course

15:33

but you know getting more and more nervous

15:35

and he's just a plate events When said

15:38

that Sector Three. Once. Had

15:40

so twins the city because he's going

15:42

to be condemned so. Very.

15:44

Alarming. Suspect. Like my

15:46

valley. Combat. Say Russia but

15:49

making a stand as make his bambee

15:51

noses probably end in disaster. i

15:54

think luther is more hopeful that he may get

15:56

away with it than the valley i think the

15:58

valley knew that he was doomed by going man

16:00

lisa doesn't think he's doomed. But of course, I

16:02

mean, he has to be aware that death

16:05

may be the result. But you know,

16:07

he kind of summons up his courage and he

16:09

says, we shall enter verbs in spite of the

16:11

gates of hell and the powers of darkness. So

16:14

he's doing what he always does, which is to

16:16

cast himself as the agent of light, and those

16:18

who are opposing him as the agents of the

16:20

devil. Yeah. So we heard from the passage he

16:22

read the account by the papal Leggett that he

16:25

arrives on 16th of April. He's installed in very

16:27

nice rooms near to the bishop's palace where his

16:29

meeting with the emperor will take place. And

16:32

he is summoned to meet chance the fifth

16:34

the following afternoon, April 17. So

16:37

just to paint a picture of Verms, Verms is on the western bank

16:39

of the Rhine in the west of

16:41

Germany. It's what's called an

16:44

imperial free city. So it's

16:46

self governing under the emperor. There

16:48

are stories that Luther is visited by representatives

16:50

of the town's Jewish community, because

16:52

there's a big Jewish population in Verms. Right. And

16:55

there are no Jews in Wittenberg. Right. So they have

16:57

been expelled in the 14th and

16:59

also its population has swelled to many

17:01

times its normal size. I think there

17:03

was something like 14,000 extra

17:06

people there because the

17:08

imperial diet, which is this regular

17:10

assembly of the electors and

17:12

other princes of the empire. Yeah. You

17:14

know, these have been held since the

17:17

ninth century when the empire was part

17:19

of the Frankish kind of world. And

17:22

you can imagine the streets full of hucksters,

17:25

minstrels, tourists,

17:28

you know, big crowds

17:30

and great excitement. Yeah.

17:33

So all the accounts of Luther's appearance

17:35

here emphasize the crowds. So they say that

17:37

when he goes to the meeting on the

17:39

afternoon of the 17th of April, that

17:42

the crowds are so great that he has to

17:44

be taken in by a sideways. So he gets

17:46

led through a garden and in through a side

17:48

door to the meeting and people

17:51

are climbing onto the rooftops to

17:53

see. And you talked

17:56

about how in the introduction, the

17:58

people like inadvertently. is kind

18:00

of conjuring up an image of Christ coming into Jerusalem.

18:03

Luther and Mary are overtly saying that.

18:05

They're overtly comparing these crowds to the

18:07

crowds who come out to see Christ

18:09

on Palm Sunday. Now, of course, that's

18:11

not necessarily a assurance. Yeah, because Jesus

18:13

still ends up being crucified. And

18:16

I think Luther is overwhelmed by it.

18:18

I think he is really, really unsettled.

18:20

So he walks into the chamber, the

18:23

nobility of the Empire are there,

18:25

and they're sumptuously arrayed in jewelry

18:28

and robes and cod pieces and

18:30

everything. Yeah. And Luther has just

18:33

got his plain, simple Cassacon. And

18:35

even though lots of the nobles are shouting

18:38

encouragement to him, it's

18:40

a terrifying, overwhelming experience for him, particularly because

18:42

there at the end of the room, of

18:45

course, is the Emperor himself. And

18:47

there is also a table that

18:49

has a great pile of all

18:51

his various publications. That's

18:53

your nightmare, isn't it? According to a meeting

18:55

of the biggest people in the world. Yeah,

18:57

it is, isn't it? And they're all your

18:59

books. I have to be dissected. Yeah,

19:05

and they look at them disapprovingly and say, have

19:08

you written them? And this is asked both first

19:10

in Latin and then in German. And

19:12

Sheriff, Luther's lawyer says,

19:15

let the titles of the books be read. So,

19:18

Dominic, Seasons in the Sun. I'd

19:21

love that. All that. I'd actually love that, Tom. And

19:25

the whole way through, Luther is supposed to

19:27

only answer yes or no. So this is,

19:29

this interrogation has been structured so that he

19:32

won't have an opportunity to grandstand because everyone

19:35

is aware, his enemies, that he's very,

19:37

very good at this. So the whole

19:39

thing has been structured to ensure that

19:41

he can't start freewheeling. Right. And I

19:43

think he's very upset by this and

19:46

intimidated. So he adopts a

19:48

delaying strategy. You know, he's asked, will you

19:50

recant and revoke your books? And he says

19:52

to this, I don't know. I

19:55

want to have time to think about it. And

19:57

he says, this is the question of faith and the salvation

19:59

of souls. it concerns the defined word

20:01

which we are all bound to reverence, for

20:03

there is nothing greater in heaven or on

20:05

earth." And so he asks for an adjournment

20:07

and this is granted. But Tom,

20:10

this is unbelievable. He's

20:13

gone all this way and there are huge

20:16

crowds. And then

20:18

he goes into this room, you know, it's like something

20:20

from The Lord of the

20:22

Rings or Star Wars or something, people

20:24

in their magnificent robes and just this

20:26

one lone monk. And

20:28

then he gets in and says, I'll come back

20:31

tomorrow. But it

20:33

is a genius tactic. It's theatre,

20:35

right? It's absolute theatre. He is

20:37

brilliant at this PR. What

20:40

chutzpah? To say that

20:42

to the Emperor and to all of these

20:44

electors and princes and counts and whatever they

20:46

are, what extraordinary

20:48

confidence. But also, Dominic, it's

20:52

a kind of silence before

20:55

the Imperial power. And

20:57

who else was silent before the Imperial

20:59

power? When he goes out

21:02

from the hall for his adjournment,

21:05

the crowds out there are

21:07

calling on him to be

21:09

strong, to be brave, not

21:12

to give in. And there are lots

21:15

of them who are openly comparing

21:17

him to Christ before Pilate. I

21:20

think he's consciously making play with

21:22

this, even as he is also

21:24

playing for time. You know, we've

21:26

talked about this again and again and

21:29

again. Luther's genius for the dramatic moment

21:31

that people will remember and talk about

21:33

and mythologize. And on that thing of

21:35

comparing himself to Jesus, or at least

21:38

role-playing as Jesus, this

21:41

is somebody who not long ago was

21:43

having six hour therapy sessions with his

21:45

confessors. He felt unworthy. Does

21:47

he now just feel kind of puffed

21:50

up is maybe too harsh? But no, the Lord

21:52

is with him. He's born again. God

21:54

loves him. Yeah, he's invigorated. He's

21:56

loving this. And he does

21:58

think reenacting the journey of Jesus as it

22:01

were, he thinks it's fine because I'm

22:03

doing the Lord's work. Christ is with him, Christ is

22:05

in his heart. That is his

22:07

state of grace. Right, okay. So he

22:09

goes back the following afternoon, so we're now in

22:11

the 18th of April, and so many people want

22:14

to see this showdown that they've had to move

22:16

it to a bigger hall. And

22:18

even as it is, some of the princes who've come,

22:20

they have to stand. So this is the measure of

22:22

how this is by miles the hottest ticket in town.

22:25

And Luther goes in, and by now

22:27

it's getting dark, the torches

22:29

are burning, the shadows are flickering, and

22:32

he is asked the same question, will you

22:34

recant and revoke your books? And Luther replies,

22:36

rather as he had done to Khad Haddad,

22:38

the cardinal who we talked about in the

22:40

previous episode, that he will, if it can

22:43

be shown from scripture, that

22:45

they contain errors. But

22:47

otherwise he won't. And

22:51

he says, you know, these books, the things

22:53

I have to say, look at the stir they

22:55

have created here in the

22:57

city, across the empire.

23:00

And I'm not going to

23:02

apologize for this, because basically, the

23:04

excitement that my books have created is

23:06

proving the truth of what they say.

23:08

And he says,

23:10

to see excitement and dissension arise because of

23:13

the word of God is to me clearly

23:15

the most joyful aspect of all in these

23:17

matters. So he's turning on its head, the

23:20

charge of his enemies that he is creating

23:22

public unrest and saying, well, yes, the public

23:24

unrest is the proof of the value of

23:26

what I'm doing. Right. Clever. For this is

23:28

the way the opportunity and the result of

23:31

the word of God, just as Christ said,

23:33

I have not come to bring peace but

23:35

a sword. And whenever a Christian leader starts

23:37

saying that, it was

23:39

slightly nerve wracking. But the thing

23:41

with the the Inquisitor, so the Inquisitor

23:43

says to him, doesn't he? Luther says,

23:46

you know, basically, to make me recant, you'd have to

23:48

prove in the Bible. I mean, it's just the

23:51

Bible or nothing for me. Yeah. But even at

23:53

this point, the Inquisitor, who's a guy slightly confusingly,

23:55

he's called Johann X. So he has the same

23:57

name as a previous Johann X we had waves

23:59

of X. But he's a different man. And

24:02

Johann Eck says, you know, all heretics

24:04

go on about the Bible. I

24:06

mean, he makes this point. He says, you're talking about

24:08

Scripture, but that's what all heretics do. That's

24:11

why you need the church as

24:13

the institution to explain what the

24:15

Bible means, because otherwise it's too

24:17

ambiguous and it's too unclear. And

24:19

that issue, that conflict between the

24:21

two, I mean, that runs through hundreds of

24:24

years of not just Protestant

24:26

versus Catholic, but kind of Western civilization.

24:29

So individual conscience versus the institution. Yeah,

24:31

absolutely. Because Luther is taking for granted

24:33

that the Spirit is speaking through him,

24:35

that his understanding of the Word is

24:38

self-evidently the truth, and that if everyone

24:40

shares in his experience, they will understand

24:42

the Word of God exactly as he

24:44

does. And that is his position. And

24:47

this is what gives him the

24:49

strength to face down the Inquisitor.

24:52

And when the Inquisitor accuses him of

24:54

kind of basically playing scholastic games, playing

24:57

the kind of the university lecture, trying

24:59

to wriggle out of situations with fine

25:01

sounding sophistry, Luther

25:03

makes this ringing statement. He

25:06

fixes his Inquisitor with

25:09

his gaze. He looks

25:12

around him. He says

25:14

that he scorns all the pretensions of popes

25:16

and councils and inquisitors, because he is bound

25:18

only by the understanding of Scripture that has

25:21

been revealed to him by the Spirit. And

25:23

he says, my conscience is captive to the

25:25

Word of God. And that word, conscience, again,

25:27

which he keeps emphasizing, I cannot and I

25:30

will not retract anything, since it is neither

25:32

safe nor right to go against conscience. And

25:35

according to the transcript of the interrogation,

25:37

this is where he stops. This is

25:39

his final statement. But according

25:42

to the transcript that in due course

25:44

will be released by his supporters in

25:46

Bittenberg, he then goes on to utter

25:48

a ringing phrase that will

25:50

probably be the most famous thing he ever says.

25:53

I cannot do otherwise. Here

25:55

I stand. Here, stay, IH. And

25:59

this phrase will... ring across

26:01

the Empire and indeed dominate down the

26:03

centuries. Oh, brilliant. And so basically his

26:06

enemies have handed literally exactly what they

26:08

didn't want to do, which is a

26:10

chance to make his case in front

26:12

of the Emperor himself, the

26:15

simple monk opposed by all the panoply

26:17

and power of the Emperor of the

26:19

Church. And

26:23

it's an amazing moment. Tom, that moment, by the

26:25

way, that phrase, here I stand, I can do

26:27

no other or have you translate it. Dyrdman

26:30

McCulloch in his book on the Reformation says that's

26:32

the motto, not just of the Reformation, but

26:35

of all modern Western civilization.

26:37

Yeah, living my truth. Yeah, that's what it

26:39

is, right? Exactly. Yeah.

26:42

And that's why it reverberates. That's why it has the influence

26:45

it does. And it means that Luther

26:47

rather than the Emperor is center stage

26:49

in the way that people understand this

26:51

confrontation. But two days

26:53

after he's heard Luther make the statement,

26:56

Charles V writes his reply. And he

26:58

says that he is staying true to

27:00

the example set by his predecessors as

27:02

Emperor. He will always be a defender

27:04

of the King of faith, of

27:07

its rituals and its decrees and its

27:09

ordinances and its customs and so on.

27:12

And so he confirms Luther's excommunication.

27:14

Nevertheless, he is a man of

27:16

his word. He had given Luther

27:19

safe passage. And so he

27:21

will hold to that. But Luther has three weeks.

27:23

And after that, he will be arrested

27:25

and liquidated. And that is the word

27:27

that he used. Right. I think

27:30

that's fair Tom. I think it reflects well on Charles V. And

27:34

the diet carries on. And on the

27:36

26th of May, so this is the day after the

27:38

diet ends, Charles issues the

27:40

edict of firms, which is that no

27:42

one is to offer Luther shelter or

27:44

food and no one is to buy

27:46

or read or purchase or print his

27:49

work. Right. And

27:52

a pamphlet is published shortly after

27:54

this that kind of sweeps like

27:56

wildfire by Luther supporters saying that

27:58

the inquisitors in had gathered

28:00

up all Luther's books and burnt them, but

28:03

on the top there was an image

28:05

of Luther and that this didn't burn.

28:08

Oh, that definitely happened. That

28:10

definitely happened. And you remember in the passage you

28:12

read, the papal legate saying people will be calling

28:15

him a saint soon. I mean the paradox is

28:17

that all this kind of miraculous stuff of images

28:19

not burning. I mean this is

28:22

very pre-Reformation, it's

28:24

saying. But also, Dominic, just

28:27

to reiterate a point that you made

28:29

earlier about how really the

28:31

question is, how does Luther know that what

28:33

he's saying is right? Because

28:37

what Charles V says in his

28:39

response is that he doesn't

28:41

pretend to deep theological knowledge. He's

28:43

not a professor of theology and the

28:45

Bible as Luther is. But

28:48

he doesn't understand how a single monk

28:51

could be correct in an opinion, as Charles puts

28:53

it, according to which all of Christianity will be

28:55

and will always have been in error, both in

28:57

the past thousand years and even more in the

28:59

present. I mean that's such a fair point, right?

29:01

Because Charles V could reasonably say, listen,

29:04

fellow, Christianity is what the Christian

29:07

church says it is. End of story. Yeah,

29:09

right. So if the whole Christian church

29:11

says, this is Christianity and you say, no, it isn't,

29:14

it's something else, you're by

29:16

definition wrong because the church decides.

29:18

Yeah. And Dominic, what's

29:20

interesting is that there is a humanist

29:23

scholar called Johann Kocles, who is in

29:25

Vyrms and he's come sympathetic to Luther

29:28

and he's worrying about this. He wants

29:30

to know kind of what Luther thinks.

29:32

So on the 24th of April, while

29:34

Luther is still in Vyrms, he gets

29:36

himself invited to dinner in Luther's rooms

29:39

and he finds himself sitting between Luther

29:41

and Frederick the Wise, the Elector, who's

29:43

there as well. And

29:45

he presses Luther on this point and

29:47

Luther doesn't really give him

29:49

convincing answers. And so Luther, after dinner, goes

29:51

back to his quarters and Kocles follows him.

29:53

So it's exactly the kind of behavior that

29:56

you really don't want. So that's how I

29:58

expect theologians to behave, to be fair. But

30:00

Luther allows Cauclaius in. Cauclaius pulls back his cloak

30:02

and shows that he doesn't have a sword or

30:05

anything. And Cauclaius keeps pressing him and saying,

30:07

you know, how do you know that your interpretation

30:09

of Scripture is right? Surely everyone will have different

30:12

interpretations. And Luther's answer is that the meaning

30:14

of God's Word is plain. If the Spirit

30:16

illumines you, then you will

30:19

know. You'll get it right. Tom, I'm sorry.

30:21

This is such obvious tosh. Okay,

30:24

well, Cauclaius is with you. He agrees. And

30:26

the argument between them becomes so intense that

30:28

the two of them fall out irrevocably. And

30:30

Cauclaius, from being an admirer of Luther, becomes

30:33

one of his most inveterate enemies.

30:35

And the accounts that he will

30:37

write of Luther are so abusive

30:39

and so popular with Luther's enemies

30:41

that they will influence how Catholics

30:43

see Luther for centuries and

30:45

centuries to come. Yeah. But

30:48

I agree, he has kind of zoomed in

30:50

on what, as events will show, is

30:52

the big issue for Luther and

30:54

indeed for the entire Reformation. And

30:57

really, in a way, this is the

30:59

high point of the identification of Luther

31:01

with a single Reformation. Up

31:04

until this point, he has

31:06

been like kind of Elvis or someone. He

31:08

is the dominant figure. I can't believe you

31:10

compared with Elvis. I mean, right.

31:13

So Elvis is the king,

31:15

the king. He dominates the world of rock and

31:17

roll. And then of course, he gets drafted. And

31:20

he vanishes from the scene. And something

31:22

rather similar to that happens to Luther because

31:25

he has this three-week period of grace before

31:27

the agents of the emperor will arrest him.

31:29

He's heading back to Wittenberg and

31:31

he's leaving firms. He's a hero and

31:33

he's an outlaw, even

31:36

more famous than he had been

31:38

before the Diet. The star of

31:40

countless pamphlets, spreading news

31:42

of his great confrontation with the

31:44

emperor across the whole of the

31:46

German-speaking world and beyond. And

31:49

then comes this extraordinary twist. He's

31:51

halfway back to Wittenberg, going through

31:53

Serengia, through a ravine, when suddenly

31:55

he gets ambushed. A posse of

31:57

horsemen. Confront him. They've got...

32:00

They point them at Luther

32:02

and his companions and

32:04

they abduct Luther and two of the

32:06

people who are travelling with Luther. Put

32:09

them onto their horses, gallop away, the

32:12

hoofbeats fade, nothing less but

32:14

dust. And there is no

32:17

clue as to who has taken

32:19

Luther, where he has

32:21

gone, what his fate is. And

32:24

it is the case that the

32:27

most famous man in Europe has

32:30

vanished from the face of the earth. What

32:33

an unbelievable cliffhanger, Tom.

32:36

Such exciting scenes. But

32:39

the good news for the listeners is they just need to

32:41

return after the break and they'll find out what has happened

32:43

to Martin Luther. Welcome

32:53

back to the Rest is History. We

32:55

ended the first half with an extraordinary

32:57

cliffhanger, Tom. Memi

32:59

Crossbows riding off into

33:01

the dust with Luther, kidnapped. Who

33:04

has taken him and why? Well,

33:07

Dominic, he's been abducted by agents of

33:09

Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony,

33:12

and they have taken him to a

33:14

place that Luther knows very well. It's

33:16

Eisenach where he had been to school

33:18

and specifically to the Wartburg, the great

33:20

castle that broods over the town. And

33:23

he's taken there and he gets disguised as a

33:25

knight. So he takes off his

33:27

cassock, he even gets to wear a codpiece. So

33:30

an amazing transformation. He grows his hair

33:32

out, so the tonsier goes, grows a

33:34

beard. And he

33:36

looks like a knight. So he's

33:39

called Juncker Georg, Juncker George,

33:42

Knight George by his keepers. And

33:44

he doesn't make a very convincing knight. He occasionally

33:46

gets taken out hunting and he falls off his

33:48

horse and he sobs over the hair. There's

33:51

occasionally where he picks up a hair and shelters it in

33:53

his cloak and the dogs just reek up and kind of

33:55

grab the hair and chew it to pieces. But he is

33:57

allowed out. He's not just locked up completely. out

34:00

but under very close supervision. Most of

34:02

the time he's kept in the castle

34:04

because obviously Frederick doesn't want the Emperor

34:06

to know that he is responsible

34:08

for looking after a condemned heretic.

34:10

So most of the time Luther

34:13

is stuck in his room which

34:15

is very small, has a high

34:17

ceiling, very plain furniture and

34:19

he's plunged into kind of gloomy introspection and

34:21

we know... He loves that. ...from his time

34:23

as a monk that he's a great man

34:25

for gloomy and he needs a bit of

34:27

better help, really what he needs. He totally

34:29

does. And so as is

34:31

always the case when he's unhappy, what

34:34

does he start obsessing about? No,

34:36

Tom, amaze me. He starts obsessing

34:38

about his bowels. Right. And

34:41

so he does write letters to close

34:43

friends and all he does is moan on

34:45

about his constipation, saying I'm constipated

34:47

for days on an end and he has

34:49

this very vivid description of how agonizing it

34:52

is finally to get released that

34:54

I'm sure all mothers listening to this

34:56

will really enjoy. And he says, now

34:58

I sit in agony like a woman

35:00

in childbirth, ripped up and

35:02

bloody. That's pretty intense

35:04

constipation. And he sees this obviously

35:06

as being persecution by the devil

35:09

and so he writes it almost every night when

35:11

I wake up, there he is itching

35:13

to argue with me. And this is the

35:15

period that generates the famous story of Luther

35:17

throwing an ink well, an ink pot at

35:20

the devil and supposedly the ink is available

35:22

to be seen in the fuckboat. This is

35:24

not true. OK. I mean, certainly

35:27

the devil wasn't there, but he didn't throw an ink pot at it.

35:29

But there are other stories that Luther

35:31

does substantiate later in life. And

35:35

there is a story that the devil comes

35:37

into his room disguised as a dog and Luther

35:39

picks the dog up and hurls it out of

35:41

the window. So Tom, I was really struck by

35:43

this. This is the one thing that most interests

35:45

me about Alton Luther because we have talked about

35:47

other dog murderers and the rest is history. Jeremy

35:50

Thorpe, Tom, the cad-bounder and erstwhile leader of

35:52

the Liberal Party, friend of the show, though,

35:54

I think, very much friend of the show

35:57

and Jack O'Mekaco, another friend of the show.

36:00

fighting monkey who defeated a dog

36:02

at the Westminster Pit. And

36:04

actually there are some interesting parallels there. So

36:07

Jaco Macaco, as with

36:09

Martin Luther, there's a lot of mystery.

36:11

We don't know what kind of monkey he was.

36:13

And with Luther, some of his spiritual crisis is

36:15

obscure to us, isn't it? And Martin

36:18

Luther, you talked very powerfully about him

36:21

and technology and his use

36:23

of pioneering technology. And of course, Jeremy thought was

36:25

a great enthusiast for the hovercraft. Yes,

36:28

the parallels are piling up. But Dominic, I

36:30

would say one way in which certainly he's

36:32

not similar to Jaco Macaco is that Luther

36:34

is a great dog lover. And I think

36:36

that this is actually what makes the story

36:38

terribly sad. Really? Especially with the dog? Yeah,

36:41

but also for Luther. I mean, at least, you know, the

36:43

dog is, but, and then

36:45

it's all over. But for Luther, the agony

36:47

continues because he adores dogs. Oh, he's the

36:49

real victim, is he? He's the real victim.

36:52

So he says about dogs that our Lord

36:54

God has made the best gifts the most

36:56

common, which I think is adorable. And

36:58

there's a very sweet thing that he sees a dog wagging

37:01

its tail. And he says, Be thou

37:03

comforted little dog, thou too in resurrection

37:05

shall have a little golden tail. That's

37:08

guilt talking. That is guilt talking, Tom.

37:10

No, it's not. No, it's

37:12

not. He wouldn't say that. It was

37:14

a notorious, drinker style dog murderer. Oh,

37:17

that I could only pray the way that my

37:19

puppy stares at meat. I mean, no one who

37:21

didn't love dogs would come out with that. Rubbish.

37:23

That's sinister. Well, anyway, Dominic, it's the fall to

37:26

the devil. It's not Luther's fault. It's the devil

37:28

persecuting him. That's what Jeremy Thorpe said in court

37:30

to Mr. Justice Cantley. No. Also,

37:33

Luther is the person who seems to

37:35

have coined the word poltergeist. So an

37:38

invisible ghost that throws things around. Really?

37:41

Luther coins the word? Yes, I think so. Wow.

37:44

That's what Roger Clark writes in his brilliant

37:46

book, A Natural History of Ghosts. And I

37:48

have no reason to doubt him. Yeah. But

37:50

Luther coins the word because he doesn't actually

37:52

believe in ghosts, because ghosts supposedly come from

37:54

purgatory. Right. Luther doesn't believe in purgatory. So

37:56

actually, these poltergeist, he's chucking nuts at him,

37:58

is clearly the devil again. The poltergeist is

38:00

throwing nuts at him. He's killing dogs and people

38:02

are throwing nuts at him. Come on. Well, he's

38:05

coming in disguised as a dog and he's throwing

38:07

nuts. So it's not surprising that Luther is very

38:09

unsatisfied by this. Yeah, he's a troubled man, I

38:11

think it's fair to say. But he

38:14

says he has a fail-safe method for

38:16

getting rid of the devil when prayer fails

38:18

to get rid of the devil. And I

38:20

quote Luther, I chase him away with a

38:22

fart. Yeah. So the constipation isn't all bad.

38:25

There's stuff going on in his mind, Tom,

38:27

that we can't even begin to imagine. But

38:29

I mean, just to reiterate, I mean, all

38:31

this is kind of knockabout stuff, but the

38:34

devil is intensely real for Luther. Yeah. And

38:36

he is wrestling with the devil very profoundly.

38:39

And ultimately, his solution to this crisis, the fact

38:41

that the devil is coming in as a dog

38:43

and throwing nuts at him and all kinds

38:45

of things. Right. It's the one that I

38:48

think that we would all do in his

38:50

situation, which is to translate the New Testament.

38:52

Of course, it's the first thing I thought

38:54

of. Wouldn't you do that? Yeah, absolutely. Again,

38:58

if you can't get better help, translate

39:01

the New Testament. And it's

39:03

not the first time that the New

39:05

Testament has been translated to German. Since Gutenberg

39:07

appeared on the scene, a German translation has

39:09

been printed and has actually been reprinted 13

39:11

times. So, you know,

39:13

it's definitely out there. But Luther is the first

39:15

to translate it directly from Greek rather than from

39:18

Latin, so from the original language. And it takes

39:20

him 11 weeks and

39:22

it is massively influential. You

39:25

know, I'm not in any way, not

39:27

actually speaking German really qualified to say

39:29

this, but I gather that it,

39:31

you know, it has a heft in German

39:34

similar to the King James Bible in English.

39:36

Oh, it's massive. But whereas the King James

39:38

Bible is all very sonorous, it

39:40

may not surprise listeners at this point to

39:42

learn that apparently Luther's translation is much earthier.

39:45

It is earthier. Yeah, I looked it up,

39:47

Tom. And Luther writes in

39:49

very short, unusually for

39:51

somebody writing in German. He

39:54

writes very short sentences and using the

39:56

shortest possible words and designed to be

39:58

accessible, right? Yeah, the very famous things

40:00

that he wrote. later on a hymn,

40:02

Ein Festerberg is eine Got, a strong

40:04

fortress is that God, and the very,

40:06

very short words and very kind of

40:08

easily comprehensible. That's Luther's populism again, isn't

40:10

it? You can see why he became

40:12

an important figure for kind of German

40:14

nationalists, because he invents

40:16

German the language to some degree, as

40:18

Chaucer does with English. The vernacular, yeah,

40:21

he shapes the vernacular. And you

40:23

see, I think one of the really, really

40:25

underappreciated things about Luther, which you've brought out

40:27

really brilliantly, is that

40:30

he's not just talking to theologians and bigwigs

40:32

and stuff, but he's actually talking in terms

40:34

that are comprehensible to the

40:36

man and woman in the street. Right. I think inspiring

40:38

people as well to write in that style. So even

40:40

while he's in the Wartburg, he's not publishing anything. But

40:43

people are putting

40:46

out pamphlets that are articulating his

40:48

ideas and doing it in ways

40:50

that echo his mastery of kind

40:52

of simple plain German. But

40:54

it's not just words that

40:56

is being promulgated, but the image.

40:59

So to kind of give a

41:01

modern analogy, Luther is

41:03

not just on Twitter. He is

41:05

also on Instagram. And

41:07

this is also hugely important in promulgating

41:09

his message and his image while he

41:12

is in isolation in the Wartburg, is

41:14

that illustrators are piling in as well. And

41:17

the inspiration for this is Lucas

41:19

Cranach, who is Frederick's court painter

41:21

in Wittenberg, who has become a

41:23

very good friend of Luther, and

41:25

who right from the beginning has

41:27

played a key role in branding

41:29

Luther. And there's a brilliant book

41:31

called Brand Luther by Andrew Pettigree

41:33

that explores this wonderfully. And

41:36

Cranach is a master of everything visual.

41:38

So even the pamphlets and books that

41:40

Luther is putting out is Cranach who

41:42

frames them. So he gives them a

41:44

kind of distinctive binding so that they

41:46

will stand out on the book stall.

41:49

And the font and the lettering and

41:51

everything is very clear and precise. So it's

41:53

a bit like a penguin classic or

41:55

something that you will immediately recognize a pamphlet

41:58

by Luther if you see it. Right.

42:00

But he's also doing portraits of Luther.

42:02

So that portrait of Luther that supposedly

42:04

didn't burn. Yeah. It's a famous

42:07

image of Luther as a monk looking very

42:09

pious, ascetic. He's got the spirit

42:11

in the form of a dove over his

42:13

head. I know what you mean. Yeah. And

42:15

this promulgates the image of Luther as

42:17

an accompaniment to his words. People know what Luther

42:20

looks like. Of course this would have been harder

42:22

to do in an age before printing, wouldn't it?

42:24

You wouldn't have been able to distribute so many

42:26

images. Of course, completely. Let alone

42:28

so many texts. Yes, absolutely.

42:31

Yeah. Yes. And while Luther

42:33

is in the Wartburg, Kranak

42:35

teams up with Malankton, who is the very

42:38

young professor of Greek, and they

42:40

published a strip cartoon. So it's

42:42

13 woodcuts that contrast the life

42:44

of Christ with the lifestyle of

42:46

the Pope, very much to

42:48

the detriment of the latter, to the

42:50

detriment of the Pope. Yeah. But even

42:53

more than that, they

42:55

really pile in with abusive cartoons.

42:57

So Carlos Heyer, who's written a

42:59

brilliant survey of this

43:01

entire period called, tellingly, Reformation. So

43:03

the idea that there are multiple

43:05

Reformation. I mean, he says the

43:07

evangelical, so the followers of Luther,

43:09

invented the satirical cartoon. And

43:12

they use images as

43:14

a medium of descent and

43:17

polemic on a scale that

43:19

has never been paralleled in history.

43:22

And in these cartoons, Luther

43:24

is the hero, and

43:26

his opponents are objects of

43:28

ridicule. Right. And unsurprisingly, because Luther is

43:31

the inspiration for this, there is a

43:33

lot of excrement in these cartoons. Yeah,

43:35

they're incredibly scatological, aren't they? So there's

43:38

one famous one where the devil is

43:41

shitting out monks. He's excreting monks. Thanks

43:43

for that, Tom. But there's another one

43:45

that Carlos Heyer writes about, which

43:48

targets Johann Kolkleas, the

43:50

humanist who had been chatting to Luther at

43:52

Vyrms. And I'll read Heyer's description of it.

43:55

One of the most obscenely outrageous

43:57

of all Reformation images, the very

43:59

epitome of smear tactics reduces

44:02

the work of Johann Kuklais to

44:04

fecal matter. In this

44:06

image the devil defecates into Kuklais' mouth

44:08

and Kuklais in turn excrete books out

44:10

of his rear end. As devils gleefully

44:13

dance in celebration of this process a

44:15

monk and a prince pick up the

44:17

books and a crowd of bystanders, some

44:19

covering their noses, look on

44:21

in disgust. Yeah I'm looking at

44:24

the image now. I mean you've described it very fairly.

44:26

I mean this is literally what happens a horrendous devil

44:29

is opening his bowels into the mouth of

44:31

this bloke and then he himself is as

44:33

you say excreting books. Nothing

44:35

is left of the imagination whatsoever.

44:37

And we are familiar with

44:40

this with our own social media that

44:42

abuse and abusive images

44:45

become more and more

44:48

abusive because there's

44:50

a kind of tidal wave I suppose

44:52

of excitement. Right. That people who feel

44:54

themselves to be part of a movement

44:56

get gathered up on and if you

44:58

have the means to propagate your opinions

45:00

and your hot takes by means of

45:03

tweets or images or whatever then

45:05

you take it. And of course

45:07

the consequence of that in turn

45:09

is that maybe the people who've

45:11

inspired it can be left behind.

45:13

Okay. And this is particularly the

45:15

case you know if like Luther

45:17

you've been effectively the

45:19

equivalent of being kicked off social media.

45:22

Yeah locked up with the devil throwing

45:24

nuts around. Yes exactly. And

45:26

so the consequences of this while

45:28

Luther is in the Wartburg are very

45:30

visibly seen in his great base in

45:32

Wittenberg. So in Wittenberg while

45:34

he is away people are inspired by the image

45:37

of him standing up to the emperor and to

45:39

the pope. And the

45:41

monks and nuns in Wittenberg start

45:43

to leave their cloisters and abandon

45:45

their vows and some of them

45:48

even get married. And there's this

45:50

sense that monasticism in Wittenberg and

45:52

beyond is starting to implode.

45:56

And students and

45:58

again this is this something that we

46:01

are familiar with as well. So they

46:03

get caught up in the excitement of it

46:05

all. And they start targeting masses, they

46:08

start smashing images in churches, and

46:10

they start targeting veneration of the

46:12

Virgin and the Saints. And it

46:14

really starts kicking off in December

46:16

1521, so in the build

46:18

up to Christmas. And the guy

46:20

who takes the lead is Luther's

46:23

friend and admirer, Andreas Karlstadt, who

46:25

is the guy who is the

46:27

chancellor, who had accompanied Luther

46:29

to the great debate with Johann

46:31

Eck in Leipzig, and

46:33

had always been a kind

46:36

of restrained and sober scholar, but he

46:38

now emerges as a kind of firebrand.

46:40

And again, it's kind of like the

46:42

highly respected scholar who suddenly goes to

46:44

the circle, abusing people left, right and

46:46

center. Yeah, that's exactly what I was

46:48

thinking. So I was thinking

46:50

the comparison is obviously with the great

46:52

sort of upsurge of kind of capital

46:54

E enthusiasm in the last five to

46:56

10 years and activism and sort of

46:58

the talk of social justice and stuff.

47:00

And you would have people who previously

47:02

would be very boring academics,

47:05

who suddenly find their voice. And then

47:07

of course, they're playing to the gallery,

47:09

aren't they? So they self

47:11

radicalize. Yeah, and they get the likes and

47:13

they want more likes. And you know, the

47:15

more likes you get, the more radical you

47:17

become. And I think Karlstadt

47:19

is the first example of this happening,

47:21

really, he's the kind of the primal

47:23

example of the angry academic getting

47:26

cross about Brexit on Twitter.

47:28

Yeah. So in December, he

47:30

preaches a whole series of fiery

47:32

sermons. And he whips the students

47:35

in Wittenberg up who go on

47:37

the rampage, destroying images and pulling

47:39

down altars and and overtly menacing

47:41

priests who are celebrating mass in

47:43

in the traditional way. And

47:46

on Christmas Eve, there's a kind

47:48

of enormous riot across Wittenberg breaking

47:50

into churches, destroying images.

47:53

And on Christmas Day,

47:55

rather than apologizing for this, Karlstadt

47:57

doubles down. So he holds this.

48:00

festive celebration and

48:02

he is making a whole series of points. So

48:05

he does it not in the traditional vestments, but

48:07

in a kind of plain cloak. He

48:09

is not turning away from

48:11

the congregation towards the awesome mystery

48:13

that is at the heart of

48:15

the mass, but facing the congregation.

48:19

He is speaking the word of

48:21

consecration, not in Latin, but

48:23

in German. And

48:25

he is distributing the bread

48:28

directly into the congregation's

48:30

hands, so rather than putting it in their

48:33

mouth. Because this whole idea that the laity

48:36

are not qualified to approach

48:38

it, let alone touch it. I mean,

48:40

this is a shocking, shocking blasphemy. And

48:43

he gives them wine, which is a very

48:45

huskite thing to do, a very overtly heretical

48:47

thing to do. That is

48:50

going straight in. He is doing the whole

48:52

thing. And

48:54

just for good measure, in the

48:56

new year, he marries, and

48:59

the person he marries is a 15-year-old girl. He is

49:02

all in. He is all in. He is all

49:04

in. And

49:07

the Wittenberg magistracy, they

49:09

back him. So on the

49:12

24th of January 1522, they basically

49:14

say that the illegal service that Karl

49:16

started celebrated on Christmas, that this is

49:19

brilliant, that this should be the model,

49:21

that all private masses should be banned, that

49:24

all religious images should be removed

49:26

from Wittenberg's churches. And

49:29

they give a date in February 1522 when

49:31

all of this has to be done. And

49:33

a mob duly goes on

49:36

the rampage through Wittenberg, and they

49:38

haul out every remaining image, icon,

49:40

whatever. They burn icons that are

49:42

made of wood. The stone ones

49:44

say stone images of Christ, stone images

49:47

of the Virgin. They smash off the

49:49

heads and break off the arms and

49:51

celebrate, and it's all great fun. The

50:00

impulse to destroy images, to tear down statues

50:02

and stuff is something we're obviously very familiar

50:04

with and it's remarkable how enduring it is

50:06

in human history. Just a

50:09

question about destruction and removal of religious images

50:11

and statues. Is that something

50:13

new? Because

50:15

obviously there have been lots of examples of it going back

50:17

to time about anti-iconoclasm, or is this an

50:19

enduring anxiety? No, I don't think

50:21

it is an enduring anxiety. I think it

50:24

is taken for granted in Latin Christendom. You're

50:26

right that there were debates in the Orthodox

50:28

world, but they were centuries and centuries earlier.

50:30

Centuries before. So both in Byzantium

50:32

and in Latin Christendom, the

50:35

assumption that images are guides and

50:37

helps maybe to the unlettered, it

50:40

brings them closer to an understanding of

50:42

their faith, is deeply,

50:45

deeply entrenched. And so this

50:47

is seen as utterly shocking

50:50

and blasphemous. And of course

50:52

the blasphemy of it is I think part of

50:54

the fun and excitement. Yeah, of course. You know,

50:56

blasphemy in itself, they don't see it as blasphemous,

50:58

of course. They see it as

51:00

entirely justified. They see the presence of

51:02

these images as malign in exactly the

51:05

way that people toppling the statues of

51:07

Confederate generals or Bristol slavers do. But

51:09

clearly there is a kind of excitement

51:11

in it as well. Of course. And

51:14

it would be foolish to deny that. Yeah.

51:17

And I've got another question. So my

51:20

other question is, so the Wittenberg

51:22

authorities have given a date, right? And

51:24

they have allowed this to happen. Doesn't

51:27

this speak to the point that the Reformation happens

51:29

at a particular moment in time, but it

51:32

also happens at a particular place in Europe?

51:35

Because isn't it an argument that only

51:37

in the Holy Roman Empire, where authority

51:39

is so decentralized, and where

51:41

local institutions have so much power, could

51:44

this have happened? It's much harder to imagine it happening,

51:46

let's say, in England,

51:48

well, unless the central authority decides

51:51

that they want to do it.

51:53

Exactly. And that's what will

51:55

happen there. But of course, what will happen,

51:57

but it can only happen in this bottom-up

51:59

way. in the Holy

52:01

Roman Empire and Switzerland, so Geneva,

52:03

which is the other great place

52:05

in the Reformation, which are the

52:07

two most decentralized, localized polities in

52:09

Europe. Yeah. So it

52:12

can obviously happen in independent cities, and

52:14

Geneva, where Calvin will establish his regime,

52:16

is the obvious example of that. But

52:18

as we will see in the next

52:20

episode, there are places within the Holy

52:22

Roman Empire where these regimes,

52:24

these kind of iconoclastic regimes will

52:26

seize control. But of

52:28

course, Dominic, the magistracy in Wittenberg is not

52:30

the ultimate arbiter of what should be done.

52:33

The ultimate arbiter is Frederick the Wise. Right,

52:36

the Electron Saxony. Who has been backing

52:38

the Reformation up to this point, but

52:40

he's still got his relics. Yeah. And

52:43

he's not very happy about this. And so

52:45

he basically says to Luther,

52:48

I think, you know, too

52:50

far, you should come out and sort this out. And

52:53

Luther, who initially had given his backing

52:55

to Karlstadt, he now also feels that

52:57

this has gone too far. So

53:01

Karlstadt is moving towards a position that Christ

53:03

is not present in the bread and wine

53:06

of the Eucharist. Okay. Luther always

53:08

thinks that Christ is present. Yeah.

53:11

And Luther is not opposed to churches

53:13

being beautiful and having images in them

53:15

in the way that Karlstadt has. Yeah.

53:17

And so Luther writes to

53:19

the Elector, and he says

53:22

Satan has come among the children of

53:24

God. They have gone too far.

53:26

That they have misunderstood

53:28

the purposes of God. That they

53:30

are being seduced by the devil,

53:32

and they are breeding anarchy. And

53:35

so on the 6th of

53:37

March, he reappears in Bittenberg. He's bearded.

53:39

He's still dressed as a knight. It's

53:41

clear that the old monkish Luther has

53:43

gone for good. Mark. In

53:47

every other way, he is turning

53:49

back the clock. So all the

53:51

old way of

53:53

doing things that Karlstadt had

53:55

abolished, Luther now reinstates. And

53:58

although, obviously, the ruined images... can't be

54:01

replaced, those icons

54:03

that do remain are protected from vandalism.

54:06

And Luther does what

54:08

he can basically to completely unpick the

54:11

Reformation that Karl Statt has introduced

54:13

and he turns on Karl Statt

54:15

with the fury and venom that

54:17

is so Lutheran. And

54:19

basically, Karl Statt is, you know, he's forced

54:21

out in disgrace. And

54:23

it seems that Luther has taken back

54:25

control of the Reformation. But of course,

54:28

he hasn't. How much that

54:30

Luther swinging or is he

54:32

being consistent? In other words, is he

54:34

swinging because he's asking for the revolution

54:36

and also his political patron is in

54:38

danger of deserting him or is he

54:41

consistent? Am I being unfair and too

54:43

cynical? I think he is swinging

54:45

back. I think he's very, very anxious not

54:47

to lose Frederick's patronage, not just for selfish

54:49

reasons that Frederick is protecting him, but also

54:52

because he feels that Frederick has been appointed

54:54

by God as the guardian of the Reformation

54:57

and that its future would be threatened were

54:59

Frederick to turn on it. But

55:01

I think there's also a strong element of peak.

55:04

You know, it is a bit like Elvis coming

55:06

back from the draft and discovering that things have

55:08

moved on and that new

55:10

types of music are being developed. So

55:12

likewise, Luther is resentful that Karl Statt,

55:14

who he's always seen as his number

55:16

two, his deputy, has taken the lead.

55:19

So I think that's absolutely a part

55:21

of it. But the

55:23

thing is that Luther cannot now impose himself

55:25

on the Reformation in the way that he

55:27

had done before he'd vanished into the Wartburg.

55:30

So that word that Carlos Eyre uses, Reformation,

55:32

I mean, we are now starting to look

55:34

at multiple different ways of

55:36

understanding the Reformation and declares his point,

55:39

Charles, the fifth point, that it's

55:42

not enough to assume that there is only

55:44

one way of understanding the Word of God.

55:46

The truth is that a belief

55:49

can very rapidly become an opinion. And

55:52

already the Reformation is becoming a

55:54

debating ground of opinions

55:56

as well as of beliefs. The

56:00

consequence of this is that there are

56:02

people who are going well beyond Luther, and

56:05

this man who has been the great

56:07

revolutionary up to this point, he

56:10

is revealing himself

56:13

now to be a reactionary.

56:16

And essentially for the rest of his life,

56:19

Luther will be with the sides of reaction rather

56:21

than with the sides of reform. Trying

56:23

to keep a lid on what he has

56:25

created, trying to slow down the revolution that

56:27

he has inaugurated. And of course

56:29

Tom, in the next episode we will be seeing

56:32

how this plays out with

56:34

unbelievably bloody and violent consequences, won't

56:36

we? We will. A

56:38

massive political convulsion that rips through

56:40

the map of Europe. The German

56:42

Peasants War, one of the most

56:44

exciting moments, Tom, in European history.

56:46

And perhaps Luther's most fascinating

56:49

and charismatic opponent, Thomas

56:51

Munzer, who pushes the

56:54

Reformation to a very, very radical end

56:57

point. Fantastic. So

56:59

if you're a member of the Restless History Club,

57:01

or even better, one of our beloved Athelstan members,

57:03

one of our elects, then you can

57:06

listen to that episode right away. If

57:08

you're just back there amid the congregation, I'm afraid you'll

57:10

just have to wait till Thursday. But

57:12

one way or another, we will see you next

57:14

time for the high drama of the German Peasants

57:16

War. Bye-bye.