Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/237

 or "theologian" are epithets of extreme contempt, but it is esteemed great good fortune to obtain the title of chamberlain or butler to the Pope. The Pope holds the first place of honor, Christ the last. When the High Priest goes forth, as many cardinals, protonotaries, bishops, legates, provosts and attomies follow him as hungry birds gather around car- rion. But Christ's eucharist follows on an ass in the last company made up of unchaste women and prostituted boys. I was recently at Rome with our Hess; saw the ancient monuments and the seat of pestilence; I was glad I saw it, and yet sorry. There certain persons, who thought them- selves clever, attacked me on the subject of indulgences and the power of the Pope, as though I either could or wished to dispute about them, especially at Rome. . ..

Wherefore, Martin, you do not conquer — although armed with the armor of Scripture and with the sword of the Holy Spirit you seek the life of the enemy — for the judgment of victory is with the Roman See, not with the Scripture, for, witness your friend Prierias, the very Bible gets its authority from the Pope. But your appeal to a general council saves you from this difficulty. The appeal itself is drawn up so carefully, according to divine and human laws, that it de? serves praise even from enemies. Yet it excites extraordinary anger from the Florentine faction,* which fears, if it loses the power of giving indulgences for the dead, that afterwards similar arguments may deprive it of the power of issuing pallia, reservations, bulls, privileges, and of its wide juris- diction and other things to which have been given the name of ecclesiastical liberty, though they are really but nets for catching the money of poor wretches. CJermany will be blind as long as she remains in her error, and as long as scholars do not declaim and write against the bad morals with which Rome infects us. Let them admonish the simple people of the Roman guile, and that we, who have so often been de- spoiled under the guise of religion for pallia, for confirma- tions, for fighting the Turk, now suffer a greater wrong in

V. e,, the papal faction, Leo X. being a Florentine. It excited all the more wrath because there was even among Catholics a large party which maintained that a council was superior to the Pope. Cf. Smith,, loc, cit., p. 97.

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