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 If you have found out anything and dare to conununicate it to another in good faith, write in confidence. Farewell.

380. ELECTOR FREDERIC OF SAXONY TO HIS BROTHER,

DUKE JOHN.

Forstemann: Neues Urkundenbuch, i. 5. German.

Worms, January 16, 1521. ... I am glad that the books I sent pleased you and my son.^ Please tell the dear boy that I am informed that the cardinals and Romanists with their followers are taking coun- sel against Dr. Luther to put him under the ban of the Em- pire and persecute him to the uttermost. But there are many other people who wish him well. God grant graciously that it be for our good. . ..

381. POPE LEO X. TO THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. AT

WORMS.

Forstemann : Neues Urkundenbuch, i. 27. Rome, January 18, 1521.

Most famous Son in Christ. Greeting and the apostolic blessing! Elsewhere by our letters and nuncios we have sig- nified to your Highness that many false and heretical errors have been disseminated in your German nation by a certain Martin Luther, and have been published in printed books, and that some persons, seduced by the errors of Martin who seeks cause for rebellion, have added unto his errors others of their own. It is our proper duty to purge the vineyard of the Lord from such brambles, and, as much as in us is, under the divine guidance, to preserve the unity of the Church and to oppose scandals, particularly when they are widespread. Wherefore, after taking diligent counsel with our brothers, we condemned his errors partly as false and heretical, partly as alien to Christian piety and wounding good consciences, and we ordered the books of the said Martin containing these errors or others to be burned with fire, and we commanded Martin himself to abstain from all preaching and disputation and within a given time to bum his own books and retract the errors contained in them, and to inform us of the re-


 * /. e., Frederic's nephew, Duke John Frederick.

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