Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/487

 and letters, my conversations and fraternal ministrations. For I am absolved from the rules of the Order and of the Pope and excommunicated by the authority of the bull, of all of which I am glad, although I do not leave my cowl nor my monastery.

Salute Crotus and Jonas kindly, and pray hard for the Word. For Satan slays many thousands of souls by this most Satanic bull. The Bishop of Meissen has brought together and burned wagonloads full of my books, as also did the proudly and avariciously humble Bishop of Merseburg. Fare- well in Christ. Melanchthon salutes you.

Martin Luther.

P. S. — Aleander the Apostate* Nuncio is striving with all his might to have me smitten with the imperial censure, but hitherto he has accomplished nothing.

��412. EMPEROR CHARLES V. TO LUTHER. Enders, iii. loi. German. Worms^ March 6, 1521.

Charles, by God's Roman Emperor Elect,* at all times Aug- mentor of the Realm,' etc., to the Honorable, our dear and pious Dr. Martin Luther, of the Augustinian Order.

Honorable, dear and pious Sir! As we, and the Estates of the Holy Empire, here assembled, have undertaken and decreed to obtain information about certain doctrines and certain books which formerly originated with you, we have given you and hereby send our and the Empire's free safeconduct to come hither and to return hence. We desire you to prepare certainly to be here within twenty-one days,* rely-

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��^Pun, instead of "Apostolic*

sAlthough he had been crowned at Aix, Charles still calls himself "elected" Roman Emperor because he had not yet been crowned by the Pope, which was done at Bologna in February, 1530.

>Thi8 title was assumed by the emperors to show their zeal for increasing the imperial territory (Mehrer des Reichs). It was recently applied to Francis Joseph on his annexation of Bosnia and Herzogovina. Cambridge Modern Hit- tory, xii. 175. For the same reason the title "Augustus" was assumed by Philip of France, because he thought it came from "augeo" and indicated that he had enlarged the kingdom.

^Reckoned from the day on which the herald handed Luther the stmimoas, March 27. On all this cf. Smith, io9£F.

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