Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/8

 PREFACE

That much talked of literary ideal, the “slice of life,” is, perhaps, better realized in a book of letters than elsewhere. In a more formal treatise the multi-colored threads of which history is woven are neatly assorted into bundles, and each bundle dealt with separately. But in a collection of letters, as in life, all the various interests develop synchronously. The whole effect is that of a rope twisted of many strands, in which now one strand and now another comes to view, and all are inextricably intertwined. By way of preface it may not be amiss to point out some of the major interests represented in the period here treated, to pick out, if I may vary the metaphor, the principal leitmotivs of the whole symphony.

The first of these is the definite formation of a Protestant party, and its attainment of a position of recognized, even constitutional, equality with the Catholic party. Prior to the Diet of Worms there was no coherent political body to represent the interests of the Reformers, but only a vast mass of progressive and fermenting public opinion. All the elements of Protestantism were there, but they were void and without form until Luther finally established a position of leadership. The Edict of Worms was a barren triumph for the conserva- tives, a dead letter from the start. From the Diet of Worms to the Diet of Spires, of 1529, German political history is a record of one ccwtiquest of Lutheranism after another; the definite adhesion of state after state, and of city after city, and the growth within the diet itself of a powerful party to represent the new movement. In the present volume this side of the Reformation is well reflected in the official acts of popes and princes before the diets, and in the accounts written by foreign ambassadors to their governments. These last are particularly valuable to the modern reader because they give just those large facts needed by a foreigner and by posterity,

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