too zealous supporters. The Church was accustomed to the presence of various schools of theology with differing opinions; but the Curia had always been extremely sensitive about Indulgences; they were the source of an enormous revenue, and anything which checked their sale would have caused financial embarrassment. Hence it is scarcely to be wondered at that Pope Leo summoned Luther to Rome to answer for his attack on the system of Indulgences.
This sudden summons (July, 1518) to appear before the Inquisitorial Office could be represented as an affront to Wittenberg; and Luther wrote to Spalatin, the Elector's chaplain, and the chief link between his Court and the University, suggesting that German princes ought to defend the rights of German universities attacked in his person. Spalatin immediately wrote to the Elector Frederick and to the Emperor Maximilian, both of whom were at Augsburg at the time. The Elector was jealous of the rights of his University, and he had a high regard for Luther, who had done so much to make his University the flourishing seat of learning it had become. The Emperor's keen political vision discerned a useful if obscure ally in the young German theologian. "Luther is sure to begin a game with the priests," he said; "the Elector should take good care of that monk, for he will be useful to us some day." So the Pope was urged to suspend the summons and grant Luther a trial on German soil. The matter was left in the hands of the Pope's Legate in Germany, Cajetan (Thomas de Vio), and Luther was ordered to present himself before that official at Augsburg.
When Luther had nailed his Theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg he had been a solitary monk driven imperiously by his conscience to act alone and afraid to compromise any of his friends. It must have been with very different feelings that he started on his journey to meet the Cardinal-Legate at Augsburg. He knew that the Theses had won for him numberless sympathisers. His correspondence shows that his University was with him to a man. The students were enthusiastic and thronged his class-room. His theology-theology based on the Holy Scriptures and on Augustine and Bernard-was spreading rapidly through the convents of his Order in Germany and even in the Netherlands. Melanchthon hatf come to Wittenberg on the 25th of August; he had begun to lecture on Homer and on the Epistle to Titus; and Luther was exulting in the thought that his University would soon show German scholarship able to match itself against the Italian. The days were fast disappearing, he wrote, when the Romans could cheat the Germans with their intrigues, trickeries, and treacheries; treat them as blockheads and boors; and gull them continuously and shamelessly. As for the Pope, he was not to be moved by what pleased or displeased his Holiness. The Pope was a man as Luther himself was; and many a Pope had been guilty not merely of errors but of crimes. At quieter moments, however, he was oppressed with the thought that it had been
