decrees of the councils and to submit himself to the judg- ment of the Pope before he departs from home, and we also beg you to bring him with you, not to Worms, but to Frank- fort on the Main or some other place thereabouts, where he shall wait for further orders. But if he will not do this let him remain where he is until we have spoken to you personally on the subject.
��362. ALEANDER TO CARDINAL LAWRENCE PUCCI AT
ROME.
Kalkoff: Aleander, 51. Worms (December 17), 1520.
... I answered Chievres that we by no means needed to fear a meeting with Martin Luther, as though we knew that we were wrong and he was right, but that we ought not to allow further discussion of things which the Holy Father as the true judge had condemned; and that as he was the sole competent authority in the world, as history teaches, the princes and estates of the Diet had no right to assume juris- diction in such affairs. Finally, I said that Luther, in the Protestation, in which (as I stated in my letter from Cologne) he demands a debate, refuses as judges all representatives of the Church, all theologians, jurists and philosophers, in short, all whom he suspects, that is, the whole learned world outside of Germany. It seems that the only court he will allow is Hutten and his miserable crowd of German human- ists. I added that if Luther agreed to recant, or if the im- perialists hoped that he would, his recantation must be in the form prescribed by the bull, before he could appear before the Diet, or elsewhere. In this case the Pope would forgive him as is usual in such cases, and receive him again as a son of the Church, for the Holy Father did not wish Luther's blood, but his salvation, and the good of the Church.
Chievres answered that they had planned to summon Luther before the Diet only in certain expectation of his recanta- tion, but that, since I had called his attention to the scandal which would result if Luther refused, he would be on his guard. He recommended me further to be present at the session of the German council early next morning. I was
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