might be established; for the said Luther has always offered on sufficient guarantee to come out and be heard by fair, honorable and impartial judges, and if he is overcome by the Holy Scriptures to let it be shown him, as he has explained at length in his printed Offer and Protest. That and nothing else induced me to make my petition to your Majesty through the said gentlemen. I had hoped that Luther's opponents would give the matter a rest for a while ; but now that the Pope's nuncio and others have thought fit to act against me, forcing themselves into my business, it is necessary that I should propose my plan. I am informed that since I departed from your Majesty, Luther's books, without trial or proof from Holy Scripture, have been burned at Cologne, Mayencc and elsewhere.* This I did not expect, but rather hoped thati if they had no respect for Luther, they at least might for me. But as this happened against my humble prayer and against the promise of the Pope's nuncio, and as I cannot discover from your Majesty's letter that it was done at your command, and as perhaps before this reaches your Majesty, Luther may have done something in revenge, it appears to me hard, as your Majesty may graciously imagine, to bring Luther with me to the Diet. Wherefore I have caused all this to be shown to your Majesty, and humbly beg you graciously to spare me and not to insist that I bring Luther with me to Worms, and not to take it ill that I omit doing so for the said reasons, for otherwise I am ready humbly to obey your Majesty's wishes.
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��365. CASPAR HEDIO TO ZWINGLI AT ZURICH. Corpus Reformatorum, xciv. 376. (Mayence), December 21, 152a
. . . We burned Luther here in obedience to the Pope's decree, but it was a ridiculous affair. Some swear that it was not Luther who was burned, but Aeneas Silvius ; some that it was Eck and some Prierias. But whatever books were burned, it was done to hurt Luther. The people almost threw Aleander into a cesspool. It has been decreed by the council of princes to summon Luther to Worms to give an answer for his writings. Good Heavens! how the Roman l^fates
- Thc elector left Cologne on November 7; the books seem to have been burned
on the 12th. At Mayence they were burned on November 29.
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