tation with great peril. Sickingen was as indignant as pos- sible when I translated your letter to him. For what do you hope to obtain from those from whom you never got any good thing or any justice, by crushing Luther if you can? Even if renouncing Luther could save you from your present danger I cannot think it honorable of you to fight those whose allies you ought to be in every honorable undertaking unless you wish to seem most ungrateful.
It would have been sufficient and more than sufficient for your protection had you written that you had nothing to do with Luther. Erasmus also wrote this, but you add that you have always disapproved of him and that you are sorry that your name is found in his writings and that you have tried to win us, his adherents, away from him. By this base adulation you hope to touch those, whom, if you were a man, you would not even salute with courtesy, so evilly have they deserved of you. . . .
Luther's cause displeases you, you disapprove of him and wish him dead. You do not remember your strong defender Sickingen nor me, who stood by you to the last, even when it was most dangerous to do so. . . . But from this time forth, if you ever oppose Luther, or submit to the Pope, you will have me for an adversary.
404. ANTONY DELLA SASSETA (?) TO FRANCIS DE*
PELLEGRINI (?).
Kalkoff : Brief e, 45. Worms, February 25, 1521.
Sasseta and Pellegrini were both papal chamberlains. On Febru- ary 15 the former wrote the latter of the opening of the Diet, and the similarity in style of the letter here translated to that leads us to infer the same authorship and addressee.
... On the first day of Lent [February 13] the honorable Jerome Aleander at the command of his Imperial Majesty spoke at a session of the council of princes before the Em- peror, the electors and the magnates of Germany. He spoke for two hours, although he hurried so as not to tire them. He proved on many grounds that Martin Luther's doctrine was directed against Christ, the apostles, the archangels, the Pope, the Emperor and many other authorities. He earned much praise from these barbarians, and, in fact, acquitted
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