The peremptory summons could be construed as an affront to the University
of Wittenberg, on whose boards the _Ninety-five Theses_ had been posted.
Luther wrote to his friend Spalatin (George Burkhardt of Spalt,
1484-1545), who was chaplain and private secretary to the Elector
Frederick, suggesting that the prince ought to defend the rights of his
University. Spalatin wrote at once to the Elector and also to the Emperor
Maximilian, and the result was that the summons to Rome was cancelled, and
it was arranged that the matter was to be left in the hands of the Papal
Legate in Germany, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan(166) (1470-1553), and
Luther was ordered to present himself before that official at Augsburg.
The interview (October 1518) was not very satisfactory. The cardinal
demanded that Luther should recant his heresies without any argument. When
pressed to say what the heresies were, he named the statement in the 58th
Thesis that the merits of Christ work effectually without the intervention
of the Pope, and that in the _Resolutiones_ which said that the sacraments
are not efficacious apart from faith in the recipient. There was some
discussion notwithstanding the Legate’s declaration; but in the end Luther
was ordered to recant or depart. He wrote out an appeal from the Pope
ill-informed to the Pope well-informed, also an appeal to a General
Council, and returned to Wittenberg.
When Luther had posted his _Theses_ on the doors of the Church of All
Saints, he had been a solitary monk with nothing but his manhood to back
him; but nine months had made a wonderful difference in the situation. He
now knew that he was a representative man, with supporters to be numbered
by the thousand. His colleagues at Wittenberg were with him; his students
demonstratively loyal (they had been burning the Wimpina-Tetzel
counter-theses); his theology was spreading among all the cloisters of his
Order in Germany, and even in the Netherlands; and the rapid circulation
of his _Theses_ had shown him that he had the ear of Germany. His first
task, on his return to Wittenberg, was to prepare for the press an account
of his interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and this was published
under the title, _Acta Augustana_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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