The court of the Palace was full of people eager to see Luther, most of
them evidently friendly. It was here that old General Frundsberg, the most
illustrious soldier in Germany, who was to be the conqueror in the famous
fight at Pavia, clapped Luther kindly on the shoulder, and said words
which have been variously reported. “My poor monk! my little monk! thou
art on thy way to make a stand as I and many of my knights have never done
in our toughest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause,
then forward in the name of God, and be of good courage: God will not
forsake thee.” From out the crowd, “here and there and from every corner,
came voices saying, ‘Play the man! Fear not death; it can but slay the
body: there is a life beyond.’ ”(225) They went up the stair and entered
the audience hall, which was crammed. While the marshal and the herald
forced a way for Luther, he passed an old acquaintance, the deputy from
Augsburg. “Ah, Doctor Peutinger,” said Luther, “are you here too?”(226)
Then he was led to where he was to stand before the Emperor; and these two
lifelong opponents saw each other for the first time. “The fool entered
smiling,” says Aleander (perhaps the lingering of the smile with which he
had just greeted Dr. Peutinger): “he looked slowly round, and his face
sobered.” “When he faced the Emperor,” Aleander goes on to say, “he could
not hold his head still, but moved it up and down and from side to
side.”(227) All eyes were fixed on Luther, and many an account was written
describing his appearance. “A man of middle height,” says an unsigned
Spanish paper preserved in the British Museum, “with a strong face, a
sturdy build of body, with eyes that scintillated and were never still. He
was clad in the robe of the Augustinian Order, but with a belt of hide,
with a large tonsure, newly shaven, and a coronal of short thick
hair.”(228) All noticed his gleaming eyes; and it was remarked that when
his glance fell on an Italian, the man moved uneasily in his seat, as if
“the evil eye was upon him.” Meanwhile, in the seconds before the silence
was broken, Luther was making _his_ observations. He noticed the swarthy
Jewish-looking face of Aleander, with its gleam of hateful triumph. “So
the Jews must have looked at Christ,” he thought.(229) He saw the young
Emperor, and near him the papal nuncios and the great ecclesiastics of the
Empire. A wave of pity passed through him as he looked. “He seemed to me,”
he said, “like some poor lamb among swine and hounds.”(230) There was a
table or bench with some books upon it. When Luther’s glance fell on them,
he saw that they were his own writings, and could not help wondering how
they had got there.(231) He did not know that Aleander had been collecting
them for some weeks, and that, at command of the Emperor, he had handed
them over to John Eck, the Official of Trier, for the purposes of the
audience.(232) Jerome Schurf made his way to Luther’s side, and stood
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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