Rome had made every preparation to destroy the monk of Wittemberg. The duty of assisting at the coronation of the emperor, as representative of the pope, was to Aleander only a secondary mission, fitted to facilitate his task by the respect which it secured to him. The essential part of his commission was to dispose Charles to crush the growing Reformation.[321] In putting the bull into the hands of the emperor, the nuncio had thus addressed him:--"The pope, who has succeeded with so many great princes, will have little difficulty in bringing three grammarians to order." By these he meant Luther, Melancthon, and Erasmus. Erasmus was present at this audience. [321] "Cui tota sollicitudo insisteret, nascentis hæresis evellendæ." (Pallavicini, i, p. 83.) Whose whole anxiety was directed to the extirpation of the growing heresy. [Sidenote: WILL LUTHER'S WORKS BE BURNT?] No sooner had Aleander arrived at Cologne, than he proceeded in concert with Carracioli, to put everything in train for burning Luther's heretical writings throughout the empire, but more especially under the eyes of the princes of Germany who were then assembled. Charles V had already consented to its being done in his hereditary states. The minds of men were greatly agitated. "Such measures," it was said to the ministers of Charles, and to the nuncios themselves, "far from curing the evil, will only make it worse. Do you imagine that the doctrine of Luther exists only in the books which you throw into the flames? It is written where you cannot reach it--on the hearts of the population.[322] If you will employ force, it must be that of innumerable swords, drawn to massacre an immense multitude.[323] Some billets of wood, collected for the purpose of consuming some bits of paper, will do nothing; such weapons become not the dignity either of the emperor or the pontiff." The nuncio defended his faggot piles. "These flames," said he, "are a sentence of condemnation written in gigantic letters, and understood alike by those who are near, and those who are at a distance, by the learned and the ignorant, by those even who cannot read." [322] "Altiusque insculptam in mentibus universæ fere Germaniæ." (Pallavicini, i, p. 88.) [323] "In vi innumerabilium gladiorum qui infinitum populum trucidarent." (Ibid.) But, in reality the nuncio's efforts were directed not against papers and books, but Luther himself. "These flames," resumed he, "are not sufficient to purify the infected air of Germany.[324] If they deter the simple, they do not correct the wicked. The thing wanted is an edict from the emperor against Luther's head."[325] [324] "Non satis ad expurgandam aërem Germaniæ jam tabificum." (Ibid., p. 89.) [325] Cæsaris edictum in caput ... Lutheri. (Ibid.) Aleander did not find the emperor so complying on the subject of the Reformer's person as on that of his books.