OMG, why do people post things they know nothing about?
Read a little bit of history before you show any more of your
ignorance.
BTW, I have read and own much of Luther's writings, and have travelled
throughout Germany and Italy visiting the places he lived.
Comments?
Excommunication
On June 15, 1520, the Pope warned Luther with the papal bull (edict) Exsurge Domine that he risked excommunication unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the 95 Theses, within 60 days.
That fall, Johann Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and other towns. Karl von Miltitz, a papal nuncio, attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had sent the pope a copy of On the Freedom of a Christian in October, publicly set fire to the bull and decretals at Wittenberg on December 10, 1520,<sup id="_ref-Hillerbrand463_0" class="reference">[45]</sup> an act he defended in Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned and Assertions Concerning All Articles.
As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Leo X on January 3, 1521, in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.
The Emperor presented the final draft of the Edict of Worms on May 25, 1521, declaring Luther an outlaw, banning his literature, and requiring his arrest: "We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic".
<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources</sup>
Exile at Wartburg Castle
Wartburg Castle, Eisenach.
The room in Wartburg where Luther translated the New Testament into German. There is an original first edition of the translation under the case on the desk.
The apprehension of Luther was the last thing Frederick III, Elector of Saxony wanted, so he had him discreetly intercepted on his way home by masked horsemen and escorted to the security of the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach, where Luther grew a beard and lived incognito for nearly eleven months, pretending to be a knight called Junker Jörg.<sup id="_ref-16" class="reference">[48]</sup>
During his stay at Wartburg — "my Patmos", as he called it<sup id="_ref-17" class="reference">[49]</sup> — Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German, and poured out doctrinal and polemical writings, including in October a renewed attack on Archbishop Albert of Mainz, whom he shamed into halting the sale of indulgences in his episcopates,<sup id="_ref-Schaff_IV_0" class="reference">[50]</sup> and a "Refutation of the argument of Latomus," in which he expounded the principle of justification to a philosopher from Louvain.<sup id="_ref-18" class="reference">[51]</sup> In a letter to Melanchthon of 1 August 1521, he wrote:
… let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides.<sup id="_ref-sinsbestrong_0" class="reference">[52]</sup>
In On the Abrogation of the Private Mass, in the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and pilgrimages to doctrines at the heart of Church practices. His essay Concerning Confession rejected the Roman Catholic Church's requirement of confession, although he affirmed the value of private confession and absolution. In the introduction to his New Testament — published in September 1522 and selling 5,000 copies in two months — he explained that good works spring from faith; they do not produce it.
