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The next step was to institute a tribunal for heretics at Rome, for Luther's trial: what its judgment would be was patent from the fact that the single theologian of learning among the judges was Sylvester Prierias. Before this tribunal Luther was cited on August 7; within sixty days he was to appear there at Rome. Friend and foe could well feel certain that they would look in vain for his return.
And yet whatever it be, these men cry still that nothing ought to be changed: that men's minds are well satisfied herewithal: that the Church of Rome, the Church which cannot err, hath decreed these things. For Silvester Prierias saith, that the Romish Church is the squire and rule of truth, and that the Holy Scripture hath received from thence authority and credit.
When such powerful princes became interested, Leo was startled. He summoned Luther to Rome, to be tried by Prierias. Luther, not daring to refuse, and not willing to obey, wrote to his friend Spalatin to use his influence with the elector to have his cause tried in Germany; and the pope, willing to please Frederic, appointed De Vio, his legate, to investigate the matter.
It was an anxious time for himself and his friends when he had to leave for that distant place, where the Elector, with all his care, could not employ any physical means for his protection, and to stand accused as a heretic before that Papal legate who, from his own theological principles, was bound to condemn him, Caietan being a zealous Thomist like Prierias, and already notorious as a champion of indulgences and Papal absolutism.
In Luther's life-work there is discernible the influence not only of good men, such as the scholarly Melanchthon, the faithful Jonas, the firm and kind Saxon electors, the eager Amsdorf, the alert Link, but also of evil men like the blunt Tetzel, the wily Prierias, and the horde of ignorant monks which the monasteries and chancelleries of Rome let loose upon one man.
Erasmus wittily said, Luther committed two unpardonable sins: he touched the pope's crown and the monks' bellies. Such effrontery would needs raise a mighty outcry. Prierias, the master of the sacred palace, pronounced Luther a heretic. Hochstrat of Cologne, Reuchlin's enemy, clamored for fire to burn him.
One was by a Franciscan friar, Augustin von Alveld; the other by Silvester Prierias, already mentioned, who was his most active opponent in this matter. 'From Rome' he says 'flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. Whoever mourns to see it, is called by the Romans a 'good Christian, or in their language, a fool.
He now also answered publicly the attack of Prierias upon his theses, and declared not only that a Council alone could represent the Church, but that even a decree of Council might err, and that an Act of the Church was no final evidence of the truth of a doctrine.
He was only the more strengthened in that conviction by the replies of his opponents; for he must well have been amazed at their utter want of Scriptural reference to disprove his conclusions, and at the blind subservience with which they merely repeated the statements of their Scholastic authorities. The arrogant reply of Prierias, his opponent of highest rank, seemed to him particularly poor.
Tetzel was forced to retreat from the borders of Saxony to Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where he drew out and published a set of counter-theses and publicly committed those of Luther to the flames. The students at Wittenberg retaliated by burning Tetzel's theses. The elector refused to interfere, and the excitement increased as new combatants Hochstratten, Prierias, and Eck entered the field.
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