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But Aleander was not alone in his powers of speech, and others besides Parisians could listen. Butzbach tells us, not without humour, of a certain Baldwin Bessel of Haarlem, a learned physician with a wonderful memory, who was summoned to Laach to heal their Abbot, who lay sick.
At Cologne Erasmus also met the man with whom, as a promising young humanist, fourteen years younger than himself, he had, for some months, shared a room in the house of Aldus's father-in-law, at Venice: Hieronymus Aleander, now sent to the Emperor as a papal nuncio, to persuade him to conform his imperial policy to that of the Pope, in the matter of the great ecclesiastical question, and give effect to the papal excommunication by the imperial ban.
There, surrounded by the scholars of the New Academy, Egnatius, Carteromachus, Aleander, Urban of Belluno, besides Aldus himself and his father-in-law Asulanus, having at hand all the wealth of the Aldine Greek editions and the Greek manuscripts which were sent from far and near to be printed, Erasmus was thoroughly equipped to transform his quarto into folio, his hundreds into thousands.
Aleander had to report to Rome, that all parties were unanimous in this desire, so hateful to the Pope himself, and that the Germans wished to have the Council in their own country. Luther formed his resolve at once on the two points required of him. He determined to obey the summons to the Diet, and, if there unconvicted of error, to refuse the recantation demanded.
At Worms, however, while the Pope was concluding an alliance with Charles against France, the Papal legate Aleander, by commission of the Emperor, prepared the edict against Luther on the 8th of May.
This met with so much favor that the pope's legate, Aleander, was alarmed lest Luther should thereby escape, and hence set himself with unwonted energy to incite the emperor to decisive measures. Charles was persuaded to make a demonstration, but demanded that the legate should first "convince the Diet." Aleander was the most famous orator Rome had, and he rejoiced in his opportunity.
After much discussion it was finally arranged, to the great disgust of the zealous Aleander, that Luther should be summoned to Worms and be given an opportunity to face the German nation and the emperor, and to declare plainly whether he was the author of the heretical books ascribed to him, and whether he still adhered to the doctrines which the pope had declared wrong.
Of this, as he wrote to Spalatin, he was convinced, and for many strong reasons. And in fact the Emperor Charles, before leaving the Netherlands, on his journey to Aix-la-Chapelle to be crowned, had already been induced by Aleander to take his first step against Luther.
Unfortunately, these "religious questions" threw the archbishop into the arms of the Lutherans, and already in 1536, Aleander considered him as much lost to the Church as Philip of Hessen himself, who made no secret of his apostasy. Melancthon was his dear friend already when he made the acquaintance of Martin Bucer at the Diet of Hagenau in 1540.
These evidently struck the old rector of Wittenberg, Pollich, and the legate Caietan at Augsburg; it was with these that, on his arrival at Worms, the legate Aleander saw him look around him 'like a demon'; it was these that 'sparkled like stars' on the young Swiss Kessler, so that he could 'hardly endure their gaze. After his death, another acquaintance of his called them 'falcon's eyes'; and Melancthon saw in the brown pupils, encircled by a yellow ring, the keen, courageous eye of a lion.
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