United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Eck left the disputation with triumph, applauded by his friends and rewarded by Duke George with favours and honours. He followed up his fancied victory by further exciting the people against Luther, and pointing out to them in particular the sympathy between him and Huss. He wrote even to the Elector Frederick from Leipzig, proposing that he should have Luther's books burnt.
The time at Leipzig had only been wasted; the disputation had been unworthy of the name; Eck and his friends there had cared nothing whatever about the truth. Eck, he said, had made more clamour in an hour than he or Carlstadt could have done in a couple of years, and yet all the time the question at issue was one of peaceful and abstruse theology.
Luther in this tractate aims beyond the "undersized scribe of the barefoot friars at Leipzig," at the "brave and great flag-bearers who remain in hiding, and would win a notable victory in another's name," namely Prierias, Cajetan, Eck, Emser and the Universities of Cologne and Louvaine. Luther uses the epithet quoted above in one of his letters to Spalatin.
It was these very Councils about which Eck purposely called on Luther for a declaration; and Luther's words on this point might well have been considered by the Elector as 'too bold. Aleander, who had used such efforts to prevent Luther's being heard, was now well satisfied with the result. But Luther remained faithful to himself.
It was in 1520, the year after his great disputation with Eck at Leipzig, that Luther published his cataclysmic addresses: "To the Christian Nobles of Germany" and "On the Babylonian Captivity," the latter of which itself contains the whole Protestant Reformation in embryo.
Luther's old opponent Prierias, in a new pamphlet, extended them to the temporal as well as the spiritual sovereignty of the world; the Pope, he said, was head of the Universe. Eck now devoted an entire treatise to justifying the Divine right of the Papal primacy, resting his proofs boldly, and without any attempt at critical inquiry, on spurious old documents.
Theologians, such as Cardinal Cajetan, Gropper of Cologne, Eck of Ingolstadt, Cochlaeus, and others, had a European reputation. The first members of the Society of Jesus were all saints and scholars.
It is reported that Dr. Eck wanted to burn it in public at Ingolstadt, as was done to Dr. Reuchlin's book. With this letter I send for my most gracious lord three impressions of a copper-plate of my most gracious lord of Mainz, which I engraved at his request.
Duke George of Saxony raged, got up an alliance against the growing cause, and beheaded citizens of Leipsic for having Luther's writings in their houses. Eck still howled from Ingolstadt for fire and fagots. The dukes of Bavaria were fierce with persecutions. The archbishop of Mayence punished cities because they would not have his priests for pastors.
Meanwhile, the tidings, that a victory was gained, spread on all sides, "We thank the Most High" wrote the deputies of the Twelve Cantons from Baden to Duke William of Bavaria "that Your Princely Grace sent over to us the highly-renowned Doctor Eck; for truly he has defended, according to the Holy Divine Scriptures, his Christian theses the chief points, which the Lutheran or Zwinglian deluding, heretical sect have ventured to assail and pervert so bravely and with such skill, that undoubtedly good will come of it; and it will be admitted by every sensible man, possessed of a good conscience, that truth and victory are on our side with our old, undoubted Christian faith."
Word Of The Day