The Diet of Worms

Summoned before the emperor Charles V and the assembled estates of the empire in April 1521, under an imperial safe conduct that many advised him not to trust given what had happened to Hus at Constance, Luther was shown his books and asked whether they were his and whether he would recant. He asked for a day to consider, and returned with an answer distinguishing among his writings and refusing to retract what could not be shown contrary to scripture and plain reason, since he could not act against conscience.

The most quoted sentence of the Reformation, here I stand, I can do no other, does not appear in the earliest reports. It seems to have entered the record in the printed accounts shortly afterwards. The refusal itself is thoroughly attested and the substance of the answer is not in doubt; the ringing line is a later addition, and the atlas marks it as such rather than repeating it as a quotation.

The Edict of Worms followed in May, declaring Luther an outlaw whose books were to be burned, whose adherents were liable to forfeiture, and who might be killed without legal penalty. It was never effectively enforced across the empire, because enforcement depended on territorial rulers and many of them declined.

On the road home, Luther was intercepted by armed men and taken to the Wartburg castle, a staged abduction arranged by Frederick of Saxony to put an outlaw somewhere safe. He spent nearly a year there in disguise, ill, restless and prolific, and among what he produced was a translation of the New Testament from Greek into German, drafted in about eleven weeks and printed in September 1522.

Its significance is not only religious. Luther translated for the market woman and the children in the street, as he put it, and made choices about vocabulary and rhythm that shaped written German for centuries. A movement whose principle was the authority of scripture required a scripture ordinary people could read, and supplying one did more to spread the Reformation than any pamphlet.

Meanwhile his own movement ran ahead of him in Wittenberg, with images destroyed, monastic vows abandoned and the mass altered by colleagues who read his principles more radically than he did. He returned in 1522 without the elector's permission to slow it down, preaching a series of sermons on proceeding gently with those whose consciences were not yet ready. The pattern set there, of a reformer restraining the reformation he had begun, recurs throughout the period and is one of the reasons the movement fragmented.