professed some sympathy with reform, and respect for Luther’s talent and zeal. He held several
interviews with Dr. Brück (Pontanus), the Chancellor of the Elector Frederick. He assured him of
great friendship, and proposed that he should induce Luther to disown or to retract the book on the
"Babylonian Captivity," which was detestable; in this case, his other writings, which contained so
much that is good, would bear fruit to the Church, and Luther might co-operate with the Emperor
in the work of a true (that is, Spanish) reformation of ecclesiastical abuses. We have no right to
doubt his sincerity any more than that of the like-minded Hadrian VI., the teacher of Charles. But
the Elector would not listen to such a proposal, and refused a private audience to Glapio. His
conference with Hutten and Sickingen on the Ebernburg was equally unsuccessful.^334
The Estates were in partial sympathy with the Reformation, not from doctrinal and religious,
but from political and patriotic motives; they repeated the old one hundred and one gravamina
against the tyranny and extortions of the Roman See^335 (similar to the charges in Luther’s Address
to the German Nobility), and resisted a condemnation of Luther without giving him a hearing. Even
his greatest enemy, Duke George of Saxony, declared that the Church suffered most from the
immorality of the clergy, and that a general reformation was most necessary, which could be best
secured by a general council.
During the Diet, Ulrich von Hutten exerted all his power of invective against the Pope and
for Luther. He was harbored at Ebernburg, a few leagues from Worms, with his friend, the valorous
Francis of Sickingen. He poured contempt and ridicule on the speech of Aleander, and even attempted
to catch him and Caracciolo by force.^336 But he and Sickingen favored, at the same time, the cause
of the young Emperor, from whom they expected great things, and wished to bring about an
anti-papal revolution with his aid. Hutten called upon him to dismiss his clerical counsellors, to
stand on his own dignity, to give Luther a hearing, and to build up a free Germany. Freedom was
now in the air, and all men of intelligence longed for a new and better order of things.^337
Aleander was scarcely safe on the street after his speech of February 13. He reported to his
master, that for nine-tenths of the Germans the name of Luther was a war-cry, and that the last tenth
screamed "Death to the court of Rome!" Cochlaeus, who was in Worms as the theological adviser
of the Archbishop of Treves, feared a popular uprising against the clergy.
Luther was the hero of the day, and called a new Moses, a second Paul. His tracts and
picture, surrounded by a halo of glory, were freely circulated in Worms.^338
At last Charles thought it most prudent to disregard the demand of the Pope. In an official
letter of March 6, he cited Luther to appear before the Diet within twenty-one days under the sure
(^334) See Brück’s conversations with Glapio in Förstemann, I., pp. 53, 54. Erasmus and Hutten regarded him as a crafty hypocrite, who
wished to ruin Luther. Strauss agrees, Ulrich von Hutten, p. 405. But Maurenbrecher, (Studien, etc., pp. 258 sqq., and Gesch. der kath.
Ref., I. 187 sqq.) thinks that Glapio presented the program of the imperial policy of reform. Janssen, II., 153 sq., seems to be of the same
opinion.
(^335) See the list in Walch, XV., 2058 sqq.
(^336) Luther, in a letter to Spalatin (Nov. 23, 1520, In De Wette I. 523), in a moment of indignation expressed a wish that Hutten might
have intercepted (utinam —Intercepisset) the legates, but not murdered, as Romanists (Janssen, twice, II. 104, 143) misinterpret it. See
Köstlin, I. 411, and note on p. 797.
(^337) See Aleander’s dispatches in Brieger, l.c. I. pp. 119 sqq.; Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., pp. 395 sqq.; and Ullmann, Franz von
Sickingen (Leipzig, 1872).
(^338) Aleander reports (April 13) that Luther was painted with the Holy Spirit over his head (el spirito santo sopra it capo, come to
depingono). Brieger, I. 139.