Charles Beard: "Martin Luther & the German Reformation," 7:355ff-1520: L...

15 Jun 1520--EX SURGE DOMINE: "A WILD BOAR IS LOOSE IN THY VINEYARD, O LORD." What say you, Dr. Bruder Martin, to this?

International gossip dominates the circuits of the cognoscenti and officialdom, including Eck, Cajetan, Caracciolo, Alender and Pope Leo X, act, to wit: 

“The Bull Exsurge Domine was issued on the 15th of June. This document, which like others of its class combined an unctuous religious phraseology with a quite legal diffuseness and repetition, stated the especial kindness with which the Holy See regarded the German nation, and vaunted the patience, the moderation, the fatherly long-suffering extended to Luther by the Pope. But it went on to condemn forty-one articles extracted from his works and extending over a wide range of Christian doctrine. At the same time the selection of the incriminated opinions was not so made as to give any distinct or comprehensive view of the matters really in dispute between Luther and the Church. All books of Luther's, wherever found, are to be burned; Luther himself is prohibited from preaching. He and his adherents are required to recant within sixty days of the publication of the Bull in the dioceses of Brandenburg, Meissen, and Merseburg; and sixty days more are 11 for the news of their recantation to reach the Pope. Otherwise they are declared to be self- convicted of obstinate heresy, and given over to the punishment reserved for heretics : a sentence which takes a lurid light from the fact that the 33d of the condemned propositions is, "To burn heretics is contrary to the will of the Spirit" The author of the Bull affected a judicial style ; but how little of the judicial character belonged to it may be inferred from the fact that Eck was invested with the office of Papal Prothonotary, with a view to the publication of the Bull in those parts of Germany where Luther's influence was greatest ; and that he was authorized to insert in the document, at his own discretion, the names of not more than twenty-four persons who were to share the penalties inflicted on the arch-heretic himself Eck declared afterwards that he had unwillingly undertaken the task of publishing the Bull ; but if it were so, he soon overcame his reluctance, and showed no lack of energy in its performance” (356). 

The Bull gets wide international play. Luther’s response? 

“This was the moment which the Reformer chose for delivering his second great blow the book, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. It was an elaborate and resolute attack upon the sacramental system of Rome; less vehement in style, as became a scientific theological treatise, than the Address to the German Nobility, but for those who could discern the wide sweep and necessary issues of the principles laid down, not less trenchant” (365).