continue to reject the council as long as the Pope insists on being superior to the council. The second item Luther reports is that the Emperor is trying to make peace with the Turks and that this fact raises the possibility that, having finally established this peace, the Emperor might turn his force against the evangelicals. In closing Luther mentions a severe stone attack he has had recently and says that he would prefer death to the pain caused by such an attack.
On Nicholas von Amsdorf, see LW 48, 218.
Text in Latin: WA, Br 11, 18.1–132.1
To the Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, Sir Nicholas, true bishop of the church at Naumburg,2 my superior3 venerably to be esteemed in the Lord
Grace and peace in the Lord. If I had something to write, I would write, Reverend Father in Christ. But I suppose that all things are better known to you than to us.
From the diet they write4 that the Emperor strongly insists that our party consent to the council. Since our friends do not wish to do this he is angry, so they say. What kind of a monstrosity this is, I do not understand: the Pope shouts that we are heretics and that we must not have a place in the council; the Emperor wants us to consent to the council and its decrees. Perhaps God is making fools out of them;5 indeed Satan reigns, [and] all of them are so totally mad that they condemn us and at the same time ask for our consent. But this seems to be their raging wisdom; since thus far they were unable to scare us with their very evil cause by using the authority and power of the pope, the church, the Emperor, [and] the diets, they are now thinking of operating with the authority of the council; thus they could be in a position of publicly decrying us as incorrigible people who are willing to listen neither to the pope, nor the church, nor the Emperor, nor the empire, and now not even to the council, which we ourselves have so often requested. Look at this wisdom of Satan in contrast to that foolish God!6 How will that God be able to escape such clever plans? But it is the Lord who will ridicule the mockers.7 If we now have to consent to such a council, why did we not twenty-five years ago agree with the lord of the councils, the pope, and his bulls? Let the pope first acknowledge that the council is superior to him,8 and let him listen to the council
[even] if it speaks against him—just as his conscience testifies against him—[and] then we shall discuss the whole matter. They are insane and stupid.9 Thanks be to God.
The Emperor, Ferdinand, and the Frenchman are trying to make peace with the Turk,10 and some think that the Emperor might turn his weapons against us.11 But David says: "Yet I was praying."12 "May the Lord's will be done."13
Farewell in the Lord, my Reverend Father! Both of us are old; perhaps in a short while we will have to be buried. My torturer, the stone, would have killed me on St. John's Day, had God not decided differently.14 I prefer death to such a tyrant.
Your Reverend Lordship's dedicated [Wittenberg,] July 16, 1545 Luther hopes that Jonas has recuperated from the stone (gall stone?) which had troubled him, and suggests that by avoiding certain foods further problems might perhaps be eliminated. Then Luther communicates some news: The Archbishop of Mainz has sent "ridiculous delegates" to the Council of Trent; God will disperse the council; on June 21 a legation of the Emperor and others left Venice in order to establish peace with the Turks; the envoys dressed themselves in Turkish clothing so as not to be despised by the Turks. In this pragmatic action on the Emperor's part Luther sees a sign of capitulation of those who previously have decried and fought the Turks as enemies of Christendom. Luther underscores the ridiculousness of the situation by pointing out the financial manipulations of the popes in connection with the wars against the Turk, this enemy of Christendom, with whom one now is trying to make peace.
For Luther all this is a sign that the end of the world is near.
On Justus Jonas, see LW 48, 275, n. 3.