If the papal nuncio at the Diet of Worms had had his way with
the emperor and the princes, Luther would not have left that city alive.
They openly declared to the emperor that he was not obliged to keep his
plighted word for a safe-conduct to a heretic. These people come now at
this late day prating about violence that they have suffered from this
sacrilegious and bloodthirsty Luther. They themselves were the
perpetrators of the most appalling violence against God and men: their
whole system rests, as Johann Gerhard in his famous _Confessio
Catholica_ rightly asserts, on _Fraus et Vis,_ that is, Fraud and
Violence.

23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One.

Extremes met, with most disastrous effect-so Catholic writers tell us-in
Luther's views of the political rights of men. At one time he was so
outspoken in his condemnation of the oppression which the common people
were suffering from the clergy, the nobility, and their aristocratic
governors that he incited them to discontent with their humble lot in
life, to unrest, and to open rebellion against their magistrates. At
another time he became the spokesman for the most pronounced absolutism
and despotism. He turned suddenly against the very people whose cause
he had so signally championed, and who hailed him as their prophet and
leader. When the poor, downtrodden people needed him most, Luther
cowardly deserted them, and by frenzied utterances excited the nobility
to slay the common people without mercy in the most ruthless fashion,
and even promised the lords whom he had denounced as tyrants heaven for
enacting the barbaric cruelties to which he was urging them. This is the
Catholic portrayal of Luther during the Peasants' War.

The relation of the peasant uprising to Luther's preaching is grossly
misrepresented when the impression is created that Luther had before
this sad upheaval worked hand in glove with the malcontent rustics for
the overthrow of the government. Disturbances of this kind had been
periodical occurrences in Europe for many hundreds of years. The heavy
taxes and tithes, and the forced labor which the lords exacted from
their tenants, who were little better than serfs, the galling
restrictions in regard to hunting, fishing, gathering wood in the
forests which they had imposed on them, the foreign Roman law under
which they tried cases in court, and, in general, their haughty and
contemptuous bearing toward the common people had for many gene