our yards in length,
amid the blowing of brass trumpets and other absurdities. They collected
from all quarters a mass of scholastic and papal writings, and hastened
with them and the bull to the pile, which their companions had meanwhile
kept alight. Another _Te Deum_ was then sung, with a requiem, and the
hymn, "_O du armer Judas_."

Luther at his lecture the next day told his hearers with great
earnestness and emotion what he had done. The papal chair, he said,
would yet have to be burned. Unless with all their hearts they abjured
the kingdom of the pope, they could not obtain salvation.

By this bold act, Luther consummated his final rupture with the papal
system, which for centuries had dominated the Christian world and had
identified itself with Christianity. The news of it must also have made
the fire which his words had kindled throughout Germany blaze out in all
its violence. He saw now, as he wrote to Staupitz, a storm raging, such
as only the last day could allay, so fiercely were passions aroused on
both sides. Germany was then, in fact, in a state of excitement and
tension more critical than at any other period of her history.

The announcement of the retractation required from Luther by the bull
was to have been sent to Rome within one hundred twenty days. Luther had
given his answer. The Pope declared that the time of grace had expired;
and on January 3d Leo X finally pronounced the ban against Luther and
his followers, and an interdict on the places where they were harbored.

Never did the most momentous issue in the fortunes of the German nation
and church rest so entirely with one man as they did now with the
Emperor. Everything depended on this whether he, as head of the empire,
should take the great work in hand, or should fling his authority and
might into the opposite scale. Charles had been welcomed in Germany as
one whose youthful heart seemed likely to respond to the newly awakened
life and aspirations, as the son of an old German princely family, who
by his election as emperor had won a triumph over the foreign king
Francis, supported though the latter was by the Pope. Rumor now alleged
that he was in the hands of the Mendicant friars; the Franciscan Glapio
was his confessor and influential adviser, the very man who had
instigated the burning of Luther's works.

He was, however, by no means so dependent on those about him as might
have been supposed. His counsellors, in the general interest