d for four P.M.,
and the fact was announced to him by Ulrich von Pappenheim, the
hereditary marshal of the Empire. When the time came, there was a
great crowd assembled to see the heretic, and his conductors,
Pappenheim and Deutschland, were obliged to take him to the hall of
audience in the Bishop's Palace through gardens and by back ways.
There he was introduced into the presence of the Estates. He was a
peasant and a peasant's son, who, though he had written bold
letters to Pope and Prelate, had never spoken face to face with the
great ones of the land, not even with his own Elector, of whose
good-will he was assured. Now he was bidden to answer, less for
himself than for what he believed to be the truth of God, before
the representatives of the double authority by which the world is
swayed. The young Emperor looked at him with impassive eyes,
speaking no word either of encouragement or rebuke. Aleandro
represented the still greater, the intrinsically superior, power of
the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ. At the Emperor's side
stood his brother Ferdinand, the new founder of the House of
Austria, while round them were grouped six out of the seven
Electors, and a crowd of princes, prelates, nobles, delegates of
free cities, who represented every phase of German and
ecclesiastical feeling.

It was a turning-point of modern European history, at which the
great issues which presented themselves to men's consciences were
greater still than they knew.

The proceedings began with an injunction given by Pappenheim to
Luther that he was not to speak unless spoken to. Then John von
Eck, Official-General of the Archbishop of Trier, champion of the
Leipzig deputation, first in Latin, then in German, put, by
Imperial command, two questions to Luther. First, did he
acknowledge these books here present--showing a bundle of books
which were circulated under his name--to be his own; and secondly,
was he willing to withdraw and recall them and their contents, or
did he rather adhere to and persist in them? At this point, Schurf,
who acted as Luther's counsel, interposed with the demand, "Let the
titles be read." The official, in reply, recited, one by one, the
titles of the books comprised in the collected edition of Luther's
works published a