Exsurge Domine
Luther refused to recant and responded instead by composing polemical tracts rebuking the papacy, and by publicly burning a copy of the bull on 10 December 1520.
Exsurge Domine also threatened Luther's colleague, Andreas Karlstadt, who likewise refused to recant his protestant teachings and suffered excommunication when Decet Romanum Pontificem was issued in 1521.
[1] The historical impetus for this bull arose from an effort to provide a decisive papal response to the growing popularity of Luther's teachings.
After a short time, it produced a hasty list of several perceived errors found in his writings, but Curial officials believed that a more thorough consideration was warranted.
The committee was reorganized and subsequently produced a report determining that only a few of Luther's teachings could potentially be deemed heretical or erroneous from the standpoint of Catholic theology.
His other teachings perceived as problematic were deemed to warrant lesser degrees of theological censure, including the designations "scandalous" or "offensive to pious ears".
All quoted statements were to be condemned as a whole (in globo) as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds.
[8] However, this in globo formula for censure had already been employed by the earlier Council of Constance to condemn various propositions extracted from the writings of Jan Hus.
[9] When the committee members had obtained agreement among themselves regarding the selection of forty-one propositions which they deemed to be problematic, they subsequently submitted their draft text to Leo X.
[9] Copies were printed, notarized, sealed and distributed to specially appointed papal nuncios who were tasked with disseminating the bull, especially in those regions where Luther's followers were most active, and ensuring that its instructions were carried out.
These words also serve to open a prefatory prayer within the text of the bull calling on the Lord to arise against the "foxes [that] have arisen seeking to destroy the vineyard" and the destructive "wild boar from the forest".
[5] Following additional prayers of intercession directed towards the Apostles Peter and Paul and the "whole church of the saints" to defend Catholicism against Luther, the bull proceeds to list the forty-one propositions previously selected by the committee.
Many of Luther's important works setting forth his disagreements with Catholic theology, including On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, had not yet been published when this bull was issued.
We forbid each and every one of the faithful of either sex, in virtue of holy obedience and under the above penalties to be incurred automatically, to read, assert, preach, praise, print, publish, or defend them.
[11]Luther, along with his "supporters, adherents and accomplices", were given sixty days from the publication of this bull in which to desist "from preaching, both expounding their views and denouncing others, from publishing books and pamphlets concerning some or all of their errors".
"[11] The Pope assigned to Eck and Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro the task of publishing this bull in Saxony, its neighboring regions, and the Low Countries.
Luther's commentary on proposition number 18 provides a representative example of its general tone: "I was wrong, I admit it, when I said that indulgences were 'the pious defrauding of the faithful'.
Although this work was not penned as a direct response to the bull, it nevertheless reaffirmed Luther's commitment to certain themes censured therein, including the primacy of ecumenical councils over papal decrees.
[27] On 10 December 1520, sixty days after Luther had received a copy of this bull, he and Melanchthon invited the local university faculty and students to assemble that morning at the Elster Gate in Wittenberg.
[17] Schaff notes that the condemned propositions are "torn from the connection [context], and presented in the most objectionable form as mere negations of Catholic doctrines.
In part, this evasion was simply an unavoidable consequence of the fact that Luther did not fully articulate his mature theological position until some time after this bull had been issued.
"[d] However, the declaration Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II states that "the human person has a right to religious freedom", and that "[t]his freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits", seem to have softened.
[34] Eastern Orthodox author Laurent Cleenewerck asserts that Leo X's condemnations technically satisfy the requirements of an infallible (ex cathedra) definition, in accordance with the criteria laid down by Vatican I.
He then notes that the practice of burning heretics poses a "serious ethical problem"[36] and thus Cleenewerck finds in Exsurge Domine support for his conclusion that "the idea that Papal Infallibility can be presented as independent of any conciliar consent and as 'the constant belief of the universal Church' is rejected.
"[37] Others disagree with those assessments and advance the alternative view that a censure that may be heretical but may also be merely "scandalous", "offensive to pious ears" or "seductive of simple minds" cannot be accepted as an infallible utterance of the Magisterium.
[38] A second argument advanced here asserts that censures that are merely "scandalous", "offensive to pious ears" or "seductive of simple minds" strongly depend upon a particular context of certain historical or cultural circumstances.
