Exsurge Domine

Exsurge Domine opens by asking the Lord to rise and judge his own cause, and calls the author of the propositions a wild boar loose in the vineyard. It then lists forty-one sentences taken from Luther's published works and condemns them collectively as heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, without saying which charge attaches to which sentence. That drafting choice was itself criticised at the time, since it left a man asked to recant unsure of what precisely he was recanting.

The propositions cover more ground than indulgences. Several concern the treasury of merit and the power of the keys, which is where the quarrel began in 1517. Others touch purgatory, the authority of councils, free will, and the standing of the sacrament of penance. One, condemned along with the rest, states that burning heretics is against the will of the Spirit.

The bull orders Luther's books collected and burned wherever they are found, forbids anyone to print, sell, read or possess them, and gives him sixty days from its publication in his own country to appear or to send a written recantation. It also names, unusually, that anyone who shelters him is subject to the same penalties. This was a document written to end a controversy quickly, drafted in Rome by men who had not read most of what they were condemning.

Getting the bull into Germany proved harder than writing it. Johann Eck, who had debated Luther at Leipzig the year before and had helped assemble the propositions, was given the task of publishing it, and his personal involvement made it look to many Germans like a private quarrel carried to Rome. Several universities and bishops delayed. In some cities the men who posted it were assaulted.

Luther answered in print, first with an appeal to a general council, then with a tract against the bull, then by burning it. On 10 December 1520, outside the Elster Gate at Wittenberg, students burned volumes of canon law and Luther threw the bull on the fire. The gesture was the point: canon law was the machinery by which the condemnation would be enforced, and destroying both together denied the jurisdiction rather than the argument. The sixty days expired that same month.

Decet Romanum Pontificem followed on 3 January 1521, declaring Luther excommunicate. The Diet of Worms in April put the question to the empire rather than the church, and the Edict of Worms placed him under imperial ban in May.

Neither bull has been withdrawn, and the atlas does not record one. What changed the ground was later and different in kind: on 31 October 1999 the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a joint declaration stating a shared understanding of justification by faith, the doctrine underneath most of the forty-one.