1520
Martin Luther, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder.Image: world · Europe
Luther burns the papal bull
Pope Leo X had issued the bull Exsurge Domine on 15 June 1520, condemning forty-one propositions drawn from Martin Luther’s writings and giving him sixty days to recant. On 10 December 1520 Luther cancelled his lectures, walked out to a bonfire lit by students outside Wittenberg’s Elster Gate and threw his copy of the bull into it, together with volumes of canon law. It was a point of no return. Leo excommunicated him on 3 January 1521 with the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, and in April Luther refused to recant before the emperor at the Diet of Worms.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Exsurge Domine ↗
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