The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

foresee how unreliable he will be; he will corrupt the blessed Scriptures by
his false interpretation, so that the common reader will believe that he is
drawing from the Holy Scriptures what that accursed man has derived
from damnable heretical books." The German nobles, to whom this letter
was addressed, received it in very different ways. Duke George replied,
that he had bought up all the copies of Luther's translation which had
found their way into his dominion, and had interdicted the circulation of it.
The Elector Frederick and Duke John, in their reply, passed over this point
with significant silence.
The mandate of Duke George spoke with special bitterness of the
pictures in Luther's New Testament, pictures which it characterized as
"outrageous, tending to throw scorn upon the Pope's holiness, and to
confirm Luther's doctrine." Luther's comment, which he bestowed upon
the Duke himself, was, "I am not to be frightened to death with a bladder:"
and to inspire some of his own courage in others, he wrote his treatise "Of
Civil Authority--how far we owe allegiance to it," in which he declares that
rulers who suppress the Holy Scriptures are tyrants--murderers of Christ-worthy
of a place with Herod, who sought the life of the infant Saviour.
The counter-translation. Emser. 86
Jerome Emser managed to get himself involved in the amber of
Luther's history; and so we know of him. After Duke George had entered
on his crusade against Luther's New Testament, especially against the
pictures in it, (and in this latter point, we confess, something might be
urged for the duke, in an artistic point of view,) he found his Peter the
Hermit in a Catholic theologian, a native of Ulm, who had studied at
Tübingen and Basle. He had been chaplain of Cardinal Raymond Gurk,
and had travelled with him through Germany and Italy. On his return, he
obtained the chair of Belles-Lettres at Erfurt. Subsequently, he became
secretary and orator to Duke George. He was originally a friend' of Luther,
but his friendship was not permanent. It gave way at the Leipzig
disputation, in 1519, and he transferred his allegiance to Eck. He had the
honor of being the first literary antagonist of Luther's version. Duke
George, the
86 See Goz, Ueberblicke, etc., p. 300.