THE BATTLE OVER THE CANON LAW

On December 10, 1520, before a group of his students and colleagues at the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther burned the books of the canon law and of the sacramental theology that supported it. Consigned to the flames were Gratian's Decretum (ca. 1140) and four books of later papal laws that formed the Corpus iuris canonici. Also included were the popular confessional book Summa angelica (1486) and the papal bull that threatened Luther's excommunication. Luther's colleagues Johann Agricola and Philip Melanchthon, who had organized the event, had also hoped to burn the works of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, two of the greatest theologians of the medieval Church. But they could not find anyone in Wittenberg who would donate their copies for the fire. They selected instead some works by Luther's antagonists, Johann Eck and Jerome Emser. Luther later wrote of his canonical bonfire: “I am more pleased with this than any other action in my life.”

If there were a single event that signaled Luther's permanent break with Rome, this was the event. Three years before, on October 31, 1517, Luther had posted and published his Ninety-Five Theses, attacking the Church's crass commercialization of salvation through the selling of indulgences. In several publications over the next few months, Luther had questioned with increasing stridency the biblical integrity of the Church's theology of salvation and the sacraments.