On Theology and the Christian Life

We last heard from Luther that “gradually contempt of excommunication or papal thunderbolts” were beginning to rise against him in response to what he had written about papal indulgences between 1517 and 1519.

Before Luther’s excommunication from the Roman Church in 1520, a condemnatory bull, issued against Luther, was brought to his prince — Frederick the Wise — by a former friend, John Eck. A papal bull was a public decree. In this case, the decree was the condemnation of Luther and those things he had written at that time. Thankfully for Luther, Frederick was sympathetic to this German prie...