Frederick the Wise
Elector of Saxony and Luther’s prince. He obtained a hearing for Luther in Germany, and Luther hid for a year at his wish after the diet of Worms. He died in May 1525, during the Peasants’ War.
Martin Luther recalled that in 1518 Duke Frederick of Saxony, prince-elector, took up his cause with the pope’s legate, asked that he be heard in Germany instead of Rome, and paid for his journey to Augsburg. Luther credited the spread of his teaching to Frederick’s protection (Luther, Preface to the Latin Writings (1545) on the years 1518–1519). From the diet of Worms Frederick wrote to his brother John of Saxony that he would gladly help Martin as far as he was in the right, and that anyone who showed him goodwill was called a heretic (Luther, Letters, Elector Frederick to Duke John, 24 April 1521 (Luther’s Correspondence 1, no. 458)).
Luther afterwards told Frederick that he had stayed in hiding for a year in obedience to him (Luther, Letters, to Elector Frederick, 5 March 1522); see Luther Is Excommunicated and Outlawed at Worms. Reporting his death in May 1525, Luther wrote that the elector had received the sacrament in both kinds, had known little of the peasants’ rising, and had urged his brother to try every peaceful means before it came to a battle (Luther, Letters, to John Rühel, 23 May 1525).
In the timeline
- 1520 to 1521, firm dateLuther Is Excommunicated and Outlawed at Worms
Leo X condemns forty-one of Luther’s propositions in 1520 and excommunicates him in January 1521. Before Charles V at Worms that April, Luther refuses to retract unless convinced by Scripture or evident reason. An imperial edict outlaws him, and he is hidden in a Saxon castle.