Acts and Deeds of Dr Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms
The account of Luther’s two hearings before the emperor and the estates at Worms in April 1521, written and printed by his supporters within weeks. It contains the text of his speech.
Read the text at archive.org ↗Latin extract with the speech of 18 April (Kidd, no. 42) ↗
The Acta narrate Martin Luther’s journey to Worms, the hearings of 17 and 18 April 1521, and the negotiations that followed. They were put together on the Lutheran side and printed at the time. The speech of 18 April is told in the first person and, in the judgement of the editor of the imperial diet records, goes back to Luther himself.
Wrede’s edition compares the manuscripts and early prints and records where they differ. Its apparatus is the evidence for the wording of the close of the speech: the edited text ends with a prayer for God’s help, and the words “I cannot do otherwise, here I stand” are found only in two prints from a single Wittenberg press. A report preserved among the papers of the papal nuncio Aleander is printed in the same volume.
Cited in
- 1520 to 1521, firm date