Exsurge Domine
The bull in which Leo X condemned forty-one propositions drawn from Luther’s writings, ordered his books burned and gave him sixty days to recant or be declared a heretic.
Read the text at papalencyclicals.net ↗Latin extracts (Kidd, Documents of the Continental Reformation, no. 38) ↗
The bull takes its name from its opening words, a prayer: “Arise, O Lord, and judge your own cause.” It calls on Peter, Paul and the whole church to rise, speaks of a wild boar that seeks to destroy the Lord’s vineyard, lists forty-one statements, and condemns them as heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds. It does not say which censure applies to which statement.
It is the Roman see’s own account of what was wrong with Martin Luther’s teaching in 1520 and of the steps already taken to recall him. The propositions are quoted from his works, cut loose from their context; to see what he meant by them one must go to the works themselves.
Cited in
- 1520 to 1521, firm date