In view of the circumstances just described, P. Kalkoff, years ago, admitted that Luther’s words as quoted above had “no claim to credibility,”[182] while, quite recently, H. Böhmer declared that “it would be well not to quote any more these most celebrated of Luther’s words as though they were his. Many will be sorry, yet the absence of these words need not affect our opinion of Luther’s behaviour at Worms.”[183] W. Friedensburg is also of opinion that “we must, at any rate, give up the emphatic conclusion of the speech--‘Here I stand,’ etc.--as unhistorical; the searching examinations made in connection with the Reichstagsakten have rendered it certain that Luther’s conclusion was simply: ‘God help me, Amen.’” Of this Karl Müller adduced conclusive proofs.[184]
The immense success of the legend of the manly, decisive, closing words so solemnly uttered in the assembly is quite explicable when we come to consider the circumstances. The Diet, an event which stands out in such strong relief in Luther’s history, where his friends seemed to see his star rising on the horizon only to set again suddenly behind the mountain fortress, was itself of a nature to invite them to embellish it with fiction.
Apart from the legends in circulation among Luther’s friends, there were others which went the rounds among his opponents and later polemics. Such is the statement to the effect that Luther played the coward at Worms, and that his assumed boldness and audacity was merely due to the promises of material assistance, or, as Thomas Münzer asserts, to actual coercion on the part of his own followers.
According to all we have seen, Luther’s chief motive-force was his passionate prepossession in favour of his own ideas. It is true that, especially previous to the Diet, this was alloyed with a certain amount of quite reasonable fear. He himself admits, that when summoned to Worms, he “fell into a tremble” till he determined to bid defiance to the devils there.[185] On his first appearance before the Diet on April 17, he spoke, according to those who heard him, “in an almost inaudible voice,” and gave the impression of being a timid man.[186] Later his enthusiasm and his boldness increased with the lively sense of the justice of his cause aided by the applause of sympathisers. There can be no doubt that he was stimulated to confidence not merely by the thought of the thousands who were giving him their moral support, but by the offers of material help he had received, and by his knowledge that the atmosphere of the Diet was charged with electricity. “Counts and Nobles,” he himself says later, “looked hard at me; as a result of my sermon, as people in the know think, they lodged in court a charge of 400 Articles [the ‘Gravamina’] against the clergy. They [the members of the Diet] had more cause to fear me than I to fear them, for they apprehended a tumult.”[187] It was his fiery conviction that he had rediscovered the Gospel and torn away the mask of Antichrist, combined with his assurance of outward support, that inspired him with that “mad courage” of which he was wont to talk even to the end of his life: “I was undismayed and feared nothing; God alone is able to make a man mad after this fashion; I hardly know whether I should be so cheery now.”[188]