Exsurge Domine

Almost three years after Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses set off a religious wildfire, Pope Leo X issued this papal bull, named after the first two words in the Latin text, “Arise, O Lord.” The document lists forty-one purported errors of Luther. Many of them concern the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences, but the bull also defends the Catholic doctrines of the divine institution of the papacy, the morality of burning heretics, and others (Wiesner-Hanks, 168-169). 

Pope Leo X ordered that all of Luther’s works be burned, and he forbade Catholics from reading or owning any of them. He also ordered Luther to come and recant his heretical beliefs within sixty days, or be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Luther did not do so, and in response to the bull he issued several new writings denouncing the papacy as the Antichrist (whether the Antichrist label applies to the individual holding the papal office or the institution has been a source of intra-Lutheran dissension since; see for example statements by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod here, and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod here, which also expound on Luther’s views on the subject). Two months after he received a copy of Exsurge Domine Martin Luther publicly burned it and other church documents.

This papal bull shows the inherent spiritual role of the papacy as the center of authority in Catholicism. In relation to the Reformation period specifically it shows the doctrines that came under debate due to Luther’s challenge, and the fierce way in which the Catholic hierarchy responded to the German monk’s criticism. However, the bull ultimately did little if anything to slow down the speed of the Reformation that was sweeping across much of Germany.