LUTHER, MARTIN

Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam

      [Melchior Lotter?] - [November 4], 1520. First Edition. The year 1520 was one of the most important in life of Martin Luther. In January of that year the Roman Inquisiton re-opened its case against him, and in the spring Luther wrote 'A Treatise of Good Works', 'The Papacy in Rome', and 'An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation'. Sensing that punitive measures were imminient, on June 11 Luther received an offer of protection from over 100 knights. On June 15 Pope Leo X issued his Bull of Excommunication titled 'Exsurge Domine' which gave Luther 60 days to recant or be excommunicated from the Church. In September Johann Eck, the Catholic emissary of the Pope, traveled through-out Saxony posting the bull of excommunication. Meanwhile Luther was writing one of his most famous works 'The Babylonian Captivity of the Church' in which he attacks numerous practices of the Catholic Church. On the 10th of October Luther received the papal Bull and on the 4th of November Luther published the titled being offered here, 'Adversus execrabilem Antichrist bullam', as a response to the Bull. A month later Luther burned the Bull, along with numerous Catholic ecclesiastical books, under an oak tree outside the walls of the city of Wittemberg. 4to, 10 leaves. Signatures A-[C2]. Newly rebound in full calf with gilt lettering on spine, tape repair on A3, miniscule circular mark on A3-C2. From the library of the Episcopalian minister Phillip Brooks (1835-1893). [Attributes: Soft Cover]