What if Luther had been burned at Worms?
In 1521 Charles V honoured Luther's safe conduct. What if he had broken it, as Sigismund did with Jan Hus?
What actually happened
Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 1517 grew, through printed pamphlets and public disputes, into a direct challenge to papal authority. The Pope excommunicated him in January 1521, and the young emperor Charles V summoned him to the Imperial Diet at Worms under a guarantee of safe conduct.
On 17 and 18 April 1521 Luther refused to recant his writings unless convinced by Scripture and reason. (The famous line "Here I stand, I can do no other" first appears in printed accounts and may not be his exact words.) Charles kept his promise and let him leave, but in May the Edict of Worms declared Luther an outlaw whose books were to be burned.
On the way home Luther was seized by men of his protector, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, and hidden in the Wartburg castle. There he translated the New Testament into German, published in 1522. Protected by princes and spread by the printing press, the Reformation took root across much of Germany.
The turning point
The precedent was obvious. In 1415 Jan Hus had come to the Council of Constance under the emperor Sigismund's safe conduct and been burned anyway, on the argument that promises to heretics need not be kept. Some at Worms, including the papal envoy Aleander, wanted Luther dealt with firmly.
Charles had reasons to keep his word: his personal honour, the need for the support of Frederick the Wise, an elector whose vote had mattered in the imperial election of 1519, and wars with France and the Ottomans that required German princes' help. Luther's death would also have made him a martyr in a Germany already flooded with his pamphlets.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: the young emperor heeded his confessor that a promise to a heretic need not be kept; like Hus at Constance, the monk of Wittenberg went to the stake; the Elector of Saxony protested but did not move his army, and the German princes did not leave Rome. In that world the scripted English Reformation does not happen either, and England and Switzerland stay Catholic.
Beyond the game, many historians doubt that killing Luther would have stopped the Reformation. Huldrych Zwingli was already preaching reform in Zürich from 1519, humanists such as Erasmus had prepared the ground, and long-standing German grievances against Rome, the so-called Gravamina, gave princes and cities their own reasons to break away. The printing press made suppression far harder than in Hus's day.
What a burning might have changed is the shape of the movement: without Luther's leadership and his German Bible, reform could have been more radical, more fragmented, or slower to win the protection of princes. It is also possible that a martyred Luther would have inflamed Germany further. The game's peaceful outcome is one plausible branch, not the likeliest.
Ripples through time
A Germany that stayed Catholic makes the later wars of religion easier for the emperor: in the game an imperial victory at Breitenfeld becomes noticeably more likely.
Carried into the Age of the Sun King (1680), the north German states, including Saxony, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Hanover, Württemberg and the Palatinate, are Catholic at the start: the German princes never left Rome.
- Shapes What if the Emperor had won the Battle of Breitenfeld?
- Carries into the next era Age of the Sun King and the Baroque
Play this turning point
Start in the Renaissance era (1500), or take the scenario The Printer of Wittenberg, which begins in 1517 as the theses go to press. The Currents of History story The Reformation lets you take Luther's side, Rome's side or the side of the peasants and preachers; Rome's side pushes for the alternative.
The two sides are treated as evenly matched in power, so the base odds and your contribution decide. Serving the emperor or the Pope through the story is how you change history.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Printer of Wittenberg” →
Questions and answers
Did Luther say "Here I stand" at Worms?
The phrase appears in early printed accounts of his speech but not in the most reliable transcripts. Historians think it may be a later addition, though it fits the substance of what he said.
Why did Charles V let Luther go?
He had promised safe conduct and considered his word binding. Politics also mattered: he needed the German princes, including Luther's protector Frederick the Wise, for his wars with France and the Ottomans.
Would the Reformation have happened without Luther?
Most historians think a reform movement was likely in some form, given Zwingli, humanist criticism, printing and German grievances against Rome, but its shape and success would probably have been different.
Sources and further reading
The Acts of the Diet of Worms (Deutsche Reichstagsakten); Luther's own writings. Modern accounts: Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation; Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther.
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