On This Day, 1521

Martin Luther is condemned as a heretic; a judgment that cannot be undone.

The men gathered to address Luther and his Reformation were certainly perceptive:

He says that there are no such things as superiority and obedience. He destroys all civil police and hierarchical and ecclesiastical order, so that people are led to rebel against their superiors, spiritual and temporal, and to start killing, stealing, and burning, to the great loss and ruin of public and Christian good. Furthermore, he institutes a way of life by which people do whatever they please, like beasts. They behave like men living without any law, condemning and despising all civil and canon laws to the extent that Luther, by excessive presumption, has publicly burned the decretals and (as we might expect) would have burned the imperial civil law had he not had more fear of the imperial and royal swords than he had of apostolic excommunication.

- The Edict of Worms (1521)

The consequences of Luther's defiance continue to haunt us after 500 years, with the Church of Me (i.e. "I’m spiritual not religious"), being the most prevalent religion in the Western world today.