The Excommunication of Martin Luther: Exsurge Domine (1520) and Decet Romanum Pontificem (1521)

Abstract

The bull Decet Romanum Pontificem ("It is fitting that the Roman pontiff") officially excommunicated Martin Luther on January 3, 1521. Yet it barely evoked a response, nor did it see the light of day until later that year. It was merely the legal consequence of the June 1520 bull Exsurge Domine, which had cited Luther for forty-one distinct errors and had given him sixty days to renounce those errors publicly in Rome or face automatic excommunication. Luther's unwillingness to appear in Rome or to recant had already sealed his fate, ceremonially symbolized by his burning of Exsurge Domine in Wittenberg on December 10. In this sense, Decet Romanum served as the culmination of a process dating back to 1517, when Albrecht of Mainz sent a copy of the Ninety-Five Theses to Rome for opinion and direction. In the weeks and months that followed, a heresy trial began according to the conventions of canon law and ecclesiastical procedure, only to stall before being resumed in 1520 and leading to Exsurge Domine, Decet Romanum Pontificem, and Luther's excommunication as a "notorious" heretic.