Martin Luther was put on trial at the Diet of Worms at 4 pm on Wednesday April 17, 1521.
He declared on the next day, April 18, 1521, “It cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me!”
He refused to recant his theology, the emerging Protestant movement, and its criticisms of corruption in the church. “Let us have a care, lest in our endeavors to arrest discords, we be bound to fight against the holy word of God and bring down upon our heads a frightful deluge of inextricable dangers, present disaster, and everlasting desolations.”
So, he defied the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the Pope, and was subsequently declared an outlaw and a heretic. His friends kidnapped him away, saving his life from assassination.
One comment that came to me was, Are you saying that Luther was tried by the ordeal by being fed a diet of worms? Good question, I don’t think most people have any idea what the name Diet of Worms means.
Diet was an old Latin word “dieta” that meant a “daily assembly” of church leaders and nobility to discuss policy issues. (Pronounced “dee-ta”.) It also came to mean a daily allowance of food, a meaning that came from its similarity to the Latin word “dies,” which means day.
In Luther’s day, the church and state leaders met at different towns to discuss and recommend policies for Europe. This assembly took place at the town of Worms in Germany, which is not far from Frankfurt and is famous for originating the sweet white wine called Liebfraumilch. (If you want to try the wine inexpensively, I recommend Leonard Kreusch’s blend of Liebfraumilch.) The name, which sounds so odd in English, meant a dragon or serpent. So, the Diet of Worms could be called the Assembly at Dragon City.
Japan took over this term “Diet” from studying German governmental forms as the name for its congress. Nowadays, when you hear that the Japanese Diet made a decision, think, Democracy at work on Godzilla Hill in the Eternal Fields (the literal name of the area of the government buildings).
