July 4, 1519

Leipzig Debate

Luther and Eck begin debating papal primacy at Leipzig

Luther's first words were not a manifesto. He said deference to the pope had made him want to avoid the subject entirely.

Seven in the morning, 4 July 1519

At 7 a.m. on 4 July 1519, Martin Luther and Johann Eck formally began their phase of the Leipzig Disputation in the Pleißenburg.

Luther's appearance replaced the preceding Eck–Karlstadt phase, which had run through 3 July on free will, grace and good works — six sitting days, feast days excluded.

The stated subject that morning was the authority, or more precisely the primacy, of the Roman pope.

Divine law, or comparatively recent decrees

Eck argued that a single sovereignty in the earthly Church had been instituted by Christ and by divine law.

Luther's opposing thesis held that claims for Roman supremacy rested on comparatively recent papal decrees, contradicted by Scripture and by earlier church history.

Eck's preparatory thesis asserting the divine institution of papal supremacy had implicitly targeted Luther, and that is what drew him in.

Deference, and a complaint about absent inquisitors

Luther opened by accepting the procedural terms Karlstadt and Eck had already established.

He said he would have avoided the contentious issue out of deference to the pope and the Roman Church had Eck's thesis not drawn him into it.

He also complained in that opening that the inquisitors who had repeatedly accused him of heresy were absent now that a public examination was available.

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