Diet of Worms
Martin Luther refuses to recant at the Diet of Worms
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Officials demanded an answer "without horns or teeth." What Luther gave them is well documented — the four words carved on his monument are not.
17 and 18 April 1521, the bishop's palace
Luther arrived in Worms on 16 April 1521, but his formal hearings occurred on 17 and 18 April in the bishop's palace, separate from the Diet's ordinary business premises.
On 17 April officials asked whether the books displayed before him were his and whether he would retract them. He acknowledged authorship but requested time to consider the second question.
The answer on the second day
Luther waited about two hours before entering the larger chamber for the decisive second hearing. On 18 April he refused a wholesale recantation unless refuted by Scripture or evident reason, stating that his conscience was bound by God's word.
The compact formula "Here I stand, I can do no other" appears in an early printed literary version and is judged by the prevailing scholarly view not to have been spoken at the hearing. What is securely documented is the appeal to Scripture, reason and conscience.
Not a debate, and not yet an outlaw
Luther was not offered an open theological disputation. He was principally asked to acknowledge and retract his books, and the imperial spokesman Johann von der Ecken put the questions to him in Latin and German.
Charles V rejected the answer the following morning and said he would proceed against Luther as a heretic, while still honouring the safe conduct that had brought him.
The formal Edict of Worms followed on 8 May; it was not issued during Luther's 18 April testimony.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at 1521-04-18.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The listed date of 16 April is Luther’s arrival in Worms, not the date on which he refused to recant. The first examination was 17 April and the decisive refusal was 18 April.
- The authenticity question concerns the compact “Here I stand” formula, not Luther’s refusal itself. Contemporary documentation securely records his appeal to Scripture, reason and conscience.