Diet of Worms
Charles V summons Martin Luther to Worms under safe conduct
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗An excommunicated monk received an imperial summons that also ordered the empire to protect him on the road.
6 March 1521: a letter and a promise
On 6 March 1521 Charles V issued a letter summoning Martin Luther to the imperial gathering at Worms.
The summons assured Luther safe passage there, where he was to be questioned in the presence of the emperor and the imperial estates.
A hearing the empire did not owe him
Leo X had excommunicated Luther on 3 January 1521, which normally called for a corresponding imperial ban.
Imperial princes and nobles insisted that he first be heard at an Imperial Diet. Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony and Luther's territorial prince, argued for handling the case under imperial law and supported granting him a hearing.
What was contemplated was an exceptional hearing about Luther's authorship and possible recantation, not an open-ended theological trial. Rome had already condemned his teachings, and the emperor and Diet would ordinarily only have enforced that judgment.
What the letter set in motion
Luther now had a formal imperial command and protection for the journey.
He departed Wittenberg on 2 April, reached Worms on 16 April, and was questioned on 17 and 18 April.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at 1521-03-06.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The exact date is well supported. It is the contemporary historical date; converting sixteenth-century dates into a proleptic modern calendar is usually avoided in Reformation scholarship.
- This sheet distinguishes the 6 March summons from Luther's much more famous appearances on 17–18 April.