The importance of giving offence

As dons at Cambridge vote on a new protocol on constraints to free speech, we mark this month the 500th anniversary of the public burning of Martin Luther’s books outside the west door of Great St Mary’s, the university church at Cambridge.

After the 1517 publication of his famous 95 Theses, raging against the Church’s sale of ‘indulgences’ that purported to pardon sin in exchange for money, Luther had been denounced by Pope Leo X in a papal Bull. This accused him of (among other things) saying things that were ‘offensive to pious ears’. Luther then burned the papal Bull on 10 December 1520, giving further offence. He was excommunicated the following year.

Make no bones about it: Martin Luther intended to offend. He was not just advancing a reasoned case against Catholic practice — though he did — but also turning his protest into a campaign that would catch fire. It would have been entirely possible for the professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg to have made his arguments with quiet courtesy, ruffling a few episcopal feathers but attracting no public interest. But he wanted to stir things up.

Luther could (in the language now recommended to Cambridge dons 500 years later) have worded his case with ‘respect’ towards opponents. The Wittenberg professor made no such concession. His language is neither respectful nor polite, nor even tolerant. In Thesis 10 he accused priests of acting ‘ignorantly and wickedly’. In his 28th thesis he accused priests who sold indulgences of ‘greed and avarice’.Thesis 32 claims that such priests face eternal damnation. Attempting to buy divine pardon for money (he says in Thesis 45) will earn ‘God’s wrath’. They are ‘the enemies of Christ’, he adds in Thesis 53.