Лео X папасының Мартин Лютерге қарсы бұйрығы

1520 papal bull by Pope Leo X in response to Martin Luther's 95 Theses

is a papal bull promulgated on 15 June 1520 by Pope Leo X. It was written in response to the teachings of Martin Luther which opposed the views of the Catholic Church. The bull censured forty one propositions abstracted from Luther's writings, and threatened him with excommunication unless he recanted within a sixty day period commencing upon the publication of the bull in Saxony and its neighboring regions. Luther refused to recant and responded instead by composing polemical tracts rebuking the papacy, and by publicly burning a copy of the bull on 10 December 1520. As a result, Luther was excommunicated in 1521.

The historical impetus for this bull arose from an effort to provide a decisive papal response to the growing popularity of Luther's teachings. Beginning in January 1520, a papal consistory was summoned to examine Luther's fidelity to Catholic teachings. After a short time, it produced a hasty list of several perceived errors found in his writings, but Curial officials believed that a more thorough consideration was warranted. The committee was reorganized and subsequently produced a report determining that only a few of Luther's teachings could potentially be deemed heretical or erroneous from the standpoint of Catholic theology. His other teachings perceived as problematic were deemed to warrant lesser degrees of theological censure, including the designations "scandalous" or "offensive to pious ears". Johann Eck subsequently became involved in these proceedings. He had personally confronted Luther a year earlier in the Leipzig disputation and had obtained copies of condemnations issued against Luther by the universities of Cologne and Leuven. In a letter to a friend, Eck said he became involved because "no one else was sufficiently familiar with Luther's errors." Soon after having joined the committee when it was already halfway through its deliberations, he began to exert his considerable influence on the direction it subsequently took. The committee on which Eck sat consisted of some forty members, including cardinals (among whom was Cardinal Cajetan), theologians and canon lawyers. The heads of the three major mendicant orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans and Augustinians, were represented. Central to the committee's proceedings was the matter of whether (and in what manner) Luther and his teachings should be formally condemned. Some members argued that Luther's popular support in Germany made it too politically risky to issue a bull at that time. The theologians supported an immediate condemnation of Luther. But the canon lawyers advocated a mediating position: Luther should be given a hearing and a chance to defend himself before being excommunicated as a heretic. Ultimately the committee negotiated a compromise. Luther would be given no hearing, but he would be offered a sixty day window in which to repent before further action would be taken. Prior to Eck's involvement, Cajetan had expressed his desire that the committee members examine the whole context of Luther's writings and specify careful distinctions among the various degrees of censure to be applied to Luther's teachings. Eck's approach was markedly different. He bulldozed a final decision through the committee to ensure a speedy publication. As a result, the text it ultimately drafted simply contained a list of various statements by Luther perceived as problematic. No attempt was made to provide specific responses to Luther's propositions based upon Scripture or Catholic tradition or any clarification of what degree of theological censure should be associated with each proposition listed. All quoted statements were to be condemned as a whole (in globo) as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds. Eck may have employed this tactic in order to associate more strongly the taint of error with all of Luther's censured teachings. However, this in globo formula for censure had already been employed by the earlier Council of Constance to condemn various propositions extracted from the writings of Jan Hus. When the committee members had obtained agreement among themselves regarding the selection of forty one propositions which they deemed to be problematic, they subsequently submitted their draft text to Leo X. He appended a preface and conclusion and issued the document as an official papal bull on 15 June 1520. Copies were printed, notarized, sealed and distributed to specially appointed papal nuncios who were tasked with disseminating the bull, especially in those regions where Luther's followers were most active, and ensuring that its instructions were carried out.

Exsurge Domine marks a watershed event in Christian history. Protestant author Philip Schaff notes: "The bull of excommunication is the papal counter manifesto to Luther's Theses, and condemns in him the whole cause of the Protestant Reformation. Therein lies its historical significance. It was the last bull addressed to Latin Christendom as an undivided whole, and the first which was disobeyed by a large part of it." However, contemporary scholars of the Reformation widely agree that this bull itself is a "strange document and an evasive assessment of Luther's theological concerns". Schaff notes that the condemned propositions are "torn from the connection [context], and presented in the most objectionable form as mere negations of Catholic doctrines. The positive views of the Reformer are not stated, or distorted." Catholic author John M. Todd calls the bull "contradictory, lacking in charity, and incidentally far less effective than it might have been". Not only does the text fail to identify precisely how each proposition is censured, but also it avoids direct engagement with numerous issues that are central to Luther's theology including sola fide and sola scriptura. In part, this evasion was simply an unavoidable consequence of the fact that Luther did not fully articulate his mature theological position until some time after this bull had been issued. Even so, Eck did not afford the committee sufficient time to better grasp the core issues at stake in Luther's teachings. As a result, some of the censured propositions are ambiguous, peripheral to Luther's main concerns, or were misunderstood or misrepresented by the committee. At least twelve of the forty one propositions fail to accurately quote Luther or misrepresent his beliefs. The bull itself contains an internal contradiction: at one point it orders all of Luther's works to be burned, but elsewhere restricts this censorship only to those works which contain one of the forty one censored propositions.

The censure of certain theological propositions in this bull continues to be a source of controversy. For example, proposition number 33 censured by this bull states: "It is contrary to the will of the Spirit that heretics be burned." However, the declaration Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II states that "the human person has a right to religious freedom", and that "[t]his freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits", seem to have softened. Eastern Orthodox author Laurent Cleenewerck asserts that Leo X's condemnations technically satisfy the requirements of an infallible (ex cathedra) definition, in accordance with the criteria laid down by Vatican I. The declaration of Leo X that members of the Catholic faithful must "condemn, reprobate, and reject completely each of these theses or errors" on pain of an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication is said to constitute an authoritative papal definition on doctrinal matters concerning faith and morals which must be held by the whole Catholic Church. He then notes that the practice of burning heretics poses a "serious ethical problem" and thus Cleenewerck finds in Exsurge Domine support for his conclusion that "the idea that Papal Infallibility can be presented as independent of any conciliar consent and as 'the constant belief of the universal Church' is rejected." Others disagree with those assessments and advance the alternative view that a censure that may be heretical but may also be merely "scandalous", "offensive to pious ears" or "seductive of simple minds" cannot be accepted as an infallible utterance of the Magisterium. Brian Harrison argues that a censure of an unspecified nature is potentially subject to future clarification or reform, unlike an ex cathedra definition, which is, by nature, irreformable. A second argument advanced here asserts that censures that are merely "scandalous", "offensive to pious ears" or "seductive of simple minds" strongly depend upon a particular context of certain historical or cultural circumstances. A proposition that causes scandal or offense when it is advanced within a particular context "may not necessarily be so noxious under different circumstances". Even if a proposition is essentially true but poorly worded or advanced in a particular context with the intent of provoking scandal or offense, it may be censured as "scandalous" or "offensive to pious ears".

A copy of Exsurge Domine is extant in the Vatican Library.