On This Day in History: April 18

The Diet of Worms

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The Diet of Worms was not nearly as disgusting as it sounds, although that may depend on your perspective.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 18, 1521--

It was an “imperial diet”—the “diet” actually means “assembly,” called by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and held in the German city of Worms, because the emperor was mega pissed at Martin Luther. Three years earlier ol’ Marty, a theology professor and priest, had (allegedly) nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. More importantly, he used whatever the 16^th-century version of the post office was to send his tirade to the Archbishop of Mainz. The basic message was that the church was wrong to say people could buy their way into heaven, or something. Oh, and the date was October 31. Trick or treat, motherfucker.

That was the start of the Protestant Reformation, and three-and-a-half years later Emperor Chuckie called his worm diet, telling Luther to take it back. Back then, heresy could get you into some deep, deep poo. But on April 18, 1521, Luther was all “Nah, dude,” saying, “If I now recant these, then, I would be doing nothing but strengthening tyranny.” Burn.

Speaking of burning, Charles was not impressed, and these folks were fond of setting heretics on actual fire. Charles ordered Luther to be named an outlaw, made it illegal for anyone to give him aid, banned his teachings, and basically said that if someone wanted to off him, it was cool. Totes legal. Kill away.

So Luther fucked off and managed to live another 25 years.

He translated the Bible from Latin to German, making it accessible to the people rather than having to trust some priest’s interpretation, and that shook shit up. He also said Jews should die. Not such a nice guy after all.

For quite some time the people who liked what Luther had to say and those who were more into the old ways didn’t get along so well. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition to add Protestants to their shit list.

But yeah, the whole Protestantism thing really took off, there was 30 years of war with eight million dead, then a bunch of them hauled ass to America. Some became chill and started ordaining gays, and others did fucked-up shit like playing with snakes and getting Trump elected.

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