Luther burns the papal bull
1520 · Event
Threatened with excommunication unless he recants, Luther gathers students at Wittenberg's Elster Gate and throws the papal bull Exsurge Domine — and volumes of canon law — onto a bonfire. The gesture is unmistakable and irrevocable; there is no walking this back.
On these timelines: The Reformation, Christianity, Major Religions, Master, Germany
More from The Reformation
- The Reformation (1517)
- Calvin's Geneva becomes a model (1541)
- The Leipzig Disputation (1519)
- Luther excommunicated (1521)
- Luther hides at the Wartburg (1521)
- Tyndale is strangled and burned (1536)
- Zwingli's reformation in Zurich (1523)
- The Marburg Colloquy splits the reformers (1529)
Around 1520
- Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation (1519)
- Columbus reaches the Americas (1492)
- English Reformation (1533)
- Eighty Years' War / Dutch Revolt (1568)
- Spanish conquest of the Incas (1532)
- Spanish Reconquista last campaign (1482)
- Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519)
- French Wars of Religion (1562)
- Luther's 95 Theses (1517)
- Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508)