[Gamecock]

The sixteenth-century papacy never succeeded in setting fire to Martin Luther, much to its chagrin.

And to the chagrin of many current day FRoman Catholics.

[Alex Murphy]

The sixteenth-century papacy never succeeded in setting fire to Martin Luther, much to its chagrin. Support from a string of Saxon princes and political events in the Holy Roman Empire combined to keep Luther from Rome's grasp until he succumbed, aged 62, to a natural death. Intriguingly, there was much speculation in Luther's day and for several centuries afterwards about what would have happened if Rome had succeeded in sending the reformer to the stake -- speculation, that is, about whether he would have actually burned or not. From rather early in Luther's reforming career the opinion circulated that Luther was in fact insusceptible to burning -- that he was, in other words, incombustible per se....

....a 1521 pamphlet describing Luther's trial at Worms notes that, while Luther was permitted to leave Worms unharmed, the Diet decided to burn his books and a picture of his person to reinforce charges of heresy against him. The books apparently burned just fine, but the picture of Luther refused to succumb to the flames, at least until it was removed, enclosed in a box made of pitch, and reinserted into the fire. In 1522, on the occasion of a burning of Luther's books in Thorn, Prussia, another picture of Luther similarly defied its natural fate. In 1634, nearly a century after Luther's death, an image of Luther inexplicably survived the destruction by fire of a Lutheran pastor's study in Artern, Germany. And in 1689 when fire broke out in Luther's birth-house in Eisleben, the only surviving picture from the areas affected by flame was one of the reformer.

PFL