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MAY

 5, 1487 --Italy. Pope Innocent VIII launches a Bull against the Vaudois living on the slopes of the Alps in Dauphiny. These Waldensians have maintained it is as profitable to pray in a stable as in a church. “To arms,” the Pontiff cries, “and trample these heretics underfoot as venomous asps.”
     As an army of eighteen thousand men, and a multitude of volunteers wishing to share the spoil approaches, the Vaudois will abandon their dwellings, withdraw to the mountains, to caves and the clefts of rocks. The persecutors will ravage forests, and mountain retreats tracking these gentle people like deer.
     Finally, the would-be murderers will grow weary and they will refuse to climb the steep retreats of these “heretics.”

5, 1521 --Germany. Martin Luther having been condemned by the Diet of Worms and a price fixed upon his head is asked, “Where will you flee?” “Under Heaven,” he replies.
      Having escaped Worms, he arrives at Frankfort on Saturday evening, April 27th. He then set out for Friedberg, a town about six leagues from Frankfort.
     On Tuesday, April 30th, we find him two leagues from Hirschfeld when the Chancellor of the Abbot, prince of the town, comes out to meet him. The Abbot then appears at the head of a troop of horsemen, and after embracing him whom the Pope has anathematized, replies, “At five in the morning we will be at the church;” and rising from the evening table, he gives the reformer his own bed.
     Today Amsdorf and his brother, James accompany him, as he ventures along in the forest of Thuringia. When the carriage hits a rut in the road, some distance from the Castle of Altenstein, a sudden noise is heard and five masked horsemen, in complete armor, rush upon them. Luther’s brother quickly escapes running at top speed and without uttering a word. The driver determines to defend himself. “Stop!” cries one of the assailants and rushing him throws him to the ground. A second masked assailant seizes Amsdorf and prevents him from interfering while three other horsemen seize Luther, violently pulling him from the carriage. Not a word is spoken, a horseman’s cloak is thrown upon his shoulders, and then placed him on an empty horse purposely brought for the preacher. The other two quit Amsdorf and the driver, and leaping into their saddles, they vanish leaving behind a hat, which they did not bother to retrieve. The assailants re-trace their steps, and make turns and windings to deceive any who might follow them.
Luther, unaccustomed to horseback soon tires. He is permitted to dismount a few moments before remounting.
     Night falls and as it is impossible to follow them, the assailants take a new direction and nearly eleven o’clock at night, they arrive at the foot of a mountain. Climbing slowly to the summit they arrive at the old isolated castle called the Wartburg where the Landgraves of old used to conceal themselves. Here the bolts are drawn, the iron bars fall, the gates open, and once having entered, the bars again close and Luther dismounts.
     He is given the clothing of a knight and a sword. He is advised to allow his hair and beard to grow, while the inhabitants of the Wartburg will know him only as “Knight George.”

5, 1571 -- Scotland. The country is in civil war, and the house of John Knox is in the center of the conflict. Both sides have been anxious not to injure the reformer who has refused to leave his residence. One night an enemy actually fired a shot through the window intending to kill him, but the man of God was not seated in his usual place. Had he been so, he would undoubtedly have been killed. Finally being convinced if he remains his friends will have to hazard their lives for his safety, he today leaves Edinburgh.

5, 1888 --Germany. At Rodlitz, Saxony, Johann Friedrich Karl Keil dies. He is chiefly remembered for his Old Testament Commentaries, which he has undertaken with Franz Delitzsch. He nearly ignores modern higher criticism being of the same school as Hengstenberg.

 

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