Authority. He had fiery supporters and fiery opponents. His life was in the
gravest danger, and his death would have been followed by a bloody
collision between the two parties. The disaster was averted by the Elector
Frederick who kidnapped him for his own sake and carried him off to a
secure retreat in the Wartburg: where he remained for nearly a year,
working at his translation of the Bible. The Diet however confirmed an
edict condemning Luther and his doctrines. The English King moreover, who
accounted himself no mean theologian, issued a refutation of the Lutheran
heresies which won for him from Pope Leo the title of Defender of the
Faith.

At this time, and for some time to come, the Papacy regarded Francis I.
with hostility, and looked upon his Italian ambitions as dangerous to
itself. Hence there was a natural tendency to alliance between Rome and the
Emperor. 1521 was the year of the ineffectual Conference of Calais,
followed by the death of Leo X., the election of the (Imperial) Pope Adrian
in the next year, and the embroilment of England in the European wars.
Charles was sufficiently occupied with these high political matters, and
was personally withdrawn from Germany, whose affairs were more or less
controlled by an Imperial Council in which Frederick of Saxony was the
guiding spirit; popular sentiment was on Luther's side, and the Worms edict
was practically a dead letter. But the seclusion of the great Reformer
threw the movement largely into the hands of extremists such as Carlstadt
and Muenzer to whose anarchical theories he was opposed as vehemently as to
Rome.

[Sidenote: 1524 The German peasant rising]

Now we shall presently see that in England itself there was strong ground
for discontent with the prevailing social order and the relations between