The Leipzig Disputation

Summary

The Leipzig Disputation was a formal academic debate held in the great hall of the Pleissenburg, the ducal castle at Leipzig, from late June to mid-July 1519, under the patronage of Duke George of Saxony and against the wishes of the local bishop of Merseburg. It grew out of a challenge by Johann Eck of Ingolstadt, who had criticized Luther's theses on indulgences and in late 1518 published theses for debate with Andreas Karlstadt of Wittenberg, aimed in fact at Luther. Luther answered with counter-theses, the last of which said that the supremacy of the Roman church rested only on papal decrees of the previous four centuries, against the testimony of Scripture, the history of the early Church and the Council of Nicaea. The Wittenberg party arrived on 24 June with Karlstadt, Luther, Philip Melanchthon and a large escort of students. After a Mass and an opening oration on the art of disputing by the humanist Petrus Mosellanus, the debate began on 27 June. Eck and Karlstadt argued for about a week over grace and free will: whether the human will is merely passive under grace or has a part of its own in good works. Eck was widely judged the quicker debater, and he objected to Karlstadt's habit of reading from his books. From 4 July Eck faced Luther on the primacy of the pope. Eck argued that the Roman primacy was established by divine right, from Christ's words to Peter in Matthew 16, the tradition of the fathers and the decisions of councils. Luther replied that the rock of Matthew 16 was Peter's confession of faith or Christ himself, that the Greek churches had never been under Rome yet were Christian, and that the primacy rested on human arrangement. Eck pressed him to say that he agreed with the condemned Bohemian Jan Hus, and Luther declared that some of Hus's articles condemned at the Council of Constance were thoroughly Christian and evangelical, and that a council could err. The two then debated purgatory, indulgences and penance, and Eck and Karlstadt briefly resumed on grace before the disputation closed in mid-July. Notaries took down the proceedings, and the universities of Erfurt and Paris were asked to judge; neither delivered a timely verdict, though both sides claimed victory. Eck went to Rome and helped draft the bull Exsurge Domine of 1520, while Luther, having stated publicly that popes and councils could err, wrote his great treatises of 1520. No public-domain English text of the disputation is stored in this library.

Top Lessons

• The disputation as a school of argument

  Leipzig was a formal university disputation with agreed rules, notaries and appointed judges. It shows how late medieval scholars tested claims publicly, and how much depended on preparation, memory and command of authorities.

• Authority: Scripture, fathers, councils and popes

  The central question was where final authority in the Church lies. Eck argued that the papacy was established by Christ and confirmed by fathers and councils; Luther argued that Scripture stands above popes and councils, which can err.

• The weight of a name: Jan Hus

  Eck's strategy was to show that Luther's position led to that of Hus, condemned and burned at the Council of Constance in 1415. Luther's admission that some of Hus's articles were Christian made the debate a turning point in his own career.

• Grace and the will before Erasmus

  The opening exchange between Eck and Karlstadt took up whether the will has a part of its own in good works. The same question, argued here in scholastic terms, returned in the debate between Erasmus and Luther in 1524-1525.

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Medical Lens

The disputation concerned grace, the papacy, councils, purgatory and indulgences; it has no medical content.