EX SURGE DOMINE
Condemning The Errors Of Martin Luther
Pope Leo X
Bull issued June 15, 1520
Arise, O Lord, and judge your own cause. Remember your
reproaches to those who are filled with foolishness all
through the day. Listen to our prayers, for foxes have
arisen seeking to destroy the vineyard whose winepress
you alone have trod. When you were about to ascend to
your Father, you committed the care, rule, and
administration of the vineyard, an image of the
triumphant church, to Peter, as the head and your vicar
and his successors. The wild boar from the forest seeks
to destroy it and every wild beast feeds upon it.
Rise, Peter, and fulfill this pastoral office divinely
entrusted to you as mentioned above.
Give heed to the cause of the holy Roman Church, mother
of all churches and teacher of the faith, whom you by the
order of God, have consecrated by your blood. Against the
Roman Church, you warned, lying teachers are rising,
introducing ruinous sects, and drawing upon themselves
speedy doom. Their tongues are fire, a restless evil,
full of deadly poison. They have bitter zeal, contention
in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth.
We beseech you also, Paul, to arise. It was you that
enlightened and illuminated the Church by your doctrine
and by a martyrdom like Peter's. For now a new Porphyry
rises who, as the old once wrongfully assailed the holy
apostles, now assails the holy pontiffs, our
predecessors.
Rebuking them, in violation of your teaching, instead of
imploring them, he is not ashamed to assail them, to tear
at them, and when he despairs of his cause, to stoop to
insults. He is like the heretics "whose last defense," as
Jerome says, "is to start spewing out a serpent's venom
with their tongue when they see that their causes are
about to be condemned, and spring to insults when they
see they are vanquished." For although you have said that
there must be heresies to test the faithful, still they
must be destroyed at their very birth by your
intercession and help, so they do not grow or wax strong
like your wolves. Finally, let the whole church of the
saints and the rest of the universal church arise. Some,
putting aside her true interpretation of Sacred
Scripture, are blinded in mind by the father of lies.
Wise in their own eyes, according to the ancient practice
of heretics, they interpret these same Scriptures
otherwise than the Holy Spirit demands, inspired only by
their own sense of ambition, and for the sake of popular
acclaim, as the Apostle declares. In fact, they twist and
adulterate the Scriptures. As a result, according to
Jerome, "It is no longer the Gospel of Christ, but a
man's, or what is worse, the devil's."
Let all this holy Church of God, I say, arise, and with
the blessed apostles intercede with almighty God to purge
the errors of His sheep, to banish all heresies from the
lands of the faithful, and be pleased to maintain the
peace and unity of His holy Church.