Jan 3, 1521: Martin Luther excommunicated....

[Valin]

Oxford University Press

 

On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum pontificem (It pleases the Roman Pontiff), which excommunicated Martin Luther, a German theologian and monk who had been causing the Roman Catholic Church no end of trouble since 1517. With that, the Pope cast Luther out of the Catholic Churchand thereby helped spur the development of the Lutheran church and the Protestant Reformation.

 

The trouble had begun back on October 31, 1517, when Luther sent his 95 Theses, protesting several Church practices and doctrines, to the Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg. By the next summer, Church authorities began to call Luthers views heretical, though it took three years before Leo X moved formally against him. On June 15, 1520, he issued the bull Exsurge Domine (Arise Oh Lord) stating that 41 sentences in Luthers 95 Theses were heresy.

 

The Pope gave Luther 60 days to recant these words and another 60 to inform the papacy of his cooperation. If not, the bull said, Luther would be excommunicated.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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It should be noted: this has never been repealed.