Frederick the Wise
Frederick the Wise was the elector who founded the university that hired Luther, would not hand him over to Rome or to the emperor, had him kidnapped to safety after Worms, and never once met him or took communion in the new way until he was dying; the Reformation survived its first four years because of what he refused to do. He was born in 1463 and became Elector of Saxony in 1486, ruling the Ernestine half of the divided duchy from Wittenberg, a small town he set out to make important: a castle church with the largest relic collection in Germany, nineteen thousand pieces that earned indulgences by the million years, Cranach as court painter, and in 1502 a university, which in 1512 gave a chair of Bible to an Augustinian friar named Luther. When Luther's theses against indulgences in 1517 turned into a case of heresy, Frederick, who had never read them, insisted that a German professor be heard in Germany, and he had the standing to insist. In 1519 he was the elector whose vote decided between Charles of Habsburg and Francis of France, and the pope, who wanted neither, offered him the crown himself. He took Charles's money and voted for Charles. He got Luther a hearing at Augsburg in 1518 and an imperial safe-conduct to the Diet of Worms in 1521, and when the Diet put him under the ban Frederick's men, by arrangement, seized him on the road home and hid him in the Wartburg for ten months as Junker Jörg, where he translated the New Testament. Frederick's Wittenberg then ran ahead of him, with Karlstadt smashing images, and he called Luther back to stop it. He governed through his secretary Spalatin, who was Luther's friend, and kept the elector's own views to himself; he declined the crown of Bohemia and the regency of the empire. He died in May 1525, unmarried, as the peasants' war burned through Thuringia, having taken the cup as well as the bread on his deathbed, the first time. His brother John, who had met Luther, succeeded. Saxony became Lutheran by law under him.
- Lived: 1463 CE – 1525 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: elector, prince
