Luther at the Diet of Worms

April 18, 1521

Summoned before Emperor Charles V, Luther refused to retract his writings. Here I stand, he reportedly said, I can do no other. Declared an outlaw, he was spirited away by Frederick the Wise to the Wartburg castle, where he began translating the New Testament into muscular German. His defiant stand became Protestant identity's founding myth, and Here I stand entered the Western lexicon as the expression of individual conscience.