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Hello nestled on a bend of the river Rhine in the southwest corner of Germany is the city of worms or worms.

It's one of the oldest cities in central Europe. It still has its early city walls. It's 11th century Romanesque cathedral and a 500-year-old printing industry.

But in its center is a statue of a monk, branded as a heretic, the founder of the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther.

In 1521, Luther came to Worms to explain his attack on the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the gathered dignitaries of the German lands.

What happened at that assembly, called the Diet of Worms, was key to a movement which tore countries apart, set nations against nations,

and felled kings and plunged dinisters into suicidal bouts of infighting. But why did Martin Luther risk execution to go to the Diet?

What was its stake for the big players of medieval Europe and how did the events of the Diet of Worms irrevocably change the history of Europe?

With me to discuss the Diet of Worms of the Reverend Dr. Charlotte Methion, lecturer in Reformation history at the University of Oxford, David Barci, lecturer in the history of Christian thought at the University of Hol,

and Durban McCulloch, professor of the history of the Church at Oxford University.

Donor McCulloch, in the spring of 1521, Martin Luther, who had been excommunicated, answered the summons of his emperor to explain his actions.

He left the theology faculty at Wittenberg University by the City of Worms. Can you tell us why he went and give us some flavor of the journey?

Well, happy days for Luther. This was a triumphal progress across the Empire, suddenly he was a celebrity.

And people crowded to see him, a priest touched the hem of his garment as he entered the City of Worms.

And that gives you a flavor of, although the fact that he's a happy days, they are also dangerous days.

He is going up to Worms almost in the manner of Christ to his crucifixion and he made that comparison.

This is a journey on behalf of God, and it's a journey to present the case of truth to the emperor at the most August assembly of the Empire.

Having defined the Pope and called the Pope the Antichrist, which he was wanting to do and being excommunicated, he was sort of safe in Saxony as a theological professor of theology there.

Why did he go?

He went first because he felt he had to. He had to present his message. He went because the emperor had summoned him under a safe conduct.

He went because he felt that he had to represent truth for God and perhaps die in the process. A hundred years before a man who had led a reformation in Bohemia had also had a safe conduct to a great assembly of the church and had been burnt despite that safe conduct.

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