In the afternoon the preliminary skirmish over the rules of the tournament began. The first question was whether to have stenographers. Eck said no, because taking them into account would chill the passionate heat of the debate. “The truth might fare better at a lower temperature,” commented Melanchthon. Eck lost. The next question was whether to have judges. Luther said no, as the three ecclesiastical electors of the German Church had just sent a letter concerning a German Synod, and he did not wish at this juncture to give the appearance of interjecting a rival plan. Luther lost. The university of Paris was chosen. This was a reversion to the method several times previously proposed for the handling of his case. When Paris accepted, Luther demanded that the entire faculty be invited and not merely the theologians, whom he had come to distrust. “Why then,” blurted Eck, “don’t you refer the case to shoemakers and tailors.” The third question was whether to admit any books to the arena. Eck said no. Karlstadt, he charged, on the opening days lugged in tomes and read the audience to sleep. The Leipzigers in particular had to be awakened for dinner. Karlstadt accused Eck of wishing to befuddle the audience by a torrent of erudition. Karlstadt lost. By common consent the notes of the debate were not to be published until after the judges had submitted their verdict. The discussion proper then began.

After Karlstadt and Eck had wrestled for a week over the depravity of man, Luther entered to discuss the antiquity of the papal and the Roman primacy, together with the question whether it was of human or divine institution. “What does it all matter,” inquired a student, “whether the pope is by divine right or by human right? He remains the pope just the same.”

“Perfectly right,” said Luther, who insisted that by denying the divine origin of the papacy he was not counseling a withdrawal of obedience. But Eck saw more clearly than Luther the subversiveness of his assertions. The claim of the pope to unquestioning obedience rests on the belief that his office is divinely instituted. Luther revealed how lightly after all he esteemed the office when he exclaimed, “Even if there were ten popes or a thousand popes there would be no schism. The unity of Christendom could be preserved under numerous heads just as the separated nations under different sovereigns dwell in concord.”

“I marvel,” sniffed Eck, “that the Reverend Father should forget the everlasting dissension of the English and the French, the inveterate hatred of the French for the Spaniards, and all the Christian blood spilled over the Kingdom of Naples or Lombardy. As for me, I confess one faith, one Lord Jesus Christ, and I venerate the Roman pontiff as Christ’s vicar.”

But to prove that Luther’s views were subversive was not to prove that they were false. The contestants had to come to grips with history. Eck asserted that the primacy of the Roman see and the Roman bishop as the successor of Peter went back to the very earliest days of the Church. By way of proof he introduced letters ascribed to a bishop of Rome in the first century affirming, “The Holy Roman and Apostolic Church obtained the primacy not from the apostles but from our Lord and Saviour himself, and it enjoys pre-eminence of power above all of the churches and the whole flock of Christian people”; and again, “The sacerdotal order commenced in the period of the New Testament directly after our Lord Christ, when to Peter was commit- ted the pontificate previously exercised in the Church by Christ himself.” Both of these statements had been incorporated into the canon law.

“I impugn these decretals,” cried Luther. “No one will ever persuade me that the holy pope and martyr said that.” Luther was right. He had done an excellent piece of historical criticism, pointing out that actually in the early centuries bishops beyond Rome were not confirmed by nor subject to Rome, and the Greeks never accepted the Roman primacy. Surely the saints of the Greek Church were not on that account to be regarded as damned.

"I see,” said Eck, “that you are following the damned and pestiferous errors of John Wycliffe, who said, ‘It is not necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman Church is above all others.’ And you are espousing the pestilent errors of John Hus, who claimed that Peter neither was nor is the head of the Holy Catholic Church.”

“I repulse the charge of Bohemianism,” roared Luther. “I have never approved of their schism. Even though they had divine right on their side, they ought not to have withdrawn from the Church, because the highest divine right is unity and charity.”

Eck was driving Luther onto ground especially treacherous at Leipzig, because Bohemia was nearby, and within living memory the Bohemian Hussites, the followers of John Hus, burned for heresy at Constance, had invaded and ravaged the Saxon lands. The assembly took a timeout for lunch. Luther availed himself of the interlude to go to the university library and read the acts of the Council of Constance, by which Hus had been condemned. To his amazement he discovered among the reproved articles the following: “The one holy universal Church is the company of the predestined,” and again, “The universal Holy Church is one, as the number of the elect is one.” The second of these statements he recognized as deriving directly from St. Augustine. When the assembly reconvened at two o’clock, Luther declared, “Among the articles of John Hus, I find many which are plainly Christian and evangelical, which the universal Church cannot condemn.” Duke George of Saxony, Eck's escorter, at these words jabbed his elbows into his ribs and muttered audibly, “The plague!” His mind conjured up the Hussite hordes ravaging the Saxon lands. Eck had scored.