His books were condemned and ordered to be burnt, and unless he should recant within sixty days of the posting of the bull in Germany he was to be considered a heretic and dealt with accordingly.

Eck was entrusted with the duty of publishing this fulmination in Germany, and performed the task in the last days of September.
The time given Luther in which to recant therefore expired two months later.

Instead of doing so he published several answers to "the execrable bull of Anti-christ," and on December 10 publicly and solemnly burnt it, together with the whole Canon Law.

This he had come to detest, partly as containing the "forged decretals," partly as the sanction for a vast mechanism of ecclesiastical use and abuse, repugnant to his more personal theology.

The dramatic act, which sent a thrill throughout Europe, symbolized the passing of some medieval accretions on primitive Christianity.