on proposition number 18 provides a representative example of its general tone: "I was wrong, I admit it, when I said that indulgences were 'the pious defrauding of the faithful'. I recant and say, 'Indulgences are the most pious frauds and imposters of the most rascally pontiffs, by which they deceive the souls and destroy the goods of the faithful. Luther also published his On the Freedom of a Christian that same month. Although this work was not penned as a direct response to the bull, it nevertheless reaffirmed Luther's commitment to certain themes censured therein, including the primacy of ecumenical councils over papal decrees. On 10 December 1520, sixty days after Luther had received a copy of this bull, he and Melanchthon invited the local university faculty and students to assemble that morning at the Elster Gate in Wittenberg. A bonfire was lit and volumes of canon law, papal constitutions, and works of scholastic theology were burned. Luther himself tossed a copy of the bull into the flames. Having done so, Luther is reported to have said, "Because you have confounded the truth [or, the saints] of God, today the Lord confounds you. Into the fire with you!", a declaration which alludes to Psalm 21:9. Luther's act of defiance reflected deeper motives than a mere retaliatory desire to treat these representations of Catholic authority with the same regard that the papal bull had shown for his own books. By burning these works, Luther signaled his decisive break from Catholicism's traditions and institutions. Luther himself later explained his actions that day: The breach between Luther and the papacy was finalized on 3 January 1521, when on account of Luther's failure to comply, the Pope issued the bull to declare that he had been formally excommunicated. Modern marks a watershed event in Christian history. Protestant author Philip Schaff notes that "The bull of excommunication is the papal counter-manifesto to Luther's Theses, and condemns in him the whole cause of the Protestant Reformation. Therein lies its historical significance. It was the last bull addressed to Latin Christendom as an undivided whole, and the first which was disobeyed by a large part of it." However, contemporary scholars of the Reformation widely agree that this bull itself is a "strange document and an evasive assessment of Luther's theological concerns". Schaff notes that the condemned propositions are "torn from the connection [context], and presented in