Luther was ordered to come to Rome, which he was able to avoid because of the political situation in the Holy Roman Empire, but he did engage in formal scholarly debate with a representative of the church, Johann Eck, at Leipzig in 1519. He refused to take back his statements, and continued to develop his reform ideas, publicizing these in a series of pamphlets in which he moved further and further away from Catholic theology. Luther clearly understood the power of the new medium of print, and so authorized the publication of his works, which turned his ideas into a movement. Printers also quickly realized that Luther would sell, so they printed additional unauthorized versions of his more popular works as fast as they could.