Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German Augustinian friar and a theologian at the University of Wittenberg. Luther, who had studied for a law degree, underwent a religious conversion in 1505. Caught in a terrible thunderstorm, he promised St. Ann that he would enter the seminary if he survived. He kept his promise and by 1512, received a doctorate in theology. Although a popular teacher at the university, Luther was still troubled by the question of his own salvation and felt that he was not worthy of it. He also believed that salvation was earned by faith, not by good works such as prayers, sacraments, or fasting. Furthermore, Luther had traveled to Rome in 1510 and was shocked by the immoral behavior of the Catholic clergy.
The issue that initiated the Protestant Reformation concerned the sale of indulgences, mentioned earlier in this chapter. Indulgences had often been used as a means of raising money for Church activities. In 1517, Pope Leo X, who was eager to construct St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, was hard-pressed for funds. Furthermore, Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz, had borrowed money from the Fuggers, a wealthy banking family, to pay for a papal dispensation that allowed him to hold several Church positions. Pope Leo X authorized Johann Tetzel (1465–1519), a Dominican friar, the right to preach and sell indulgences, the proceeds of which were to go to build the new cathedral at St. Peter’s Church and to repay the loan to the Fuggers. One of the popular beliefs of the time, which became Tetzel’s slogan, was “As soon as gold in the basin rings, the souls in purgatory spring.” This slogan created much business and horrified persons such as Luther, who condemned the sale of indulgences and were critical of the pope getting wealthy from the money collected in Germany. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his 95 Theses (statements) to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, a medieval way of indicating that an issue should be debated. Pope Leo X initially ignored Luther’s pleas for reform and refused to get involved, considering Luther’s action a local issue.
From 1517 to1520, Luther wrote a series of works, such as On Christian Liberty (1519), Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), and Freedom of Christian Man (1520), which outlined his basic beliefs. These beliefs were:
Salvation through faith alone. Influenced by the words of St. Paul in Romans 1:17, Luther rejected the Church’s position that a combination of good works and faith was necessary for salvation.
Religious authority rested with the Bible not the pope. Luther considered the Bible the final authority because each individual could read it and thus determine church doctrine and practices. There was no need for a pope or any higher authority.
The church consisted of the entire community of Christian believers. The Catholic Church identified the church only with the clergy.
All work is sacred and each person should serve God in his or her own individual calling. The monastic or religious life is not better than the secular life.
Marriage of clergy should be permitted. Luther married a former nun and had seven children.
Baptism, Communion, and Penance were the only sacraments instead of the seven Roman Catholic Church sacraments (Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction). Luther also disagreed with the Church’s doctrine of Transubstantiation (the idea that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ). Luther supported Consubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine undergo a spiritual change whereby Christ is really present but the elements themselves are not transformed.
Secular rulers were the supreme authority in all matters except theological ones.
Political leaders supported Luther’s belief because it gave them an opportunity to gain control of the vast church lands and wealth and limited the power of the pope.
In 1520, Pope Leo X issued a Papal Bull (or official statement by the pope) demanding that Luther recant his ideas or be burned at the stake as a heretic. In an act of defiance, Luther publicly burned the Bull and claimed that he no longer recognized papal authority. The pope excommunicated him in 1521 and ordered him to appear before the Diet of Worms, a meeting of German nobility and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in Worms, a city along the Rhine. Luther had not been arrested because he was under the protection of Frederick the Wise of Saxony who was sympathetic to many of Luther’s ideas. At the Diet, Emperor Charles V ordered Luther to recant his beliefs. In dramatic fashion, Luther proclaimed that he would not recant, stating, “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” Declared a heretic and banned from the Empire, Luther was hidden by his protector Frederick of Saxony and did not leave Germany. In Saxony, he translated the Bible into German, which influenced the spread of his religion. He also organized a new religion, known as Lutheranism, based on his ideas. At the Diet of Speyer in 1529, Charles V again ordered that his rulings against Luther and his followers be enforced. Lutheran princes issued a defiant protest (again contributing to the origins of the term “Protestant”).
During the 1520s, Lutheranism spread throughout northern Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, where rulers seized church property and closed down monasteries. The German princes of the North protected Luther from the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor while gaining political power by assuming many of the privileges once reserved for the Church. In southern Germany, Catholicism prevailed in the Rhine Valley in the direct possession of the Hapsburg dynasty, which reached as far north as the Netherlands.
Many peasants in Germany followed Lutheranism because they were suffering economic hardship. The peasants looked to Luther for support, mistakenly believing that Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers was a call for social justice. Christian liberty for them meant the end of harsh manorial burdens. In 1524, German peasants, excited by the prospects of freedom, demanded an end to serfdom. Bands of angry peasants went about the countryside pillaging and burning and ransacking monasteries. However, Luther was terrified by the Peasant Revolts (beginning in 1524) against the feudal system and attacked the extremists in his tract entitled, Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants. He exhorted the nobility to put down the rebellion, which resulted in the death of 70,000–100,000 peasants. Feeling betrayed by Luther, many peasants rejected his religious leadership.
Luther rejected the ideas of a number of other religious sects (which together comprise what is called the Radical Reformation) that developed out of his challenge to religious authority. One such sect was the Anabaptist, which denied the validity of child baptism and believed that children had to be rebaptized when they became adults. Anabaptists also proposed the radical idea of separation of church and state. Another sect, known as the Anti Trinitarians, denied the validity of the Holy Trinity. They rejected the idea that the Holy Spirit could be considered one of three persons in God, saying it had no scriptural validity. Luther was a conservative and supported efforts by the Catholics and Lutherans to persecute those who held these beliefs.