Luther, Martin (1483–1546)

A woodcarving showing Johann Tetzel selling indulgences in Wittenberg (1517).

German Christian church reformer Martin Luther in about 1522. Luther's criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church initiated the Protestant Reformation. He was excommunicated in 1520, but publicly burned the papal bull of excommunication, and continued his work.

A woodcarving by Lucas Cranach of the church at Wittenberg. It was on the door of this church that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses criticizing the Roman Catholic Church in 1517.

Leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Martin Luther. His translation of the Bible from Latin, the accepted language of the clergy and scholars, into the German vernacular was a revolutionary act in defiance of Rome. Known as the Lutheran Bible, it was first printed in 1534 and contributed significantly to the spread and development of the German language.

The German theologian Martin Luther, c.1520, the year he burned the papal bull that condemned his teachings. Impatient with traditional Catholic doctrine, he attacked the practise of papal indulgences by nailing his famous ‘Ninety-five Theses’ to the door of the Wittenberg Church. The ensuing bitter controversy led to his excommunication.

German Protestant theologian, Martin Luther. Born in 1483, Luther translated the Bible into the vernacular, and in 1517 is reputed to have nailed his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. This statement contained his attack on the Catholic tradition of selling indulgences.

German Christian church reformer, a founder of Protestantism. While he was a priest at the University of Wittenberg, he wrote an attack on the sale of indulgences (remissions of punishment for sin). The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V summoned him to the Diet (meeting of dignitaries of the Holy Roman Empire) of Worms in Germany, in 1521, where he refused to retract his objections. Originally intending reform, his protest led to schism, with the emergence, following the Confession of Augsburg in 1530 (a statement of the Protestant faith), of a new Protestant Church. Luther is regarded as the instigator of the Protestant revolution, and Lutheranism is now the predominant religion of many northern European countries, including Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. See also the Reformation: Lutheranism.

Luther was born in Eisleben, the son of a miner; he studied at the University of Erfurt, spent three years as a monk in the Augustinian convent there, and in 1507 was ordained priest. Shortly afterwards he attracted attention as a teacher and preacher at the University of Wittenberg.

On a trip to Rome in 1511, Luther had been horrified by the wealth and luxury of the Roman Catholic Church, compared to the poverty of the people in Germany. Further, his study of the Bible, particularly the books of the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, convinced him that good works and confession could not earn salvation, but that justification was by faith alone and was the gift of God. He came to believe that the church's teaching – that pilgrimages, relics, and penances could earn salvation – was wrong. When, 1516–17, the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel (c. 1465–1519) was sent round Germany selling indulgences (payments to secure remissions of punishment for sin) to raise funds for the rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, Luther was horrified that the church seemed to be trying to sell salvation to raise money for itself. On 31 October 1517 Luther nailed on the church door in Wittenberg a statement of ‘Ninety-five Theses’ attacking these practices and suggesting that religion was an inward relationship with God, and the following year he was summoned to Rome to defend his action. His reply was to attack the papal system even more strongly, and in 1520 he published his three greatest works. In the first, Address to the German Nobility, he attacked the authority of the pope and called on Germans to unite against papal exploitation and to reform the church. In the second, On Christian Liberty, he expounded the nature of Christian faith and argued that ‘the soul...is justified by faith alone, and not by any works’ – the doctrine that became the founding principle of Reformation theology. In the third, On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church, he rejected five of the seven contemporary sacraments and the doctrine of transubstantiation (the transformation of bread and water into the body and blood of Jesus during the Eucharist). When a papal bull (edict) was published against him, he publicly burned it.

At the Diet of Worms in 1521 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V demanded that he retract his objections – Luther's reply: ‘Here I stand’, marked the start of the Reformation. On his way home from Worms he was taken into ‘protective custody’ by the elector of Saxony in the castle of Wartburg. Originally intending reform, his protest led to a split in the church, the Augsburg Confession (1530) leading to the foundation of a new Protestant Church. Later Luther became estranged from the Dutch theologian Erasmus, who had formerly supported him in his attacks on papal authority, and engaged in violent controversies with political and religious opponents. After the Augsburg Confession, Luther gradually retired from the Protestant leadership. His translation of the scriptures is generally regarded as the beginning of modern German literature.

Formerly condemned by communism, Luther had by the 1980s been rehabilitated as a revolutionary socialist hero, and was claimed as patron saint in Germany.