Martin Luther
Martin Luther objected to the sale of indulgences in 1517 and split western Christianity permanently. Born in 1483 in Saxony, the son of a copper miner who had risen to own smelters, he was sent to study law and abandoned it after being caught in a thunderstorm at twenty-one and vowing to become a monk if he survived — a decision his father never forgave. He was a tormented Augustinian, confessing for hours and unable to believe himself forgiven, until working through Romans as a professor at Wittenberg he concluded that righteousness is not earned but given, and received by faith alone. The Ninety-Five Theses of October 1517 were an academic invitation to debate, in Latin, about a specific abuse: Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences in Germany to fund the rebuilding of St Peter's and a bishop's debt to the Fuggers, with the pitch that a coin in the coffer freed a soul from purgatory. Printing did the rest. They were translated and reprinted across Germany within weeks, and the argument escalated from indulgences to papal authority and to whether councils could err. He was excommunicated in 1521 and summoned to Worms, where he refused to recant before the emperor. Frederick the Wise hid him at the Wartburg, where he translated the New Testament into German in eleven weeks — a text that did for German what the King James did for English. He married a former nun, wrote hymns, and urged the princes to slaughter the peasants who rose in 1525 citing him. His late writings on the Jews are indefensible and were used four centuries later.
- Lived: 1483 CE – 1546 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: theologian, reformer, religious_figure
