On October 31, 1517, legend has it that the priest and scholar Martin Luther approached the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nailed there a piece of paper containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Reformation. protestant.
In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the papal practice of asking for payment – called “indulgences” – for the forgiveness of sins. At the time, a Dominican priest named Johann Tetzel, commissioned by the Archbishop of Mainz and Pope Leo X, was in the midst of a major fundraising campaign in Germany to fund the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Although Prince Frederick III the Wise banned the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg, many church members have come to buy them. When they returned, they showed the pardons they had bought from Luther, claiming that they no longer had to repent for their sins.
READ MORE: Martin Luther might not have nailed his 95 theses to the church door
Luther’s frustration with this practice led him to write the 95 theses, which were quickly retrieved, translated from Latin into German, and widely distributed. A copy made its way to Rome, and efforts began to convince Luther to change his tune. He refused to remain silent, however, and in 1521 Pope Leo X officially excommunicated Luther from the Catholic Church. That same year Luther again refused to renounce his writings before the Germanic Roman Emperor Charles V of Germany, who issued Worms’ famous edict declaring Luther an outlaw and a heretic and allowing anyone to do so. kill without consequence. Protected by Prince Frederick, Luther began work on a German translation of the Bible, a task that took 10 years.
The term “Protestant” first appeared in 1529, when Charles V revoked a provision that allowed the ruler of each German state to choose whether he would enforce the Edict of Worms. A number of princes and other supporters of Luther protested, saying their allegiance to God outweighed their allegiance to the Emperor. They became known to their opponents as Protestants; Gradually, this name came to apply to all who believed that the Church should be reformed, even those who were outside of Germany. By the time Luther died of natural causes in 1546, his revolutionary beliefs had formed the basis of the Protestant Reformation, which over the next three centuries would revolutionize Western civilization.
