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Martin Luther :: Ninety-Five Theses on the Power of Indulgences

Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences

In 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk posted upon the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg (in the manner common to those issuing bulletin of an upcoming event or debate) the Ninety-Five Theses on the Power of Indulgences , what has commonly become known as The Ninety-Five Theses . The contents of his posting challenged the current teaching of the Church on penance and indulgences, questioning as well the authority of the pope. Reaction to Luther's Theses was immediate and strong, leading to his excommunication from the Roman Church and the eventual birth of the Protestant Reformation. Luther's historically important defense of the gospel is noted and celebrated annually on 31 October, Reformation Day. The following is the translated text of the Ninety-Five Theses .

Out of love and concern for the truth, and with the object of eliciting it, the following heads will be the subject of a public discussion at Wittenberg under the presidency of the reverend father, Martin Luther, Augustinian, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and duly appointed Lecturer on these subjects in that place. He requests that whoever cannot be present personally to debate the matter orally will do so in absence in writing.

• When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
• The word cannot be properly understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, i.e. confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.
• Yet its meaning is not restricted to repentance in one's heart; for such repentance is null unless it produces outward signs in various mortifications of the flesh.
• As long as hatred of self abides (i.e. true inward repentance) the penalty of sin abides, viz., until we enter the kingdom of heaven.
• The pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties beyond those imposed either at his own discretion or by canon law.
• The pope himself cannot remit guilt, but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God; or, at most, he can remit it in cases reserved to his discretion. Except for these cases, the guilt remains untouched.
• God never remits guilt to anyone without, at the same time, making him humbly submissive to the priest, His representative.
• The penitential canons apply only to men who are still alive, and, according to the canons themselves, none applies to the dead.
• Accordingly, the Holy Spirit, acting in the person of the pope, manifests grace to us, by the fact that the papal regulations always cease to apply at death, or in any hard case.
• It is a wrongful act, due to ignorance, when priests retain the canonical penalties on the dead in purgatory.
• When canonical penalties were changed and made to apply to purgatory, surely it would seem that tares were sown while the bishops were asleep.
• In former days, the canonical penalties were imposed, not after, but before absolution was pronounced; and were intended to be tests of true contrition.
• Death puts an end to all the claims of the Church; even the dying are already dead to the canon laws, and are no longer bound by them.
• Defective piety or love in a dying person is necessarily accompanied by great fear, which is greatest where the piety or love is least.
• This fear or horror is sufficient in itself, whatever else might be said, to constitute the pain of purgatory, since it approaches very closely to the horror of despair.
• There seems to be the same difference between hell, purgatory, and heaven as between despair, uncertainty, and assurance.
• Of a truth, the pains of souls in purgatory ought to be abated, and charity ought to be proportionately increased.
• Moreover, it does not seem proved, on any grounds of reason or Scripture, that these souls are outside the state of merit, or unable to grow in grace.
• Nor does it seem proved to be always the case that they are certain and assured of salvation, even if we are very certain ourselves.
• Therefore the pope, in speaking of the plenary remission of all penalties, does not mean "all" in the strict sense, but only those imposed by himself.
• Hence those who preach indulgences are in error when they say that a man is absolved and saved from every penalty by the pope's indulgences.
• Indeed, he cannot remit to souls in purgatory any penalty which canon law declares should be suffered in the present life.
• If plenary remission could be granted to anyone at all, it would be only in the cases of the most perfect, i.e. to very few.
• It must therefore be the case that the major part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of relief from penalty.
• The same power as the pope exercises in general over purgatory is exercised in particular by every single bishop in his bishopric and priest in his parish.
• The pope does excellently when he grants remission to the souls in purgatory on account of intercessions made on their behalf, and not by the power of the keys (which he cannot exercise for them).
• There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of the purgatory immediately the money clinks in the bottom of the chest.
• It is certainly possible that when the money clinks in the bottom of the chest avarice and greed increase; but when the church offers intercession, all depends in the will of God.
• Who knows whether all souls in purgatory wish to be redeemed in view of what is said of St. Severinus and St. Pascal? (Note: Paschal I, pope 817-24. The legend is that he and Severinus were willing to endure the pains of purgatory for the benefit of the faithful).
• No one is sure of the reality of his own contrition, much less of receiving plenary forgiveness.
• Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare.
• All those who believe themselves certain of their own salvation by means of letters of indulgence, will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.
• We should be most carefully on our guard against those who say that the papal indulgences are an inestimable divine gift, and that a man is reconciled to God by them.
• For the grace conveyed by these indulgences relates simply to the penalties of the sacramental "satisfactions" decreed merely by man.
• It is not in accordance with Christian doctrines to preach and teach that those who buy off souls, or purchase confessional licenses, have no need to repent of their own sins.
• Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence.
• Any true Christian whatsoever, living or dead, participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church; and this participation is granted to him by God without letters of indulgence.
• Yet the pope's remission and dispensation are in no way to be despised, for, as already said, they proclaim the divine remission.
• It is very difficult, even for the most learned theologians, to extol to the people the great bounty contained in the indulgences, while, at the same time, praising contrition as a virtue.
• A truly contrite sinner seeks out, and loves to pay, the penalties of his sins; whereas the very multitude of indulgences dulls men's consciences, and tends to make them hate the penalties.
• Papal indulgences should only be preached with caution, lest people gain a wrong understanding, and think that they are preferable to other good works: those of love.
• Christians should be taught that the pope does not at all intend that the purchase of indulgences should be understood as at all comparable with the works of mercy.
• Christians should be taught that one who gives to the poor, or lends to the needy, does a better action than if he purchases indulgences.
• Because, by works of love, love grows and a man becomes a better man; whereas, by indulgences, he does not become a better man, but only escapes certain penalties.
• Christians should be taught that he who sees a needy person, but passes him by although he gives money for indulgences, gains no benefit from the pope's pardon, but only incurs the wrath of God.
• Christians should be taught that, unless they have more than they need, they are bound to retain what is only necessary for the upkeep of their home, and should in no way squander it on indulgences.
• Christians should be taught that they purchase indulgences voluntarily, and are not under obligation to do so.
• Christians should be taught that, in granting indulgences, the pope has more need, and more desire, for devout prayer on his own behalf than for ready money.
• Christians should be taught that the pope's indulgences are useful only if one does not rely on them, but most harmful if one loses the fear of God through them.
• Christians should be taught that, if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers, he would rather the church of St. Peter were reduced to ashes than be built with the skin, flesh, and bones of the sheep.
• Christians should be taught that the pope would be willing, as he ought if necessity should arise, to sell the church of St. Peter, and give, too, his own money to many of those from whom the pardon-merchants conjure money.
• It is vain to rely on salvation by letters of indulgence, even if the commissary, or indeed the pope himself, were to pledge his own soul for their validity.
• Those are enemies of Christ and the pope who forbid the word of God to be preached at all in some churches, in order that indulgences may be preached in others.
• The word of God suffers injury if, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is devoted to indulgences than to that word.
• The pope cannot help taking the view that if indulgences (very small matters) are celebrated by one bell, one pageant, or one ceremony, the gospel (a very great matter) should be preached to the accompaniment of a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.
• The treasures of the church, out of which the pope dispenses indulgences, are not sufficiently spoken of or known among the people of Christ.
• That these treasures are not temporal are clear from the fact that many of the merchants do not grant them freely, but only collect them.
• Nor are they the merits of Christ and the saints, because, even apart from the pope, these merits are always working grace in the inner man, and working the cross, death, and hell in the outer man.
• St. Laurence said that the poor were the treasures of the church, but he used the term in accordance with the custom of his own time.
• We do not speak rashly in saying that the treasures of the church are the keys of the church, and are bestowed by the merits of Christ.
• For it is clear that the power of the pope suffices, by itself, for the remission of penalties and reserved cases.
• The true treasure of the church is the Holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.
• It is right to regard this treasure as most odious, for it makes the first to be the last.
• On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is most acceptable, for it makes the last to be the first.
• Therefore the treasures of the gospel are nets which, in former times, they used to fish for men of wealth.
• The treasures of the indulgences are the nets to-day which they use to fish for men of wealth.
• The indulgences, which the merchants extol as the greatest of favours, are seen to be, in fact, a favourite means for money-getting.
• Nevertheless, they are not to be compared with the grace of God and the compassion shown in the Cross.
• Bishops and curates, in duty bound, must receive the commissaries of the papal indulgences with all reverence.
• But they are under a much greater obligation to watch closely and attend carefully lest these men preach their own fancies instead of what the pope commissioned.
• Let him be anathema and accursed who denies the apostolic character of the indulgences.
• On the other hand, let him be blessed who is on his guard against the wantonness and license of the pardon-merchant's words.
• In the same way, the pope rightly excommunicates those who make any plans to the detriment of the trade in indulgences.
• It is much more in keeping with his views to excommunicate those who use the pretext of indulgences to plot anything to the detriment of holy love and truth.
• It is foolish to think that papal indulgences have so much power that they can absolve a man even if he has done the impossible and violated the mother of God.
• We assert the contrary, and say that the pope's pardons are not able to remove the least venial of sins as far as their guilt is concerned.
• When it is said that not even St. Peter, if he were now pope, could grant a greater grace, it is blasphemy against St. Peter and the pope.
• We assert the contrary, and say that he, and any pope whatever, possesses greater graces, viz., the gospel, spiritual powers, gifts of healing, etc., as is declared in I Corinthians 12 [:28] .
• It is blasphemy to say that the insignia of the cross with the papal arms are of equal value to the cross on which Christ died.
• The bishops, curates, and theologians, who permit assertions of that kind to be made to the people without let or hindrance, will have to answer for it.
• This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult for learned men to guard the respect due to the pope against false accusations, or at least from the keen criticisms of the laity.
• They ask, e.g.: Why does not the pope liberate everyone from purgatory for the sake of love (a most holy thing) and because of the supreme necessity of their souls? This would be morally the best of all reasons. Meanwhile he redeems innumerable souls for money, a most perishable thing, with which to build St. Peter's church, a very minor purpose.
• Again: Why should funeral and anniversary masses for the dead continue to be said? And why does not the pope repay, or permit to be repaid, the benefactions instituted for these purposes, since it is wrong to pray for those souls who are now redeemed?
• Again: Surely this is a new sort of compassion, on the part of God and the pope, when an impious man, an enemy of God, is allowed to pay money to redeem a devout soul, a friend of God; while yet that devout and beloved soul is not allowed to be redeemed without payment, for love's sake, and just because of its need of redemption.
• Again: Why are the penitential canon laws, which in fact, if not in practice, have long been obsolete and dead in themselves-why are they, to-day, still used in imposing fines in money, through the granting of indulgences, as if all the penitential canons were fully operative?
• Again: since the pope's income to-day is larger than that of the wealthiest of wealthy men, why does he not build this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of indigent believers?
• Again: What does the pope remit or dispense to people who, by their perfect repentance, have a right to plenary remission or dispensation?
• Again: Surely a greater good could be done to the church if the pope were to bestow these remissions and dispensations, not once, as now, but a hundred times a day, for the benefit of any believer whatever.
• What the pope seeks by indulgences is not money, but rather the salvation of souls; why then does he suspend the letters and indulgences formerly conceded, and still as efficacious as ever?
• These questions are serious matters of conscience to the laity. To suppress them by force alone, and not to refute them by giving reasons, is to expose the church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christian people unhappy.
• If therefore, indulgences were preached in accordance with the spirit and mind of the pope, all these difficulties would be easily overcome, and indeed, cease to exist.
• Away, then, with those prophets who say to Christ's people, "Peace, peace," where in there is no peace.
• Hail, hail to all those prophets who say to Christ's people, "The cross, the cross," where there is no cross.
• Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hells.
• And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.

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Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and the Origins of the Reformation Narrative

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C Scott Dixon, Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and the Origins of the Reformation Narrative, The English Historical Review , Volume 132, Issue 556, June 2017, Pages 533–569, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cex224

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With the quincentenary of the German Reformation now upon us, it is worth revisiting how, and why, the posting of the 95 theses emerged as such a defining moment in the Reformation story. It is easy to understand why it has assumed pride of place in modern histories. What is less easy to understand, however, is why the theses-posting emerged as the critical moment in the early modern accounts, for there were many other moments with even more drama and proximate significance for the Reformation. Moreover, the posting of theses had little shock-value at the time. Many professors posted academic theses, many reform-minded Christians had questioned indulgences, and many high-profile German intellectuals had written at least one critical piece against Rome. The following article begins with a survey of the origins of Reformation history and traces the incorporation of the theses-posting into the narrative stream. The second section examines the reasons why this act remained so prominent in the Lutheran memory during the two centuries after the Reformation by relating it to a broader analytical framework and sense of self-perception. The final section examines the process of reinterpretation that occurred during the period of late Lutheran Orthodoxy and the early Enlightenment, when scholars started to revisit the episode and sketch out the features of the modern view. The broader aim is to demonstrate how historical conditions can shape historical facts, even when those facts were bound to something as seemingly idealistic as the origins of a new Church.

On 13 October 1760, as a consequence of the ongoing hostilities between Prussian and Imperial troops in the Seven Years War, a relentless hail of bombs, grenades, and ‘fire balls’ rained down on the Saxon town of Wittenberg. According to the theology professor Christian Siegmund Georgi (1702–71), who was in Wittenberg at the time, most of the buildings in and near the centre of the town suffered direct hits and subsequently burned for a number of days. Away from the centre, however, and closer to the walls, some areas of the town had been spared and some buildings had survived the onslaught, including the Augusteum, the former monastery that had once served as a home to Martin Luther and still housed the famous Lutherstube ( Figure 1 ). But even the Augusteum was severely damaged and was only preserved because the intervals between strikes were long enough to allow for suppression of the fires. One building that did not survive the attack was the Castle Church, termed by Georgi the ‘mother church of all evangelical Lutheranism’, which had been reduced to a smouldering pile of stone and ash. 1 Numerous treasures went up in flames, including paintings by Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer, late medieval imperial tombs, marble statues of the electors, epitaphs of renowned theologians, the church organ and Luther’s stone pulpit. But perhaps the most revered of all these casualties was the church door, the very door on which Luther had first posted the Ninety-Five Theses . No doubt there had been some repairs in the intervening centuries, but it was still thought to be authentic at the time of the bicentenary of the Reformation in 1717, and indeed some people held that Luther’s nails were still in the wood. 2 In October 1760, however, the Imperial ordnance set the church alight and the ‘beautiful temple’, to use Georgi’s words, ‘whence the teaching of the Gospel had first rung out and spread to the rest of the world’, was destroyed. 3

The bombardment. Georgi, Wittenbergische Klage-Geschichte (1760). Image by permission of SLUB Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id334313465/10 ( CC-BY-SA 4.0 ).

By the time the Imperial battery had reduced the Castle Church (also known as All Saints Church) to pulverised stone and ash, the church door had already secured its place in Reformation history. Although the famous scene of Luther nailing the Ninety-Five Theses against indulgences on 31 October 1517 was based on very modest historical foundations, with a single recollection by Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) being the first and only public testimony to the event, Melanchthon’s reference proved authoritative enough for later generations of Lutherans to look back on this act as the starting point of the Reformation. At the time, however, the posting of the theses was just one scene among others, and in truth it does not appear to have had an immediate visual appeal. It was not until the gothic revival of the nineteenth century that artists such as Gustav König, Ferdinand Pauwels and Hugo Vogel began to pose Luther in front of the church door with hammer in hand. The elevation of the theses-posting to its current place in the public imagination as the Reformation’s dramatic scene nonpareil is a legacy of the nineteenth century. 4 Nevertheless, the theses-posting became a staple of the Reformation narrative soon after Melanchthon first published his recollection. No one doubted that it occurred on All Saints’ Day 1517; and, more to the point, all were in agreement that this act marked the origins of the Reformation and thus that 31 October 1517 was the moment when the Reformation began. In Georgi’s interior view of the Castle Church ( Figure 2 ), for instance, the door is clearly marked out (no. 59) and described as ‘the great door on which Doctor Luther of hallowed memory posted his 95 theses against Tetzel and thus brought about the blessed Reformation’. 5

The interior. Georgi, Wittenbergische Klage-Geschichte (1760). Image by permission of SLUB Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id334313465/67 ( CC-BY-SA 4.0 ).

With the quincentenary of the German Reformation now upon us, it is worth revisiting how, and why, the theses-posting emerged as such a defining moment in the Reformation story. From the modern perspective it seems straightforward enough: this was the moment when Luther openly challenged the practice of indulgence-peddling, and with it the teaching and authority of the late medieval Catholic church. As a result of this act of defiance, Catholicism ultimately lost its monopoly of Christian salvation in the West. Furthermore, according to a long tradition of scholarship, this was the moment when the individual believer took his stand against the dead hand of tradition and the modern religious conscience was born. In the words of the church historian Ernst Wilhelm Benz, this act marks the instant when ‘western Christianity had reached a new stage of the religious conscience, one in which, for the individual, personal experience and personal witness becomes decisive in his relationship to God and to the community’. 6 The theologian Ulrich Barth has recently confirmed this view, claiming that the range and depth of social, moral and theological criticisms (both implicit and explicit) in the Ninety-Five Theses , compounded with Luther’s clearly stated doubts about the practice of indulgences and the power of the papacy, warrant the claim that this episode marked ‘the birth of religious autonomy’. 7

Freighted with this much importance, it is easy to understand why the posting of the theses has assumed pride of place in modern histories. What is less easy to understand, however, is why it emerged as the critical moment in early modern accounts, before the modern cult of individualism and its celebration of religious conscience; for not only were reports of the episode based on very shaky foundations but there were many other moments with even more drama and similar significance for the Reformation, from the debate with Johannes Eck in Leipzig and the burning of the papal Bull of excommunication to Luther’s appearance before Charles V in Worms (by which time the critical concern had shifted from the issue of indulgences to papal plenitude). Moreover, as a historical gesture with the symbolic weight identified by Benz, the posting of theses had little shock value at the time. Many professors posted academic theses, many reform-minded Christians had questioned indulgences, and many high-profile German intellectuals had written at least one critical piece against Rome.

The following article addresses this problem in three parts. It begins with a survey of the origins of Reformation history and traces the incorporation of the theses-posting into the narrative stream. The second section examines the reasons why this act remained so prominent in Lutheran memory during the two centuries after the Reformation by relating it to a broader theological framework, a providential interpretation of history and an evolving sense of self-perception. The final section examines the process of reinterpretation that occurred during the period of late Lutheran Orthodoxy and the early Enlightenment, when scholars started to revisit the episode and sketch the outlines of the modern view. A survey of the theses-posting is nothing new, of course, and indeed German historians have regularly re-examined the episode since the debate first became a national issue in the 1960s. Where this study departs from its predecessors is in its focus on the place and the meaning of the theses-posting within the evolving understanding of the German Reformation. It does not treat the episode as a fixed event in an unchanging narrative. Perceptions of Luther and the Reformation at the tail-end of the early modern period were different from perceptions at the beginning, so too the philosophies of history that ordered the past. And yet the theses-posting retained its prominence as the point of origin, the crucial moment in the story. Why was this? Why did this episode remain a fixed point in the history of the Reformation during a period when that entire history was reconsidered and reconceived? The main purpose of this study is to explain the reasons behind the durability of the theses-posting as the Reformation’s perceived moment of creation despite more than two centuries of historiographical change. The broader aim is to demonstrate how historical conditions can shape historical facts, even when those facts are bound to something as seemingly idealised as the origins of a new Church.

There is very little evidence to support the claim that Martin Luther (1483–1546) personally nailed a set of ninety-five theses against indulgences to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. I do not intend to revisit all of the arguments for and against the theses-posting here, but some mention must be made of the weaknesses of the historical record, for this will have a bearing on the later discussion. 8 To begin with, as mentioned above, there is only one witness to this event, namely Melanchthon, who made reference to the theses-posting in the second volume of the Wittenberg Latin edition of Luther’s works (1546). 9 But the authority of Melanchthon’s testimony is solely based on his status and his role in the Reformation. In truth he was not even in Wittenberg at the time and was inconsistent in his recollections of the event. He mentioned it in a Sunday sermon in 1557, for example, but there was no reference to it in the short historical account of the Reformation that he placed in a time-capsule left in the church bell-tower the following year. 10 Even more significant is the fact that Luther himself never mentioned the posting of the theses. The indulgence debate clearly had priority in his recollections of the origins of the Reformation, and he did consider 31 October 1517 a day of special significance, but he made no reference to the theses and the door. At times the door fell within his frame of reference, as it did when the Swiss neo-Latin poet Simon Lemnius (1511–50) was caught peddling libellous anti-Wittenberg epigrams in front of the Castle Church entrance in 1538. Luther spoke from the pulpit against the dishonour brought upon the professors, the university, and the town; but he made no mention of the dishonour brought upon the very site where the Reformation was thought to have begun, even though he had become sentimental about other sites by this time. 11

There are other problems with established accounts, though some of the counter-arguments are based on circumstantial reasoning. For instance, although it was common to post theses for disputation on church doors, in Wittenberg, as in most other German universities, this was done by beadles rather than professors. Moreover, in Wittenberg, as the university statutes make clear, the disputation placards were to be posted on the doors of all the churches ( in valvis templorum ), not just the Castle Church. (And if Cranach’s image of the entrance to the Castle Church in 1509 is anywhere near the historical reality of 1517 [ Figure 3 ], multiple postings would have been advisable.) Equally troubling is the fact that historians have yet to find an extant copy of a Wittenberg print of the Ninety-Five Theses , though a summons to a public disputation of this kind was usually given in the form of a printed broadside. The few prints that do exist were published elsewhere (Nuremberg, Leipzig and Basel), and when Luther actually dispatched copies of the theses he seems to have sent them in handwritten form. 12 Even more perplexing is the issue of timing. In Melanchthon’s original account, Luther posted the theses ‘on the day before the feast of All Saints’ (‘pridie festi omnium Sanctorum’), that is, on 31 October 1517. He also dispatched letters to the archbishop of Mainz and the bishop of Brandenburg, both with a copy of the theses enclosed. The letter to Mainz still exists and is dated 31 October 1517. Context, content and later testimony would suggest that this letter to the archbishop was the first time that Luther made contact with him; however, in correspondence and recollections stretching from 1518 to 1545, Luther claimed that he had written to the bishops (sometimes suggesting more than two) before the posting of the theses. Only after waiting in vain for a response of some kind, he claimed, did he decide to make the theses public. If this was true, then Luther cannot have posted the theses on 31 October, for this was the day that he sent his appeal to the bishops. 13 Scholars were confronted with this discrepancy as soon as they began to piece together the Reformation narrative, for the letter to the archbishop was published in the Wittenberg (1539–59) and Jena (1554–8) editions of Luther’s works with the date at the bottom.

The church in 1509. Lucas Cranach, Dye zaigung des hochlobwirdigen hailigthums der stifftkirchen aller hailigen zu Wittenburg (Wittenberg, 1509). © The Trustees of the British Museum.

In the mid-sixteenth century, however, when German Protestants began to write the first histories of the Reformation, there was no need to call Melanchthon’s testimony into question. Admittedly, some of the earliest accounts make no reference to the event, including important foundational histories by contemporaries such as Johann Carion, Friedrich Myconius, Georg Spalatin and Johannes Sleidan. Nor did sharp-eyed Catholic controversialists such as Kilian Leib, Johannes Cochlaeus or Hieronymus Emser recall the scene. 14 They spoke of the publication or the dissemination of the theses rather than the posting on the church door. But once a shared stream of Reformation history began to emerge in the 1570s, the theses-posting became a staple of the core narrative. The church historian Volker Leppin has recently retraced this reception process during the first century of memorialisation. Drawing on the recollection of Melanchthon, the earliest authors to mention the act repeated the basic information provided by Melanchthon and occasionally added small details, such as that Luther was surrounded by pilgrims at the time. After these first attempts, the most influential account was given by Johannes Mathesius (1504–65) in his cycle of sermons on Luther’s life (1562–4). Mathesius included Melanchthon’s version of the theses-posting, yet he also related the dispatching of the letters to the bishops as described in the recollections of Luther. He did not try to reconcile the two accounts, nor did he depict Luther as a heroic figure who actively sought to challenge the teachings of the Church. According to Mathesius, Luther had been forced into issuing the theses by the actions of Johannes Tetzel, the Dominican friar who had been commissioned by Pope Leo X to preach the Jubilee indulgence in Germany. Only later, in the Luther biographies of the 1570s and 1580s, and beginning in particular with the works of Orthodox Lutheran historians such as Nikolaus Selnecker and Georg Glocker, do we meet Luther as the resolute reformer of the Church who was driven to take a stand against a corrupt medieval Catholic Church. We also start to see the theses-posting, rather than the dispatch of the letters to the bishops, emerge as the critical act of 1517. 15

A few crucial texts should be added to this survey. One is the reworking of Melanchthon’s version of Carion’s Chronicle by his son-in-law Caspar Peucer (1525–1602), who extended the narrative from the age of Charlemagne to the reign of the emperor Charles V. Though rather vague in the first Latin edition, the subsequent German translation clearly referred to the theses-posting as the ‘occasion and origin’ of the Reformation. 16 The other important vehicles for the spread and reception of the episode were the Wittenberg and Jena editions of Luther’s works. Given that Melanchthon’s preface first appeared in the Wittenberg version, this is a rather obvious point to make; and yet it is worth noting that the editors also added a marginal comment beside the Ninety-Five Theses in both editions, thereby reminding all subsequent scholars of the theses-posting every time they consulted the German translations. 17 Moreover, because the first editions of Luther’s works opened with the theses and the indulgence debate, they tended to sharpen the sense that Reformation itself began with the theses-posting. Both the Jena and the later Altenburg versions of Luther’s works were influential in this regard, as the Lutheran Pietist Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) observed, for their chronological ordering provided ‘a much more exact notion of the entire sequence of events one after the other’. 18 Thus by the time Lutheran clergymen such as Selnecker and Glocker came to write their biographies, the theses-posting was already a central support of the broader narrative. It marked the terminus ante quem for the build-up to reform and the catalyst for the Reformation itself. To cite the words of one early biographer, 31 October 1517 was the date when Martin Luther

posted a set of public propositions and articles on the Castle Church, wherein, drawing on the Word of God and with a bountiful spirit, rigorously, just, and meet, he argued at length against the indulgence trade. This dispute was the beginning and the original cause of the Reformation and why the pure teaching of the Holy Gospel has been brought back to light. 19

The importance of 1517 was confirmed by the centenary celebrations of 1617, when Lutherans had the opportunity to celebrate the origins of the Reformation on a universal scale. Up to that point different regional churches had honoured different episodes, from Luther’s birth- and death-dates or the submission of the Augsburg Confession to events of local significance, such as the first evangelical communion in a particular place. 20 The 1617 centenary thus provided a common point of origin for public memorialisation across all these churches; but when the date arrived, because of the tense political situation and the need for Protestant unity, the main emphasis was placed on the celebration of the Reformation in general, or Protestant tropes such as the fall of the papal Antichrist or the spreading of the Word, rather than Luther’s theses-posting as the singular moment of origin. Indeed, in the initial plans for a general Protestant commemoration—which were largely put in motion by Friedrich V, the Reformed elector of the Palatinate—the main day of observation was set for 2 November. In most Lutheran territories, however, as in Electoral Saxony, the celebrations extended from 31 October to 2 November and were marked out by sermon cycles, special prayers of thanks, anniversary publications and the suspension of secular activities. 21 The theses-posting was not yet considered such a critical moment in the Reformation story that all celebrations had to be exclusively centred on this day (Hartmut Lehmann’s survey of ninety-four dated sermons, for instance, places just twenty-one on 31 October), and none of the anniversary pamphlets included an image of Luther in front of the church door; but the anniversary did confirm the widespread conceit that the Reformation originated with the posting of the theses and it did canonise this act in the public memory. Representative in this respect is the cycle of sermons preached in the Castle Church by the Wittenberg professors Friedrich Balduin, Nicolas Hunnius and Wolfgang Franz, all of whom stressed the significance of the theses as the starting-point of the Reformation. 22

For the lasting memorialisation of the theses-posting, however, perhaps the most important act of commemoration was the publication of the so-called Dream of Friedrich the Wise , a broadsheet engraving that appeared in 1617, which is thought to be the first visual representation of Luther in front of the church door ( Figure 4 ). References to the dream sequence experienced by Friedrich, who was the prince of Saxony at the time of the theses-posting, pre-date the broadsheet, but the appearance of this image, rich in detail and symbolism, marked an important juncture. As Robert Scribner observed, the image was significant because it invested the event with two forms of legitimacy. First, it provided a historical provenance for the idea of Luther and the church door. According to the pamphlet, Friedrich first related the dream to his chaplain Georg Spalatin, one of Luther’s Wittenberg contemporaries. Spalatin told Antonius Musa, the pastor of Rochlitz, who recorded it in a manuscript. While visiting the subsequent pastor of Rochlitz in 1591, the editor of the pamphlet claimed, he actually saw the manuscript and the description of the dream. With this, the historical foundations of the theses-posting were secured: all of these men were contemporary figures and their words and acts were joined by written testimony. The second form of legitimation was prophetic. In the dream related by Friedrich, which came to him as he contemplated the fate of souls in purgatory, God sent him a monk who seemed to be the natural son of Paul. Assured by God through the saints that he would not regret it if he let the monk write something on his Castle Church, Friedrich, having agreed to the request, next saw the vision of the monk scrawling oversized text on a door with a huge quill that reached all the way to Rome, where it went through the ears of a lion (representing Pope Leo X) and started to tip over the papal crown. Some of these symbols were the common stock of visual culture. Some could be deciphered with a modicum of historical knowledge. Others, such as the burning of a goose, which was an allusion to the prediction uttered by the heretic Jan Hus about the coming of Luther, were specific to the emerging prophecies of the Reformation. Harmonised in this image, they joined up the theses-posting with the emerging mytho-historical accounts of the Reformation. 23

The Dream of Frederick the Wise. Der Traum des Churfürsten Friedrich III. oder des Weisen (1617). ©The Trustees of the British Museum.

In historical terms, nothing new was added to the established account of the theses-posting during the seventeenth century. No additional sources were discovered, no new details accrued. According to this account, Luther personally nailed the theses to the door on 31 October 1517 and thereby launched the Reformation. What was new in the seventeenth century, however, was the increasing importance of the theses-posting in Reformation histories as the anchor for arguments in defence of the faith. Thus in works by Matthias Hoe von Hönegg, Johannes Müller, Caspar Sagittarius and Johannes Faber, discussions about the theses-posting and the motives behind it, which only appear after long introductory narratives about the poor state of the late medieval Church, take centre stage as a way of defending Luther against the accusations of the Catholics. Reform, in these accounts, had been a necessity, and the theses-posting was the catalyst. The theses-posting was also emphasised in works that were primarily concerned with defending the providential nature of the Reformation, as in the late-century interpretations by Johann Adam Scherzer, Johann Deutschmann and Johann Friderich Mayer. 24 In this scheme, Luther’s action on 31 October 1517 is the singular act that reveals the hand of God. Over the long term, however, perhaps the most important theoretical framework was that provided by the Lutheran statesman Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626–92) in his Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo (1688). This was the most influential work on German Reformation history to appear in the early modern period, particularly after it was translated into German and supplemented by the Ulm pastor Elias Frick. That Seckendorff found such a prominent place for Luther’s early career and the indulgence debate confirmed the status of the theses-posting in Reformation history and invested the claim that it was the moment of origin with historiographical credibility. 25

The bicentennial celebrations of 1717 serve as a convenient end-point to this short survey of the incorporation of the theses-posting into the history of the Reformation. Even at this stage, after two centuries of Protestant development, the episode had not yet captured the historical or the visual imagination in the way that it would in the nineteenth century. In most accounts the theses-posting shared the stage with other dramatic opening acts, from the meeting with the papal legate Thomas Cajetan at the Diet of Augsburg to the debate in Leipzig or the hearing in Worms. Luther’s nailing of the theses to the church door was just one scene in a narrative cycle—as it is, for instance, in the Danish image prepared for the celebrations of 1717, in which Luther is depicted posting the theses, burning the papal bull, and translating the Bible ( Figure 5 ). 26 At the time, in fact, there was good reason to play down the theses-posting, which was such a uniquely Lutheran moment in German history. In 1717, the Lutheran church was in a weaker position than it had been a century before. The Counter-Reformation had long since revitalised Catholicism in the Empire; the Reformed faith, now legally recognised, had emerged from the Peace of Westphalia even stronger than before; and German Lutheranism itself had little sense of common purpose or identity, as was evidenced by the difficulties faced by the statesmen and theologians in Saxony and Hesse who tried to co-ordinate a masterplan for the bicentennial celebrations. 27 Moreover, Lutheran historians had now developed a much more source-based and sophisticated history of the early Reformation, and they recognised that the theses-posting did not represent such a radical break in the story, either with reference to Luther’s personal development or to Reformation history as a whole.

The cycle of events. Cyprian, Hilaria Evangelica (1719). Image by permission of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Halle, http://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vd18/content/pageview/2394295 ( CC-BY-SA 4.0 ).

Nevertheless, even though there were good reasons to shift the narrative away from 31 October 1517, once the bicentennial celebrations had taken place the Lutheran church continued to emphasise the importance of the theses-posting for the Reformation. The Helmstedt professor Christoph Heinrich Rittmeier (1671–1719) made this point in the build-up to the celebrations. As he remarked, although Luther had been preaching against indulgences before the dispute with Tetzel,

nevertheless, because in the following year of 1517 the issue was further flaming up, Luther was forced by the disagreeable circumstances and the audacious conduct of his antagonists to draw up and publicly post ninety-five theses or principles, which began as follows: ‘When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent!”, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance’. This happened on 31 October 1517, and for this reason, as is well known, the Reformation is reckoned from this date. That is why the anniversary of the first Lutheran century was celebrated in 1617. And now with the passage of the second century, yet another is just around the corner. 28

As was the case one hundred years before, the preachers and the historians continued to stress the importance of the dramatic scene on the eve of All Saints’ Day for the outbreak of the Reformation. Doubts were creeping in about the reliability of the early accounts, including Luther’s recollection of events, and there was a growing tendency to look for historical rather than providential explanations for Luther’s actions, but the theses-posting remained the crucial and decisive act in Reformation history. For the vast majority of Lutherans in 1717, Luther standing before the door of the Castle Church on 31 October 1517 was the image that came to mind when they recalled the origins of the Church.

Why did the theses-posting emerge and then endure as the defining moment in early modern Reformation history, and what does its lasting importance in the narrative say about Lutheran modes of remembrance and interpretation? Before answering these questions, it is worth pointing out that there were better candidates for what the theologians termed the annus climacterius or the annus restauratae religionis than the year 1517. Indeed, even within the compass of that year, there were more consequential acts than the theses-posting—for if its purpose was to initiate an academic debate, then Luther failed, as no disputation ever took place. In purely historical terms, the dispatching of the theses to the archbishop of Mainz was the crucial act, as Luther himself recalled. Moreover, the theses themselves can hardly be considered a proclamation of evangelical reform. They were, as the theologians acknowledged, a mix of evangelical insight and Luther’s abiding ‘Papisterey’; and, as more was learned of Luther’s early teaching and preaching in Wittenberg, in which similar glimpses of a fledgling evangelical theology were revealed, their importance as the Reformation’s first public utterance began to diminish.

A strong case could be made for other points of origin, as contemporary scholars came to recognise. Few went so far as the Kemberg provost Johann Heinrich Feustking (1672–1713), who proposed that the Wittenberg thesis defence by Bartholomäus Bernhardi in 1516, at which Luther presided, was in fact the first evangelical attack on the ‘six-headed beast’ in Rome and thus the actual starting-point of the Reformation. 29 But there was enough knowledge and nuance in the histories of the time for scholars at least to imagine other scenarios. As turning-points in history, for instance, the Leipzig debate of 1519 or Luther’s burning of the Bull in 1520 could be seen as more significant. Nor was it difficult to make a case for the importance of the Diet of Worms (1521), as indeed Johannes Mathesius did in the first substantial Luther biography ever written. In a similar vein, in his study of the origins of the faith, the martyrologist Ludwig Rabus (1523–92) provided illustrated accounts of the main dramatic events in Luther’s early life, including the meetings in Augsburg, Leipzig, Worms, and the burning of the papal bull, but he did not emphasise the posting of the theses. 30

Understanding the place of the theses-posting in the narrative of Lutheran history requires some awareness of the broader process of memorialisation at work. From the very outset of the Reformation the public memory of the Church was closely controlled, just as it was deeply affected—as all public memory is deeply affected—by shifts of sentiment and perception over time. Thus, while the first histories of the Reformation were primarily concerned with finding a place for the faith in the traditional narratives of Christian history—which explains why they were so confessionally charged and so theologically precise—later histories started to tailor their arguments to fit the temper of the times, with the result that Enlightenment histories spoke openly of reason, liberty and freedom of conscience, while the histories of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries turned Luther into a proto-nationalist and the Reformation into the first great unfolding of the German spirit. Very few details appeared by chance in teleological narratives of this kind, for everything was meant to serve a higher purpose in the wider historiographical scheme, whether that was to legitimise or justify the faith, provide the community with a sense of identity, or sanction the role of the secular authorities. 31 Moreover, as Lutherans also had to uproot the established Catholic narrative, some delicate acts of reinterpretation were required: simply dismissing the past wholesale ran the risk of alienating their broad base of support. Writing a history of the Reformation was thus a very complex, and very deliberate, process of historical fabrication. Indeed, we can see Luther’s own hand in that process from the start, not only in his own accounts of events from Heidelberg to Worms—as in his acta Augustana , for instance, with which he rushed his version of the meeting with Cajetan into print—but also in his attempts to define which episodes properly belonged to a history of ‘his’ Reformation. Revealing of Luther’s involvement is Natalie Krentz’s recent reconstruction of the early history of the Wittenberg Movement (1521–2), which recovers the acts of inclusion and exclusion at work in the process, reaching from Luther’s writing desk to the categorisation of the material in the Ernestine archives in Weimar and Gotha. 32 These were the first steps in an ongoing process of Lutheran memorialisation that began in Wittenberg and took on greater definition throughout the confessional age.

By the mid-seventeenth century, as a consequence, Lutheranism had developed a broadly consistent sense of its past with a fairly crowded calendar of red-letter days. From the 1580s onwards, sermons regularly marked the anniversaries of Luther’s death and birth, or of important events such as the posting of the theses, the burning of the bull, or the Diet of Worms. In the following century the calendar became more formalised as a series of universal foundational moments entered into the cycle. The centenary celebration of 1617, for instance, was followed by similar festivities marking the centenaries of the Augsburg Confession (1630), the Schmalkaldic War (1647), the Peace of Augsburg (1655) and the Book of Concord (1680). Annual events were also marked at the regional and local level, with some cities and territories mandating the days of observance in their church orders. Given that the reformers had been so vigorous in condemning the medieval cycles of holy days and papal jubilees, Catholics were quick to point up the seeming contradiction. As the Catholic author Johann Weislinger (1691–1755) observed, each day seemed to bring a new cause for celebration in Lutheran lands: ‘cheer and rejoicing in every Lutheran land, city, village, cottage, and spinning room; cheer and rejoicing in the universities, from the pulpits, dance floors and river-side laundry banks; from every preacher, labourer, odd-jobber, horse-doctor, bathhouse-attendant, and sow-gelder there is nothing else to see, hear, or talk about than cheer and rejoicing’. 33 Weislinger was taking aim at the Lutherans of Strasbourg, who had used the bicentenary of the Augsburg Confession as an occasion for launching polemical attacks against the Catholics. And he was correct to stress the local dimensions of these rites of public memory. The best evidence of this was the massive assemblage of material brought together by the Orthodox Lutheran scholar Ernst Solomon Cyprian (1673–1745) in his Hilaria Evangelica (1719), a huge collection of reports of the local celebrations marking the bicentenary of 1717. Reports came in from all over the Lutheran world, including descriptions of the celebrations in places as distant from Cyprian’s German town of Gotha as Dublin, Aarhus and The Hague.

Despite this crowded landscape of memorialisation, growing in complexity over time, and the weakness of the historical evidence discussed above, the theses-posting preserved its place as the moment of creation. It remained the crucial turning-point in the story of the Reformation. At one level there is a simple reason for this: Luther said it was so. Although he did not mention the actual posting of the theses on the church door, in all of his recorded reflections on the early stages of his career and the origins of the Reformation, Luther considered the indulgence controversy to be the cause and the catalyst. He made this claim in letters to Pope Leo X (May 1518) and Elector Friedrich the Wise (21 November 1518), in which, out of deference to both figures, he tried to justify his criticisms of Tetzel and the indulgence trade and prove that his intervention had arisen out of good faith and a desire for religious truth. And he made the same claims much later in life in his pamphlet Against Hans Worst (1541), in which he set out in detail the origins of the controversy and the reasoning behind his actions. Further reflections were made in his preface to the Wittenberg Latin edition of his works, occasional sessions of his Table Talk , and the preface to his Bible, in which he simply declared that ‘this present strife began with indulgences in the year 1517’. 34 All of the early biographers followed Luther in his assessment that the indulgence controversy was the catalyst of the Reformation and that it was Tetzel, that ‘most impudent sycophant’ (to quote Melanchthon), supported by a coterie of papal yea-sayers, who forced Luther to challenge the teaching of the Church. 35

But there was a deeper logic at work than just deference to Luther’s memory. Faced with Catholic accusations that they had founded a new religion, the early reformers needed to justify the break with Rome while making a case for the antiquity and the orthodoxy of their faith. One of their answers to this dilemma was to remove the human element from Reformation history. Luther’s teachings, it was argued, were not based on personal opinions or internal visions, but rather on the understanding that gradually came to him through the diligent reading of the Word. Melanchthon portrayed Luther in this manner in his Vita Lutheri , the first evangelical biography, in which Luther appears as an agent of the divine awoken to his purpose by the Spirit and fulfilling the will of God. But he does not have a vision or an agenda of his own. The purpose, and the essence, of all his works is to call men’s minds back to the ancient truths of the Church. 36 Further proof of this, indeed the best proof of this, is offered by the Ninety-Five Theses . Luther did not emerge out of obscurity in 1517 with a ready-made confession of the faith but simply with a long list of speculative propositions about indulgences. This was not the foundation document for a new religion but an appeal for dialogue by an anxious Christian concerned with religious truth.

In light of this fact, the reformers argued, there had to be other forces at work in the Reformation, as ancient as the Church itself: namely, the spirit of the Christian community (by which they meant something approximating the medieval notion of the sensus fidelium ) and the providential hand of God. Both testified to the truth and antiquity at the root of Luther’s call for penance in the theses-posting. In the context of late medieval religiosity, few things were more universal than the concern with proper penance and how mankind could make good its sins in the eyes of God. By speaking directly to this question of ‘doing enough’ ( satisfactio ), which was the underlying theme of the Ninety-Five Theses , Luther took on the role of a preacher of penance, a figure of long-standing significance in medieval Christianity, and so placed himself at the very heart of late medieval faith. He was articulating the common spirit of the age. 37 Even more profoundly legitimising, however, was the suggestion that the Reformation was not the work of human hands but rather the predestined work of God. Using the theses-posting as a form of historical proof, the theologians played down Luther’s role and projected the incident as an instance of divine intervention along the lines of Belshazzar’s feast or the burning bush. Had there ever been a greater miracle than this, later memorialists would ask, than the fact that a single monk in a small university town was able to topple the pope from his throne, something that even the greatest potentates had been unable to do? And all on the basis ‘of a few propositions’? 38

This, then, was the importance of the theses-posting for the first few generations of Lutheran historians: it opened with a call for repentance, woke believers from their centuries-long slumber, unveiled the errors of the papacy, and led pious Christians back to the Word. 39 For the Reformation’s founding fathers, who had to avoid the Catholic accusation of novelty, it was the ideal point of origin, for ultimately its importance was not based on the thought or the acts of an individual. On the contrary, this was the moment when God intervened in human affairs, with Luther playing the role of a latter-day John the Baptist pointing the way to Christ. The Wittenberg professor Wolfgang Franz (1564–1628) put it in these terms:

In these propositions—or rather, as we now say, in these theses—Doctor Luther demonstrates the danger, ambiguity, and vanity of the papal indulgence while also showing how a man who, on account of his sins, was suffering great anxiety and burdens of conscience, could console himself in a true Christian manner by way of the Holy Gospel. 40

Admittedly, some scholars saw more than just this. After Luther’s death it was not uncommon for theologians to find traces of his mature theology in the theses. Melanchthon was the first to do this and others followed his example, finding references in the theses to his notions of Scripture alone, grace alone, the distinction between law and gospel, and even justification through faith. And they were not misguided in their views, as modern scholars have pointed out, for even if the theses were more of an exercise in ‘soundbite theology’ than systematic thought, they were based upon long reflection and it is likely that Luther had developed many of his central insights by that stage. 41 But the real value of the theses as a confession of faith, and one of the reasons why the posting was so quickly accepted as the moment of creation, was precisely because Reformation theology was so hard to find in the theses. It would only emerge after the act, once Christians had paid heed to the call to repentance and God had begun to reveal his Word.

Claiming that the Reformation church was founded on Scripture and that it was brought into being by an act of divine intervention enabled Lutherans to answer the Catholic questions about origins. It also enabled them to develop powerful teleological arguments in defence of their church. There were two main lines of thinking in this regard, one historical and the other providential. Both considered the theses-posting to be the culmination of a preordained passage of time.

The idea that Christianity, from the age of Constantine onwards, had experienced a relentless trajectory of decline was a commonplace in the late medieval period. It was particularly popular among heretical groups, but mainstream theologians and humanists made use of it—as did the evangelical reformers in their early struggles with the papacy. Once the first great Lutheran histories appeared, it took hold as the main interpretative framework of Protestant history. Its central assumptions were clear: namely, that over the medieval period the Catholic Church had declined to the point of apostasy and that the pope was in fact the Antichrist. Melanchthon’s edited version of Carion’s Chronicle was the first Lutheran history to work this scheme into its analysis, but the seminal text in this regard was the Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74), composed by the theologian Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–75) and the other centuriators of Magdeburg. According to Flacius, all of Christian history since the age of the apostles was a tale of unremitting decline. There were, however, inspired individuals (the so-called testes veritatis , the witnesses to truth) who surfaced on occasion through the centuries and testified to the eternal presence of the Word of God, including recent figures such as Jean Gerson, Girolamo Savonarola, John Wycliffe and Jan Hus. All of these men were witnesses to the Christian truth to some degree, though it was not until the Gospel was liberated by Martin Luther and his Reformation that the Church of Christ was reborn and the trajectory of decline was reversed. 42

Lutheran scholars developed a number of historical arguments to bear out this theory of decline, from the rise of papal power to the excesses of medieval monkery, but one of the most persuasive drew its strength from the history of the indulgence trade. Building on the first-hand accounts of Luther and Friedrich Myconius (1490–1546), whose recollections of Johann Tetzel’s campaign provided some of the most scurrilous details (including Tetzel’s infamous claim that indulgences could remit any sin ‘even if someone had slept with Christ’s dear mother’), Lutherans were quick to deploy the example of the late medieval indulgence trade as a riposte to Catholic accusations that there had been no warrant for the Reformation. Indulgences were the ideal case-study for this purpose, for they could be used in a general sense to reveal the alleged failings of the late medieval church, from its empty sacramentalism to the wealth and corruption of the papacy, and they could also stand as a specific example of papal deception. To cite the words of the pastor-biographer Paul Seidel in 1581: ‘In [indulgences] the sheer power amassed by the pope and his cronies becomes clear and present, so too the wretched blindness of our ancestors, who were taken in by such devilry and monkey business and paid for it, to their detriment, dearly enough’. 43

Based on this historical proof, among others—many of which, the Lutherans pointed out, had been provided by loyal sons of Catholicism such as Jean Gerson and Johann Staupitz—it was not difficult to argue that the Church had never been in more desperate need of reform than just before the outbreak of the Reformation. Nor was it difficult to argue that 31 October 1517, when the abuses of the indulgence trade reached the point where Luther was forced to take a stand, was the great turning-point in this long trajectory of decline. Many of the histories written by the Orthodox Lutherans of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries open with extended discussions of the decline of the medieval Church and then present the indulgence controversy as the pivotal moment when the long chain of decline finally came to an end and the age of evangelical truth began. Even in studies by members of the post-Seckendorff generations it was common to identify the indulgence controversy as the crucial turn in the Reformation story when, through the intervention of Luther under the guiding hand of providence, the time had finally arrived to reverse the decline of the Church and initiate a new Christian age. 44 As one of his four proofs of the supernatural origins of the Reformation, the Jena theologian Johann Georg Walch (1693–1775) evoked this argument of historical necessity. It was no accident, he proposed, that the Reformation occurred when it did, for God had prepared the ground by allowing the Church to reach the lowest point in its history. ‘In particular’, reasoned Walch, ‘we find that the Reformation had to begin at such a time when the papal atrocities had never been more manifest, namely just as the indulgence racket had reached its final extremes. Luther opposed the trade as something contrary to both reason and Holy Writ, and that is why he was so quickly supported’. 45

Walch’s allusion to divine intervention evokes the other powerful argument a posteriori : namely, the belief that the Reformation was a preordained event in the history of Christianity, brought into being by the guiding hand of God. Adopting this view, as Geoffrey Dickens once remarked, meant that historians began to think of the Reformation as ‘a supernatural act in the history of salvation, to which they [Lutherans] traced their religious roots, but which they viewed in a way that can only be described as profoundly ahistorical’. 46 Scholars could take different approaches to this type of providential analysis. Some adopted the Flacian notion of the ‘witnesses to the truth’ mentioned above, in which a bloodline of true Christians reached all the way from the age of the apostles to the present day, preserved in their perfect faith by the superintending hand of God. Other scholars, particularly during the heyday of Lutheran Orthodoxy, pieced together florilegia of prophecies and predictions to prove that the Reformation was the final act in Christian history. An extremely eclectic range of sources was used in order to support this interpretation, ranging from Scripture and the works of the Church Fathers to other writings such as the Sibylline Oracles, Hermetic literature, late medieval reform literature and Jewish apocalypticism. 47

Within this providential framework, it is interesting to note how many of the prophecies were resolved specifically with reference to the indulgence controversy and the theses-posting. Soon after Luther’s death, historians started to emphasise the prophecies that spoke explicitly about the coming of Luther and his quarrel with the papacy in 1517. Granted, the two most famous prophecies of all—those by the Bohemian heretic Jan Hus and the Eisleben Franciscan Johann Hilten, both of whom predicted that a reforming monk would appear in the year 1516—did not match the year exactly; but most historians passed over this discrepancy in silence or made subtle distinctions about intentions, as did Mathesius when he claimed that 1516 was the year when Luther ‘began to sing’, but 1517 was when his views became public. 48 Other prophecies, however, were easier to relate to the year 1517, including those attributed to respected figures such as the famous Doctor Fleck of Laussig, Johann Staupitz, Martin Pollich von Mellerstadt and Friedrich the Wise. Some scholars made the connection using more ingenious means. Using the logic of typology, for instance, it was common to correlate the year 1517 CE to the year 1517 BCE, the latter date signifying (it was alleged) when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. On a similar note, a popular chronogram of the Ambrosian chant was circulated in which certain highlighted letters stood in for Roman numerals and so pointed to the theses-posting. According to this theory, the proper rearrangement of the letters Tibi Chervbin et Seraphim Incessabili voce proclamant reveals the sequence MCCCCLLVVIIIIIII, which gives the year 1517. 49 This list of prophecies, predictions, acrostics and forewarnings continued to accumulate for well over a century and a half after Luther’s death. Even the Orthodox Lutheran Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673–1749), an exponent of the source-based study of Reformation history, devoted an entire chapter to the prophecies leading up the Reformation. Löscher did not dwell on the year 1517, but, having reduced the various predictions to an essential core—namely, that a learned monk from Wittenberg would emerge who would bring about the fall of the Antichrist and the school philosophies (by which was meant indulgences) on the basis of Scripture—he did not leave much room for speculation. 50

Prophecies and acrostics of this kind provided important proofs for providential narratives, but there was a deeper rationale at work as well. By the mid-seventeenth century, as the Luther biography reached its apogee as a mode of apologetics, the theses-posting was confirmed in its place in the grand arch of providential history. Of course, the conceit that the Reformation more broadly fulfilled the biblical prophecies and thus had to be understood in the light of the Book of Revelation was evident from the very first days of the movement. Indeed, Luther’s identification of the pope as the actual Antichrist, rather than just one of the many predicted by John to appear before the End Time, brought about a heightened concern with sacral history and eschatology, not least because it meant that the latter days were immediately at hand. 51 But the concern with the Reformation’s place in the providential scheme was particularly marked in the seventeenth century, and it often reflected back on the theses-posting.

In the popular exegeses of Revelation 14, for instance, which usually drew on a wide range of biblical prophecies, Luther came to assume the figuration of the first angel flying through the midst of heaven preaching penance and the eternal Gospel. To explain the reference to heaven, the clergy equated it with the Church; but to explain the idea of heavenly flight, many referred to the Ninety-Five Theses . Did they not fly through the lands of Germany and Europe at a miraculous speed and reach the ears of all nations? Indeed, they were born aloft by the great miracle of print, God’s gift to the German people. Were the theses not a call to repentance, sounded from the north at midnight, that brought down the Antichrist from his throne? And was their power not solely based on the Word rather than force, as the prophecies foretold? As Wolfgang Franz (1564–1628) put it, the theses were nothing more than an appeal to the Gospel, landing ‘softly and benevolently’ among the people ‘like rain on dry fields’. 52 Typologies and allegories of this kind were sometimes difficult to relay to parishioners in sermons. Before Johann Friedrich Mayer (1650–1712) began his own reading of Revelation 14 on the anniversary of the theses-posting in 1677, for instance, he advised his public to think of the angel’s wings in abstract, allegorical terms rather than like a painting in the church. Only then could their meaning as something so seemingly impossible as Luther’s flight ( Lutheri Flug ) be understood. 53

Martin Luther the theses-poster, caught up in the flow of providential history, was the ideal figuration of a church founder in the confessional age. For, as 31 October 1517 made clear, he was not a self-proclaimed prophet, just an uneasy Christian, plagued by uncertainty and hedged in by human flaws. Nor was he a self-proclaimed visionary who set out to create a new church. 54 On both counts, the theses offered ample evidence that Luther alone could not have been the founder of the Reformation, for he did not have a prophetic sense of mission or a perfect vision of religious truth at the time. On the contrary, as Löscher wrote, the very conservatism of the Ninety-Five Theses, written when Luther was still in thrall to the papacy, was proof that the Reformation was a miracle; for God worked his miracles through the meek, and the theses were certainly the work of a mild-mannered monk who had not yet grasped the truth. It is worth quoting Löscher in full:

They were clearly written in weakness, for Luther acknowledges the supreme authority of the pope in the same. He takes this as a given, and indeed he rises in defence of the idea, as can be seen in theses 5, 6, 9, 20, 22, 25, 26, 38, 42, 48, and following 61, 78, number 90 and the following theses. And those are mistaken who claim that Luther was already writing about the pope here in a satirical manner and secretly taking shots. On the contrary, at that time Luther’s veneration of the pope was sincere. The evil state of affairs in Rome distressed him, but he had only the best hopes for, and belief in, the Roman See and the pope himself. It may be that he had some doubts at the time on the issue of Purgatory, nevertheless he let it stand here, as theses 10, 17, 19, 22, 25, 29 and others demonstrate. Nor in principle had he rejected the indulgences of the Roman church at the time, as theses 71 and 73 in particular attest, and indeed he still speaks of them with respect and without false Apostolicas venias . 55

In order to sustain the broader framework of providentialism, it was important to emphasise that Luther was merely a tool of God’s will, rather than a supernatural agent directly shaping the destiny of the Church. Thus, even though he was likened to prophets, angels, and Biblical heroes from Noah and Moses to John the Baptist, Daniel and the third Elijah, by the age of Orthodoxy this was meant in a typological or analogical rather than a literal sense. He was termed the instrument or the mouthpiece of the divine, a temple or vessel through which God effected the ‘last Reformation’. But this was not the same thing as being a heaven-sent agent of the divine will, as Georg Nuber (1590–1667) remarked: ‘Although we must concede that Doctor Luther should not be numbered among the prophets and the apostles, nevertheless we hold him to be a unique, glorious, and distinguished teacher of God’s Church’. 56 Luther’s status as an interpreter of the Gospel occasionally reached the point of ‘quasi-papalisation’, but most theologians did not claim that Luther was directly inspired by the divine or ‘completely enlightened’ at the moment of conversion, like Paul. On the contrary, although he may have been ‘awoken’ by God, Luther’s path to the truth was gradual, it had several stages, and it was only possible because he had discovered ‘this new and unheard-of manner of teaching’, by which was meant his turn to Scripture. 57 Some traced this insight back to his first stay in Wittenberg in 1508, others ascribed it to subsequent years; but most were in general agreement that ‘he should be recognised as belonging to those men, as Augustine writes of himself, who rose through teaching and writing and not to those who are suddenly elevated from a low rank without having any substance, without having put in any work, without having wagered anything, or without having learned through experience’. 58 Luther did not have a direct relationship with the divine, so there was no need to treat him as a prophet or claim that his words were infallible. He came to the truth by exercising his office as a preacher and a teacher in the Church.

The issue of Luther’s calling is an appropriate point with which to conclude this analysis of the theses-posting in the early Reformation histories. For even when they were addressing a question so seemingly straightforward as Luther’s credentials as a clergyman, which became a particular point of contention in the seventeenth century, it is interesting to note how often historians invoked the posting of the theses in order to defend Luther’s role as the founding father. For instance, one of the arguments deployed by a long line of Catholic critics from Cochlaeus to Bellarmine was that Luther had no authority to challenge the Catholic magisterium and no warrant, either institutional or prophetic, to assume the mantle of reform. The only reasons he did so, the Catholics argued, were, first, his thirst for power and wealth (by which they meant his desire that his own Augustinian order, rather than Tetzel’s Dominicans, be placed in charge of the indulgence trade); and, secondly, that he was just acting on behalf of his prince the Elector Friedrich the Wise, who wanted to disrupt the designs of his dynastic rival Albrecht of Mainz. 59

On all counts, the Lutherans argued, the claims of the Catholics could be easily disproved by a thorough examination of what happened on 31 October 1517. When Luther stepped up to the church door with his theses in hand, he did so as a legitimate member of the Church, ordained in office by the local Catholic authorities. His purpose was to debate his fellow theologians on the theme of indulgences, which was a right that had been conferred on him in 1512 by virtue of his Wittenberg doctorate. His aim was not to increase the power of his order or elevate his own fame, for he gained nothing by the gesture and he remained very deferential to the Catholic authorities, as the sources attest. Rather, he intended to point out the dangers of the indulgence trade, for which he was accountable to the Christian community on account of his office as a preacher and a teacher in the Church. 60 Indeed, according to the Eisleben clergyman Anton Probus (1537–1613), it was the very posting of the Ninety-Five Theses that fulfilled Luther’s prophetic role in his office as a preacher and teacher of the Word, for that was the moment when he brought about the renewal ‘of the primal, prophetic, apostolic, and catholic teaching, which had been snuffed out and obscured in terrible and miserable fashion by the pope’s terrible idolatry, false teaching, lies, and human opinions’. 61

Sometime around the beginning of the eighteenth century the writing of Reformation history began to change. The model of providential history discussed above attracted more and more criticism, and many of the basic features of the foundational narrative that had been in place since the early sixteenth century—such as the distinction between secular and spiritual history, the Flacian chronologies of rise and decline, the importance of religion in human history, and the role of divine intervention in earthly affairs (including so-called Protestant miracles such as the posting of the theses)—were questioned and often rejected outright. 62 Ultimately, all aspects of the Reformation narrative would be subject to revision, but three trends in particular threatened the survival of the paradigm that had emerged during the confessional age. First, history became much more of an exact discipline, by which is meant, in the first instance, that scholars placed greater stress on archival research and critical use of the primary sources. That is why Seckendorff’s Commentarius was considered to be so important, for it was the first work in which ‘one can see, in an orderly and detailed manner, the process at work in dear Luther’s Reformation’. 63 Secondly, as has been mentioned, historians began to divest Church history of the supernatural. There was no longer a place for divine intervention, no justification for the preservation of theological tradition at the expense of truth, and no need for revelation in works of history where research and reason would suffice. And finally, and following from both of these factors, the study of Church history gradually succumbed to secularising trends, both intellectual and social. Scholars began to apply the same standards of historical exegesis to the sources of ecclesiastical history as they did to documents of political or military history. Even in the study of the Reformation, the primary materials were no longer simply accepted as testimony of God’s greater plan. The records of the past contained ‘mere facts’, nothing inherently revelatory or sacred, and the historian needed to apply the same standards to the interpretation of the spiritual as the secular past. 64

Drawing on these new interpretative techniques, together with the new philosophies and the shifting sentiments of the early Enlightenment, and with a larger body of published primary materials at their disposal, scholars began to revisit some of the foundational episodes of the Reformation narrative, including the posting of the theses. 65 Eventually this led to a change in how historians portrayed the event, though without challenging the long-held conviction that the theses-posting marked the starting-point of the Reformation. On the contrary, with the emergence of the Enlightenment portrayal of the Reformation, Luther and the church door started to monopolise the centre stage.

As mentioned earlier, there were some discrepancies in the original accounts of the theses-posting with reference to the issue of timing. Did Luther dispatch letters before posting the theses? If so, how long was the interval between the two acts? None of the early historians had dealt with this issue in any systematic way. The martyrologist Ludwig Rabus was one of the very few even to touch on it, and his solution was to backdate the Mainz letter to 1 October. 66 Only with the rise of the new historiography did this become a concern, and while (to my knowledge) no Lutheran scholar ever challenged the veracity of the theses-posting outright, some started to question, or at least to re-examine, the facts. Seckendorff, for instance, did not doubt that letters to four bishops had been dispatched, as Myconius claimed, but he did concede that it was difficult to prove this one way or another on account of the absence of source materials. He could only conclude that ‘one can well see how Luther wrote more letters to the bishops than are presently to be found in his collected works’. 67 Löscher was also uneasy about the fact that there was no evidence to support the claim that Luther wrote to four bishops—not even a clear reference from Luther himself. Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745), like Löscher one of the great Lutheran Orthodox thinkers of his day, had fewer doubts, but he was unable to make a stronger case for the sequence of events than the historians before him. As one writer noted, Cyprian’s use of the word ‘then’ or ‘subsequently’ ( mithin ) in his account of events did little to clarify things. 68

Ultimately, even historians who defended the idea that Luther wrote to the bishops and then waited for their responses undermined, by virtue of their more exacting methods of research, the credibility of the original source-base. Having surveyed the various arguments pro and con , for instance, Johann Gottlob Walter (1704–82) reached the conclusion that the words of Myconius and Luther were more than enough proof that letters had been sent out in advance of the posting. On the basis of this conviction, he then cast doubt on the competence of Georg Rörer (1492–1557) and the editors of the Jena edition of Luther’s works, who had erroneously interpreted Luther’s reference to ‘prelates’ to mean only the archbishop of Mainz and the bishop of Brandenburg. This mistake ‘is all the more remarkable’, Walter added, because these men were in daily contact with Luther during the editing and correcting process. He then added in the footnote that it only goes to show ‘that there are some things in the older works touching on both Reformation history and Luther’s life that are in need of correction’. 69

There were similar concerns about the sequence of events in Wittenberg that led up to the theses-posting. As many of Luther’s early sermons had not yet been recovered or dated, there was only rudimentary knowledge of Luther’s views on indulgences before All Saint’s Eve, and this left room for speculation. Having seen an indulgence letter signed by Tetzel on 5 October 1517 in Berlin, Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel (1659–1707) concluded that the main developments must have taken place after this date—though he knew that Luther had preached against indulgences earlier in the year, just as he knew that Luther had disputed against scholastic theology in September. 70 Similarly, in his compilation of primary materials relating to the indulgence controversy, Johann Erhard Kapp (1696–1756) took up the issue of timing by examining the provenance of Luther’s Sermon on Indulgences and Grace . Kapp correctly dated the sermon to 1517; but he confessed that there was always room for doubt when examining this period of the Reformation, particularly when scholars were forced to rely on the first editions of Luther’s works, ‘as it is well known that the compilers of Luther’s works did not always observe the appropriate level of accuracy, which holds true with reference to dates as well’. 71 Finally, some scholars began to doubt the authenticity of The Dream of Friedrich the Wise , which had emerged as the most powerful support of both the historical and the providential theory of the theses-posting. Catholics had been denying its authenticity for years, of course, but in the early eighteenth century some Lutherans also began to express doubts about the timing, the meaning and the authenticity of the source. As the critics pointed out, neither Luther nor Spalatin ever mentioned the dream; and, they added, it was unlikely that the reformers would have relied on visions of this kind, for such dreams were the stuff of Anabaptism. Convinced that the sources did not add up, Christoph August Heumann (1681–1764) devoted a chapter in his work Lutherus Apocalypticus to the proposition that Friedrich’s dream was nothing more than a fable. 72

Critical re-evaluation of the sources along these lines thus did much to weaken the assumptions of the original providential accounts, but ultimately even more subversive were the new interpretations of the meaning of the theses-posting. Löscher touched on the two main strands of these when he accused Heumann, who was an Enlightenment enthusiast, of indifference and syncretism—by which he meant the growing tendency to look for causation in historical laws rather than in providence, and the application of standards of reason to issues of belief. 73 This was the framework for the revised meaning of the theses-posting during the age of Enlightenment. No longer the moment of divine intervention, as in the providential accounts, 31 October 1517 now became the great turning-point in the history of western civilisation as historical necessity and the use of reason began to displace faith and tradition. Both approaches were still bound to the broader idea that the theses-posting marked the crucial moment in the medieval Church’s trajectory of decline, but they were fundamentally at odds in terms of explanation.

In the works of the early Enlightenment, as profane historians began to outnumber the theologians, it became more and more common to apply the new modes of historical analysis to the Reformation, and this encouraged scholars to view 31 October 1517 in a different light. In place of the providential readings of the past, secular-minded historians started to think of the theses-posting as one link in a chain of historical causation that did not necessarily have to have led to Luther’s separation from Rome. Blame for the division was placed squarely at the door of the papacy, for if the papal theologians had reacted differently to demands for reform, and if the popes had responded with more humility and good will to the critics of the indulgence trade, the Catholic clergy of northern Europe would still be watching over their sheep. 74 To make their case historians began to publish detailed histories of the Church on the eve of the Reformation, drawing on the source materials in order to prove (and not just to preach, as in earlier works) that religion was in a state of crisis at the time and in desperate need of reform. Most scholars still acknowledged that the theses-posting was the critical moment in the story—or, as Erdmann Uhse (1677–1730) put it, ‘the main and most immediate cause of the Reformation’—but it was just still one link in a chain of events. 75

In place of the earlier notion of divine intervention, scholars started to dwell on the mistakes made by the papacy during the indulgence controversy, the underlying idea being that the essential cause of the Reformation was human error. As the jurist Samuel Pufendorf (1632–94) remarked, ‘it was a big mistake on the part of Leo X that he was so quick to take the side of the indulgence peddlers and that he responded to the emerging disputations with the new Bull of November 1518. With this he eliminated all paths to accommodation and removed any hopes Luther may have had about a consensual solution’. 76 Some scholars went even further than this, conceding that Catholic corruption and human error had undoubtedly played their part, but anyone with an understanding of historical causation could see that the coming of the Reformation was inevitable. As Gottlieb Samuel Treuer (1683–1743) put it, ‘by human reckoning, the beginning of the sixteenth century was simply the right time for a great revolution in the Church. Anyone of intelligence could have taken a leaf from Machiavelli and quite easily have seen this coming’. 77

There was also a change in the way historians treated the subject of indulgences. In the foundational narratives, the indulgence controversy had been depicted as the episode that forced Luther to take a stand, the posting of the theses being his divinely inspired act of defiance. But more than this, indulgences perfectly exemplified the teaching and practice of medieval Catholicism for an evangelical audience and thus served as a foil to Luther’s new insights on repentance, grace, and justification. 78 By the late seventeenth century, however, Lutheran historians could no longer assume that their readers even knew what indulgences were. In his 1646 anthology of Luther quotations, for instance, Philipp Saltzmann (1614–67) included a glossary at the end of the work with a number of ‘special terms’ that had fallen out of German usage, including a number relating to the indulgence trade ( Ablassbuben, Ablassnarren, Ablassvogt ). 79 As a way of illustrating the problem, one historian told the story of John Maylorn, an Irish Catholic, who could not believe that Tetzel said the things he said, particularly the infamous quote about sinning against the Virgin Mary, and wagered a thousand pounds that it was not true. Eventually Maylorn was shown the historical proofs, but he never paid up and was last seen living as a Mennonite in Amsterdam. 80

In the face of fading knowledge, Orthodox Lutheran historians started to publish compilations of medieval letters of indulgence or devoted whole chapters in their Reformation histories to the topic in the hope that it would revive memories of the practice. Indeed, Tetzel himself found worthy biographers in Gottfried Hecht and Johann Jacob Vogel, whose detailed treatment of Tetzel’s life, thought, and career helped to explain how he ‘pulled in so many fish with his golden net’. 81 But this effort to preserve the memory of the indulgence trade and remind Protestants of the great danger to salvation that it had posed had little effect on a public that had started to look back on the medieval period as an age of superstition. Historians, too, thought about indulgences in a different manner and were more likely to stress the corruption or the irrationality of the trade than its sacerdotal dangers. Pufendorf, for instance, suggested that Luther posted the theses on ‘good and reasonable’ grounds and that his adversaries were ‘such individuals, whose foolishness and wickedness bring people of honour to sigh’. 82 In his historical survey of the rise of the Reformation, even the theologian Johann Georg Walch stressed the irrationality of the practice before mentioning that it was contrary to Scripture. In his words: ‘The matter itself was unreasonable … something simply illogical and unreasonable’. 83

For Orthodox Lutheran scholars such as Valentin Ernst Löscher, Ernst Salomon Cyprian and Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel, all of whom thought of themselves as the keepers of the public memory of the Church, these trends were alarming. To treat the Reformation as a historical event like any other, to suggest that it was brought into being due to political miscalculation (as Pufendorf did), or to propose new models of interpretation (as Heumann did), was to challenge the time-honoured providential reading of the Reformation and lead Christians down the path to religious indifference ( Indifferentismus ). 84 In response these great scholars embarked on an extended campaign of research and recovery in an effort to bring together as much source-material as possible and thereby confirm the original narrative and its assumption that the Reformation was the work of God and the outcome of providence. But there was no denying the shift in perception. The Lutheran histories of this period are shot through with complaints about the lack of interest in Reformation history and the life and the works of Luther. This lack of knowledge was particularly marked among the younger people, as Georg Nuber remarked, who knew ‘next to nothing, or at best very little, about Luther and who he was’. 85 But even more alarming was the growing tendency to treat the Reformation as a purely secular event, and one, moreover, that could be explained with reference to the rise of reason or as the outcome of political decision-making. The Mecklenburg theologian Georg Friedrich Stieber (1684–1755) identified the changing approach:

For just as the secular reigns have their revolutions, their particular times and periods, so too have the Church and the sciences experienced great changes, especially at the start of our own eighteenth century. I’ll make no mention now of philosophy, which has taken on such a different form in our age, nor will I speak of theology, whose discourse and form have also changed over time, and begins to depart from the main methods of the previous century. Rather, I will stick just to history, for even though one may be of the opinion that, because it is based purely on stories and facts, it must remain the same through all times. And yet as we have experienced in our own time, this too can take on a completely different aspect. 86

No one dreaded these changes and the related rise of Indifferentismus more than Löscher. He was also quick to recognise the dangers of the early Enlightenment, and he did not hesitate to cite Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) as its prime mover in Germany. In the work of Thomasius, Löscher saw all of the principles that would eventually bring about the collapse of his mode of Lutheran history, including the displacement of the providential narrative by secular thought, the primacy of reason over revelation as a mode of interpretation, and the supersession of scriptural warrant by natural, social or historical laws. He spent the better part of his life trying to hold back the tide, but in the end, as he recognised, his efforts were in vain. 87 Löscher’s worst fears were realised when Enlightenment thinkers turned their attention to Luther and the origins of the Reformation. In many respects the faith and dogmatism of the Reformation were alien to the Enlightenment mind, and this was demonstrated in its approach to Luther himself. As a historical figure, as Goethe once remarked, the public found Luther’s character fascinating, but this was really the only thing that held their attention. 88 Enlightenment intellectuals had little sympathy for the figure of Luther as the monk who, riddled with doubt and anxiety, rose up against something so trivial as indulgences. The indulgence dispute still held its place as the moment of origin, but historians such as Johann Matthias Schröckh (1733–1808) now had alternative explanations as to why it was that ‘the Reformation, the greatest and most incredible revolution to occur in the Church since the days of Christ and the apostles, emerged out of such a minor dispute’. 89 For Schröckh, as for many other thinkers of the time, the reasons why the Reformation emerged out of so small a matter had little (and perhaps nothing at all) to do with theology or divine providence. Rather, the Reformation came into being because Luther was an early proponent of the values and ideas held so dear by the Enlightenment. Thus for thinkers ranging from church historians such as Walch and Schröck to literary men such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Goethe, or universal scholars such as Anton Friedrich Büsching and Johann Salomo Semler, Luther became the heroic prefiguration of the Enlightenment. In their eyes, Luther’s resolve to take a stand in the indulgence debate was a result of his desire to defend reason and free the Christian conscience from the yoke of late-medieval superstition: and he launched his campaign with the theses-posting. As Friedrich Germanus Lüdke (1730–92) put it, in doing this Luther became in effect the guardian angel of ‘the rights of reason, humanity, and freedom of conscience’, and took on the defence of religious liberty, religious tolerance and the German people against the tyranny of the papacy—which was reason enough, according to Friedrich the Great, ‘for altars to be erected in his honour as the liberator of the Fatherland’. 90 This last point became very important in the age of Romanticism that followed, when Luther took his place among the pantheon of German heroes.

Thus in the historical imagination of the age of the German Enlightenment, the Martin Luther who stepped up to the door of the Castle Church on 31 October 1517 was very different to the figure depicted by Mathesius, Selnecker, or even Löscher. The image that emerged in this period was that of a man full of courage, resolve and certainty of purpose who was determined to free the German Church and the German people from their medieval captivity. He was a freedom fighter of the soul and a champion of the spirit, a hero in the classical mould. ‘Luther was a man of this kind’, read an entry in the Berlin Journal for Enlightenment , ‘as are all who play a leading role in the theatre of the world. Enterprising, fearless, resolute, merciless in the face of prejudice and superstition...’. 91 His main concern was liberty of conscience, which is why he posted the theses in the first place, for all Christians had been created equally and none should be subjected to the judgements of the Church against his or her will. For Semler this was Luther’s lasting legacy to the modern age—that he ‘gave every Christian the freedom to think for himself about Christian ideas and truths and to follow his conscience’. 92 From this liberation of the individual it was a small step to the liberation of the nation, and this too became part of the Enlightenment discourse. For Luther was no longer just a religious but a cultural hero, the man who turned German into a literary language and, to cite a passage in Zedler’s Universal Lexicon , ‘sought with the utmost diligence the uprooting of ignorance among the people’. 93 And of course he was a German as well, a fact eloquently captured in the thought of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), the architect of German nationalism, who once remarked that ‘Luther was a powerful mind and the true prophet and preacher of our fatherland’. 94 With Luther being all of these things in the German imagination of the eighteenth century, it is little wonder that something as dramatic as the theses-posting preserved its place in the narrative.

Artists did not really begin to capture this revised image until the gothic revival of the nineteenth century, when Luther emerges with hammer in hand, but we can get some sense of the extended meaning of the theses-posting in Christian Siegmund Georgi’s portrayal of a Wittenberg procession held in 1755 as part of the Peace of Augsburg bicentennial celebrations ( Figure 6 ). Georgi relates how the procession, having begun with a meeting of the professors and other university luminaries in the Lutherstube , made its way through the city streets in the direction of the Castle Church, accompanied throughout by drums, trumpets and choirs. What is particularly interesting is the social mix, for it was not just a parade of university academics and clergymen but an event that included the entire social profile of the town, from noblemen and city councillors to local residents and students, and they were all marching towards ‘the church door on which Doctor Luther of blessed memory posted his propositions against Tetzel’s indulgence trade’. 95 By this stage, the people of Wittenberg, as indeed the people of Germany as a whole, would have been thoroughly familiar with the importance of the theses-posting in German history and they would have associated it with the courageous actions of the great German hero Martin Luther. He was no longer just a religious figure guided by the hand of God but a historical personage of the type projected by the Enlightenment historians, and he had become the common property of the people at large. Commemorating the Reformation and its heroes in this manner became very popular in the eighteenth century; indeed, at some stage in the build-up to the bicentennial celebrations in Wittenberg the magistracy had to order that soldiers with fixed bayonets be deployed in the town, just in case there was trouble with the press of the crowd. This was a rather different scenario to the one faced by the magistracy five years later, when Prussian soldiers patrolled the streets and prepared the defences against an imperial bombardment that would ultimately destroy over half of the town, including the Castle Church and its famous door.

The Procession: Georgi, Wittenbergische Jubel-Geschichte (1756), pp. 49–50. Image by permission of SLUB Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id427022533/80 ( CC-BY-SA 4.0 ).

Christian Siegmund Georgi, Wittenbergische Klage-Geschichte (Wittenberg, 1760), p. 28. For the history of the Castle Church and its destruction and reconstruction, see M. Steffens and I.C. Hennen, eds., Von der Kapelle zum Nationaldenkmal: Die Wittenberger Schlosskirche (Wittenberg, 1998).

Matthaeus Faber, Kurzgefasste historische Nachricht von der Schloss- und Academischen Stiffts-Kirche zu Aller-Heiligen in Wittenberg (Wittenberg, 1717), mentioned in the preface by Gottlieb Wernsdorff.

Georgi, Wittenbergische Klage-Geschichte , p. 6.

H. Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis 1817 bis 2017 (Göttingen, 2012), pp. 17–34; on nineteenth-century memorialisation, see M. Steffens, Luthergedenkstätten im 19. Jahrhundert. Memoria—Repräsentation—Denkmalpflege (Regensburg, 2008); S. Reichelt, Der Erlebnisraum Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Genese, Entwicklung und Bestand (Göttingen, 2012).

Georgi, Wittenbergische Klage-Geschichte , p. 56.

E. Benz, ‘Symbole und Ereignisse der Reformation’, in R. Schmidt, ed., Die Bedeutung der Reformation für die Welt von Morgen (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), p. 70; see also the discussion in V. Leppin, ‘Die Monumentalisierung Luthers: Warum vom Thesenanschlag erzählt wurde—und was davon zu erzählen ist’, in J. Ott and M. Treue, eds., Luthers Thesenanschlag—Faktum oder Fiktion (Leipzig, 2008), pp. 69–92.

U. Barth, Aufgeklärter Protestantismus (Tübingen, 2004), p. 94.

For recent discussions of the theses debate, see Ott and Treue, eds., Luthers Thesenanschlag ; V. Leppin and T. Wengert, ‘Sources For and Against the Posting of the Ninety-Five Theses ’, Lutheran Quarterly , xxix (2015), pp. 373–98; and the articles in I. Dingel and H.P. Jürgens, eds., Meilensteine der Reformation. Schlüsseldokumente der frühen Wirksamkeit Martin Luthers (Gütersloh, 2014). For a wide-ranging survey of the theses-posting through history, see now P. Marshall, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation (Oxford, forthcoming).

Recent research has proposed that a marginal comment about the theses-posting by Georg Rörer in Luther’s working copy of the Bible may precede Melanchthon’s published remarks (and perhaps even Luther’s death). But even if this were the case, Rörer’s comment remained buried in his research notes and would have been seen by very few. See M. Treu, ‘Urkunde und Reflexion: Wiederentdeckung eines Belegs für Luthers Thesenanschlag’, in Ott and Treu, eds., Luthers Thesenanschlag , pp. 59–68.

Johann Christian Crell, Sächsisches Curiositäten Cabinet (Dresden, 1731), pt. ii, pp. 82–9.

Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke (65 vols., Weimar, 1883–1993) [hereafter WA], l. 348–51. In 1532 Luther feared that renovation work on the town defences threatened to destroy his study where ‘ich doch das bapstumb gesturmet habe’; quoted in H. Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs (Munich, 2012), p. 127.

It is interesting to note that early modern scholars regularly declared that Luther had the theses printed in Wittenberg before posting them on the church door, and indeed some even professed to own a copy. The Husum clergyman Johann Melchior Krafft, for instance, claimed to have a Wittenberg original, and Johann Quodvultdeus Bürger, among others, claimed to have consulted it, though the description Krafft gives of the format also matches the Nuremberg print. See Johann Melchior Krafft, Das andere Hundert-Jährige Jubel-Jahr der Evangelischen Kirchen, von der 1517 angegangenen Reformation (Hamburg, 1717), p. 10. Both Bernd Moeller and Andrew Pettegree have convincingly argued that the Nuremberg and Leipzig prints were based on an original by the Wittenberg printer Rhau-Grünenberg; see B. Moeller, ‘Thesenanschläge’, in Ott and Treu, eds., Luthers Thesenanschlag , pp. 9–31, and A. Pettegree, Brand Luther (New York, 2015), pp. 70–72. According to the Nuremberg jurist Christoph Scheurl (1481–1542), the copies sent out by Luther were ‘bloss geschrieben’; see E. Iserloh, Luthers Thesenanschlag: Tatsache oder Legende? (Wiesbaden, 1962), p. 31.

H. Volz, Martin Luthers Thesenanschlag und dessen Vorgeschichte (Weimar, 1959), pp. 19–27; Iserloh, Luthers Thesenanschlag , pp. 3–40. The matter is further complicated by the account by Friedrich Myconius in his Historia Reformationis . According to Myconius, Luther first wrote to the bishops of Meissen, Frankfurt [Brandenburg or Lebus], Zeitz and Merseburg as well as Mainz. With no response forthcoming, he had the theses printed and made his criticisms public. This question of timing has recently been re-examined in H. Junghans, ‘Martin Luther, kirchliche Magnaten und Thesenanschlag’, in Ott and Treu, eds., Luthers Thesenanschlag , pp. 33–46.

Iserloh, Luthers Thesenanschlag , p. 20. Spalatin did not comment on the theses, but his history in its published form only begins in 1518 due to the fact that the manuscript (to cite the editor) ‘durch die Länge der Zeit beydes Anfang und Ende gantz verlohren gegangen, in der Mitte aber vieles durch Nässe und Moder zerfressen und verderbet worden’; see the preface by Ernst Salomon Cyprian in Georgii Spalatini Annales Reformationis (Gotha, 1718), fo. a3v.

V. Leppin, ‘“Nicht seine Person, sondern die Wahrheit zu verteidigen”. Die Legende vom Thesenanschlag in lutherischer Historiographie und Memoria’, in H. Schilling, ed., Der Reformator Martin Luther 2017. Eine wissenschaftliche und gedenkpolitische Bestandsaufnahme (Berlin, 2015), pp. 85–97. On early representations of Luther in general, see L. Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body: The “Stout Doctor” and his Biographers’, American Historical Review, cxv (2010), pp. 351–84.

Caspar Peucer, Liber quintus chronici Carionis a Friderico Secundo usque ad Carolum Quintum (Wittenberg, 1566), fo. Vv3r; Caspar Peucer, Chronica Carionis (Wittenberg, 1588), p. 1080.

Der Neundte Teil der Bücher der Ehrnwirdigen Herrn D. Martini Lutheri (Wittenberg, 1557), fo. 9v; Der erste Teil der Bücher und Schrifften des theuren, seligen Mans Doct: Mart: Luther, vom XVII Jar an, bis auff des XXII (Jena, 1555), fo. 2v. The Jena edition terms them ‘Sprüche’, the Wittenberg edition ‘Propositiones’.

Quoted in S.J. Lee, ‘Luther-Rezeption bei Gottfried Arnold’ (Marburg Univ. diss., 2010), p. 75.

Paul Seidel, Historia und Geschicht des Ehrwirdigen unsers in Gott lieben Vaters, Herrn Doctoris Martini Lutheri (Wittenberg, 1581), pp. 1–2; similar views were expressed in Anton Probus, Renovalia Lutheri (Jena, 1590), fo. C1v; Georg Glocker, Wahrhafftige Historia, und gründlicher summarischer Bericht (Strasbourg, 1586), fo. C3r; Nikolaus Selnecker, Historica Oratio vom Leben und Wandel … Martini Lutheri (Leipzig, 1576), fo. 11v; Johannes Mathesius, Historien von des Ehrwirdigen in Gott seligen thewren Manns Gottes, Doctoris Martini Luthers, Anfang, Lehr, Leben und Sterben (Nuremberg, 1567), fo. CCXv.

On the role of local pastors for the preservation of memory, see S. Dornheim, Der Pfarrer als Arbeiter am Gedächtnis. Lutherische Erinnerungskultur in der Frühen Neuzeit zwischen Religion und sozialer Kohäsion (Leipzig, 2013).

H.J. Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug. Römische Kirche, Reformation und Luther im Spiegel des Reformationsjubiläums 1617 (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 10–85, 200–253; T. Kaufmann, ‘Reformationsgedenken in der Frühen Neuzeit. Bemerkungen zum 16. und 18. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche , cvii (2010), pp. 285–324; R. Kastner, Geistlicher Rauffhandel. Form und Funktion der illustrierten Flugblätter zum Reformationsjubiläum 1617 in ihrem historischen und publizistischen Kontext (Frankfurt, 1982), pp. 195, 244, 310–19, 352–5.

Balthasar Meisner et al., Christliche Evangelische Lutherische Jubel Predigten, auff das Erste, hohe Lutherische Jubelfest (Wittenberg, 1618), pp. 18, 64–5, 75, 83–4; Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis, pp. 17–24; Kaufmann, ‘Reformationsgedenken’, p. 321.

R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), pp. 310–13; H. Volz, ‘Der Traum Kurfürst Friedrichs des Weisen vom 30./31. Oktober 1517’, Gutenberg Jahrbuch , xlv (1970), pp. 174–211.

For a bibliographical overview of the various works, see Ernst Gustav Vogel, Bibliotheca Biographica Lutherana (Halle, 1851), pp. 31–4, 84–7.

On the influence of Seckendorff’s Commentarius and its mix of history and apologetics, see S. Strauch, Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff: Reformationsgeschichtsschreibung—Reformation des Lebens—Selbstbestimmung zwischen lutherischer Orthodoxie, Pietismus und Frühaufklärung (Münster, 2005), pp. 132–49; Seckendorff emphasised the first seven years of Luther’s life, considering this the crucial period ( propria historia Lutheri ).

Ernst Salomon Cyprian, Hilaria Evangelica (Gotha, 1719), p. 65.

H. Cordes, Hilaria evangelica academica. Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1717 an den deutschen lutherischen Universitäten (Göttingen, 2006), pp. 22–75.

Christoph Heinrich Rittmeier, Vorbereitung zu dem instehenden Evangelischen Jubel-Jahre (Helmstedt, 1716), fo. A2v.

Johann Heinrich Feustking, Historia Clerogamiae Evangelicae, sive de primo Sacerdote marito Lutherano, Bartholomaeo Bernardi, schediasma historico-theologicum (Wittenberg, 1703), p. 18.

E. Wolgast, ‘Biographie als Autoritätsstiftung: Die ersten evangelischen Lutherbiographien’, in W. Berschin, ed., Biographie zwischen Renaissance und Barock (Heidelberg, 1993), p. 64; Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body’, pp. 364–6.

See W. Müller, ed., Das historische Jubiläum. Genese, Ordnungsleistung und Inzenierungsgeschichte eines institutionellen Mechanismus (Münster, 2004); W. Flügel, Konfession und Jubiläum. Zur Institutionalisierung der lutherischen Gedenkkultur in Sachsen, 1617–1830 (Leipzig, 2005), pp. 26–84; J. Eibach and M. Sandel, eds., Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung. Von der Reformation bis zur Bürgerrechtsbewegung in der DDR (Göttingen, 2003); Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis , pp. 17–24; Kaufmann, ‘Reformationsgedenken’, 285–324.

N. Krentz, ‘Auf den Spuren der Erinnerung. Wie die “Wittenberger Bewegung” zu einem Ereignis wurde’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung , xxxvi (2009), pp. 363–95; J. Burckhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert. Deutsche Geschichte zwischen Medienrevolution und Institutionsbildung, 1517–1617 (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 30–48.

Johann Nicholaus Weislinger, Huttenus Delarvatus (Constance, 1730), pp. 29–30.

Volz, Martin Luthers Thesenanschlag, pp. 19–27; Iserloh, Luthers Thesenanschlag , pp. 4–7; WA, li. 538 and liv. 180.

R. Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520–1620 (Grand Rapids, MI, 1999), pp. 21–5.

I. Backus, Life Writing in Reformation Europe: Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 1–9.

W.E. Winterhager, ‘Ablasskritik als Indikator historischen Wandels vor 1517: Ein Beitrag zu Voraussetzungen und Einordnungen der Reformation’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte , xc (1999), pp. 6–71; B. Hamm, Der frühe Luther (Tübingen, 2010), pp. 90–114; B. Moeller, Die Reformation und das Mittelalter (Göttingen, 1991), pp. 53–72.

Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug , p. 240, no. 16; Cyriakus Spangenberg, Von der Geistlichen Hausshaltung und Ritterschaft D. Martin Lutheri (Eisleben, 1563), fos. G3v–G4r.

See, for instance, Ernst Salomon Cyprian, Frederici Myconii Historia Reformationis (Gotha, 1718), pp. 102–4; Der erste Teil der Bücher und Schrifften , fo. Ar; Mathesius, Historien , fo. XIIv; Probus, Renovalia Lutheri , fo. C1v; Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, Christliches Geburt und Lobgedächtnis des … D. Martini Lutheri (Leipzig, 1604), fo. Bv.

Wolfgang Franz, sermon of 31 Oct. 1617, in Meisner et al., Christliche Evangelische Lutherische Jubel Predigten , p. 83.

Hamm, Der frühe Luther , pp. 62–72; Thönissen, ‘Luthers 95 Thesen gegen den Ablass’, pp. 96–7; M. Schmidt, ‘Luthers 95 Ablassthesen als kirchliches Bekenntnis’, Lutherjahrbuch , xlv (1978), pp. 35–55; D. Bagchi, ‘Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and the Contemporary Criticism of Indulgences’, in R.N. Swanson, ed., Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Leiden, 2006), pp. 331–55, at 341. With reference to the idea of justification, Mathesius noted that Luther ‘etwas dunckler von diesem Artickel redete’ in the theses and only worked out the full implications over time; see Mathesius, Historien , fo. XIIv.

On this, see M. Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung. Lutherische Kirchen- und Universalgeschichtsschreibung, 1546–1617 (Tübingen, 2007), pp. 301–22.

Seidel, Historia und Geschicht , p. 25.

Elias Veiel, Historia et necessitas reformationis evangelicae, per B. Lutherum feliciter institutae (Ulm, 1692), pp. 26–8.

Johann Georg Walch, Historische und theologische Einleitung in die Religions-Streitigkeiten der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirchen (5 vols., Jena, 1733–9), i. 11.

A.G. Dickens and J.M. Tonkin, The Reformation in Historical Thought (Oxford, 1985), p. 95.

R.B. Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis : Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, CA, 1988), pp. 60–258; V. Leppin, Antichrist und Jüngster Tag. Das Profil apokalyptischer Flugschriftenpublizistik im deutschen Luthertum, 1548–1618 (Gütersloh, 1999), pp. 206–92.

Mathesius, Historien , fos. Xir–XIIr, CXCVIIIr. On the strength of these two prophecies, Georg Mylius went so far as to refer to 1516 as the year of the theses-posting; see M. Pohlig, ‘Luthers Thesenanschlag von 1516 (!) und seine prophetische Legitimation. Georg Mylius’ Gedenkpredigt von 1592’, in S. Rau and B. Studt, eds., Geschichte schreiben. Ein Quellen- und Studienhandbuch zur Historiografie (ca. 1350–1750 ) (Berlin, 2010), pp. 501–6. Over time, as Thomas Kaufmann has remarked, these references were ‘corrected’ and 1517 became the standard year. In large part this was due to the authority of Luther’s own recollections. As Kaufmann writes, ‘Durch Luthers Äusserungen … war die “Kanonizität” des Initialdatums 1517 gesichert’: ‘Reformationsgedenken’, p. 292, no. 34.

Kaspar Roth, Gloria Lutheri (Leipzig, 1619), pp. 1–25; Selnecker, Historica Oratio , fos. 11r–13r; Seidel, Historia und Geschicht , pp. 10–25; Glocker, Wahrhafftige Historia , fos. C4r–C7v; on these prophecies in general, see Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero , pp. 75–126.

Valentin Ernst Löscher, Vollständige Reformations-Acta and Documenta (3 vols., Leipzig, 1720), i. 145–73.

A. Seifert, Der Rückzug der biblischen Prophetie von der neueren Geschichte (Cologne, 1990), pp. 1–10.

Franz, sermon of 31 Oct. 1617, in Meisner, ed., Christliche Evangelische Lutherische Jubel Predigten , pp. 84, 75; Simon Gedick, Solennitas Jubliaei (Leipzig, 1618), fos. Ciiv, F4r–v; Valerius Herberger, Gloria Lutheri et Evangelicorum (Leipzig, 1608), pp. 30–120 (Herberger spoke of the origins of the Reformation as an ‘Engelische[r] Federkrieg’); Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug , pp. 256–60. Revelations 14 became a popular theme for anniversary sermons, which were then often reworked and turned into substantial theological works. See Johann Friedrich Mayer, Lutherus Apocalypticus (Leipzig, 1677), pp. 150–64; Johann Müller, Defensio Lutheri Defensi (Frankfurt am Main, 1684), pp. 48–58; Christoph August Heumann, Lutherus Apocalypticus (Hanover, 1717), which is a revisionist collection of six dissertations that begins with the typology of Michael and the dragon. There is a survey of the main interpretations from Bugenhagen to Heumann in Johann Georg Walch, D. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften (23 vols., Halle, 1740–53), xv. 82–3.

Mayer, Lutherus Apocalypticus, pp. 149–50.

As Luther’s own confession that ‘I got into these turmoils by accident and not by will or intention’ seemed to confirm: WA, liv. 180.

Löscher, Vollständige Reformations-Acta and Documenta , p. 459. Löscher was primarily referring to Hermann von der Hardt in his discussion of those who claimed that Luther wrote satirically.

Georg Nuber, Lutherus Redivivus (Stuttgart, 1658), fo. (a)2v; Philipp Melanchthon, Vita Lutheri , ed. and tr. Matthias Ritter (Frankfurt am Main, 1564), fo. Vvr; Mathesius, Historien , fo. Aiiv; Georg Mylius, Parentatio Lutheri (Wittenberg, 1592), fo. A4v; Mayer, Lutherus Apocalypticus , pp. 92–4; Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug , pp. 286–303.

Selnecker, Historica Oratio , fo. 8v; Wolgast, ‘Biographie als Autoritätsstiftung’, p. 43. In 1617 many of the clergy numbered him among the ‘pastors and teachers’ evoked in Ephesians 4:11; see Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug , pp. 260–2.

Selnecker, Historica Oratio , fo. 28r–v; Mathesius, Historien , fos. xiiv–xiiiv; Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, Martinalia Sacra Pragensia (Leipzig, 1613), pp. 26–7. These are close to the words of Luther himself, who, also citing Augustine, claimed ‘I was not one of those who from nothing suddenly rise to the top’: quoted in S.H. Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven, CT, 2015), p. 41.

See the surveys in Philipp Hailbrunner, Der unschuldige Luther (Laugingen, 1599), and Johann Müller, Lutherus Defensus (Hamburg, 1634). See also E.W. Zeeden, Martin Luther und die Reformation im Urteil des deutschen Luthertums (2 vols., Freiburg, 1950), ii. 113–14.

Glocker, Wahrhafftige Historia , fos. B2r–C3r; Andreas Kesler, Luthertum (Coburg, 1630), pp. 15–59, at 57; Müller, Defensio Lutheri Defensi , pp. 69–115.

Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero , pp. 96.

T. Fuchs, ‘Das Ringen mit der Tradition. Die Kritik an Kirche und Religion in der Historiographie der Aufklärungsepoche’, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte , lv (2003), pp. 121–37.

Erdmann Uhse, Kirchen-Historie des XVI und XVII Jahr-Hunderts nach Christi Geburth (Leipzig, 1710), fo. )(3v.

P.H. Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (London, 1975), pp. 2–21; John Stroup, ‘Protestant Church Historians in the German Enlightenment’, in H.E. Bödeker et al., eds., Aufklärung und Geschichte. Studien zur deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 1986), pp. 169–92; D.R. Kelly, Fortunes of History: Historical Inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 9–16. On the foundations, see U. Muhlack, Geschichtswissenschaft im Humanismus und in der Aufklärung. Die Vorgeschichte des Historizismus (Munich, 1991).

The theses and the indulgence dispute were the subject of a number of university disputations over the course of the seventeenth century, including defences overseen by Wolfgang Franz (1617), Johann Conrad Dannhauer (1661), Johann Friedrich Mayer (1685) and Hermann van der Hardt (1703). Occasionally scholars mention a manuscript history of the conflict written by Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch entitled Anfang und Ursach Doctor Luthers Predigen und Schreiben wieder den Ablass . I have not been able to locate a copy of this work.

Leppin, ‘Nicht seine Person, sondern die Wahrheit zu verteidigen’, p. 93; Ludwig Rabus, Historien der Martyrer (2 vols., Strasbourg, 1571–2), vol. ii, fo. Avir.

Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff, Ausführliche Historie des Lutherthums und der heilsamen Reformation , ed. and tr. Elias Frick (Leipzig, 1714), pp. 62–84, at 66.

Johann Gottlob Walter, Ergäntzte und verbesserte Nachrichten von den Letzten Thaten und Lebensgeschichten des seligen D. Luthers (Jena, 1750), pt. i, section 2, pp. 97–8. Walter is referring to the following passage in Ernst Salomon Cyprian, Historia der Augspurgischen Confession (Gotha, 1730), ch. 2, p. 23: ‘Er schriebe auch, wie Myconius berichtet, so wohl an seinen ordentlichen Bischoff nach Brandenburg, als an den Cardinal Albrechten, sehr demüthig, bate zugleich um Unterricht, und Abstellung des grossen aus dem Ablass-Kram erwachsenden Aergernisses, mithin schluge er den 31. Octobris gewisse Sätze von der Busse und von dem Ablass, darüber zu disputiren, und die Wahrheit zu erforschen, öffentlich an’.

Walter, Ergäntzte und verbesserte Nachrichten, pp. 101, 106. Working on the assumption that Luther’s reference to ‘prelates’ in his letter to Leo X (‘aliquot magnates ecclesiarum’ in the original Latin, ‘etliche Prelaten’ in the German) signifies more than just Mainz and Brandenburg, Walter criticised the marginal note in the Jena edition for interpreting it to mean just these two men. Even worse than this, he added, is the fact that the marginal comment refers the reader back to the copies of Luther’s letters to Mainz and Brandenburg, one of which is dated 31 October 1517 (Mainz) and the other May 1518 (Brandenburg). See Der erste Teil der Bücher und Schrifften , fos. 1r–2r, 43r–44 v , 47v. See also the survey in Walch, D. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften , xviii. 31–2. Many aspects of Walter’s analysis touch on the same points that would later be raised by Iserloh, Volz and Bornkamm in the modern debate.

Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel, ed., Monatliche Unterredungen , xi (Nov. 1697), pp. 900–922; Ernst Wilhelm Tentzel, Historischer Bericht vom Anfang und ersten Fortgang der Reformation Lutheri (Gotha, 1717), pp. 234–64.

Johann Erhard Kapp, Sammlung einiger zum Päbstlichen Ablass überhaupt, Sonderlich aber zu der im Anfang der Reformation zwischen D. Martin Luther und Johann Tetzel hiervon geführten Streitigkeit gehörigen Schrifften (Leipzig, 1721), p. 309. See also Walch, D. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften , xviii. 35–6. On the dating of Luther’s pre-theses indulgence sermons, see T. Wengert, ‘Martin Luther’s Preaching of Indulgences in January 1517’, Lutheran Quarterly , xxix (2015), pp. 62–75.

Heumann, Lutherus Apocalypticus , pp. 73–115.

Valentin Ernst Löscher, ed., Unschuldige Nachrichten , xviii (1718), p. 299.

Christian Kortholt, Papa Schismaticus (Rostock, 1663), pp. 11–25; Johann Georg Lairitz, Der Römische Pabsts-Thron (Bayreuth, 1685), pp. 845–94. See also Nicholas Hunnius, Offentlicher Beweiss, dass Martinus Luther zu des Pabstthumbs Reformation rechtmässig von Gott sey beruffen worden (Dresden, 1717), preface by Löscher.

Uhse, Kirchen-Historie des XVI und XVII Jahr-Hunderts , p. 60.

Samuel von Pufendorf, Politische Betrachtung der geistlichen Monarchie (Halle, 1717), pp. 187–8.

Gottlieb Samuel Treuer, Die politischen Fehler des päbstlichen Hofes welche die Reformation Lutheri sollen befördert haben (Leipzig, 1718), p. 19.

Hamm, Der frühe Luther , pp. 90–114.

Philipp Saltzmann, Singularia Lutheri (Naumburg, 1646), ‘Sonderbare Worte’, p. 1.

Hugo Wismeider, Historische Untersuchung, ob die bekannte Lästerung wider die hl. Mutter Gottes dem päpstischen Ablass-Crämer Johann Tetzeln, mit Grund könne zugeschrieben werden? (Jena, 1718), pp. 25–6.

Johann Jacob Vogel, Leben des päbstlichen Gnaden-Predigers oder Ablass-Crämers Johann Tetzels (Leipzig, 1717), p. 125; Gottfried Hecht, Vita Joannis Tezelii Quaestoris Sacri (Wittenberg, 1717). Walch drew on the recent work on indulgences for his huge collection of sources in Sämmtliche Schriften , xv. 1–469.

Pufendorf, Politische Betrachtung , p. 175.

Walch, Historische und theologische Einleitung , i. 12.

Georg Friedrich Stieber, Vorspiel zur Historia der Reformation und Leben Lutheri (Güstrow, 1710), p. 254; Löscher, ed., Unschuldige Nachrichten , xviii, p. 295.

Nuber, Lutherus Redivivus , fo. B2r.

Georg Friedrich Stieber, Historien von des Ehrwürdigen in Gott seeligen theueren Mannes Gottes D. Martin Luthers (Güstrow, 1715), fo. a4r.

M. Greschat, Zwischen Tradition und neuem Anfang. Valentin Ernst Löscher und der Ausgang der lutherischen Orthodoxie (Witten, 1971), pp. 20–75; compare I. Hunter, The Secularisation of the Confessional State: The Political Thought of Christian Thomasius (Cambridge, 2007).

A. Beutel, ‘Martin Luther im Urteil der deutschen Aufklärung. Beobachtungen zu einem epochalen Paradigmawechsel’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche , cxii (2015), p. 164.

Johann Matthias Schröckh, Das Leben Martin Luthers (Frankfurt, 1771), p. 9.

Beutel, ‘Martin Luther im Urteil der deutschen Aufklärung’, pp. 164, 168; Zeeden, Martin Luther , i. 189–316; H. Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Göttingen, 1970), pp. 13–19, at 17; H. Stephan, Luther in den Wandlungen seiner Kirche (Berlin, 1951), pp. 35–49.

Andreas Riem, ‘Wie weit erstreckt sich die Macht der weltlichen Obrigkeit in Religionssachen’, Berlinisches Journal für Aufklärung , i (1788), pp. 248–9.

Zeeden, Martin Luther , i. 231.

Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon Aller Wissenschafften und Künste (68 vols., Halle and Leipzig, 1731–54), xviii. 1292.

Zeeden, Martin Luther , i. 322.

Christian Siegmund Georgi, Wittenbergische Jubel-Geschichte (Wittenberg, 1756), p. 49.

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Luther’s Ninety-five Theses: What You May Not Know and Why They Matter Today

More By Justin Holcomb

For more accessible overviews of key moments in church history, purchase Justin Holcomb’s new book, Know the Creeds and Councils (Zondervan, 2014) [ interview ]. Additionally, Holcomb has made available to TGC readers an exclusive bonus chapter, which can be accessed here . This article is a shortened version of the chapter.

If people know only one thing about the Protestant Reformation, it is the famous event on October 31, 1517, when the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther (1483–1586) were nailed on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg in protest against the Roman Catholic Church. Within a few years of this event, the church had splintered into not just the “church’s camp” or “Luther’s camp” but also the camps of churches led by theologians of all different stripes.

Luther is known mostly for his teachings about Scripture and justification. Regarding Scripture, he argued the Bible alone ( sola scriptura ) is our ultimate authority for faith and practice. Regarding justification, he taught we are saved solely through faith in Jesus Christ because of God’s grace and Christ’s merit. We are neither saved by our merits nor declared righteous by our good works. Additionally, we need to fully trust in God to save us from our sins, rather than relying partly on our own self-improvement.

Forgiveness with a Price Tag

These teachings were radical departures from the Catholic orthodoxy of Luther’s day. But you might be surprised to learn that the Ninety-five Theses, even though this document that sparked the Reformation, was not about these issues. Instead, Luther objected to the fact that the Roman Catholic Church was offering to sell certificates of forgiveness, and that by doing so it was substituting a false hope (that forgiveness can be earned or purchased) for the true hope of the gospel (that we receive forgiveness solely via the riches of God’s grace).

The Roman Catholic Church claimed it had been placed in charge of a “treasury of merits” of all of the good deeds that saints had done (not to mention the deeds of Christ, who made the treasury infinitely deep). For those trapped by their own sinfulness, the church could write a certificate transferring to the sinner some of the merits of the saints. The catch? These “indulgences” had a price tag.

This much needs to be understood to make sense of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses: the selling of indulgences for full remission of sins intersected perfectly with the long, intense struggle Luther himself had experienced over the issues of salvation and assurance. At this point of collision between one man’s gospel hope and the church’s denial of that hope the Ninety-five Theses can be properly understood.

Theses Themselves

Luther’s Ninety-five Theses focuses on three main issues: selling forgiveness (via indulgences) to build a cathedral, the pope’s claimed power to distribute forgiveness, and the damage indulgences caused to grieving sinners. That his concern was pastoral (rather than trying to push a private agenda) is apparent from the document. He didn’t believe (at this point) that indulgences were altogether a bad idea; he just believed they were misleading Christians regarding their spiritual state:

41. Papal indulgences must be preached with caution, lest people erroneously think that they are preferable to other good works of love.

As well as their duty to others:

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.

44. Because love grows by works of love, man thereby becomes better. Man does not, however, become better by means of indulgences but is merely freed from penalties. [Notice that Luther is not yet wholly against the theology of indulgences.]

And even financial well-being:

46. Christians are to be taught that, unless they have more than they need, they must reserve enough for their family needs and by no means squander it on indulgences.

Luther’s attitude toward the pope is also surprisingly ambivalent. In later years he called the pope “the Antichrist” and burned his writings, but here his tone is merely cautionary, hoping the pope will come to his senses. For instance, in this passage he appears to be defending the pope against detractors, albeit in a backhanded way:

51. Christians are to be taught that the pope would and should wish to give of his own money, even though he had to sell the basilica of St. Peter, to many of those from whom certain hawkers of indulgences cajole money.

Obviously, since Leo X had begun the indulgences campaign in order to build the basilica, he did not “wish to give of his own money” to victims. However, Luther phrased his criticism to suggest that the pope might be ignorant of the abuses and at any rate should be given the benefit of the doubt. It provided Leo a graceful exit from the indulgences campaign if he wished to take it.

So what made this document so controversial? Luther’s Ninety-five Theses hit a nerve in the depths of the authority structure of the medieval church. Luther was calling the pope and those in power to repent—on no authority but the convictions he’d gained from Scripture—and urged the leaders of the indulgences movement to direct their gaze to Christ, the only one able to pay the penalty due for sin.

Of all the portions of the document, Luther’s closing is perhaps the most memorable for its exhortation to look to Christ rather than to the church’s power:

92. Away, then, with those prophets who say to Christ’s people, “Peace, peace,” where in there is no peace.

93. Hail, hail to all those prophets who say to Christ’s people, “The cross, the cross,” where there is no cross.

94. Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hells.

95. And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.

In the years following his initial posting of the theses, Luther became emboldened in his resolve and strengthened his arguments with Scripture. At the same time, the church became more and more uncomfortable with the radical Luther and, in the following decades, the spark that he made grew into a flame of reformation that spread across Europe. Luther was ordered by the church to recant in 1520 and was eventually exiled in 1521.

Ongoing Relevance

Although the Ninety-five Theses doesn’t explicitly lay out a Protestant theology or agenda, it contains the seeds of the most important beliefs of the movement, especially the priority of grasping and applying the gospel. Luther developed his critique of the Roman Catholic Church out of his struggle with doubt and guilt as well as his pastoral concern for his parishioners. He longed for the hope and security that only the good news can bring, and he was frustrated with the structures that were using Christ to take advantage of people and prevent them from saving union with God. Further, Luther’s focus on the teaching of Scripture is significant, since it provided the foundation on which the great doctrines of the Reformation found their origin.

Indeed, Luther developed a robust notion of justification by faith and rejected the notion of purgatory as unbiblical; he argued that indulgences and even hierarchical penance cannot lead to salvation; and, perhaps most notably, he rebelled against the authority of the pope. All of these critiques were driven by Luther’s commitment, above all else, to Christ and the Scriptures that testify about him. The outspoken courage Luther demonstrated in writing and publishing the Ninety-five Theses also spread to other influential leaders of the young Protestant Reformation.

Today, the Ninety-five Theses may stand as the most well-known document from the Reformation era. Luther’s courage and his willingness to confront what he deemed to be clear error is just as important today as it was then. One of the greatest ways in which Luther’s theses affect us today—in addition to the wonderful inheritance of the five Reformation solas (Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, glory to God alone)—is that it calls us to thoroughly examine the inherited practices of the church against the standard set forth in the Scriptures. Luther saw an abuse, was not afraid to address it, and was exiled as a result of his faithfulness to the Bible in the midst of harsh opposition.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

Justin Holcomb is an Episcopal priest and a theology professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is author with his wife, Lindsey, of God Made All of Me , Is It My Fault? , and Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault . Justin also has written or edited numerous other books on historical theology and biblical studies. You can find him on Facebook , Twitter , and at JustinHolcomb.com .

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The 95 Theses: A reader’s guide

by Kevin Armbrust

October 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. Yet it is not the anniversary of any great statement Luther made as a reformer or in front of any court. There was no fiery and resounding speech given or dramatic showdown with the pope. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to the church door in a small city called Wittenberg, Germany. This rather mundane academic document contained 95 theses for debate. Luther was a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, and he was permitted to call for public theological debate to discuss ideas and interpretations as he desired.

Yet this debate was not merely academic for Luther. According to a letter he wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz explaining the posting of the 95 Theses, Luther also desired to debate the concerns in the Theses for the sake of conscience.

Luther’s short preface explains:

“Out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses will be publicly discussed at Wittenberg under the chairmanship of the reverend father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology and regularly appointed Lecturer on these subjects at that place. He requests that those who cannot be present to debate orally with us will do so by letter.”

The original text of the 95 Theses was written in Latin, since that was the academic language of Luther’s day. Luther’s theses were quickly translated into German, published in pamphlet form and spread throughout Germany.

Though English translations are readily available , many have found the 95 Theses difficult to read and comprehend. The short primer that follows may assist to highlight some of the theses and concepts Luther wished to explore.

Repentance and forgiveness dominate the content of the Theses. Since the question for Luther was the effectiveness of indulgences, he drove the discussion to the consideration of repentance and forgiveness in Christ. The first three theses address this:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [MATT. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

3. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh.

The pope and the Church cannot cause true repentance in a Christian and cannot forgive the sins of one who is guilty before Christ. The pope can only forgive that which Christ forgives. True repentance and eternal forgiveness come from Christ alone.

Luther identifies indulgences as a doctrine invented by man, since there is no scriptural promise or command for indulgences. Although Luther stops short of entirely condemning indulgences in the Theses, he nonetheless argues that the sale of indulgences and the trust in indulgences for salvation condemns both those who teach such notions and those who trust in them.

27. They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.

28. Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.

God’s grace comes not through indulgences but through Christ. All Christians receive the blessings of God apart from indulgence letters.

36. Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.

37. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

If Christians are going to spend money on something other than supporting their families, they should take care of the poor instead of buying indulgences.

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.

The second half of the 95 Theses concentrates on the preaching of the true Word of the Gospel. Luther states that the teaching of indulgences should be lessened so that there might be more time for the proclamation of the true Gospel.

62. The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.

63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last [MATT. 20:16].

The Gospel of Christ is the true power for salvation (ROM. 1:16), not indulgences or even the power of the papal office.

76. We say on the contrary that papal indulgences cannot remove the very least of venial sins as far as guilt is concerned.

77. To say that even St. Peter, if he were now pope, could not grant greater graces is blasphemy against St. Peter and the pope.

78. We say on the contrary that even the present pope, or any pope whatsoever, has greater graces at his disposal, that is, the gospel, spiritual powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I Cor. 12[:28].

Preaching a false hope is really no hope at all. As a matter of fact, a false hope destroys and kills because it moves people away from Christ, where true salvation is found. The Gospel is found in Christ alone, which includes a cross and tribulations both large and small.

92. Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace! [JER. 6:14].

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!

94. Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their head, through penalties, death, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace [ACTS 14:22].

Throughout the 95 Theses, Luther seeks to balance the role of the Church with the truth of the Gospel. Even as he desired to support the pope and his role in the Church, the false teaching of indulgences and the pope’s unwillingness to freely forgive the sins of all repentant Christians compelled him to speak up against these abuses.

Luther’s pastoral desire for all to trust in Christ alone for salvation drove him to post the 95 Theses. This same faith and hope sparked the Reformation that followed.

Dr. Kevin Armbrust is manager of editorial services for LCMS Communications. 

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11 thoughts on “the 95 theses: a reader’s guide”.

Thx. This article does clear up a number of difficulties in interpreting the drift & theme of the 95 thesis. The fact that he supports the pope’s office at this juncture is new to me.

Very useful as I prepare a Sunday School lesson. Thanks

As important as the 95 Theses were for the beginning of the Reformation, and since they are not specifically part of the Lutheran Confessions, are there any of the Theses that we Lutherans consider unimportant or would rather avoid, theologically speaking?

I wish Luther was here, maybe things would change in our country and bring more folks to Jesus .

“When our Lord and master Jesus Christ says, ‘Repent,’ he wills that the entire life of the Christian be one of repentance.”

This seemingly joyless statement is often quoted, less often explained, and easily misunderstood. Is Jesus calling for the main theme of Christian life to be, “I’m ashamed of my sin”?

The full sentence from Matthew 4:17 is, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” spoken when Jesus was beginning His ministry. This layman might paraphrase those words as, “Change your mindset, for divine authority is coming among you.” Indeed, when a very important person is coming to visit, we depart from business as usual, adjust our priorities, focus on careful preparation, and behave as befits the status of the visitor.

The word “repent” is recorded in Greek as “metanoeite”, which I understand to be not about remorse — not primarily about feelings at all — but about changing one’s mind or purpose.

The Christian life has a variety of themes, of which repentance is one. But repentance is not an end in itself. It is pivoting and changing course to pursue a direction that better fulfills God’s purposes as He gives the grace. For Jesus also willed “that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8) and “that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Could you explain number 93? I need this one explained. Jackie

Agreed. 93 is confusing.

In contrast to the false security of indulgences referenced in 92, number 93 references the preaching of true repentance. With true contrition and repentance over our sins, we Christians humble ourselves to the truth that we have earned our place on the cross as punishment and condemnation. But then we find the eternal surprise and wellspring of joy that our cross has been taken away from us and made Christ’s own. In exchange He gives us forgiveness, life and salvation!

Thank you, James Athey.

I myself did not fully understand this thesis yesterday, when I searched the Internet for an explanation of it. I found that I was not the only person who was confused by it. I also found that Luther explained it in a letter that he wrote to an Augustinian prior in 1516. Here is his explanation:

You are seeking and craving for peace, but in the wrong order. For you are seeking it as the world giveth, not as Christ giveth. Know you not that God is “wonderful among His saints,” for this reason, that He establishes His peace in the midst of no peace, that is, of all temptations and afflictions. It is said “Thou shalt dwell in the midst of thine enemies.” The man who possesses peace is not the man whom no one disturbs—that is the peace of the world; he is the man whom all men and all things disturb, but who bears all patiently, and with joy. You are saying with Israel, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace. Learn to say rather with Christ: “The Cross, the Cross,” and there is no Cross. For the Cross at once ceases to be the Cross as soon as you have joyfully exclaimed, in the language of the hymn,

Blessed Cross, above all other, One and only noble tree.

It is posted here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/first_prin.iii.i.html

Magnificent!

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The 95 Theses, Part 2

In our last look at the Ninety-Five Theses, we left off with thesis 56, where Luther said that the truth was not sufficiently known among the people. Luther went on to say in thesis 62, “The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.” What Luther is referring to here is the treasury of merit, the idea that the saints had accumulated more grace than they needed. All that accumulated grace is laid up in heaven. At the top of the chain of saints is Mary, and she is full of grace. We lowly sinners can tap into that accumulated grace. Luther said that the treasury of merit is not the true treasure of the church; the true treasure of the church is the gospel.

In thesis 90, Luther writes, “To repress these convincing arguments of the laity by force alone and not to resolve them by giving reasonable answers is to expose the church and the pope to ridicule of their enemies and to leave Christians unsatisfied.” Luther, as he finishes up his Ninety-Five Theses, is warning against simply dismissing his points; he says the church should take them seriously. Of course, we know that the church didn’t. In fact, when Pope Leo X got a copy of the Ninety-Five Theses, his first response was, “Ah, the ramblings of a drunken German. He will think differently when he sobers up.” He clearly underestimated Luther and he clearly underestimated what was happening in that moment when Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the church door. I’m not even sure Luther had a full sense of the implications and the consequences of this singular action of posting of the Ninety-Five Theses.

As he gets to thesis 92, Luther quotes Jeremiah and tells us, “Away, away then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘Peace, peace,’ and there is no peace.” What Luther is saying is that the church is a false prophet. The church was saying, “Here, come buy this indulgence. Take this pilgrimage. Give money to this. Light this candle in front of this relic and you’ll have peace with God.” Luther said that’s a false prophet and there’s no peace there but only despair.

Then Luther says in thesis 93, “Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘Cross, cross,’ and there is no cross.” What does that mean? Luther is saying there is no cross because there is no cross for us. Christ endured the cross so that we don’t have to, and through His work on our behalf, He brought us peace with God. We can be reconciled to God not because of anything we have done but by being justified by faith alone through what Christ has done for us.

So, that’s Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses. It was the beginning of the Reformation. Luther continued to serve the church over the coming decades, but it all started at the doors at the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

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The 95 Theses of Martin Luther (1517)

Dennis Bratcher, ed.

Original Latin    English Translation

Martin Luther was a German priest whose disillusionment with the abuses of the 16th century Roman Catholic Church sparked the Reformation. He was born in 1483. At the encouragement of his father, he was determined to become a lawyer. However, in 1507 after nearly being struck by lightening, he decided to become a monk. He entered a monastery in 1505 and was ordained a priest in 1507. Luther was assigned to teach at the University of Wittenberg in 1508, where he would spend his entire career. Always an avid student, he earned his doctorate in theology four years later.

In 1510 he visited Rome and was appalled by the behavior of church officials and the sale of indulgences. In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the remission of the physical and temporal punishment for sins that is endured in Purgatory after death, even though the legal guilt has been pardoned by absolution. In Luther’s era, indulgences were being sold by the Church to raise money for refurbishing the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome. The slogan attributed to the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel epitomized the sale of indulgences: "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." (see Thesis 27 ).

In light of his discouragement with the Church, as Luther studied and lectured on Psalms, Hebrews, and Romans he came to new insights about repentance, salvation, and the role of faith. Especially from his study of Romans, he began to understand that salvation is a gift of God by grace through Christ received by faith alone ( sola fide ). He also came to believe that there should be a clear distinction between "law," obedience and salvation by obedience to the will of God by law, and "gospel," forgiveness of sins and salvation based on the sacrificial death of Jesus.

In 1517 Luther, informed by his growing belief that salvation is by faith alone, presented his concerns to Church officials in the form of ninety-five theses, a series of statements that presented a logical argument against the sale of indulgences. An account arose later that he nailed the theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg as an act of defiance. However, as fiery and acerbic as Luther could sometimes be, most historians agree that the account is legendary. Historical research suggests that he sent a letter along with the 95 theses, which included an invitation to discuss the issues openly, to Archbishop Albert of Mainz.

Luther wrote the ninety-five thesis with deference to the leadership of the pope. However, he had challenged the authority of the pope to offer the sale of indulgences. In a charged political climate, it was seen by some as an attack on the papacy and therefore on the Church. Luther was summoned to Rome to answer charges of heresy. Luther did not respond to the summons, which led to an escalating controversy between Luther and those who defended the absolute authority of the papacy. Luther continued writing about salvation by faith alone as well as other reforms that he saw needed to occur in the church. As a result, the rift between Luther and those who wanted to defend the authority of the papacy, as well as to protect the lucrative source of income from the sale of indulgences, fueled a growing controversy.

Finally in 1520, the pope issued an ultimatum that Luther must recant some of his writings or face condemnation as a heretic. Luther responded with typical bluntness that "the die is cast," that he sought no reconciliation with Rome, and called the decisions of the pope a "swamp of heresies." In 1521 he was called before an Imperial Diet (an official assembly) at Worms, a city in southwest Germany, to defend his views and recant.  Luther refused and as a result was excommunicated as a heretic and the Edict of Worms issued by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the urging of Church officials banned his writings and in effect called for his execution. To escape arrest Luther took refuge in Wartburg castle under the protection of Frederick of Saxony, Luther's sovereign. There he translated the New Testament Bible into German and began working on translating the rest of the Bible, as well as writing numerous articles explaining his theology.

Because of ongoing political and religious turmoil in Germany, the Edict of Worms was never enforced.  Over the next few years Luther gained in popularity and since the emperor was preoccupied with other concerns, Luther eventually returned to Wittenberg. He was instrumental in reforming church worship as well as laying the groundwork for the Reformation, which essentially rejected the authority of the Pope and canon law, which is the accumulated body of laws, rules, regulations, and traditional dogmas that governed the practices of the Church. Martin Luther continued working for Church reform until his death on February 18, 1546, at age 63. -Dennis Bratcher

The English translation is adapted from Works of Martin Luther , ed. and trans. by Adolph Spaeth, et al. , A. J. Holman Company, 1915, Vol. 1, pp. 29-38.

The 95 Theses of Martin Luther

Disputation of doctor martin luther on the power and efficacy of indulgences, october 31, 1517.

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and duly appointed Lecturer on these subjects at that place. He requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter.

In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said "Repent", willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood to mean the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.

3. Yet it does not mean inward repentance only; for there is no inward repentance that does not produce outwardly various mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of canon law.

6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God's remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven.

7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His representative, the priest.

8. The penitential canons apply only to the living, and, according to them, none applies to the dead.

9. Therefore the Holy Spirit acting in the person of the pope manifests grace to us, because in his [the pope’s] decrees he always excludes the dead and cases of hardship.

10. Ignorant and wicked are the actions of those priests who impose canonical penances on the dead in purgatory.

11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.

12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them.

14. The imperfect piety and love of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient in itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. There seems to be the same difference between hell, purgatory, and heaven as there are between despair, almost-despair, and the assurance of safety.

17. The horror of souls in purgatory should grow less and love ought to increase.

18. It seems unproven, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit, that is to say, of increasing love.

19. Again, it seems unproven that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of their own salvation, though we may be quite certain of it.

20. Therefore by "full remission of all penalties" the pope means not actually "of all," but only of those imposed by himself.

21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty and saved are in error;

22. Indeed he cannot pass on to souls in purgatory any penalty which canon law declares should be paid in this life.

23. If it is at all possible to grant to anyone the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission could be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to very few.

24. Therefore it must be the case that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty.

25. The power which the pope has, in general, over purgatory, is just like the power which any bishop or curate has, in particular, within his own diocese or parish.

26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession.

27. There is no divine authority for preaching that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory].

28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.

29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend of Sts. Severinus and Paschal.*

[*This legend tells of two saints who were willing to remain in torment in purgatory to suffer for others.]

30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission.

31. The man who sincerely buys indulgences is as rare as the man that is truly penitent; that is, such men are most rare.

32. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.

33. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him;

34. For these "graces of pardon" concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, and these are appointed by man.

35. It is not according to Christian doctrine to preach and teach that contrition is not necessary for those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessional licenses.

36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.

38. Nevertheless, the remission and participation [in the blessings of the Church] which are granted by the pope are in no way to be despised, for as I have said, they are the declaration of divine remission.

39. It is most difficult, even for the very best theologians, to commend to the people the abundance of pardons while at the same time encouraging true contrition.

40. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but generous pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, or at least, furnish an occasion [for hating them].

41. Papal pardons should be preached with caution, lest people falsely think they are preferable to other good works of love.

42. Christians should be taught that the pope does not intend the purchase of pardons to be compared in any way to works of mercy.

43. Christians should be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons;

44. Because love grows by works of love, and a man becomes a better man; but by pardons he does not grow better, only escapes penalty.

45. Christians should be taught that he who sees a person in need, and passes him by, and then purchases pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.

46. Christians should be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep what is necessary for their own families, and should by no means squander it on pardons.

47. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a voluntary matter, and not a legal requirement.

48. Christians should be taught that in granting pardons the pope needs and desires their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring.

49. Christians are to be taught that the pope's pardons are useful only if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if they lose their fear of God because of them.

50. Christians should be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter's church be reduced to ashes than be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.

51. Christians should be taught that it would be the pope's wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold, to many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money.

52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is useless, even though the commissary, or indeed even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who forbid the Word of God to be preached at all in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others.

54. Injury is done the word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this word.

55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.

56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope grants indulgences, are not sufficiently spoken of or known among the people of Christ.

57. That they are not temporal treasures is certainly evident, for many of the vendors do not grant such treasures freely, but only collect them.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the Saints, for even without the pope, these always work grace for the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell for the outward man.

59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church were the Church's poor, but he used the term in accordance with the custom of his own time.

60. Without rashness we say that the keys of the Church are that treasure, given by Christ's merit;

61. For it is clear that the power of the pope is of itself sufficient for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases,

62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last.

64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes the last to be first.

65. Therefore the treasures of the Gospel are nets with which they formerly desired to fish for men of wealth.

66. Now, the treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they fish for the wealth of men.

67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the "greatest graces" are in fact truly such only when they promote financial gain.

68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to receive the commissaries of papal pardons, with all reverence.

70. But they are under greater obligation to watch closely and listen carefully lest these men preach their own imaginings instead of the commission of the pope.

71. He who speaks against the validity of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed!

72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be blessed!

73. The pope justly thunders against those who, by any means, contrive the injury of the traffic in pardons.

74. But much more does he intend to thunder against those who use the pretext of pardons to contrive the injury of holy love and truth.

75. It is folly to think that the papal pardons are so powerful that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God.

76. We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned.

77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. Peter and against the pope.

78. We say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces at his disposal; specifically, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in 1 Corinthians 12.

79. To say that the cross emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

80. The bishops, curates and theologians who permit such assertions to be spread among the people will be held accountable for it.

81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it difficult even for learned men to defend the respect due the pope from false accusations, or even from the astute criticisms of the laity;

82. For example: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he can redeem an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial."

83. Again: -- "Why do funeral and anniversary masses for the dead continue to be said? Why does the pope not return or permit the repayment of the endowments founded on their behalf, since it is wrong to pray for those now redeemed?"

84. Again: -- "What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow an impious man who is their enemy to buy out of purgatory the devout soul of a friend of God, when they do not allow that pious and beloved soul to be redeemed without payment for pure love's sake or because of its need of redemption?"

85. Again: -- "Why are the penitential canon laws long, which in actual fact and practice are long obsolete and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still alive and in effect?"

86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealthiest of the wealthy, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?"

87. Again: -- "What is it that the pope dispenses to people, and what participation does he grant, to those who have a right to full remission and participation because of their perfect repentance?"

88. Again: -- "What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a hundred times a day what he now does only once, and bestow on every believer these remissions and participations?"

89. "Since the pope seeks the salvation of souls rather than money by his pardons, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted before now, since these have equal efficacy?"

90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christians unhappy.

91. If, therefore, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved; indeed, they would cease to exist.

92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," where there is no peace!

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "the cross, the cross," where there is no cross!

94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.

Original Latin Version

Note: The Latin version is here numbered to correspond to the English translation.

Disputatio pro Declaratione Virtutis Indulgentiarum.

D. martin luthers.

Amore et studio elucidande veritatis hec subscripta disputabuntur Wittenberge, Presidente R. P. Martino Lutther, Artium et S. Theologie Magistro eiusdemque ibidem lectore Ordinario. Quare petit, ut qui non possunt verbis presentes nobiscum disceptare agant id literis absentes. In nomine domini nostri Hiesu Christi. Amen.

1. Dominus et magister noster Iesus Christus dicendo `Penitentiam agite &c.' omnem vitam fidelium penitentiam esse voluit.

2. Quod verbum de penitentia sacramentali (id est confessionis et satisfactionis, que sacerdotum ministerio celebratur) non potest intelligi.

3. Non tamen solam intendit interiorem, immo interior nulla est, nisi foris operetur varias carnis mortificationes.

4. Manet itaque pena, donec manet odium sui (id est penitentia vera intus), scilicet usque ad introitum regni celorum.

5. Papa non vult nec potest ullas penas remittere preter eas, quas arbitrio vel suo vel canonum imposuit.

6. Papa non potest remittere ullam culpam nisi declarando, et approbando remissam a deo Aut certe remittendo casus reservatos sibi, quibus contemptis culpa prorsus remaneret.

7. Nulli prorus remittit deus culpam, quin simul eum subiiciat humiliatum in omnibus sacerdoti suo vicario.

8. Canones penitentiales solum viventibus sunt impositi nihilque morituris secundum eosdem debet imponi.

9. Inde bene nobis facit spiritussanctus in papa excipiendo in suis decretis semper articulum mortis et necessitatis.

10. Indocte et male faciunt sacerdotes ii, qui morituris penitentias canonicas in purgatorium reservant.

11. Zizania illa de mutanda pena Canonica in penam purgatorii videntur certe dormientibus episcopis seminata.

12. Olim pene canonice non post, sed ante absolutionem imponebantur tanquam tentamenta vere contritionis.

13. Morituri per mortem omnia solvunt et legibus canonum mortui iam sunt, habentes iure earum relaxationem.

14. Imperfecta sanitas seu charitas morituri necessario secum fert magnum timorem, tantoque maiorem, quanto minor fuerit ipsa.

15. Hic timor et horror satis est se solo (ut alia taceam) facere penam purgatorii, cum sit proximus desperationis horrori.

16. Videntur infernus, purgaturium, celum differre, sicut desperatio, prope desperatio, securitas differunt.

17. Necessarium videtur animabus in purgatorio sicut minni horrorem ita augeri charitatem.

18. Nec probatum videtur ullis aut rationibus aut scripturis, quod sint extra statum meriti seu augende charitatis.

19. Nec hoc probatum esse videtur, quod sint de sua beatitudine certe et secure, saltem omnes, licet nos certissimi simus. 20. Igitur papa per remissionem plenariam omnium penarum non simpliciter omnium intelligit, sed a seipso tantummodo impositarum.

21. Errant itaque indulgentiarum predicatores ii, qui dicunt per pape indulgentias hominem ab omni pena solvi et salvari.

22. Quin nullam remittit animabus in purgatorio, quam in hac vita debuissent secundum Canones solvere.

23. Si remissio ulla omnium omnino penarum potest alicui dari, certum est eam non nisi perfectissimis, i.e. paucissimis, dari.

24. Falli ob id necesse est maiorem partem populi per indifferentem illam et magnificam pene solute promissionem.

25. Qualem potestatem habet papa in purgatorium generaliter, talem habet quilibet Episcopus et Curatus in sua diocesi et parochia specialiter.

26. Optime facit papa, quod non potestate clavis (quam nullam habet) sed per modum suffragii dat animabus remissionem.

27. Hominem predicant, qui statim ut iactus nummus in cistam tinnierit evolare dicunt animam.

28. Certum est, nummo in cistam tinniente augeri questum et avariciam posse: suffragium autem ecclesie est in arbitrio dei solius.

29. Quis scit, si omnes anime in purgatorio velint redimi, sicut de s. Severino et Paschali factum narratur.

30. Nullus securus est de veritate sue contritionis, multominus de consecutione plenarie remissionis.

31. Quam rarus est vere penitens, tam rarus est vere indulgentias redimens, i. e. rarissimus.

32. Damnabuntur ineternum cum suis magistris, qui per literas veniarum securos sese credunt de sua salute.

33. Cavendi sunt nimis, qui dicunt venias illas Pape donum esse illud dei inestimabile, quo reconciliatur homo deo.

34. Gratie enim ille veniales tantum respiciunt penas satisfactionis sacramentalis ab homine constitutas.

35. Non christiana predicant, qui docent, quod redempturis animas vel confessionalia non sit necessaria contritio.

36. Quilibet christianus vere compunctus habet remissionem plenariam a pena et culpa etiam sine literis veniarum sibi debitam.

37. Quilibet versus christianus, sive vivus sive mortuus, habet participationem omnium bonorum Christi et Ecclesie etiam sine literis veniarum a deo sibi datam.

38. Remissio tamen et participatio Pape nullo modo est contemnenda, quia (ut dixi) est declaratio remissionis divine.

39. Difficillimum est etiam doctissimis Theologis simul extollere veniarum largitatem et contritionis veritatem coram populo.

40. Contritionis veritas penas querit et amat, Veniarum autem largitas relaxat et odisse facit, saltem occasione.

41. Caute sunt venie apostolice predicande, ne populus false intelligat eas preferri ceteris bonis operibus charitatis.

42. Docendi sunt christiani, quod Pape mens non est, redemptionem veniarum ulla ex parte comparandam esse operibus misericordie.

43. Docendi sunt christiani, quod dans pauperi aut mutuans egenti melius facit quam si venias redimereet.

44. Quia per opus charitatis crescit charitas et fit homo melior, sed per venias non fit melior sed tantummodo a pena liberior.

45. Docendi sunt christiani, quod, qui videt egenum et neglecto eo dat pro veniis, non idulgentias Pape sed indignationem dei sibi vendicat.

46. Docendi sunt christiani, quod nisi superfluis abundent necessaria tenentur domui sue retinere et nequaquam propter venias effundere.

47. Docendi sunt christiani, quod redemptio veniarum est libera, non precepta.

48. Docendi sunt christiani, quod Papa sicut magis eget ita magis optat in veniis dandis pro se devotam orationem quam promptam pecuniam.

49. Docendi sunt christiani, quod venie Pape sunt utiles, si non in cas confidant, Sed nocentissime, si timorem dei per eas amittant.

50. Docendi sunt christiani, quod si Papa nosset exactiones venialium predicatorum, mallet Basilicam s. Petri in cineres ire quam edificari cute, carne et ossibus ovium suarum.

51. Docendi sunt christiani, quod Papa sicut debet ita vellet, etiam vendita (si opus sit) Basilicam s. Petri, de suis pecuniis dare illis, a quorum plurimis quidam concionatores veniarum pecuniam eliciunt.

52. Vana est fiducia salutis per literas veniarum, etiam si Commissarius, immo Papa ipse suam animam pro illis impigneraret.

53. Hostes Christi et Pape sunt ii, qui propter venias predicandas verbum dei in aliis ecclesiis penitus silere iubent.

54. Iniuria fit verbo dei, dum in eodem sermone equale vel longius tempus impenditur veniis quam illi.

55. Mens Pape necessario est, quod, si venie (quod minimum est) una campana, unis pompis et ceremoniis celebrantur, Euangelium (quod maximum est) centum campanis, centum pompis, centum ceremoniis predicetur.

56. Thesauri ecclesie, unde Pape dat indulgentias, neque satis nominati sunt neque cogniti apud populum Christi.

57. Temporales certe non esse patet, quod non tam facile eos profundunt, sed tantummodo colligunt multi concionatorum.

58. Nec sunt merita Christi et sanctorum, quia hec semper sine Papa operantur gratiam hominis interioris et crucem, mortem infernumque exterioris.

59. Thesauros ecclesie s. Laurentius dixit esse pauperes ecclesie, sed locutus est usu vocabuli suo tempore.

60. Sine temeritate dicimus claves ecclesie (merito Christi donatas) esse thesaurum istum.

61. Clarum est enim, quod ad remissionem penarum et casuum sola sufficit potestas Pape.

62. Verus thesaurus ecclesie est sacrosanctum euangelium glorie et gratie dei.

63. Hic autem est merito odiosissimus, quia ex primis facit novissimos.

64. Thesaurus autem indulgentiarum merito est gratissimus, quia ex novissimis facit primos.

65. Igitur thesauri Euangelici rhetia sunt, quibus olim piscabantur viros divitiarum.

66. Thesauri indulgentiarum rhetia sunt, quibus nunc piscantur divitias virorum.

67. Indulgentie, quas concionatores vociferantur maximas gratias, intelliguntur vere tales quoad questum promovendum.

68. Sunt tamen re vera minime ad gratiam dei et crucis pietatem comparate.

69. Tenentur Episcopi et Curati veniarum apostolicarum Commissarios cum omni reverentia admittere.

70. Sed magis tenentur omnibus oculis intendere, omnibus auribus advertere, ne pro commissione Pape sua illi somnia predicent.

71. Contra veniarum apostolicarum veritatem qui loquitur, sit ille anathema et maledictus.

72. Qui vero, contra libidinem ac licentiam verborum Concionatoris veniarum curam agit, sit ille benedictus.

73. Sicut Papa iuste fulminat eos, qui in fraudem negocii veniarum quacunque arte machinantur,

74. Multomagnis fulminare intendit eos, qui per veniarum pretextum in fraudem sancte charitatis et veritatis machinantur,

75. Opinari venias papales tantas esse, ut solvere possint hominem, etiam si quis per impossibile dei genitricem violasset, Est insanire.

76. Dicimus contra, quod venie papales nec minimum venialium peccatorum tollere possint quo ad culpam.

77. Quod dicitur, nec si s. Petrus modo Papa esset maiores gratias donare posset, est blasphemia in sanctum Petrum et Papam.

78. Dicimus contra, quod etiam iste et quilibet papa maiores habet, scilicet Euangelium, virtutes, gratias, curationum &c. ut 1. Co. XII.

79. Dicere, Crucem armis papalibus insigniter erectam cruci Christi equivalere, blasphemia est.

80. Rationem reddent Episcopi, Curati et Theologi, Qui tales sermones in populum licere sinunt.

81. Facit hec licentiosa veniarum predicatio, ut nec reverentiam Pape facile sit etiam doctis viris redimere a calumniis aut certe argutis questionibus laicorm.

82. Scilicet. Cur Papa non evacuat purgatorium propter sanctissimam charitatem et summam animarum necessitatem ut causam omnium iustissimam, Si infinitas animas redimit propter pecuniam funestissimam ad structuram Basilice ut causam levissimam?

83. Item. Cur permanent exequie et anniversaria defunctorum et non reddit aut recipi permittit beneficia pro illis instituta, cum iam sit iniuria pro redemptis orare?

84. Item. Que illa nova pietas Dei et Pape, quod impio et inimico propter pecuniam concedunt animam piam et amicam dei redimere, Et tamen propter necessitatem ipsius met pie et dilecte anime non redimunt eam gratuita charitate?

85. Item. Cur Canones penitentiales re ipsa et non usu iam diu in semet abrogati et mortui adhuc tamen pecuniis redimuntur per concessionem indulgentiarum tanquam vivacissimi?

86. Item. Cur Papa, cuius opes hodie sunt opulentissimis Crassis crassiores, non de suis pecuniis magis quam pauperum fidelium struit unam tantummodo Basilicam sancti Petri?

87. Item. Quid remittit aut participat Papa iis, qui per contritionem perfectam ius habent plenarie remissionis et participationis?

88. Item. Quid adderetur ecclesie boni maioris, Si Papa, sicut semel facit, ita centies in die cuilibet fidelium has remissiones et participationes tribueret?

89. Ex quo Papa salutem querit animarum per venias magis quam pecunias, Cur suspendit literas et venias iam olim concessas, cum sint eque efficaces?

90. Hec scrupulosissima laicorum argumenta sola potestate compescere nec reddita ratione diluere, Est ecclesiam et Papam hostibus ridendos exponere et infelices christianos facere.

91. Si ergo venie secundum spiritum et mentem Pape predicarentur, facile illa omnia solverentur, immo non essent.

92. Valeant itaque omnes illi prophete, qui dicunt populo Christi ' Pax pax,' et non est pax.

93. Bene agant omnes illi prophete, qui dicunt populo Christi ' Crux crux,' et non est crux.

94. Exhortandi sunt Christiani, ut caput suum Christum per penas, mortes infernosque sequi studeant,

95. Ac sic magis per multas tribulationes intrare celum quam per securitatem pacis confidant.

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This Day In History : October 31

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Martin Luther posts 95 theses

On October 31, 1517, legend has it that the priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation .

In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the papal practice of asking 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 finance the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Though Prince Frederick III the Wise had banned the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg, many church members traveled to purchase them. When they returned, they showed the pardons they had bought to Luther, claiming they no longer had to repent for their sins.

Luther’s frustration with this practice led him to write the 95 Theses, which were quickly snapped up, translated from Latin into German and distributed widely. A copy made its way to Rome, and efforts began to convince Luther to change his tune. He refused to keep silent, however, and in 1521 Pope Leo X formally excommunicated Luther from the Catholic Church. That same year, Luther again refused to recant his writings before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Germany, who issued the famous Edict of Worms declaring Luther an outlaw and a heretic and giving permission for anyone to kill him without consequence. Protected by Prince Frederick, Luther began working on a German translation of the Bible, a task that took 10 years to complete.

The term “Protestant” first appeared in 1529, when Charles V revoked a provision that allowed the ruler of each German state to choose whether they would enforce the Edict of Worms. A number of princes and other supporters of Luther issued a protest, declaring that their allegiance to God trumped their allegiance to the emperor. They became known to their opponents as Protestants; gradually this name came to apply to all who believed the Church should be reformed, even those outside Germany. By the time Luther died, of natural causes, in 1546, his revolutionary beliefs had formed the basis for the Protestant Reformation, which would over the next three centuries revolutionize Western civilization.

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Martin Luther’s 95 Theses

On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther posted his now-famous 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

This was not an act of defiant vandalism but was instead a fairly common occurrence for inviting academic discussion. The 95 points that Luther wished to have discussed are not all equally controversial. Many are rather mundane, some are difficult to understand in our time, and still others would not even be held by Luther himself in later years. Nevertheless, this event and the results of it are what lead to the Protestant Reformation.

These are the words that sparked the Reformation:

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter.

In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.

3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.

6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God’s remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven.

7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest.

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying.

9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory.

11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.

12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them.

14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair, almost-despair, and the assurance of safety.

17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase.

18. It seems unproved, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit, that is to say, of increasing love.

19. Again, it seems unproved that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of their own blessedness, though we may be quite certain of it.

20. Therefore by “full remission of all penalties” the pope means not actually “of all,” but only of those imposed by himself.

21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope’s indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved;

Meet Martin Luther, the audacious Reformer who, out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, set the world ablaze. In this volume, Drs. R.C. Sproul, Stephen J. Nichols, and thirteen other scholars and pastors examine his life, teaching, and enduring influence.

22. Whereas he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they would have had to pay in this life.

23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest.

24. It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty.

25. The power which the pope has, in a general way, over purgatory, is just like the power which any bishop or curate has, in a special way, within his own diocese or parish.

26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession.

27. They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory].

28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.

29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend of Sts. Severinus and Paschal.

30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission.

31. Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare.

32. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.

33. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope’s pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him;

34. For these “graces of pardon” concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, and these are appointed by man.

35. They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition is not necessary in those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessionalia.

36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.

38. Nevertheless, the remission and participation [in the blessings of the Church] which are granted by the pope are in no way to be despised, for they are, as I have said, the declaration of divine remission.

39. It is most difficult, even for the very keenest theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the people the abundance of pardons and [the need of] true contrition.

40. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but liberal pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, or at least, furnish an occasion [for hating them].

41. Apostolic pardons are to be preached with caution, lest the people may falsely think them preferable to other good works of love.

42. Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend the buying of pardons to be compared in any way to works of mercy.

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons;

44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty.

45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.

46. Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means to squander it on pardons.

47. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a matter of free will, and not of commandment.

48. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting pardons, needs, and therefore desires, their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring.

49. Christians are to be taught that the pope’s pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God.

50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter’s church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.

51. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope’s wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold.

52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the Word of God be altogether silent in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others.

54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this Word.

55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.

56. The “treasures of the Church,” out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ.

57. That they are not temporal treasures is certainly evident, for many of the vendors do not pour out such treasures so easily, but only gather them.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the Saints, for even without the pope, these always work grace for the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell for the outward man.

59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church were the Church’s poor, but he spoke according to the usage of the word in his own time.

60. Without rashness we say that the keys of the Church, given by Christ’s merit, are that treasure;

61. For it is clear that for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases, the power of the pope is of itself sufficient.

62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last.

64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes the last to be first.

65. Therefore the treasures of the Gospel are nets with which they formerly were wont to fish for men of riches.

66. The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men.

67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the “greatest graces” are known to be truly such, in so far as they promote gain.

68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all reverence.

70. But still more are they bound to strain all their eyes and attend with all their ears, lest these men preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the pope.

71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed!

72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be blessed!

73. The pope justly thunders against those who, by any art, contrive the injury of the traffic in pardons.

74. But much more does he intend to thunder against those who use the pretext of pardons to contrive the injury of holy love and truth.

75. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God — this is madness.

76. We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned.

77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. Peter and against the pope.

78. We say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces at his disposal; to wit, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I. Corinthians xii.

79. To say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

80. The bishops, curates and theologians who allow such talk to be spread among the people, will have an account to render.

81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity.

82. To wit: — “Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial.”

83. Again: — “Why are mortuary and anniversary masses for the dead continued, and why does he not return or permit the withdrawal of the endowments founded on their behalf, since it is wrong to pray for the redeemed?”

84. Again: — “What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul’s own need, free it for pure love’s sake?”

85. Again: — “Why are the penitential canons long since in actual fact and through disuse abrogated and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still alive and in force?”

86. Again: — “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?”

87. Again: — “What is it that the pope remits, and what participation does he grant to those who, by perfect contrition, have a right to full remission and participation?”

88. Again: — “What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a hundred times a day what he now does once, and bestow on every believer these remissions and participations?”

89. “Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the salvation of souls rather than money, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted heretofore, since these have equal efficacy?”

90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christians unhappy.

91. If, therefore, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved; nay, they would not exist.

92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace!

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!

94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.

Learn More about Martin Luther:

• The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther (Free eBook)
• The Heroic Boldness of Martin Luther by Steven Lawson (Book)
• The Heroic Boldness of Martin Luther (Video lecture from Steven Lawson)
• Martin Luther: Lessons from His Life and Labor (Sermon from John Piper)

This English translation of Luther’s 95 theses is from Works of Martin Luther, ed. and trans. by Adolph Spaeth, et al.

The main blog image was painted by Greg Copeland is from Paul Maier’s Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed the World .

Clayton Kraby

Hi, I'm Clay. I created ReasonableTheology.org to explain sound doctrine in plain language and help make theology more accessible for the everyday Christian. Thanks for stopping by!

Although I am not a Christian, in fact, I’m not religious, I have a keen interest in theology and I acknowledge there is a spiritual dimension to life. A very vague term, I realize…

I have always wanted to read the theses of Luther. They are astonishing! This man was certainly brave; he must have known he was putting himself in grave danger. And I can feel the breath of his righteous anger and indignation across the centuries.

All religion aside, he speaks here for the common man against the hypocrisy and greed and self-serving justifications of the clergy. He speaks truth to power, in other words.

My favorite is #45: “Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.” And how relevant still.

Thank you for the chance to read these.

Thanks, David. Luther certainly showed bravery in standing up against the doctrinal error of his day. There is a new documentary on Luther you may find interesting: https://www.lutherdocumentary.com/

Thanks for reading and commenting!

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Martin Luther’s Motivation Behind the 95 Theses

This essay about Martin Luther’s 95 Theses explains why he wrote them and the impact they had. Luther was motivated by his opposition to the sale of indulgences, which he saw as a corruption of the true Christian faith. He believed that salvation could not be bought but was granted by God’s grace through faith. Personal experiences and his deep theological studies also influenced his views. Luther intended the 95 Theses as a scholarly critique to initiate debate within the Church. The rapid spread of his ideas, aided by the printing press, sparked the Protestant Reformation, leading to significant religious, political, and cultural changes in Europe.

How it works

In 1517, Martin Luther, a Teutonic monastic and theologian, inscribed a parchment that would ignite one of history’s most momentous spiritual upheavals: the Protestant Reformation. His 95 Theses, officially titled “Disputation on the Potency and Efficacy of Indulgences,” contested the methodologies of the Catholic Church and cast doubt upon the integrity of its teachings. Luther’s impetus for composing the 95 Theses stemmed from the depths of his theological convictions, his personal ordeals, and his burgeoning disenchantment with ecclesiastical malfeasance.

At the core of Luther’s discontent lay the commerce of indulgences, a custom affording individuals the purchase of absolution for their transgressions.

Johann Tetzel, a Dominican mendicant, stood as one of the foremost purveyors of indulgences, traversing Germanic territories and propagating grandiose assertions regarding their efficacies. Tetzel’s undertakings bore the Church’s imprimatur, with proceeds earmarked for sundry undertakings, including the edification of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Luther viewed this practice with profound disquietude, both on doctrinal and ethical grounds.

Luther’s theological demurrals against indulgences were predicated on his exegesis of scripture and his insistence upon the primacy of faith. He posited that salvation could neither be bartered nor bargained but was a divine bequest conferred solely through faith. This tenet stood in stark contradistinction to ecclesiastical precepts, which espoused indulgences as conduits for mitigating purgatorial sojourns for oneself or kin. Luther perceived this as a distortion of the gospel and a means for the Church to exploit humanity’s anxieties and contrition for pecuniary gain.

Personal vicissitudes also informed Luther’s convictions profoundly. As a monastic, Luther harbored a fervent devotion to his faith, grappling for years with his own existential culpability and the pathways to spiritual rectitude. His perusal of scripture, particularly the Pauline epistles, led him to the conclusion that righteousness emanated from divine grace through faith, rather than human exertions or pecuniary transactions. This epiphany crystallized into a linchpin of his theology and kindled his fervor for ecclesiastical renewal.

Luther’s escalating disillusionment with ecclesiastical venality and the ethical lapses of its dignitaries further galvanized his resolve. He recoiled particularly from the opulent lifestyles of certain ecclesiastics and the ubiquitous abuses of authority within ecclesiastical hierarchies. These issues, conjoined with the theological maladies he discerned, convinced Luther of the imperative for seismic change.

The 95 Theses were crafted as an erudite critique and an invocation for discourse. Luther couched them in Latin, the lingua franca of academia in that epoch, dispatching them to ecclesiastical superiors with the hope of instigating earnest deliberations concerning the maladies he discerned. On October 31, 1517, lore posits Luther affixed a copy of the Theses to the portal of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, a customary gesture heralding public colloquies. While the veracity of this episode remains a matter of historical contention, it endures as a potent emblem of Luther’s ecclesiastical gauntlet.

The riposte to the 95 Theses eclipsed Luther’s expectations manifold. The treatise swiftly underwent translation into vernacular tongues and disseminated across Europe with alacrity. The printing press served as a pivotal agent in promulgating Luther’s tenets, rendering them accessible to broad demographics and amplifying their resonance. What commenced as a summons to dialogue burgeoned into a widescale clarion call for reform.

Luther’s deeds and the ethos he enshrined in the 95 Theses resonated with multitudes disenchanted with ecclesiastical hegemony. His emphasis on scripture and faith, his indictment of clerical transgressions, and his exhortation for a return to the pristine precepts of Christianity found a receptive audience. The Theses laid the cornerstone for what would evolve into the Protestant Reformation, a movement irrevocably reshaping the spiritual, sociopolitical, and cultural contours of Europe.

In composing the 95 Theses, Martin Luther aspired to address specific theological and ethical quandaries pertaining to the Catholic Church’s practices, notably the commerce of indulgences. His ardent devotion to his faith, his erudite comprehension of scripture, and his personal tribulations impelled him to challenge ecclesiastical hegemony and advocate for rejuvenation. Luther’s initiatives set in motion a cascade of events culminating in the fracturing of Western Christendom and the advent of Protestantism. His legacy endures to this day, with the principles he championed remaining pivotal to myriad Christian denominations.

Remember, this treatise serves as a vantage for inspiration and further exploration. For bespoke guidance and to ensure conformity with scholarly standards, contemplate soliciting assistance from professionals at EduBirdie.

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Martin Luther’s Motivation Behind the 95 Theses. (2024, Jun 01). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/martin-luthers-motivation-behind-the-95-theses/

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Martin Luther’s Motivation Behind the 95 Theses . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/martin-luthers-motivation-behind-the-95-theses/ [Accessed: 4-Jun-2024]

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