Martin Luther

Initiator of the Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther was a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, a movement that forever altered the course of Western spiritual and intellectual tradition. Born in 1483 in what is now Germany, Luther began a journey that would see him challenge the might of the Catholic Church, a revolutionary act at the time. As a young man, Luther was schooled in both the secular and ecclesiastical, taking his doctorate in theology from the University of Wittenberg. An incident that marks the start of his reformatory ideas was the infamous indulgence controversy. Luther's opposition to the Church's corrupt practice of selling 'indulgences' for the forgiveness of sins came to head in 1517 when he posted his 'Ninety-Five Theses' on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg. This document criticized various church practices, primarily the selling of indulgences, and called for a return to the teachings of the Bible.

In this way, Luther became a pivotal force for change, calling for transparency, accountability, and a new interpretation of religious doctrine—principles that spread rapidly across Europe thanks to the recent invention of the printing press. His teachings advocated that salvation is a gift from God, reached by faith, not by deeds, a direct challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy of the day.

Luther's translation of the Bible into the vernacular enabled ordinary Christians in Germany to read the text for themselves, democratizing knowledge that had previously been solely mediated by priests. Besides democratizing theological knowledge, this act also had cultural impacts, leading to a standardization of the German language.

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