LUTHER 



3539 



LUTHER 



was the most promising of a large family of 



children, and his father, a slate-cutter of very 



slender means, was determined that this son 



should receive a good education. Accordingly, 



sacrifices were made to send him to school at 



Magdeburg and at 



Eisenach, where 



he helped to sup- 



port himself by 



singing in front 



of the homes of 



the rich. In 1501 



he entered the 



University of Er- 



furt, winning a 



master's degree 



there four years 

 , , 



MARTIN LUSHER 



The man who established 

 Luther had the Protestant Church in the 



planned to take world ' 



up the profession of law, but about the close of 

 his university career he came deeply under the 

 influence, of a religious revival that was sweep- 

 ing over Western Europe, and shortly after 

 taking his degree he entered the monastery of 

 the Augustinian Order at Erfurt. In 1507 he 

 was ordained a priest, and the following year 

 was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the 

 new University of Wittenberg. In 1512, on his 

 return from a visit to Rome in the interests of 

 his Order, he took his degree of doctor of di- 

 vinity, and having been appointed professor of 

 theology at Wittenberg began there a course of 

 lectures on the Bible. 



Students from far and wide were soon flock- 

 ing to the obscure university to attend these 

 lectures, but just when Luther was enjoying 

 his greatest prestige he was called upon to 

 oppose what he felt to be a great abuse in the 

 Church, that is, the method of granting indul- 

 gences. At that time an indulgence was the 

 remission of temporal punishment for sin, the 

 guilt of which was already forgiven. Indul- 

 gences were granted in return for the perform- 

 ance of some work of piety, charity or mercy, 

 which might include a gift of money to further 

 some good work. 



In the year 1517, Johann Tetzel, a Domini- 

 can priest, appeared in the vicinity of Witten- 

 berg as the messenger of Pope Leo X, asking 

 the people to secure indulgences. The pro- 

 ceeds of this sale were to go toward the build- 

 ing of Saint Peter's at Rome. When Luther 

 heard that the people were flocking in great 

 crowds about the preacher of indulgences he 

 was sorely distressed, for he was convinced that 



the methods of Tetzel were harmful and con- 

 trary to the teachings of the Church. He 

 made public his objection by nailing to the 

 door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg a 

 protest which has become celebrated as the 

 "ninety-five theses;" these were destined to 

 bring about a breach in the great Roman 

 Catholic Church that has never been healed. 



The effect of these sledge-hammer blows 

 against the abuse of indulgences astonished 

 even Luther himself. Though written in Latin 



they were trans- i i 



lated into Ger- 

 man and then 

 into various other 

 languages and dis- 

 tributed through- 

 out Europe, and 

 it was not long 

 before their 

 author found 

 himself the 

 storm-center of a 

 great controversy 

 in the Church. 

 His study of the 

 Bible and of 

 Church history 

 and law bore him 

 further and fur- 

 ther from the ac- 

 cepted doctrines, 

 and when, in 

 1519, he engaged 

 in a public argu- 

 ment with the fa- 

 mous Dr. John 

 Eck, at Leipzig, he 

 openly denied the 

 supremacy of the 

 Pope. In 1520 he 

 announced his 

 position in three remarkable pamphlets, An 

 Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, 

 The Babylonian Captivity of the Church and 

 The Liberty of a Christian Man. In the same 

 year he publicly burned, at Wittenberg, a copy 

 of a Papal bull threatening him with excom- 

 munication (see BULL). 



Luther's defiance of the Pope was followed 

 by a summons to appear before the Imperial 

 Diet which met at Worms in April, 1521. This 

 was an assemblage of German princes, nobles 

 and clergy convened by the newly-elected em- 

 peror, Charles V. Luther's answer to the de- 

 mand of the Diet that he retract his heretical 



LUTHER'S HOME 

 In Frankfort-on-the-Main. 



