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Margarethe Ziegler, daughter of an established family in Eisenach, a town in Thuringia (i.e., western Saxony), had in 1481 or 82 married Hans Luther, son of a peasant from Möhre in that part of Thuringia controlled by Brunswick at that time. Hans had foregone the agricultural life for that of a copper miner. The newlyweds settled in the town of Eisleben near Mansfeld in Brunswick. Their first son was born on November 10, the day before St. Martin's Day, 1483. Next day the infant was baptized and Christened with the saint's name as Martin Luther. The next year the family moved to Mansfeld where Hans leased several copper smelting furnaces and mining shafts and operated them prosperously. By 1491 Hans was an elected representative on the town council, and was later recognized as one of the outstanding citizens of the city. His prosperity was sufficient to allow him to seek the best education for his oldest son.
Young Martin Luther attended the Latin School at Mansfeld which, so far as is known, had not been influenced by Humanism. The emphasis was placed on learning to read Latin so the curriculum consisted of drills on grammar and syntax. Although classical Latin texts were utilized in their lessons, there was no emphasis given to rhetoric or logic.
At age 14 (1498) Martin was sent north to Magdeburg where he studied, probably at the Cathedral School, and where some of the canons were associated with the Nullbrüder, the popular German designation for the Brethren of the Common Life. The curriculum here seems to have consisted of the traditional religious piety mixed with elementary Latin rhetoric and logic. There are hints that Martin's success there was not without difficulties--there are later allusions to the schoolmaster's whip.
Before 1498 was over Martin had been sent to Eisenach to continue his education in advanced Latin grammar, rhetoric and poetry. While there he was influenced by several family acquaintances. The well-to-do Cotta family, Kuntz and Ursula, befriended the young man in numerous ways, not the least of which was teaching him manners and providing him with some vocal music training. Another benefactor was Heinrich Shalbe at whose table he often ate.
The vicar of the Church of St Mary at Eisenach, Johannes Braun, with whom Luther further cultivated his appreciation of music and poetry, also introduced Luther to a community of ascetic Franciscans who had established a cloister just outside Eisenach near Wartburg Castle.
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Luther enrolled in classes at the University of Erfurt in 1501. The small independent state of Erfurt was completely surrounded by Saxony but owed its primary allegiance to the political authority of the Archbishop of Mainz. The city of Erfurt was about 20,000 and the citizens there liked to think of their city as the religious center of Germany--they even called it "the little Rome." In support of this claim they could boast a house of almost every canonical, mendicant and monastic order (there were twenty monasteries, in all) and an impressive roster of local churches. By 1500 the university there was considered the best in Germany.
The university's curriculum included the usual liberal arts subjects: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Geometry, Astronomy, Harmonics, and Physics. The faculty in Logic (we would say Philosophy) were advocates of the views of the English Franciscan, William of Ockham, and his German disciple, Gabriel Biel. This via moderna philosophy attacked the via antique of Thomas Aquinas on logical grounds. Luther was greatly impressed by the lectures of Trutwetter and Arnoldi and aped them in referring to Ockham as "the master". Luther's later emphasis on the difference between faith and reason and his defense of the unique role of faith in salvation derives at least in part from the popular Ockhamism.
Hans Luther arranged for Martin to live in the College of St. George, one of the several "colleges" and "hostels" operated specifically to house students at the university. The College of St. George was one of the more regimented colleges where the student's lives were closely and strictly regulated in something of a rigid monastic atmosphere.
Martin was among a class of 57 who "commenced" their bachelorhood in the Liberal Arts at the beginning of the Fall school term in 1502. He ranked thirtieth in the class. Continuing his studies for the customary period while teaching grammar and logic at the university he passed his examination for the Master's degree in the Liberal Arts which he received in February, 1505, at the beginning of the Spring school term. This time he was second in a class of seventeen.
Hans Luther was very proud of his 21-year-old magister, but he had set higher hopes still. His graduation present to Martin was a very valuable printed copy of the Corpus iuris civilis (the famous Roman Law code published in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian.) It was a not a very subtle hint. Hans was pushing Martin to proceed immediately with a degree in law. Also Hans had begun, like any good father in that age, actively looking over the selection of brides suitable for a jurist. In May, 1505, Martin Luther registered as a student with the Erfurt faculty of Law. The university had an outstanding reputation in the field of legal studies all across Germany.
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On July 2, 1505, Martin was returning to Erfurt after a short visit to his parent's home in Mansfeld. On the road near the small village of Stotternheim, not far from Erfurt, he was overtaken by a sudden heavy thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning struck in the vicinity of the loan traveler and knocked the rain soaked Martin to the ground. Terrified that his final moments were slipping out of his grasp, he called on St. Ann (the patron saint of the miners) to save him and vowed he would become a monk if he were spared. Although within moments he realized his vow had been hastily made, he remained disturbed by the experience. During the next two weeks he struggled with the conviction that God had somehow spoken to him in this brush with death, and perhaps it was a second warning. Indeed, two years earlier in April he had experienced another very frightening and life threatening accident by himself on the road. On that occasion he only stumbled and fell, but the dagger he carried in his belt had opened an artery in his thigh causing him to loose a great deal of blood to be very weak for several days. On July 16, he invited his companions to a "farewell dinner" and announced his decision. The next day his friends escorted him to gate of the local Observantine cloister of the Augustinian order of Eremites (Hermits of St. Augustine) and waved their good-byes.
The Austin hermit cloister, among the twenty various cloisters at Erfurt, was part of a congregation of reformed fraternities first organized in 1477 and now consisting of about 30 out of the approximately 100 Eremitic houses in Germany. The aim of these Observantine friars was to enforce a more rigorously monastic observance of the rule than was becoming characteristic of many of the rest of this order's houses--all of which were already more isolative, reclusive and monastery-like than houses belonging to other orders of friars. The house at Erfurt was the seat of the provincial seminary widely recognized as among the best in Germany. The professor of theology at the Seminary was Johannes Nathin von Neuenkirchen. Both he and the current Vicar-general of the Observantine hermits in the Saxon-Thuringian Province, Johannes von Staupitz, had been students of Gabriel Biel at the University of Tübingen.
Luther's motivation in entering the cloister was one in which the fear of God's judgment played a large role. He could not rest with anything less than a clear conviction that he had at last satisfied God's demands on his life. In the popular notion the rigors of the discipline of the Observantine Ausgustinians offered the surest avenue of salvation the Church had to offer. He pressed on completing his novitiate and taking the irrevocable vows in September, 1506. But the compelling urgency did not subside even though it was taught that taking the vows remitted both the guilt and the punishment for all sins. Luther and his contemporaries believed man must earn God's grace by his own decisions and actions. His concern to confess every sin exasperated his confessor; his rigorous ascetic discipline threatened his health. But that much-desired sense of God's pleasure continued to elude him as he tried all the harder to earn it. Depressed and confused, and more terrorized than ever by his sense of the justice and wrath of God, his superiors referred him to Staupitz who became a needed friend and counselor. Staupitz and others recommended that he study for ordination to the priesthood. By this time Luther had received the Bachelor of Theology through the Seminary. Luther progressed rapidly through the ranks of subdeacon and deacon and was ordained a priest in May 2, 1507.
Still there was no relief for Martin's troubled soul. He could but conclude that he was unworthy and that his sacrifice of the worldly life and freedom for the discipline of monastic vows and now ordination was not yet what God wanted of him, but he began to doubt that his conclusions were valid.
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Meanwhile in 1507 Johannes von Staupitz, Luther's friend and counselor, had become professor of Theology and the first Dean of the theology faculty at the five-year-old University of Wittenberg in eastern Saxony. It had fallen to the responsibility of the Augustinian house in Wittenberg to fill both the professorship of the Bible, and the lectureship in Aristotle's Ethics at the university. Staupitz tapped Luther for the lectureship early in 1508, and transferred Luther to the Augustinian house in Wittenberg to begin with the Spring school term in 1508.
Luther was more exited about studying the Bible under his fellow Augustinians than he was in teaching Aristotle. He managed to earn his Baccalaureus biblicus, Bachelor's in Bible, by the commencement after the end of the Spring school term in 1509. After holding the lectureship on through the spring and fall school terms in 1509-10 Luther returned to Erfurt. There the University faculty found him competent to receive the honorary degree of Sentenarius and the appointment as lecturer in theology, a position he filled for two years. His study for these lectures included not only old works like Peter Lombard's Sentences, the works of Hugh of St. Victor and St. Bernard, the relevant (proof)texts from the early Church Fathers (primarily Augustine) and especially the Bible, but also the more recent works of Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Pierre d'Ailly, and Gabriel Biel.
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Between the fall school term in 1510 and the spring term of 1511 Luther and an Augustinian brother traveled to Rome to represent a group of Observantines that opposed the loss of their separate organizational structure and the union of the Observantines with the Conventuals, that is, the slightly less strict group. The union plan was favored by Staupitz, but the General Chapter rejected it. The trip to Rome allowed Luther to enthusiastically embrace all the spiritual advantages the Holy city was said to offer. Yet, he experienced the same empty, unsatisfying results to say nothing of the profound culture shock he experienced with Italian society both in and outside of the Church.
He later characterized himself in Rome as a "frantic saint." He visited numerous churches, ascended the Scala Sancta (The Holy Stairway) on his knees, and prayed for the release of his Grandfather's soul from purgatory. He later confessed he caught himself wishing his Grandmother were already dead so he could pray her out of purgatory too.
He noted the secular activities of the papacy, the cold, indifferent professionalism of the clergy, and the relaxed morality among both churchmen and laymen.
Luther's spring school term at Erfurt in 1511 was unhappy both because of his inner struggle and because of the ill feelings of the brethren generated by his position on the union issue. Staupitz for one did not hold it against Luther for opposing him on that matter and continued to counsel with him as before. His next suggestion was for Luther to study the fourteenth century mystics, a subject Staupitz himself had recently gotten interested in. It was apparently at this juncture that Luther became acquainted with the German Theology by the unknown disciples of Johannes Tauler. Later he would testify that he ranked it next to the New Testament for its impact on his spiritual quest.
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Over the summer of 1511 Staupitz relocated Luther back in Wittenberg where he became assistant to the prior and chaplain of the Augustinian House while being registered as a student under the Wittenberg faculty of Theology. The twenty-eight year old Luther continued his study of the Bible and began a systematic study of Augustine. He received his Theologicus degree on October 18, 1512. (This degree qualified Luther as a teacher, i.e., doctor, of Theology.) When Staupitz elected to move on to greener pastures, Luther became Professor of Theology and began his lectures on Biblical literature. He lectured on Psalms from 1513 to 1515; then on Romans during 1515 and 1516, On Paul's letter to the Galatians, Hebrews and Titus from 1516 to early 1519 and began the Psalms again in 1519. During the course of these lectures he gradually departed from the four-fold exegesis typical of traditional scholasticism; namely, the literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical interpretations of each passage, in favor of the grammatical-historical interpretation made popular by the influence of humanities scholarship.
Luther was actually part of a movement that saw humanities scholarship in many disciplines in the Wittenberg offerings. Johannes Lang, the prior of the Augustinian house at Erfurt was a humanist scholar of considerable influence who later came to serve on the faculty at Wittenberg. Georg Spalatin, another humanist-trained priest was chaplain and private secretary to Frederick the Wise. Christoph Scheurl was a humanist professor of canon law at Wittenberg. Andreas von Carlstadt, Luther's tutor in Greek and originally the ring leader of the Thomistic theologians at Wittenberg was also a humanist. Finally, rounding out the humanist circle was Nikolous von Amsdorf, leader of the Wittenberg Scotists.
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In 1514 Luther first supplied at the Wittenberg city church when the incumbent was ill. The next year when the pastor's health broke the town council invited him to fill the pulpit at first temporarily and then on a full time basis--indeed, for the rest of his life. He was still chaplain and consequently preacher for his brethren and pastor of the local parish around his monastery. As assistant to the Wenceslaus Link, the prior of the Wittenberg Augustinian house, one of Luther's tasks was to serve as the coordinator and principle instructor for the education of all the novices and friars. In May 1515 he became Vicar-general, over the eleven Augustinian houses in the Saxon-Thuringian province.
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Luther's discovery and experience of God's Grace through faith came gradually. it was not a single, simple, instantaneous insight, but an understanding that emerged through years of searching along the avenues pointed out by his spiritual advisors.
The prevailing theology of the Catholic Church since the days of Ockham (14th century) had emphasized a kind of dualism. On the one hand there was the spirit world of revelation and faith. On the other hand there was the physical world of reason. Reason could not be employed in the realm of revelation; even as faith was unnecessary in the realm of physical reality. This dichotomy left the Church as the sole authority in the realm of revelation.
The Church placed emphasis on God's sovereign will, but also emphasized the freedom of human will. These two seemingly contradictory principles have been causing problems for the Christians since the late fourth century at least. Human freedom presented man with a multitude of free choices ranging from absolute good to absolute evil throughout the span of his years. The good and evil actions resulting from the daily choices would accumulate over a lifetime and determine whether the man was more of a saint or more of a sinner. Theologians emphasized therefore the necessity of a man working out his own sanctification by deliberately making more good choices than evil ones. Some dared to conclude--rather illogically--that the more saintly one was at the conclusion of life the more certain salvation was.
However, God's sovereign will was exercised in making that final judgment not based on the soul's saintliness or lack thereof. God's judgment was not whether to admit the soul to heaven; on the contrary, it was whether or not the soul would be lost in Hell! And it was not one's saintliness that was at issue, rather it was one's guilt! The remedy for guilt was freely given forgiveness earned by Christ's death on the Cross and distributed exclusively by the Church by means of the sacraments. Baptism and Confirmation provided grace to forgive the guilt inherited by every human from Adam, the Mass and Confession/Absolution provided the grace blot out the guilt for all confessed sins, and Extreme Unction provided the grace to forgive any overlooked or remaining guilt.
But Luther had almost from the beginning jumped to a conclusion that confused him. From the bolt of lightening beside the lonely road, Luther's fear of the unknown had terrorized him. He had instantaneously come to the conclusion that he was guilty of not doing something that God wanted him to do. So he aggressively adopted the ascetic life. When his health was endangered he was advised to lighten up; after all he could be forgiven for any sin confessed. Luther's response was to become compulsive about confessing every recognized act or thought that was considered to be sinful. When he remained anxious because of his continued terror of the sovereign unfathomable God he began to despair that he would ever be able to confess not doing something unless he could discover what it was he was not doing. After all, God's standard of justice/righteousness must be consistent with God's unfathomable character, no one could know for sure what it was. The harder and longer he worked the stronger the conviction became that God's righteousness implied so severe a standard of judgement and justice that human accomplishment seemed hopelessly futile. Even when he did achieve something thought to be good, he found himself helpless to prevent the onset of personal pride, a sin that surely erased his accomplishment in a fatal instant.
Was it Ordination? Apparently not.
Was it the practice of mysticism? He turned to study the works of the mystics which while it put a new slant on many things seemed not, of itself, to supply the answer he so desperately sought. Seeking to narrow that chasm separating earthly man from the heavenly God through mystical exercises of worship and devotion seemed to him simply another type of "work". Human accomplishment here was equally vulnerable to that pernicious sin of pride.
Luther's theological mentors taught him not to accept the rational arguments that had one time convinced the schoolmen in the middle ages. Nevertheless he studied the works of those writers in search of an understanding, a handle with which to get hold of his problem. At this stage his understanding of the Bible, which he was teaching, was still almost totally captive to the theology of the day.
Luther found himself again and again in the depths of hopelessness and depression; for the only conclusion supportable was that mankind, and especially Martin Luther, was destined for eternal perdition. His lostness manifested itself in sleepless nights and miserable days of horror and despair. Luther kept appealing to Staupitz, his anchor in the storm, for the compassion, understanding and encouragement to keep looking for an answer. Luther later admitted, that if it were not for Staupitz he would have "sunk into hell" (Peter Klassen, Europe in Reformation, p. 29).
He continued to seek some solution as he lectured on the Bible at Wittenberg, and he gradually began to put the pieces all together. He became convinced that the answer he was seeking must in some direct way deal with the person of Jesus Christ, not with the teachings of the Church. Although he had studied the Bible for years he was only beginning to comprehend the centrality of Christ's death and resurrection. From the twenty-second Psalm Luther gained the insight that his own sense of lostness and despair had been experienced by Christ as he hung on the cross. That realization blossomed into the understanding that God in Christ was not simply the righteous judge of merciless and rigorous justice Luther had always feared but a God of both justice and mercy.
There in his study in the tower of the Wittenberg Augustinian house Luther gradually began to build on this new understanding. His study of Paul's letters brought him to Romans 1:16-17 where Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God's saving power for everyone who believes; to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For by [Greek, ek] faith the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel unto faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by [Greek, ek] faith."' (translation by HKG) Then in Galatians 3:11 Paul repeats the Habakkuk reference with the emphasis of refuting the Jewish argument that righteousness is achieved by keeping the law. Finally, in Ephesians 2:5-9, Paul contrasts faith with human achievement noting that "And we being dead in sins he graciously made alive together with Christ.... For you are graciously saved by means of faith ... not by [Greek, ek] works in order that no one may boast; for we are products of God's handiwork, creations in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works, creations which God set apart in order that we should go about continually doing good works." (translation by HKG) He even found this understanding expressed again in the writings of Augustine of Hippo and other ancient churchmen. While man could never achieve the level of righteousness (saintliness) demanded by a Holy God, God had taken the initiative of imputing divine righteousness to those who both recognize and rely in faith on what God has done in Christ Jesus.
Partly as a result of the climate of Humanistic scholarship with its emphasis on the authoritative texts and sense of the historical, and partly through his continued separation of the realm of the spirit from the realm of the physical, Luther began to understand the authority of the Bible vis à vis the Church in a new way. The more emphasis he placed on faith the less emphasis he gave to Church authority. While contemporary theology wrote faith very small and works very large, Luther eventually reached the point of seeing faith alone as the basis for human salvation.
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By September of 1517, Luther felt sufficiently possessed of his new theological understanding to present it formally to the academic communities at Wittenberg and surrounding universities. He published a list of ninety-seven theses under the general title of Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. This was a relatively broad articulation of many of the ramifications of his new understanding compared and contrasted to the "standard" Scholasticism of the day. Revolutionary as Luther's ideas were they got no serious response; no academic thought it worth his time and energy to debate with Luther on these issues. His colleagues at Wittenberg were evidently already in sympathy if not in agreement with his views. Admittedly, these theses dealt primarily with the theological issues, and did not engage in hardball with ecclesiastical issues.
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The political setting of this episode is significant. Both Brandenburg and Saxony were ruled by princes who possessed electoral dignity in the Holy Roman Empire. Elector Joachim of Hohenzollern, the ruler of Brandenburg, and the two royal lines (Elector and Duke) of divided Saxony were in open competition for rank and recognition in northeastern Germany. The focus of their competition was the well fortified and strategically located region of Magdeburg a prosperous and politically autonomous ecclesiastic archdiocese ruled by its Archbishop. The brother of Saxony's Elector, Frederick the Wise, had been Archbishop of Magdeburg until his death in 1513 when the Cathedral chapter of the archdiocese selected Albert of Hohenzollern, Elector Joachim's younger brother, as his successor.
Before the papacy would recognize Albert as the Archbishop of Magdeburg there were some hurdles to be cleared. Albert at age twenty-three was still seven years too young to be a bishop according to canon law. Moreover, the situation was complicated by the fact that the clergy at the bishopric of Halberstadt located in the archdiocese of Magdeburg had almost at the same time also selected Albert as their bishop. One may well assume that demonstrations of Hohenzollern generosity had no small part to play in these two successful elections. Pope Leo X's cooperation and approval was secured merely by obtaining a dispensation permitting both these infractions of canon law. The expense of this dispensation together with the servitia and the pallium fees associated with each appointment was apparently substantial, possibly in excess of 10,000 ducats. The Fuggar Brothers of Augsburg seem to have extended at least part of the sum to Albert.
A year later, in 1514, the Electoral Archbishop of Mainz died, vacating the bishop's throne for the third time in ten years. The Cathedral clergy were dismayed at the prospect of paying the servitia and the fees associated with a new appointment again so soon. Indeed, the two previous appointments had not only impoverished the diocese, they had been forced to borrow heavily to meet their obligations. In desperation they selected Albert, since he seems to have promised them he would personally assume the debts along with the servitia and other fees. Albert for his part would need a dispensation to hold three ecclesiastical offices even though he was still six years too young to hold even one bishopric. Pope Leo X was accommodating, even eager, in the light of the prospect of having the two Hohenzollern Electors (Albert and his brother Joachim) beholden to the papacy in the not too distant election. Albert, however, was embarrassed by the size of his present indebtedness as well as the shallowness of his financial reserves. Apparently, his previous spending had nearly exhausted his liquid capital and was already putting a strain on his credit. The dispensations alone in the Halberstadt-Magdeburg case are estimated in excess of 10,000 ducats. Albert's total outlay of personal resources and borrowed money for all three appointments is estimated at about 34,000 ducats of gold. Some estimates put his indebtedness to the Fuggar Brothers' bank alone in the neighborhood of 30,000 ducats. One may appreciate the hesitance the Fuggars considering the length of time it would take Albert to repay such a debt.
In order to improve Albert's chances of borrowing the necessary funds, the Pope secretly agreed to an arrangement. The Jubilee indulgence, authorized by Pope Julius II in 1506 to attract contributions for the building of St. Peters' at Rome, was now extended to Albert's two north German archdioceses, Mainz and Magdeburg, for ten years. The income, after expenses, generated from the indulgences peddled there would be divided half-and-half between Albert's debt, plus interest, and the building fund for St. Peter's at Rome. The Fuggar's brothers' bank of Augsburg finally agreed to advance Albert the necessary funds provided their clerks personally administered all the collections from the indulgence distribution. And the deal was closed when Albert borrowed enough cash to pay the pope about 25% of his bill as a down payment.
Leo X issued a bull authorizing the distribution of indulgences by Archbishop Albert of Mainz and Magdeburg, and Albert drew up a kind of prospectus making the indulgences as attractive as possible to people of all classes. To allay the anxieties of the poor he assured them that even the pennyless could secure an indulgence for themselves and for the departed loved ones merely by reciting some prayers and fasting. On the other hand those with meager means might rest assured in the prospect of heaven for a gift not exceeding a week's wages. Those with more abundant resources, however, were admonished to size their gift accordingly. The benefits were also very attractive. One gift in behalf of a departed loved one would not only provide that relative immediate release from Purgatory, but at the same time completely eliminate any punishment (i.e. penance and purgatory) for the donor's sins.
Archbishop Albert chose as his agent for the Magdeburg archdiocese the prior of the Dominican house in the Saxon city of Leipzig, Friar Johann Tetzel. Tetzel concentrated personally on the more important locations in the Magdeburg archdiocese, moving from place to place excitedly proclaiming his mission to bring salvation to one and all with as much fanfare as he and his associates could muster. He sent other agents to the lesser towns. Moreover, Tetzel and his agents were armed with the authorization to cite for excommunication anyone who refused to recognize and honor the indulgences.
Printed handbills for the literate, buglers and criers for the illiterate, preceded Tetzel's entourage foretelling his arrival and making preliminary arrangements. According to a contemporary observer (Oswald Myconius) the city fathers, clergy, monks, school masters, and numerous lay men and women of Annaberg gathered outside the city to welcome the arrival of Tetzel's entourage. They carried banners, flags and candles. As the city's bells pealed unceasingly they escorted Tetzel and company across the city to the cathedral.
At the head of the procession a smartly dressed herald advanced proudly carrying a copy of the Papal bull on a pillow draped in scarlet and gold velvet. Tetzel's and his entire retinue followed, dressed in the colorful regalia of authority and escorted by flag and banner bearers. In the cathedral, in the midst of the naive, they had raised a huge red cross on the arms of which hung a huge papal banner.
The success of Tetzel's publicity and the popular response to it was not limited to the lands of the Principality of Magdeburg. Soon scores of Saxons were streaming across the frontiers to secure these highly touted indulgences. Elector Fredrick the Wise's comment reflected his open resentment that Tetzel was encroaching on the "market area" of the relics collections residing in Saxon cathedrals. When Tetzel's minions came to Magdeburg towns near the borders of Saxony in the vicinity of Wittenberg some of Luther's parishioners journeyed across the line and secured indulgences. When Luther later admonished certain individuals to mend their sinful ways, they waved the indulgence in his face and threatened to have him cited for excommunication by Tetzel's agents.
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The year before on the eve of All-Saints in 1516 Luther had preached a sermon concerning indulgences that had earned him the mild displeasure of Frederick the Elector, his patron. Luther's main point was that the efficacy of the indulgence depended on the donor being truly penitent. Yet anything that made potential donors stop and think was worrisome to the Elector whose collection of relics was proudly and frequently displayed to attract the cash donations. Luther now has much more to say. His response to Tetzel was to prepare ninety-five theses questioning the logic and rationale of indulgences and challenging the unprincipled methods with which they were being distributed. They were published as an academic offering titled Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, and attacked more vehemently the abuses of the indulgence hawkers than the authority behind them.
This was not the first time this question had been raised and the history of the issue was not encouraging. In the late fifteenth century the Spaniard at the University of Salamanca, Pedro de Osma, was imprisoned by the inquisition because he had publicly questioned indulgences on the basis of predestination. Wessel Gansfort product of the Brethren of the Common Life Schools and prominent scholar at the Universities at Paris and Cologne had in his retirement in the Netherlands launched an extensive attack on indulgences. His earlier reputation nonetheless survived. Other younger men like Luther such as the priest Jean Lallier who questioned the idea of the plenary indulgence, and the Observantine Friar John Vitrier who suggested that indulgences were demonic in origin were silenced by the due process of ecclesiastical vigilance. These had not been prepared, as Luther now was, to answer their opponents by challenging their whole theological viewpoint.
These ninety-five theses were evidently not, as is so often asserted, posted on the door of Castle Church at Wittenberg on All Saints Eve, October 31, 1517. Since Erwin Iserloh's careful exposition in 1961 (The Theses were not Posted) Lutheran scholars and others have come to understand that while Luther did indeed hand out copies of his theses to his colleagues at Wittenburg and mail them to his ecclesiastical superiors and to other scholars across Germany during the latter part of October, he did not post them on the door of Castle Church. In all of the textual material and numerous contemporary reports of Luther's responsibility in the whole indulgence affair there is no mention of a public posting of the theses at Wittenberg. The posting account appears first in a reference by Philip Melanchthon who was not in Wittenberg at the time and did not record it during Luther's lifetime. That is not to say that the scholarly Melanchthon was the originator of the anecdote, but he was the earliest recorder of what scholars today consider legendary.
Nevertheless, you can expect to see the legendary account remain current in the popular mythology that so often circulates under the guise of being accurate historical information. It has become so commonplace that if a person remembers learning nothing else whatsoever about Martin Luther in school, it will frequently be this non-event that will come to mind.
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Most recently edited 31 January 2003