Martin Luther (born November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, House of Mansfeld; and died on February 18, 1546, in Eisleben), was an Augustinian Catholic theologian and friar who began and promoted religious reform in Germany and whose teachings were inspired by the Protestant Reformation and theological doctrine and cultural called Lutheranism.
Luther exhorted the Christian church to return to the original teachings of the Bible, resulting in a restructuring of the Christian churches in Europe. The reaction of the Catholic Church before the Protestant reform was the Counter-Reformation.
His contributions to Western civilization extend beyond the religious realm, as his translations of the Bible helped develop a standard version of the German language and became a model in the art of translation. His marriage to Catalina de Bora on June 13, In 1525, he began a movement to support priestly marriage within many Christian currents.
The Early Life of Martin Luther
Martin Luther was born in Eisleben (today’s Land of Saxony-Anhalt) on the night of November 10, 1483, “11 hours after sunset”, that is, around 5 am in the morning. Luther was the first son of the Hans Luder (1459-1530) and his wife Margarethe Lindemann (1459-1531).
He was baptized the day after the celebration of the feast of St. Martin of Tours, so he was given the name of the saint. In 1484 the family moved to Mansfeld, where his father ran several copper mines. Having grown up in a peasant environment, Hans Luder longed for his son to become a civil servant to give more honor to the family.
To this end, he sent young Martin to various schools in Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach. In 1501, at age 18, Luther entered the University of Erfurt, where he played the lute and received the nickname The Philosopher.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 1502 and a master’s degree in 1505, as the second of 17 candidates. Following the wishes of his father, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law of this university. But everything changed during a lightning storm on July 2, 1505.
A lightning strike struck him as he returned from a visit to his parents’ home. Terrified, he shouted: “Help Santa Ana! I will become a monk!”. He came alive and gave up his law studies, he sold his books except those of Virgilio and entered the monastery Augustinian of Erfurt on 17 July 1505.
Marriage and family of Martin Luther
On April 8, 1523, Luther writes to Wenceslaus: “Yesterday I received nine nuns from their captivity in the Nimbschen convent.” Luther had decided to help twelve nuns escape from the Cistercian monastery in Nimbschen, near Grimma in Saxony, by removing them from the convent in barrels.
Three of them left with their relatives, while the other nine were taken to Wittenberg. Catalina de Bora was in this last group. Between May and June 1523 it was thought that the woman would marry a student at the University of Wittenberg, Jerome Baumgartner, although his family probably denied it.
Dr. Caspar Glatz was the next suitor, but Catherine felt “neither desire nor love” for him. It was learned that she wanted to marry Luther or Nicholas von Amsdorf. Luther felt that he was not a good husband since he had been excommunicated by the Pope and was persecuted by the Emperor.
In May or early June 1525, his intention to marry Catherine was known in Luther’s inner circle. To avoid any objection from his friends, he acted quickly: on the morning of Tuesday, June 13, 1525, he legally married Catherine, whom he affectionately called “Katy”.
She moved into her husband’s house, the former Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg, and they started living as a family. The Luthers had three sons and three daughters:
- Johannes, born on 7 of June of 1526, who later would study laws and get to be an officer of the court, passing away in 1575.
- Elizabeth, born October as December as 1527, prematurely died on 3 August in 1528.
- Magdalena, born on 5 of maypole of 1529, died in the arms of his father on September 20, 1542. His death was very hard for Luther and Catherine.
- Martin, son, born on November 9, 1531, studied theology but never had a regular pastoral call before his death in 1565.
- Paul, born on January 28, 1533, was a doctor, father of six children, and died on 8 of March of 1593, continuing the male line of the family of Luther by Juan Ernesto, who would die in 1759.
- Margaretha, born on 17 of December of 1534, married with the Prussian nobleman George von Kunheim, but passed away in 1570 at the age of 36; it is the only lineage of Luther that remains to this day.
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Luther’s Theology of Grace
The desire to obtain academic degrees led Martin Luther to study the Scriptures in depth. Influenced by the humanistic vocation to go ad Fontes (“to the sources”), he immersed himself in the study of the Bible and of the early Church.
Because of this, terms such as penance and probity took on a new meaning for Luther, now convinced that the Church had lost sight of several central truths that Christianity taught in the Scriptures, one of the most important of which is the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
Luther began to teach that salvation is a gift exclusively from God, given by grace through Christ and received only by faith. Later, Luther defined and reintroduced the principle of the proper distinction between the Law of Moses and the Gospels that reinforced his theology of grace.
Consequently, Luther believed that his principle of interpretation was an essential starting point in the study of the Scriptures. He noted that the lack of clarity in distinguishing the Mosaic Law from the Gospels was the cause of the incorrect understanding of the Gospel of Jesus in the Church of his time, an institution that he blamed for having created and promoted many fundamental theological errors.
Martin Luther reformation
The reformation was initiated in Germany by Martin Luther, in Switzerland by Huldrych Zwingli and Johannes Calvin, if not intended. Its beginning is generally dated 1517 when Martin Luther is said to have knocked his 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, but its causes and forerunners go back further.
The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 is generally regarded as the conclusion. The movement was initially an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church. Many Catholics in Western and Central Europe were troubled by what they saw as false teachings and abuse within the Church, especially regarding the letters of indulgence.
Another point of criticism was the buying ability of church offices (Simone), which brought the whole clergy into suspicion of corruption. The reform movement split into different Protestant churches due to different teachings.
The most important denominations that emerged from the Reformation are those of the Lutherans and the Reformed (including Calvinists, Zwinglians, and Presbyterians). Then there are the radical Reformation Baptists. In countries outside of Germany, the Reformation was sometimes very different.
This is how Anglicanism emerged in England and Unitarianism in parts of Eastern Europe. The Reformation in Transylvania is regarded as a “special case in church history”. In countries that remained loyal to the Roman Church, some concerns of the Reformation were expressed in the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic reform.
The Protestant Reformation
On October 31, 1517, by Martin Luther, then a Catholic monk, in the Holy Roman Empire, Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, and later Jean Calvin in Paris and Geneva, the Reformation affected most of North-West Europe.
The attempts at conciliation having failed, it resulted in a split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches. The Catholic Counter-Reformation initiated at the end of the Council of Trent allows the Catholic Church only a partial reconquest of the populations which passed to Protestantism.
The adoption of the Reformation also has a political character. It is a way for princes to assert their independence in the face of a papacy claiming a universal theocracy or for populations to be able to revolt in the face of a poorly accepted sovereign as in Scotland and the Spanish Netherlands.
Reform is thus reflected in the 16th century by many conflicts between the Emperor Habsburg and the German princes but also civil wars in France, in England and Scotland.
The indulgence controversy
In addition to his duties as a teacher, Martin Luther served as a preacher and confessor in the church of Santa María in the city. He usually preached in the palace church, also called “of all saints”, because he had a collection of relics from a foundation created by Frederick III of Saxony.
It was during this period that the young priest became aware of the effects of offering indulgences to parishioners. An indulgence is the remission (partial or total) of the temporary punishment that is still maintained for sins after the guilt has been removed by acquittal. At that time, anyone could buy an indulgence, either for himself or for his dead relatives who remained in Purgatory.
The Dominican friar Johann Tetzel had been recruited to travel through the episcopal territories of Albert of Brandenburg (Elector of Mainz) selling indulgences. With the money obtained by said means, it was hoped to finance the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Italy., and buy a bishopric for Albert of Brandenburg.
Luther saw this trafficking in indulgences not only as an abuse of power but as a lie, which, having no basis in Scripture, could confuse people and lead them to trust only the lie of indulgences, leaving aside the sacrament of confession and true repentance. Luther preached three sermons against indulgences in 1516 and 1517.
One night he read a passage from the Letter to the Romans 1:16 and 17 that would lead him to do the Reformation: Because I am not ashamed of the gospel message because it is the power of God for all who believe to reach salvation, the Jews first and then the Greeks. This message shows us how God frees us from guilt: it is by faith and only by faith.
Thus the Scriptures say: The just shall live by faith. But his anger continued to grow and, according to tradition, the 31 of October of 1517 were nailed the ninety-five theses on the door of the church of the Palace of Wittenberg as an open invitation to debate them.
Theses condemned greed and paganism in the Church as abuse, and they asked for a theological dispute on what indulgences could give. However, in his theses, he did not directly question the pope’s authority to grant indulgences.
Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses 15 were quickly translated into German and widely copied and printed. Within two weeks they had spread throughout Germany and, after two months, throughout Europe. This was one of the first cases in history in which the printing press had an important role, as it facilitated a simpler and wider distribution of any document.
Diet of Worms
January 3, 1521, was published in Rome bulla Decet Romanum Pontificem, by Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. Emperor Charles V inaugurated the Imperial Diet of Worms on January 22, 1521. Luther was called to renounce or reaffirm his doctrine and a safe-conduct was granted to guarantee his safety.
Luther appeared before the Diet on April 16. Johann Eck, an assistant to the archbishop of Trier, presented Luther with a table full of copies of his writings. He asked Luther if the books were his and if he still believed in what those works taught. Luther asked for time to think about his answer, which was granted.
Luther prayed, consulted with his friends and mediators, and appeared before the Diet the next day. When the matter was dealt with in the Diet, Councilor Eck asked Luther to answer explicitly: ” Luther, do you reject his books and the errors in them?”, to which Luther replied:
“Let me be convinced by testimonies of Scripture and clear arguments of reason – because I do not believe neither the pope nor the councils since it has been shown that they have often erred, contradicting themselves. themselves— by the texts of Holy Scripture that I have quoted, I am subject to my conscience and bound to the word of God.
That is why I cannot and do not want to retract anything, because doing something against conscience is not safe or healthy. according to tradition, Luther then spoke these words: “!! I can not do anything else, this is my position God help me”.
In the following days, private conferences were held to determine Luther’s fate. Before the decision was made, Luther left Worms. During his return to Wittenberg, he disappeared. The emperor wrote the Edict of Worms on May 25, 1521, declaring Martin Luther a fugitive and heretic, and forbidding his works.
Martin Luther last journey and death
Luther’s last trip to Mansfeld was made because of his concern for the families of his brothers and sisters, who were still in the Hans Luther copper mine, threatened by Count Albrecht of Mansfeld’s intentions to control that industry for their personal gain.
The controversy involved the four earls of Mansfeld: Albrecht, Philip, John George, and Gerhard. Luther traveled twice towards the end of 1545 with the aim of participating in the negotiations to reach an agreement. A third visit was necessary for early 1546 to complete them. On January 23, Luther left Wittenberg accompanied by his three children.
The negotiations concluded successfully on February 17. After 8 at night, Luther suffered chest pains. When he went to bed he prayed to say: “In your hands, I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. At 1 o’clock in the morning, he woke up with sharp chest pain and was wrapped with hot towels.
Knowing that his death was imminent, he thanked God for revealing his Son, in whom he had believed. His companions Justus Jonah and Michael Coelius shouted: Reverend father, are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and confessing the doctrine that he taught in his name?.
A distinctive “yes” was Luther’s answer. He died at 2:45 on February 18, 1546, in Eisleben, the city where he was born. He was buried in the Wittenberg Palace church near the pulpit.