On the eve of All Saints’ Day in 1517, a German Augustinian friar, Martin Luther (1483-1546), nailed on the door of the collegiate Church of Wittenberg in Germany a parchment containing ninety-five these (academic propositions) written in Latin – the usual procedure for advertising an academic debate. Luther’s theses constituted an attack on the Roman Catholic doctrine of indulgences (forgiveness of punishment for sins, usually obtained either through good works or prayers along with the payment of an appropriate sum of money); this was currently being preached near Wittenberg to help raise funds for the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s in Rome.
Luther’s act touched off a controversy that went far beyond academic debate. For the next few yearsthere were arguments among theologians, while Luther received emissaries and directives from the Vatican as waver in his criticisms. On June 15, 1520, Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent) condemned Luther’s teaching as heretical and, on January 3, 1521, excommunicated him from the Catholic Church. The Protestant Reformation had been born.
Luther’s reformation principles began to apply in churches throughout Germany, and a rapid and widespread outbreak of other reforming movements was touched off by Luther’s example. By 1523, radical reformers far more iconoclastic than Luther began to agitate for a purer Christianity free from any trace of “popery”. These radical reformers are often called Anabaptist (“baptized again”) because of their insistence on adult baptism even if baptism had been performed in infancy. Many of these Anabaptist groups had radical social and political ideas, including pacifism and the refusal to take oaths or participate in civil government, which appealed to the discontent of the lower classes. One outcome was the Peasants’ War in Germany, which was put down with ferocious bloodshed in 1525.
The Reformation was not confined to Germany.
