Martin Luther

1483-1546

German religious leader

The medieval church taught that the church's role was to serve as intermediary between the individual and God. Thus, the pope and the priests provided the official interpretations the bible for the people. Individuals were strongly discouraged from interpreting the bible for themselves. Luther, a priest and professor of theology in Wittenburg, became convinced that the church's view was wrong. Instead, he believed that each person should be allowed to interpret the bible for themselves, to become, in effect, his or her own priest.

At first, Luther did not publicly challenge church doctrine, but then a monk came to him selling indulgences. By selling indulgences, the church was promising to reduce the punishment that a person would have to suffer in purgatory in exchange for money. This particular monk had turned up at Luther's door because Albert von Hohenzollern, at age 23, had purchased the archbishopric of Mainz with funds he borrowed from a bank. To pay the bank back, Pope Leo X authorized Albert to sell indulgences. Outraged by this evidence of corruption in the highest levels of the church, Luther decided to take action.

In 1517, Martin Luther triggered the Protestant reformation by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. These theses criticized corrupt practices in the church and proclaimed the right of the individual to interpret the bible for him or herself. Luther's reformation spread rapidly through Germany and Scandanavia. The protestant revolution began to fragment almost immediately, perhaps because of the emphasis on individual interpretation of the scriptures, and continues to be fragmented today.

Luther wrote the wrote what is perhaps the best known of all protestant hymns, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."

Just three years befor Luther's death, Copernicus suggested that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. Luther, like the religious leaders of the Roman church, dismissed Copernicus' views as absurd.