Yesterday, the world commemorated the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation. On October 31, 1517, an obscure German monk – Martin Luther – nailed his 95 theses (‘Disputation by Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences’) to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church. And so began the Reformation.
Luther – Luder – was born in the smoky, slag-filled town of Eisleben in northern Germany in 1483. He grew up under the shadow of the Count of Mansfield’s castles in the small mining town of the same name. In later life he would always highlight his impeccable peasant origins although his father was a mining inspector and prominent smelting master.
Even though Luther remained loyal to his childhood home, there was certainly nothing that could have prepared him for the less attractive aspects of St Augustine’s theology when he defied his father to become an Augustinian monk. It seems odd in retrospect that a man who spent so much of his time railing against monasticism should have joined so austere an Order. Yet for some reason there was a streak of guilt and self-loathing in Luther that found some perverse comfort in the ascetic discipline and gloomy theology of the observant Augustinians.
Luther was ordained in 1507, began teaching at the University of Wittenberg and in 1512 was made a doctor of theology. In 1510, he visited Rome on behalf of a number of Augustinian monasteries and was appalled by the corruption he found there.
Luther came to reject several teachings and practises of the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the Catholic view on indulgences, which taught that freedom from God’s punishment for sin – either for someone still living or for one who had died and was believed to be in purgatory – could be purchased with money.
Luther taught that salvation and, consequently, eternal life were not earned by good pecuniary deeds, but are received only as the free gift of God’s grace through the believer’s faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin. His refusal to renounce all his writings at the demands of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation by the emperor.
Luther was an odd and contradictory man. Obsessed by death and the devil (he was convinced that Satan possessed his bowels and was responsible for the constipation which he famously suffered), he was a depressive and a hypochondriac, susceptible to mysterious illnesses in times of stress.
Consumed by the love of God, yet enraged by the corruption of the Catholic Church, this was the wider context of the adult Luther’s rebellion. The growing anti-clericalism of the late 15th century, the extravagance of the Renaissance papacy, clerical absenteeism, the shameful ignorance of so many clergy, the scandal of indulgences and the simmering hostility between Rome and Germany, moved him to show enormous courage in confronting the power of the pope and the Church.
Although it was perfectly possible in the early 16th century to reconcile a moderate Augustinian theologian with Roman Catholic orthodoxy, moderation was never part of Luther’s character
It is hard not to feel that the Reformation took the direction it did because of Luther’s personality. Although it was perfectly possible in the early 16th century to reconcile a moderate Augustinian theologian with Roman Catholic orthodoxy, moderation was never part of Luther’s character. Thesis by thesis, crisis by crisis, prayer by prayer, revelation by revelation, the reformer and theologian in Luther came together to produce the most implacable enemy of the Catholic Church.
It was the combination of doctrine and character that gave Luther’s assault on the papacy its momentum and destructive power. There was nothing in his attacks on relics or indulgences that was not common currency across Europe at the time. But if man could be saved by faith alone then the whole penitent edifice of the medieval Church – the sale of indulgences, the intercession to Mary and the saints, the cult of relics, the authority of the pope, the distinct existence of a priestly caste to mediate between man and God – were all so much rubble.
His polemical skills, his unrivalled gifts for fighting dirty, his genius for exploiting the possibilities of the printing press meant that his battles were fought with acrimony and a violence that would poison the debate between Christian denominations for another 400 years.
Nor was that Luther’s only grim legacy. In two of his later works, he expressed antagonistic views towards the Jews, writing that Jewish homes and synagogues should be destroyed, their money confiscated and liberty curtailed. These statements and their influence on anti-Semitism have contributed to his controversial status.
There is no room for doubt about Luther’s towering stature in Reformation history. But his life and character were a mass of contradictions. He was at once a theologian who gave Germany its vernacular Bible (which fostered a standard version of the German language) and the man whose philosophy was to have dark implications for those living under Nazi rule.
He was the charismatic preacher who proclaimed the liberating power of the gospel, but turned on the peasants who took him at his word. He was the hollow-eyed, celibate ascetic in search of martyrdom – who died in 1546, fat and married, in his bed.
His marriage to a former nun, with whom he had six children, set a precedent for the practise of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry. He was the godfather of modern secularism who struggled with the Devil.
He liked to see himself as a man of the people, but he was protected by members of the German nobility. During the peasants’ revolt of the 1520s, he sided with aristocrats, not the peasants who had been inspired to rebellion by his teachings.
This charismatic, bruising and paradoxical Augustinian monk turned dissident, fuelled by faith and fury, was a Catholic renegade who changed the world. After Luther, the Christian world would never be the same again.
Luther was one of the most influential individuals in European history. His ideas helped to shape the modern mind and affected the lives of even those who profess no religion. He was not only a Catholic renegade, but also a thorough-going reformer.