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Luther
was born in Eisleben, Germany, the son of Hans and Margarethe
Luther. He went to school at Magdeburg and Eisenach, and entered the
University of Erfurt in 1501, graduating with a BA in 1502 and an MA
in 1505. His father wished him to be a lawyer, but Luther was drawn
to the study of the Scriptures, and spent three years in the
Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. In 1507 he was ordained a priest,
and went to the University of Wittenberg, where he lectured on
philosophy and the Scriptures, becoming a powerful and influential
preacher.
On a
mission to Rome in 1510--11 he was appalled by the corruption he
found there. Money was greatly needed at the time for the rebuilding
of St Peter's, and papal emissaries sought everywhere to raise funds
by the sale of indulgences. The system was grossly abused, and
Luther's indignation at the shameless traffic, carried on in
particular by the Dominican |
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Johann
Tetzel, became irrepressible. As professor of biblical exegesis at
Wittenberg (1512--46), he began to preach the doctrine of salvation
by faith rather than works, and on 31 October 1517 drew up a list
of
95 theses
on indulgences denying the pope any right to forgive sins, and
nailed them on the church door at Wittenberg. Tetzel retreated from
Saxony to Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, where he published a set of
counter-theses and burnt Luther's. The Wittenberg students
retaliated by burning Tetzel's, and in 1518 Luther was joined in his
views by Melanchthon.
Pope
Leo X, at first took little notice of this disturbance, but in 1518
summoned Luther to Rome to answer for his theses. His university
and the elector interfered, and ineffective negotiations were
undertaken by Cardinal Cajetan and by Miltitz, envoy of the pope to
the Saxon court. The scholar Johann Eck and Luther held a memorable
disputation at Leipzig (1519) and Luther began to attack the papal
system more boldly. In 1520 he published his famous address An den
christlichen Adel deutscher Nation (Address to the Christian
Nobility of the German Nation), followed by a treatise De
captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium (A Prelude concerning
the Babylonian Captivity of the Church), which also attacked the
doctrinal system of the Church of Rome.
A papal
bull containing 41 theses was issued against him. He burned it
before a multitude of doctors, students, and citizens in
Wittenberg. He was excommunicated, and Charles V, Holy Roman
Emperor, convened the first Diet at Worms in 1521, before which
Luther was called to retract his teachings. Luther refused to
relent. An order was issued for the destruction of his books, and
he was put under the ban of the Empire. On his return from Worms he
was seized, at the instigation of the elector of Saxony, and lodged
(for his own protection) in the Wartburg, the elector's fortress.
During the year he spent there, he translated the Scriptures and
composed his cogent controversial treatise, "Refutation of the
Argument of Latomus'.
Civil
unrest called Luther back to Wittenberg in 1522. He rebuked the
unruly elements, and made a stand against lawlessness on the one
hand, and tyranny on the other. In the same year Luther published
his acrimonious reply to Henry VIII's attack on him in Assertio
septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum (1521) about the
nature of the seven sacraments.
A
divergence had gradually taken place also between the views of the
Humanist scholar Erasmus and Luther. There was an open breach in
1525, when Erasmus published De libero arbitrio (1524, Discourse on
Free Will), and Luther followed with De Servo arbitrio (Concerning
the Bondage of Will). In the same year he married Katherine von
Bora, a nun who had withdrawn from convent life.
In 1529
he engaged with the controversial question of transubstantiation in
the famous conference at Marburg with Zwingli and other Swiss
theologians. He obstinately maintained his view that Christ is
present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The drawing up of
his theological views in the Augsburg Confession (1530) by
Melanchthon, ably representing Luther at the Diet of Augsburg, marks
the culmination of the German Reformation.
Luther
died in Eisleben, and was buried at Wittenberg. Endowed with broad
human sympathies, massive energy, manly and affectionate simplicity,
and a rich, if sometimes coarse, humour, he was undoubtedly a
spiritual genius. His intuitions of divine truth were bold, vivid,
and penetrating, if not necessarily philosophical and comprehensive
and he possessed the power of kindling other souls with the fire of
his own convictions. His voluminous works include "Von den guten
Wercken" (1520,
Of Good
Works), and "Widder die hymelischen Propheten von den Bildern und
Sacrament" |
