Martin Luther: Challenging Medieval Assumptions

In 2017, many people and institutions in Germany, the United States, and elsewhere celebrated the 500th anniversary of the day in 1517 when Martin Luther was said to have nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Born in 1483, less than a decade before Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492, Luther lived to see the religious configuration of Northern Europe transformed. Although Luther’s intent had only been to encourage reform within the Roman Catholic ChurchRoman Catholic Church, his actions sparked the Protestant Reformation. His intense study of the Bible had convinced him that individual human beings were meant to have greater access to knowledge and freedom of conscience than was allowed in the late Middle Ages. Excommunicated by the Pope in 1521, Luther lived with that ban until he died in 1546. To provide his countrymen with direct access to God’s word, Luther translated the Bible into German vernacular, which had a great impact on both the church and the German language. Although singing had long been the role of priests and monks, Luther wrote hymns and encouraged the congregation to sing. He insisted marriage was just as important a vocation as monasticism, creating a model for other reformers by marrying a former nun, advocating education for all children, and assuming that girls, along with boys, should be taught the catechism.