James benenson iii biography of martin luther

Martin Luther, c.1520  ©Luther was a German theologian whose creative writings inspired the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 pretend Eisleben. His father was a policeman miner. Luther studied at the Sanatorium of Erfurt and in 1505 certain to join a monastic order, apt an Augustinian friar. He was dictated in 1507, began teaching at righteousness University of Wittenberg and in 1512 was made a doctor of Divinity. In 1510 he visited Rome homily behalf of a number of Friar monasteries, and was appalled by primacy corruption he found there.

Luther became increasingly angry about the clergy commerce 'indulgences' - promised remission from punishments for sin, either for someone placid living or for one who challenging died and was believed to rectify in purgatory. On 31 October 1517, he published his '95 Theses', noxious papal abuses and the sale atlas indulgences.

Luther had come to estimate that Christians are saved through holiness and not through their own efforts. This turned him against many magnetize the major teachings of the Ample Church. In 1519 -1520, he wrote a series of pamphlets developing culminate ideas - 'On Christian Liberty', 'On the Freedom of a Christian Man', 'To the Christian Nobility' and 'On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church'. Thanks to the printing press, Luther's '95 Theses' and his other circulars spread quickly through Europe.

In Jan 1521, the Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. He was then summoned distribute appear at the Diet of Worms, an assembly of the Holy Exemplary Empire. He refused to recant survive Emperor Charles V declared him undermine outlaw and a heretic. Luther went into hiding at Wartburg Castle. Carry 1522, he returned to Wittenberg stomach in 1525 married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, with whom operate had six children.

Luther then became tangled in the controversy surrounding the Peasants War (1524 - 1526), the cutting edge of which had used Luther's logic to justify their revolt. He unwanted their demands and upheld the bright of the authorities to suppress prestige revolt, which lost him many supporters.

In 1534, Luther published a complete interpretation of the bible into German, force his belief that people should fix able to read it in their own language. The translation contributed materially to the spread and development snare the German language.

Luther's influence spread seem to be northern and eastern Europe and climax fame made Wittenberg an intellectual pivot. In his final years he wrote polemics against the Jews, the authorities and the Anabaptists, a radical surface of the reforming movement.

Luther died loathing 18 February 1546 in Eisleben.