Luther, Martin

German Christian church reformer, a founder of Protestantism. While he was a priest at the University of Wittenberg, he wrote an attack on the sale of indulgences (remissions of punishment for sin). The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V summoned him to the Diet (meeting of dignitaries of the Holy Roman Empire) of Worms in Germany, in 1521, where he refused to retract his objections. Originally intending reform, his protest led to schism, with the emergence, following the Confession of Augsburg in 1530 (a statement of the Protestant faith), of a new Protestant Church. Luther is regarded as the instigator of the Protestant revolution, and Lutheranism is now the predominant religion of many northern European countries, including Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. See also the Reformation: Lutheranism.

Luther was born in Eisleben, the son of a miner; he studied at the University of Erfurt, spent three years as a monk in the Augustinian convent there, and in 1507 was ordained priest. Shortly afterwards he attracted attention as a teacher and preacher at the University of Wittenberg.

On a trip to Rome in 1511, Luther had been horrified by the wealth and luxury of the Roman Catholic Church, compared to the poverty of the people in Germany. Further, his study of the Bible, particularly the books of the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, convinced him that good works and confession could not earn salvation, but that justification was by faith alone and was the gift of God. He came to believe that the church's teaching – that pilgrimages, relics, and penances could earn salvation – was wrong. When, 1516–17, the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel (c. 1465–1519) was sent round Germany selling indulgences (payments to secure remissions of punishment for sin) to raise funds for the rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, Luther was horrified that the church seemed to be trying to sell salvation to raise money for itself. On 31 October 1517 Luther nailed on the church door in Wittenberg a statement of ‘Ninety-five Theses’ attacking these practices and suggesting that religion was an inward relationship with God, and the following year he was summoned to Rome to defend his action. His reply was to attack the papal system even more strongly, and in 1520 he published his three greatest works. In the first, Address to the German Nobility, he attacked the authority of the pope and called on Germans to unite against papal exploitation and to reform the church. In the second, On Christian Liberty, he expounded the nature of Christian faith and argued that ‘the soul...is justified by faith alone, and not by any works’ – the doctrine that became the founding principle of Reformation theology. In the third, On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church, he rejected five of the seven contemporary sacraments and the doctrine of transubstantiation (the transformation of bread and water into the body and blood of Jesus during the Eucharist). When a papal bull (edict) was published against him, he publicly burned it.

At the Diet of Worms in 1521 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V demanded that he retract his objections – Luther's reply: ‘Here I stand’, marked the start of the Reformation. On his way home from Worms he was taken into ‘protective custody’ by the elector of Saxony in the castle of Wartburg. Originally intending reform, his protest led to a split in the church, the Augsburg Confession (1530) leading to the foundation of a new Protestant Church. Later Luther became estranged from the Dutch theologian Erasmus, who had formerly supported him in his attacks on papal authority, and engaged in violent controversies with political and religious opponents. After the Augsburg Confession, Luther gradually retired from the Protestant leadership. His translation of the scriptures is generally regarded as the beginning of modern German literature.