Martin Luther was born in November 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony. His parents were the miner Hans Luther and Margarita Lindenmann. Martinos, although he grew up with deprivations, as his family was very poor. He attended schools in Mansfeld, Magdeburg and Eisenach. Receiving the help of a wealthy widow, in 1501 he enrolled at the University of Erfurt to study philosophy.
When he was returning to the university from a visit to his father’s house one day in July 1505, a storm broke out. The lightnings so frightened the young student that he invoked Saint Anne to protect him, promising that he would become a monk if he survived the terrible storm unscathed. Returning to Erfurt, he announced to his relatives that he would become a monk, fulfilling the promise he had made. Afterwards, he went to a monastery of Augustinian monks, where he was immediately accepted. In 1507 he was ordained a priest and a little later he completed his doctoral studies in Theology. He soon gained control of several Augustinian monasteries and was elected rector of the Theological School in Wittenberg.
From the first years of his life as a monk, Martin Luther was tormented by questions related to his faith. He himself often wondered if there was any connection between his virtuous life on earth and the heavenly salvation of his soul. He spent endless hours in the library of his monastery, but without being able to give clear answers to the questions that tormented him. Influenced by the reference in the letter of the Apostle Paul “To the Romans”, that “the righteous man will gain eternal life through his faith”, as well as the teachings of St. Augustine, Luther came to the view that faith and not good works were the key to entering Paradise.
Of course, Luther was also concerned with other issues – most notably that of the abusive sale of pardons by the Catholic Church. In his time, after all, the number of voices condemning the cases of financial wrongdoing on the part of the heads of the Church in the West had increased. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the church of All Saints in Wittenberg. In this form he condemned the practice of selling forgiveness to the faithful on the part of the Church. He even distributed his Theses to believers in the area, inviting those who wished to question him to come and debate with him on this matter.
In the following years, Luther vehemently defended his views before his superiors in the hierarchy of the Augustinian order of monks. At first he did not wish to establish a new Church, but to reform the existing one. His dispute with the Vatican did not take long to reach great proportions. In the 1520’s he published treatises where he referred to a reform of the Catholic Church, which he now cultivated not only for pardons. It aimed, among other things, at freeing the German regions from the rigid doctrines and inaccessible institutions of the Vatican, which seemed increasingly distant from the faithful.
In January 1521 Pope Leo I excommunicated Luther, accusing him of being a heretic. Luther ignored the act of the Papal Church and threw the excommunication paper into the flames. At the urging of the Elector of Saxony Frederick III, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire invited Luther to attend the assembly of the Imperial Diet in the Rhineland city of Worms. On April 17 and 18, Luther expressed his views on the issues that had recently arisen in his relations with the Catholic Church. He asserted that “I cannot retract my positions, because I do not believe in the infallibility of the pope, nor in the infallibility of synods, because everyone knows that many times both popes and synods have erred and fallen into contradictions. I am convinced by the biblical arguments I have already mentioned, and I am completely united with the word of God.”
The Diet condemned his views, and in May 1521 the Edict of Worms was signed, by which he was branded a heretic and his writings forbidden to be read within the limits of the empire.
Column Editor: Myrto Katsigera, Vassilis Minakakis, Antigoni-Despina Poimenidou, Athanasios Syroplakis
