Time Period

During the time period when this book was published, church and state were intertwined. The Catholic Church wielded considerable political power and wealth.  Bishops were appointed by the Pope in every country in Europe and they took orders from the Pope, not the King. According to the Catholic Church the Pope’s power was granted directly by God. The Pope had the power of excommunication -  a person would be cut off from the Church and this meant that when they died their soul would end up going to Hell. With this degree of political and spiritual power, the authority of the Pope seemed absolute and he had more power than any individual ruler.

Martin Luther's Journey 

Martin Luther (November 10, 1483- February 18, 1546,) was a Doctor of  Theology and a German monk of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine. On October 31, 1517, to express his outrage with the sale of indulgences -– licences which offered absolution of sins for money, he nailed a copy of his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ to the chapel door of the University of Wittenberg. This act is considered to be the spark that started the Reformation movement (Hillerbrand 2020).

In this early work, while his tone is more subservient – he also raises some provocative questions about the Pope,

“Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers”

– Martin Luther, Thesis 86, “Ninety-five Theses”, 1517 (Hillerbrand 2020)

 By summer 1518, the Catholic Church had summoned him to Rome for examination. Through intervention of Frederick III,  he was able to answer the summons at the Imperial Diet in the local German city of Augsburg. At this time , Fredrick was of vital importance to the Catholic Church given his influence on the vote of succession for the papacy and in financing the defense of Europe against the Ottoman Empire (Hillerbrand 2020).He fled Augsburg following papal instructions to have him apprehended and brought to Rome.

 On November 9, 1518, Pope Leo X issued the bull Cum postquam to reaffirm the authority of the Church on the matter of the indulgences. Luther’s doctrines were condemned and he agreed to stop participating in public debate. This did not halt the movement, as others took his place.

 Following a delay caused by the election of the New German emperor, the proceedings against Luther resumed in fall of 1519 and culminated in the papal bull issued by Pope Leo X on June 15, 1520, Exsurge Domine. This bull declared  41 unspecified sentences were “heretical, scandalous, offensive to pious ears”(Hillerbrand 2020). He was given 60 days to recant and to report this recantation back to Rome.

In response to this he released a tract called, Against the Execrable Bull of the Antichrist. This was a turning point in Luther’s dialogue with the Church and is among his first references to the Pope as the Antichrist. On the expiration date of the bull, December 10, 1520, Luther cancelled classes and marched with his students and threw a copy of the bull into a bonfire.

 Martin Luther was excommunicated from the church and declared a heretic by the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem on January 3, 1521. Normally this condemnation carried an automatic sentence of burning to be carried out by local government. Due to the political technicalities and fearful of the public unrest stirred by Luther’s ideas, it was decided that he would be allowed to have a public hearing.

 Martin Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms on April 17, 1521 before the Roman Emperor Charles Luther to acknowledge and refute the books published in his name. He acknowledged authorship of the books, but defiantly refused to recant his views and stated that his conscience was bounded by the Word of God. He said,  “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”(Hillerbrand 2020)

 He fled Worms on April 26 and on May 8, 1521 Emperor drew up the Edict of Worms. Luther and his followers were declared as political outlaws and his writings were to be burned (Bagchi 2016). Shortly after, he published this pamphlet Passional Christi und Antichrist.             

The powerful German monarch Frederick III of Saxony intervened and protected Martin Luther by secretly keeping him safe in Wartburg Castle. During this time, he worked on a translation of the Bible into German. Previously, Bibles were only in Latin which could only be read by a select few who could afford to be educated or were members of the clergy. This translation made the Word of God accessible to the public for the first time ever.

The Reformation was an agent of social change, playing a key role in changing the  religious and political outlook of the future.

“This ideological movement resulted ultimately in a social movement, in which persons not only sought the company of existing adherents, but attempted to win new followers to their cause” (Hanneman 1973).