NINETY-FIVE THESES OF MARTIN LUTHER

Author: Martin Luther
Original date and place of publication: 1517, Switzerland
Literary form: Theological tract

SUMMARY

Martin Luther, a German monk of the Augustinian order, was the founder of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. He was a doctor of divinity and town preacher of Wittenberg, where he taught theology at the university. A visit to Rome had convinced him of the decadence and corruption of the Catholic pope and clergy. In 1516, he began to question the efficacy of indulgences in a series of sermons.

In 16th-century Roman Catholic doctrine, the pope could transfer superfl uous merit accumulated by Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the saints to an individual sinner in order to remit temporal penalties for sin later to be suffered in purgatory. Such transfers of indulgences could benefi t both the living and the dead. Luther’s evangelical emphasis on the complete forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God through God’s grace alone led him to question the doctrine of indulgences and the pervasive ecclesiastical practice of selling them.

The following year, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk, hawked indulgences to pay a debt that Albert of Brandenburg had incurred to purchase the Bishopric of Mainz and to help pay for the new basilica of Saint Peter in Rome. Luther resolved to voice his pastoral concern about the spiritual dangers of indulgences as an obstacle to the preaching of true repentance and interior conversion.

On October 15, 1517, Luther challenged his academic colleagues to debate the subject. Luther issued his challenge in the traditional manner—by posting a placard written in Latin on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Luther’s notice contained his 95 theses on indulgences. To his surprise, the theses were circulated in Latin and German throughout  Germany and within a few weeks to much of Europe, unleashing a storm of controversy that was to lead to the Protestant Reformation.

In his Ninety-five Theses or"Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", Luther argued that the pope could remit only those penalties he had imposed himself and denied the pope’s authority to remit sin. Luther rejected the idea that the saints had superfl uous merits or that merit could be stored up for later use by others.

The pope has no control over the souls in purgatory, Luther asserted. “They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul fl ies out of purgatory.” If the pope does have such power, Luther asked, “why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of the holy love and the dire need of all the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?”

He branded indulgences as harmful because they gave believers a false sense of security. By implying that the payment of money could appease the wrath of God, the sale of indulgences impeded salvation by diverting charity and inducing complacency. “Christians should be taught that he who gives to the poor is better than he who receives a pardon. He who spends his money for indulgences instead of relieving want receives not the indulgence of the pope but the indignation of God.” Those who believe that their salvation is assured because they have indulgence letters will face eternal damnation, “together with their teachers,” who preach unchristian doctrine.

Luther objected to the church’s intent to raise money for a basilica by sale of indulgences. “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?” Luther asked. Luther believed that to repress by force the objections of the laity to the sale of indulgences, rather than resolving them reasonably, “is to expose the church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies and to make Christians unhappy.”

Luther’s theses were directed toward church reform. He did not see them as an attack on the pope’s authority or as the beginnings of a schism. But the church’s response to Luther’s proposals pushed him toward a more radical stance that led ultimately to a break with Rome and the founding of a new church.

CENSORSHIP HISTORY

At first Pope Leo X did not take serious notice of Luther’s theses, viewing them instead as a refl ection of the rivalry between Luther’s Augustinian order and the Dominicans, who were Luther’s most vociferous critics. But the theses, rapidly distributed in Germany, found active support among the peasantry and civil authorities, who objected to Rome’s siphoning of local funds. The hierarchy became convinced that the abuses of indulgences should be corrected and Luther silenced.

In 1518, the pope asked Hieronymus, bishop of Ascoli, to investigate Luther’s case. Luther was summoned to Rome to answer charges of heresy and contumacy, or insubordination. Frederick III, elector of Saxony, stepped in to demand that Luther’s hearing be held on German soil. When the hearing before the papal legate was transferred to Augsburg, where the imperial diet (the legislative assembly) was unsympathetic to papal claims, Luther refused to retract any of his theses. In a debate in Leipzig in 1519 with the German professor Johannes Eck, Luther argued that because the authority of the pope was of human origin, rather than rooted in divine right, he could be resisted when his edicts contravened the Scriptures.

Johannes Froben of Basel had published the Ninety-fi ve Theses in an edition with Luther’s sermons. In February 1519, Froben reported that only 10 copies were left and that no book from his presses had ever sold out so quickly. Taking full advantage of the new potential of the printing press, the book had been distributed not only in Germany, but in France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, England, and even in Rome. The same year, the theological faculties of the Universities of Louvain and Cologne ordered copies of the theses to be burned for heresy.

The pope appointed commissions to study Luther’s writings. On June 15, 1520, the pope proclaimed in the papal bull “Exsurge Domine,” “Rise up O Lord and judge thy cause. A wild boar has invaded thy vineyard.” The bull pronounced 41 errors of Luther as “heretical, or scandalous, or false, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds, or repugnant to Catholic truth, respectively.” In his preface the pope wrote, “Our pastoral offi ce can no longer tolerate the pestiferous virus of the following forty-one errors. . . . The books of Martin Luther which contain these errors are to be examined and burned. . . . Now therefore we give Martin sixty days in which to submit.” It was forbidden to print, distribute, read, possess, or quote any of Luther’s books, tracts, or sermons.

Then in August, October, and November of 1520, Luther published three revolutionary tracts that dramatically raised the stakes of his disagreement with the church: Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, which attacked the claim of papal authority over secular rulers; The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which rejected the priesthood and the sacraments; The Freedom of Christian Man, which reiterated his doctrine of justification by faith alone. The first edition of 4,000 copies of the Address sold out within a week. Riding the crest of a wave of public support, Luther in his sermons, debates, and writings proposed a radical alternative to the Catholic Church.

On October 10, the papal bull reached Luther in Germany. Luther wrote a stinging reply to the bull: Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist. “They say that some articles are heretical, some erroneous, some scandalous, some offensive,” Luther wrote. “The implication is that those which are heretical are not erroneous, those which are erroneous are not scandalous, and those which are scandalous are not offensive.” Calling on the pope to “renounce your diabolical blasphemy and audacious impiety,” he concluded, “It is better that I should die a thousand times than that I should retract one syllable of the condemned articles.”

Luther’s books were burned in Louvain and Liège during October and the following month in Cologne and Mainz. On December 10, 1520, Luther and his followers publicly burned the papal bull at Wittenberg, along with copies of canon law and the papal constitutions. “Since they have burned my books, I burn theirs,” Luther said. In January 1521, the pope issued a new bull, “Decet Romanum Pontificum,” which affirmed the excommunication of Luther and his followers and the burning of his works.

Luther’s enormous popularity, bolstered by his appeal to German nationalist objections to Roman intervention in their affairs, saved him from the fate of other heretics. Elector Frederick III of Saxony, Luther’s temporal ruler, refused to give him over for trial to Rome. The only power in Europe capable of suppressing Luther was the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, a devout Catholic determined to root out the heresy.

On April 18, 1521, Luther was called before the Diet of Worms. Before the emperor and the assembled princes of the empire he refused to recant or disown his writings. “Should I recant at this point,” he said, “I would open the door to more tyranny and impiety, and it will be all the worse should it appear that I had done so at the instance of the Holy Roman Empire.” He continued, “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

On May 26, 1521, Charles V decreed in the Edict of Worms that Luther was “a limb cut off from the Church of God, an obstinate schismatic and manifest heretic. . . . [N]o one is to harbor him. His followers are also to be condemned. His books are to be eradicated from the memory of man.” The edict included a Law of Printing, which prohibited printing, sale, possession, reading, or copying Luther’s work or any future works he might produce.

Though the emperor had persuaded most of the princes of Germany to sign the condemnation, few strongly supported it. Though the edict called for Luther’s arrest, his friends were able to harbor him at the castle in Wartburg of Elector Frederick III of Saxony. There he translated the New Testament into German and began a 10-year project to translate the entire Bible. He returned to Wittenberg in March 1522 at considerable risk and spent the rest of his life spreading his new gospel.

Censorship of Luther’s writing was pervasive throughout Europe. His works and those of his disciples were destroyed and banned in England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In 1524, the Diet of Nürnberg declared that “each prince in his own territory should enforce the Edict of Worms in so far as he might be able.” As the edict implied, it could not be enforced in most of northern Germany. Cities in southern Germany and elsewhere in northern Europe joined the Lutheran reform. “Lutheran books are for sale in the marketplace immediately beneath the edicts of the Emperor and the Pope who declare them to be prohibited.” a contemporary commented.

In 1555, Charles V signed the Peace of Augsburg, giving up further attempts to impose Catholicism on the Protestant princes. The peace allowed each prince to choose the religion of his state and declared that people could not be prevented from migrating to another region to practice their own religion. Lutheranism had taken hold.

Luther’s works remained on the Vatican’s "Index of Forbidden Book" until 1930. They were still prohibited, however, according to the church’s canon law barring Catholics under penalty of mortal sin from reading books “which propound or defend heresy or schism.”

By Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald and Dawn B.Sova in "120 Banned Books", second edition, Checkmark Books, New York, 2011, excerpts pp. 277-281. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.