Martin Luther lived in a period that had a wide spread desire for reformation of the Christan Churhc and played the role in the development of Protestantism. Luther was born at Eislebenin Saxony. Since his father was a miner, it was a great distress on him to send Martin to school and then to the University of Erfurt. That is where he earned his master’s degree at the young age of twenty-one(Erikson, 39). Although his father wished him to study law, Martin, after being terribly frightened in a thunderstorm, vowed to become a Friar. He entered the onastery of the Augustinian friars at Erfurt and was ordained a priest(Erikson, 167).
He eventually earned a doctorate of theology. He grew disburbed by the growing abouve of indulgences. The cetrificate granted by the people in return for the payment of a fee to the church. It stated that the sould of a dead relative or a friend of the purchaser would have his time in purgatory reduced by many year’s or cancelled together. Also the person had to by an indulgence. This would allow them to receive their earthly penance, since no one knows that God’s ultimate punishment will be. The Catholic Church faith now has a doctrine to back the three principles of indulgences(Neil 18) (Underwood 345). he principles of indulgences first one that God mericful, but he also just.
Next, Chrust and hte saints, through their inifnite virtue, established a treasury of merits on which the church, through its special relationship with Christ and the saints, can draw. Third, the Church has the authority to grant sinners the spiritual benefits of those meirts(Underwood, 345). Luther idea spread began writing the Ninty-five Theses or arguments against indulgences. That he began posting them on the Wittenberg where he preached. He wanted the public to know that he was debating against important issue.
The Theses stated the simple folk believed that when they have bought the indulgence they have secured their salvation. They also, believed that if the money jingles in the box, souls are delievered from pungatory and all the sins will be foreign through a letter of indulgence(Neil, 21). Luther fears that urging people to seek escape from divine punishment through indulgences would lead them away from true sorrow for their sins and into a dangerous sense of false ecurity(Judith,21). Luther defined Protestantism as a theological issues. At first was to salvation.
The Catholic called salvation as attained through faith and good works. He said that salvation by the faith. He urged people to read the scriptures and reflect on the that reading. Luther agreed with Catholic teaching that Church conbsists of the entire community of Christan believers, but disagreed with the Church bein identified by the clergy(Boehmenr, 192). Luther was known on his theology he taught in his professional life. In Luther’s faith he was thought to he revolution and led against the vast organization of the Catholic Church.
He blieve that the Church, which wielded soom immense power over the whole western world, had imprisoned the gospel of God’s forgiveness in a rigid system of laws and rules and power of politics. He believed that people are justified solely throught the faith in God’s promise that Christ died for their salvation. In other words it shows that when sinful people trust the scriptural message the Christ died for their sins, Christ takes their place before God’s judgement seat and God finds them not quilty for Christ sake(Neil, 25).
Starting the Peasants’ War Luther had found great support and sympathy amongst the poor peasants, who were by far the largest class in Germany. They heard the oppression of freedom from every oppression by their landlords as well as oppression of the clergy. His ideas encouraged by the agitators who wanted to use his ideas. For political lends, he sympathized with the peasants and was openly critical of the wealthy rulers and landlords who often exploited them. The peasants’ demands for Chapter food and greater freedom became more insistent. Series of violent risings broke out and gathered force in many parts of the country.
Thousands of peasants armed themselves on monasteries, castles and prosperours farms. The surged through the countryside, living off the land, and killing, burning, plundering as they want. The peasants were disillusioned when they expected Luther to support them. He was so horrified about the prospect of a bloody revolution that he urged the rulers to crush the rebels without mercy. He believed that Christians ought to always obey against the state was always wrong and must be crushed(Neil, 43). Luther heard that monks were getting married, that they wouldn’t give them a wife, but he changed his mind.
That he could get married without the monks advising if he could get married. Luther helped a group of nine nuns to leave there convent and come to Wittenberg. Two years later all were married, but one named Katherine von Bora. He suggested that someone she might marry but she refused. At the age of forty-two and she was twenty-six. They both got married on June 1525.
The marriage stared off in a unromatinc and common sense beginning of what turn out to be a very happy marriage. His father came to the wedding party and forgive his son for going into a monastery in the first place and then for leaving it(pg 44). ey lived in part of Augustinian monastery at Wittenberg where Luther had been a Friar.
They had five children but his sixth child died when she was young and one of the five, Magdalena, died when she was fifteen. They also raised up eleven orphan brothers and sisters. There was always an endless stream of visitors. The house was so full of people and noise. Luther was known as not an easy person to live with. He was often moody and depressed and at other times gay and energetic. He was frequently ill. His wife found out he was a difficult patient to look after.
Katherine was the type that she was popular and unpleasant of cures of the day giving the patients cow’s dung or pig in wine. Luther really hated these remedies but he had to put up with them(45). The marriage lasted for a long time it was known as a good marriage. Luther was known as Lutheranism when he help grow out of Reformation a religious movement. Known because he used largely on the doctriens and his beliefs of reforming Germany. The teachings of Luther’s Reformation set the Lutherans apart from Christian Churches. They made them to have different shapes of historical and cultural forces(Booth, 94).
He made easy the peasants to live in different Scandinavian countries, that Lutheranism can be used as a state of religion under the governments own authority. It made it possible tha thte government to attempt to control doctrine or worship. At the end of Luther, Luther caught a very bad cold without any medicine to cure it. He died in 1546 because the cold developed that nobody could cure him, not even his wife(45). Luther will always be known as the person who reform the Catholic Church, went against indulgences by posting the Ninety-Five Theses on the Church. Also, helped the peasants to choose their own faith.