Martin Luther

The year 1483 certainly was not the best of times and arguably not the worst of times but it was a notable time in that the birth of one Martin Luther did occur and the re-birth of Christendom was not far away. Eisleben, Germany is noted as the birthplace of young Martin Luther just ten days into November. Germany at that time was a place of emperors, princes, princelings, nobles, lords and knights. A place once called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. A place that had no qualms with poverty or those who lived poverty’s reality, the peasants. One of the many odd things about young Martin’s Germany was the fact that the princes at that time were made up of archbishops and bishops who had been appointed by the pope (so much for separation of church and state). In 1483, Emperor Frederick III presided over what can be described as a violent and brutal Germany, a land that hosted torture and established a new class of people…the executioner. Debate over the death penalty was non-existent for even young Martin would grow up to support state executions as being divine punishment. Today’s electric chair seems humane compared to “the wheel”, “the stake”, or being boiled to death in oil or water, styles of execution that were a common place in young Martin’s time. Young Martin’s Germany was a lively and interesting place but everything except static. The fire of change was tiny but being kindled with embers from corrupt clerics, the destruction of the flat earth theory and the invention of the printing press were but a few. Change was emphatically in the wind.

Hans and Margarethe Luther had four boys with Martin being the second, and one of two to survive the dreaded plague. Hans went from laboring in copper and silver mines to later owning several small foundries. Despite the promotion, the Luther’s were still not far from basic peasantry, but young Martin did enjoy some of the better things life had to offer such as an education. Though he couldn’t escape the infrequent brutal beatings at the hands of his parents, he did at times play like the other kids. Martin enrolled in the University of Erfurt in the spring of 1501 with a solid primary and secondary education behind him, and he intended on studying law. Like most institutions of higher learning at that time, Erfurt concentrated on philosophy and that meant “thinking and reasoning”; one would say you...

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...Leo X called for a hearing in Rome but Martin argued it should be in Germany with German judges. His prince Frederick the Wise agreed and got the emperor to sign on. Ausborg would be host to the hearing though Rome preferred Martin be bound in chains, fetters and handcuffs and delivered there. Things went so bad at Ausborg, Martin ended stealing away at night to stagger back to Wittenberg, dazed and feeling alone. At Martins hearing, the Church stood strictly on its tradition and its assumed position of authority. Martin stood on scripture. While this was going on the people of Germany were watching and were stirred by the spirit of the debate. Martin stayed the course and things continued to heat up with the Roman Curia investigating and condemning him in 1520, and a year later excommunicating him. They summoned him to appear before Emperor Charles V at The Diet of Worms, and they expected him to recant his position. He didn’t. Upon his condemnation, his prince placed him in hiding at Wartburg castle where he would translate the New Testament from Greek to German and also go down in history as the progenitor of the Protestant Reform Movement. Christendom would forever be changed.