This week at Harvard we watched a movie called Luther. It was back in the day when they all wore huge hat and had really long hair.In the movie he was a monk who did not like how the church of was saying you give us more and to get your friends and family out of hell. so he stared to wright these book that told want he thought and the king and the pope got really mad they wanted him dead and they burned all of his books and then all they did the important part of his life is when he was made the persist of this one church and then he stated to right his book and this got the people of hat town thunk and believing that this could really work so then they stared to tell people and it spread like wild fire then when he got married to a ex nun and they and 6 kids this is important cuz they were not supports to get married and not have kids. I think that he was a important part of the church today with out him we mite all be Catholic and we would have to follow the same rules that they had to bIn 1517, a dispute about who was entitled to a cut of the revenues generated by itinerant papal indulgence sellers provoked the controversy that led the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, to nail his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg. The upshot of Luther's theses was that Christians are saved by faith, and faith alone, and that no amount of works (including the purchase of indulgences) made any difference at all. A drastic enough view, but not one that was immediately perceived as having the ultimate consequences that it eventually did. The Pope, Leo X, was a fairly easy going fellow, not inclined to vigorously prosecute this first appearance of heresy. There were plenty of heterodox views in the air at the time, and he thought it could be worked out diplomatically.
As it turns out, it could not. Luther was not immediately burnt for a heretic; he was allowed to present his case in court and had a powerful effect on the populace. He also had a powerful patron and protector in the Elector of Saxony, who shielded him from the ecclesiastical authorities. In addition, the media explosion brought on by the printing press spread his message much further than it otherwise might have gone, and made him the focus for all sorts of religious, spiritual, political, and economic discontent. The right to read and interpret scripture lead to the throwing off of the chains of papal and ecclesiastical authority; and taking this to mean political and
economic freedom as well, there were widespread revolts among the German peasantry. This horrified Luther and many of the civil powers.
The deep belief that religious uniformity was essential for political and and social stability made heterodox opinions a potential act of treason. It was not the desire of the intellectual reformers to challenge civil authority, but it was a consequence. The German states were small political units: principalities, duchies, electorates, and so on, all theoretically owing loyalty to the Holy Roman Emperor as overlord, but most exercising a fairly independent course a lot of the time. As the leaders of these states made their choices for or against the new opinion, their populations went with them (like it or not). For many, the attractions of "nationalizing" church property was a powerful incentive to become a reformer. Political alliances were made and remade in the name of religion throughout the rest of the century. ( I got this from www.lepg.org/religion.htm)
