Louana rawls biography of martin luther

If you asked me for a single book, just one resource on the Reformation, this would be the one. He also gives positive attention to the diversities within Catholicism and its own internal reformation movements—with a final part dedicated to early extensions of Reformation, through movements like German louana rawls biography of martin luther.

And did I mention that Yale University Press does beautiful books? This book has received a lot of attention, and rightly so. In other words, the Reformation would never have happened without technology. A historian at Notre Dame, Professor Gregory gives us a sober and, depending on your point of viewsomber analysis of the legacy of Martin Luther for Christianity in the modern world.

Whether you view this more somber analysis of the legacy of Luther as a ultimately a good or a bad thing, these points need to be taken seriously and honestly. Nunes Eerdmans, This is a stunning fact—and a powerful way to introduce the significance and timeliness of this book. Marty Paraclete Press, The eminent scholar Martin Marty wrote this book to commemorate the th year anniversary of the Reformation.

The book is quite brief—and for that reason alone may be worth picking up and giving it a quick read. The rest of the book, though, explores the ways that many Catholics, Lutherans, and others have attempted to regain some of the unity that was lost due to the Reformation fissures. The result is a brief but powerful devotional reflection on the possibility of restoring Christian unity across theological and historical divides.

Bainton is still the foremost biographer associated with Martin Luther and the Reformation. He claimed they had no scriptural basis and were merely conspiracies to keep Christians trapped within control of the church. He redefined penance to be a mutual assurance of divine forgiveness between Christians, and he argued for keeping only the traditional rites of baptism the ceremony in which a person is blessed as a Christian and communion.

At this time, there was considerable controversy among reformers about communion. Many debated whether there was a real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine that was partaken during the ritual. Luther believed that the body and blood of Christ were combined with the substance of the bread and wine known as consubstantiationinstead of the wine and bread being transformed into the actual body and blood known as transubstantiation.

In Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen The freedom of the ChristianLuther held that the true Christian did good works not because of heavenly reward, but out of spontaneous gratitude to God for salvation. In Pope Leo issued Exsurge domine, the bull decree written by Eck. The bull threatened Luther with excommunication if he did not recant his writings.

On January 3,the pope issued another bull, titled Decet Romanum Pontifecem It is fitting that the popeand Luther was officially excommunicated from the church. Charles knew that the pope had objected to his election, and he wanted to gain favor with the church. On the other hand, Charles did not want to offend Frederick the Wise, Luther's supporter, or any other German prince.

The emperor needed their help in his war against France see " Italian Wars dominate Renaissance" Chapter 2. Wanting to gain as much German favor as possible, Charles agreed to Frederick's request that Luther be given a hearing at the Imperial Diet of Worms. Luther arrived in Worms and began studying with Jewish scholars to improve his Hebrew.

He was working on a translation of the Old Testamentand he found that translating a Hebrew text directly to German would be more accurate than using a Greek translation as his master source. Luther was a firm believer in using original sources, a major theme of Renaissance humanism. When Luther presented himself before the council at Worms at 4 P.

What he encountered was not what he had expected. Luther was led to a room in which his collected writings were piled on a table. He was ordered to renounce them. He asked for time to consider, then left the room. He returned the next day to appear before Charles V. Luther gave this response to the council's command to renounce his views: "Unless I am proved wrong by the testimony of Scripture or by evident reason I am bound in conscience and held fast to the Word of God.

Therefore I cannot and will not retract anything, for it is neither safe nor salutary to act against one's conscience. God help me. One of Luther's students described his teacher at this period: "He was a man of middle stature, with a voice which combined sharpness and softness: it was soft in tone, sharp in the enunciation of syllables, words, and sentences.

He spoke neither too quickly nor too slowly, but at an even pace, without hesitation, and very clearly… If even the fiercest enemies of the Gospel had been among his hearers, they would have confessed from the force of what they heard, that they had witnessed, not a man, but a spirit. Charles was unmoved by Luther's statements, seeing them as a threat to the stability of the church.

Nevertheless, Charles waited to condemn Luther publicly until after he had secured enough financial support to continue his military campaigns against the French and the Ottomans. Charles had been advised that Luther was extremely popular with the German masses, as well as with scholars throughout Europe, so he knew he had to bide his time. Finally, after receiving assurances from his allies, Charles issued an edict on May 26,that declared Luther to be an outlaw.

The emperor forbade any of his subjects from helping Luther or his supporters. Luther, however, firmly believed that he was neither a troublemaker nor a heretic since he had never opposed indulgences or the papacy by using force.

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Instead, he stated that it was God's Word—meaning the scriptures—which Luther had taught, preached, and wrote about that actually weakened the papacy. Occupied by threats from the Turks, the French, and rebels against his rule in Spain, Charles was unable to stop agents of Frederick the Wise from secretly taking Luther to Wartburg Castle. Luther hid there for almost a year, disguised as Knight George.

Luther stayed in the castle and wrote many of the works that would define his career. In his treatise De votis monasticis On monastic vowshe claimed that vows taken by Catholic monks and nuns were not binding, and he questioned the value of monks living in solitude and contemplation. In solitude, Luther thought, the Christian was open to attacks from Satan, the Christian concept of evil.

The first edition appeared in September with prefaces explaining each book according to Luther's own views. His Old Testament translation was completed a decade later. Luther's German Bible became one of the influences on the modern German language. Unrest in Wittenberg made Luther return there in March The discontent was caused by men, like Luther's former debate partner Andreas von Karlstadt, who had pushed to the limit Luther's idea that all religious authority came from the Bible.

Since the Bible states that God condemned image worship and called upon prophets to destroy these objects, many people saw themselves as prophets called by God to destroy Catholic crucifixes carved images of the crucified Christ on the cross and statues of saints. The resulting violence and destruction threatened social order. Supported by Frederick, Luther decided to put a stop to it.

Luther convinced Karlstadt that the Reformation would best be served by gradual and reasoned opposition to the church. Karlstadt, who had publicly declared that things were moving too slowly, heeded Luther's advice. Luther calmed down the mood at Wittenberg and returned to Wartburg Castle. In MarchKarlstadt began to once again spread a more radical doctrine than Luther, and Luther was forced to return to Wittenberg.

Luther, realizing that his message had been well received but badly interpreted, decided to start his own church. Although Luther spoke out strongly against the corruptions and practices of the Catholic Church, he did not believe in louana rawls biography of martin luther as a solution to the problem. Luther wanted order to be maintained, both within society and within the church, and he did not advocate violent methods to achieve peace and harmony.

Luther was alarmed that some wanted to use the sword to spread reform. Men like Franz von Sickingen — disagreed with Luther. Sickingen started the rebellion called the Knights' Revolt. Under the system of feudalism during the Middle Agesknights were warriors who swore allegiance to lords and kings and followed a strict code of honor called chivalry; see "Feudalism" in Chapter 1.

Knighthood continued in many parts of Europe during the Renaissance and Reformation period. Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten —a humanist knight who later helped write the Letters of the Obscure Men, were both lower nobles of the Holy Roman Empire. Like many nobles, they believed that the papacy should be under the control of the Holy Roman Emperor.

They had watched helplessly as their land holdings declined in the economic turbulence of early sixteenth-century Europe. As the cost of living continued to increase due to inflation, many nobles began to attack merchants' caravans. Some of these robber knights, including Sickingen, started hiring themselves out as mercenaries soldiers paid to fight in wars.

In Emperor Maximilian I declared Sickingen to be an outlaw. Maximilian was afraid to punish his friends in the lower nobility and was unwilling to lose his military experts, so he did not take proper action to support his declaration. Sickingen's military campaign was a dismal failure, and the Spanish government did. When Luther returned to Wittenberg from Wartburg Castle in Decemberhis message had already begun to take hold in religious practice.

Greek scholar and Renaissance humanist Philip Melanchthon performed the Lord's Supper by distributing the ceremonial wine and bread to the laity unordained church members. Melanchthon administered the ceremony in the spirit of Luther's concept of consubstantiation. Luther believed that, according to Scripture, the body and blood of Jesus of Nazareth called the Christ are present in the bread and wine taken during the service.

This view was similar to the Roman Catholic teaching, known as transubstantiation, which holds that the bread and wine are transformed when held aloft by the priest during the service. The difference between Luther's theory and the Catholic teaching was that Luther refused to accept the role of the priest in changing the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

He felt that only the world of God, as found in the Scripture, mad this change possible. The liturgy of Melanchthon's ceremony was similar to that of the traditional Catholic ceremony, but Melanchthon performed the first distinctly Protestant service. Other supporters of Luther, however, took more radical and experimental views.

Seeing themselves as prophets, the three began preaching on the streets of Zwickau. While Luther did not deny that God could speak through common men, the fact that the three were proven to be alcoholics and liars did not help Luther's message. Luther spoke out against the Zwickau "prophets," and reemphasized his message about scriptural authority.

This event, coupled with his disagreements with Karlstadt, led to Luther forming his own church. He was forced to send many of his troops home without payment. Later that year, Sickingen was introduced to the ideas of Luther by Hutten.

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Moved by Luther's religious beliefs, Sickingen attempted to present his sword a token of a knight' oath of loyalty to Luther at the Diet of Worms. Although he politely declined the gesture, Luther did dedicate a later writing to Sickingen. Luther's refusal of the sword did not curb Sickingen's own religious zeal. He was determined to spread the gospel the word of God delivered by Jesus Christ by waging war.

In Sickingen attacked the western German city of Trier, including the home of the local archbishop. The military governor known as a margravePhilip of Hesse known as Philip the Magnanimous; —was a strong supporter of Luther and did not agree with Sickingen's methods. Seeing violence as a threat to property and spirituality, Philip joined with the archbishop of Trier in seeking assistance from the Swabian League.

The league was an alliance of cities, princes, knights, and church officials in Swabia, a region in southwestern Germany. It had been formed in the fourteenth century to protect trade and maintain peace in the region. Sickingen and his forces were driven out of the city and toward their own homes. One by one, the castles, or homes, of Sickingen and other knights fell under attacks from Swabian League forces.

Sickingen was killed in when his castle was destroyed. Hutten fled to Zurich, Switzerland, where he died of syphilis a contagious disease spread by sexual contact or inherited from an infected parent. In the summer of the Swabian League continued to attack the castles of the robber knights, destroying a total of thirty castles. The actions of the Swabian League would serve as a rehearsal for the much more destructive Peasants' War of the mids.

A reform-minded native of the Low CountriesAdrian VI was the only non-Italian pope elected in the sixteenth century. The next non-Italian pope was John Paul of Poland, who was elected in Although Adrian had supported Luther's excommunication, Adrian agreed with some of Luther's charges against the Catholic Church. Adrian appointed a Reform Commission and indicated he would act on their recommendations.

After only twenty months as pope, Adrian died of the plague, and with him died the hopes of peaceful reform within the Catholic Church. Many Catholics celebrated the death of Adrian, fearing the changes he had been poised to introduce. Clement VII —; reigned —34a Medici, was named as Adrian's successor, but he never had the courage to implement reform in the church.

During the reign of Adrian VI and the early years of Clement's reign, a series of three Imperial Diets were held in Nuremberg, Germany, between and One of the central aims of the Diets was to discuss Luther and how to enforce the Edict of Worms declaring Luther an outlaw. The issue soon became secondary to the impending threat of the Ottomans.

The city of Belgrade present-day capital of Serbia was an important fortress city in the Balkans countries in eastern Europe and had been sacked in When the island of Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean was overtaken by the Ottomans, attention shifted from Luther to the potential fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Ferdinand found it difficult to persuade the German princes and nobles to take definitive measures against Luther and his followers.

Inwhen Ferdinand insisted upon action, officials at the diet produced a document citing grievances against the church. A general council was called, and it issued an order stating that Catholic traditions would be observed until a church council met and made a final decision. Without a firm action or decree against them, Luther and his followers were able to continue winning supporters.

The city was therefore essentially the center of the Holy Roman Empire.

Louana rawls biography of martin luther: Martin Luther King, Jr An

Nuremberg was also important to the humanist movement. A number of prominent humanistic thinkers lived there. Luther had visited the city twice inso many there had received early exposure to his ideas. The popularity of his message began to increase, and between and the city hired a number of church officials who had been Luther's students at Wittenberg.

As Lutheranism continued to become more popular, city officials saw a chance to break from the authority of the Catholic Church. Having been given full rights to decisions regarding the city's churches by Pope Leo X inNuremberg all but sealed its authority in religious matters by officially adopting Lutheranism in The city government already controlled the social aspects of life in Nuremberg and felt that control of the church was a logical next step.

Nuremberg's decision to adopt Lutheranism served to fan the flames of reform, which quickly spread across all of Europe. The German Peasants' War was the greatest uprising of early German history. The conflict involved most of south Germany and parts of central Germany. Its high point was from January to Junebut preliminary activity and aftershocks extended from May to July Until April the rebellion was not based on military action; it was more a form of social protest than a call to violent conflict.

Large gatherings and marches of commoners supported an armed boycott of clerical and lay lords. While there were scattered attacks on monasteries and castles, the aim was to acquire goods and money, not to kill or capture. To fully understand the German Peasants's War, the social, religious, and economic realities of the period have to be examined.

Most of the unrest was centered in the urbanized regions of the Holy Roman Empire, where a majority of the empire's food was grown. For years, noble landlords and clerics had been overworking and exploiting peasants who worked on farms, violating their rights and village customs. Artisans and common workers complained they were kept from markets of their choice by nobles and forced to sell food to their overlords at extremely low prices.

In areas of upper Germany, populations were rapidly increasing while crops had been failing for more than two decades. With barely enough food to feed the population, misery and frustration spread. While crops were failing in some areas, most of western Europe had been experiencing an economic upswing since This fact did little to improve the life of the common landowner, but it increased the wealth of the nobility.

A sharp division among the social classes quickly emerged. Landholding peasants controlled village government, dominated landless peasants, and subjugated common workers. In turn, however, the incomes of landholding peasants were reduced by landlords who collected rent, government officials who took taxes, and churchmen who expected tithes.

Peasants were allowed to hold land, but they could not own it. Money was kept by the clerics, aristocrats, and nobles. Peasant landowners were given certain rights and privileges, but they were tightly controlled by those at the top. At the bottom was the common worker, who barely had enough to feed his family and had no personal wealth.

As these injustices continued to mount, groups of peasant landowners across southern and central Germany began to unite in protest. The peasants had a number of complaints against the nobility. Local, self-ruled governments were rapidly being replaced by district officials. Towns and urban areas were being absorbed into larger territories and placed under the Holy Roman Empire.

Wishing to create uniform rule and custom, officials of the empire replaced local laws with Roman law. In some areas, the practice of serfdom was once again instituted. Serfdom was a part of feudalism, a social and economic system in the Middle Ageswhich required peasants to work all their lives for a landowner with no possibility of being freed see "Feudalism" in Chapter 1.

This change angered many peasants, who were also upset that noblemen were attempting to exclude them from hunting game in the local forests and meadows and from fishing in the local waterways. Selling game and fish was a traditional source of extra income for peasants, and the nobles' attempts to stop peasants from hunting and fishing directly affected the economic situation of many commoners.

Peasants were also subjected to additional labor by the aristocrats who owned the land, keeping many peasants from making additional money to feed their families. Others objected to the excessive rents charged to live on the aristocrats' lands, and to the arbitrary penalties for offenses not mentioned in the law. New taxes on wine, beer, milling, and the slaughtering of farm animals greatly angered the peasants, who were also expected to pay the church a tithe, even when crops had failed.

Overtaxed and overworked, underpaid and underfed, the peasants began to revolt. In the early s peasants staged armed uprisings against monasteries and castles. In the Black ForestUpper Swabia, and Alsace, attacks were made on monastic landlords, demonstrating the widespread anger toward tithes. Other uprisings, also centered on monastic orders, occurred in and On May 30, peasants in the Black Forest region rebelled against the overlord, claiming they would no longer provide feudal services or pay feudal dues.

In June laborers stopped working in the southern region of the Black Forest. Here the louana rawls biographies of martin luther were angered by the recent limits placed on local governmentand when the local ruler would not negotiate, peasant groups began to march through the Black Forest and called for rebellion. The movement soon began to gain support and increase in size.

The military phase of the Peasants' War, from April onward, was largely one-sided. Violence was usually squelched by the Swabian League and German princes. During this phase the rebel bands were successful in stealing the wealth of various monasteries, as well as destroying a number of castles belonging to aristocratic nobles. Some towns were forcibly occupied, but executions of nobles were extremely rare.

The battles were usually slaughters in which commoners were killed. In Maysix thousand people were killed in Frankenhausen, Thuringia; eighteen thousand were killed in Alsace. Limited peasant uprisings continued into the seventeenth century, but the main rebellion essentially ended in Many factors contributed to the violence of the German Peasants' War.

As already noted, anger toward the church and aristocratic nobles was central to the rebels' discontent. Several written works voiced these concerns and were adopted by the movement. The most significant were the Twelve Articles and the Federal Ordinance. The Twelve Articles were written in Marchone month before the armed uprisings took place. This work expressed an opposition to tithes, and the authors used scriptural references to support their argument.

The opening part of the Twelve Articles made the same point Luther had made years earlier, that any disorder resulting from the preaching of the gospel that is, Lutheran gospel should be blamed on those who resist it, not on those who preach it. According to this view, any violence or unrest that resulted from the Peasants' War was not the fault of the peasants.

Instead, those who refused to hear their complaints were responsible. The peasants believed they were charged by God to rebel and fight for their rights. In addition to the Twelve Articles, there were other Reformation pamphlets that called for an end to the tithe and demanded that parishes have the right to choose and dismiss pastors. They insisted that pastors preach the Scripture as written in the Bible and not as it is interpreted by church officials.

The Federal Ordinance was a more complicated document because there were so many different versions. Some of these versions expressed different ideas about how the existing social and political structures should be changed. In versions found in Upper Swabia and the Black Forest, the authors wanted self-governing groups, or confederations, of local communities "towns, villages, and rural regions" to be formed.

Such a political and louana rawls biography of martin luther organization was patterned on the Swiss Confederation of neighboring Switzerland see "Switzerland" in Chapter 4. Switzerland had grown in size and power by absorbing smaller neighboring confederations on its borders. Some Germans even hoped to break away from Germany completely and become part of the Swiss Confederation.

In this system, peasants who owned land would be able to participate in the local governmentessentially making them equal to the nobles and aristocrats who sat on the assemblies. It was unusual, but by no means unheard of, for peasants to participate in representative assemblies during this time. The rebels were not united under a common political goal; their ideas varied from region to region, and therefore there was not a united movement to change the political structure of Europe as a whole.

He nuances his positions on various issues as he faces challenges which his own Reformation theology generated. Thus, knowing what issues he is facing and when is important when reading him. The benchmark biography of Luther in English is the three volumes by the German historian, Martin Brecht. These look rather forbidding: nearly pages of text, excluding notes.

It was my first introduction to the Reformation and remains a favourite. Bainton was a radical thinker himself, not doctrinally sympathetic to Luther but rather emotionally so: he knew what it was like to be a beleaguered outside, a man at war with his times. Thus, he writes on Luther with considerable passion. A more recent short biography is that by the distinguished Lutheran historian, Martin Marty, in the Penguin Brief Lives series.

You can read the whole thing herewhich also includes recommended reading from Luther himself and by others on his theology. His writings changed the course of religious and cultural history in the West. At age five, Luther began his education at a local school where he learned reading, writing and Latin. Did you know? Legend says Martin Luther was inspired to launch the Protestant Reformation while seated comfortably on the chamber pot.

That cannot be confirmed, but in archeologists discovered Luther's lavatory, which was remarkably modern for its day, featuring a heated-floor system and a primitive drain. But Hans Luther had other plans for young Martin—he wanted him to become a lawyer—so he withdrew him from the school in Magdeburg and sent him to new school in Eisenach. Then, inLuther enrolled at the University of Erfurt, the premiere university in Germany at the time.

In July of that year, Luther got caught in a violent thunderstorm, in which a bolt of lightning nearly struck him down. He considered the incident a sign from God and vowed to become a monk if he survived the storm. The storm subsided, Luther emerged unscathed and, true to his promise, Luther turned his back on his study of the law days later on July 17, Instead, he entered an Augustinian monastery.

Luther began to live the spartan and rigorous life of a monk but did not abandon his studies. Between andLuther studied at the University of Erfurt and at a university in Wittenberg.