31 Novermber 1517 is today celebrated as Reformation Day, when Martin Luther nailed on the door of the Castle Church his now famous Ninety-Five Theses. Yet the details of the events remain hazy. Even the door that tourists visit today at the Church cannot bear witness to the event since the original were burned down in a fire 1760, and replaced by the more secure metal one we see today. That Luther issued such a document, an academic exercise in fact, an invitation to those interested in debating the question of the indulgences—which he saw as an abuse—, whose sales, incidentally were banned from Wittenberg. It was written in Latin, the language of academia, not German. The document asks simply to debate on "the power and efficacy of indulgences," i.e., on the usefulness, if any, of the indulgences that were being offered for sale in the neighbouring principality. They were meant as an academic exercise, inviting all those interested in the subject to debate on it.
There was, therefore, no particular reason why Luther's name should be so spectacularly associated with the Reformation afterwards except perhaps for the law of unintended consequences. There were many other men, of whom it may be honestly said, were far better equipped in office, resources, ability and opportunity than Luther to forment a reformation, men committed to reform in the Church as a matter of personal commitment and calling. One could think, e.g., of Dean Colet of St Paul's, Erasmus of Amsterdam, or even Thomas More of London. Luther didn't. In 1517 he was a relative nobody, a teacher in a recently founded university (1502) without yet a reputation in a three-street city. Luther rather stumbled into it with absolutely no such intentions of reforming the Church at all. On the surface of it his 95-Theses were not much "reformative," and it is an open question whether if the Catholic Church had just let him be, and, in particular, if their theologians, like Cardinal Cajetan and Johann Eck, had been more gentle in their encounters with him, his call for debate may just died a quiet death, a non-event.
The fact remains, however, that the Church had to respond, for, in addition to posting the theses for debate Luther had also sent a copy of it to the Prince-Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg, Archbishop in the neighbouring city of Mainz. And Albrecht was a man with a very bad conscience, part of the story of how he came to be such an energetic and enthusiastic purveyor of the indulgences in Germany.
Albrecht was perhaps not as neferious in his greed as most of the popes were but he cared a great deal more for worldly gains than for the flocks in his care. He had been named Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1513, at the age of twenty-three (you can imagine for yourself how one gets appointed archbishop at that age. But that was not enough. He wanted more and the archibishopric of Mainz was open. Mainz was a prosperous city on the Rhine, its archbishopric the Primas Germaniae, the leading episcopal see in Germany, with a reputation going back to the highly revered St Boniface in the 8th Cent. The laws of the Church, however, does not permit a person to hold two such high offices at the same time. Albrecht needed only to win Pope Leo over. A substantial donation to the pope, who was then in bad need of funds for the completion of St Peter's in Rome, took care of the law. Albrecht took out a huge loan from Fuggers, the merchant-bankers in Augsburg for the pope. In return Leo extended the sales of indulgences to Germany which would be under Albrecht supervision; they would split the profit between them. Though Luther would not have then known it, the sales of indulgences in his backyard was, in fact, a huge pious racket.
However, forced to defend himself by their demand to recant of his views, he was forced to review his views afresh, he discovered that, embedded in those theses, there were so many seeds that were alien to biblical faith and their presence had been so central in corrupting the Church for all these centuries past. Because his responses were so public—facilititated, especially later, when his writings were translated into German and the printing press in Wittenberg—suddenly it opened the eyes of many people to them who had been gropping and asking what went wrong with the Church. In an unintended sort of way, then, the 95-Theses switched on theological lights Luther didn't realize were there and they spot-lighted the central issues that became the heart of the Reformation cause.
Further Reading & Resources:
☰ Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church Vol. VII. Modern Christianity. The German Reformation. "The Ninety-five Theses."
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