The Trial of Martin Luther

 

Historians have described it as the trial that led to the birth of the modern world.  Before the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Diet of Worms in the spring of 1521, as Luther biographer Roland H. Bainton noted, "the past and the future were met."  Martin Luther bravely defended his written attacks on orthodox Catholic beliefs and denied the power of Rome to determine what is right and wrong in matters of faith.  By holding steadfast to his interpretation of Scripture, Luther provided the impetus for the Reformation, a reform movement that would divide Europe into two regions, one Protestant and one Catholic, and that would set the scene for religious wars that would continue for more than a century, not ending until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.  

 

Martin Luther's long journey to Worms might be said to have begun in 1505 on a road near his home town of Erfurt in Saxony (now part of Germany), when a bolt of lightening knocked Luther to the ground.  Luther took the lightening to be a call from God, and--to the disappointment of his father, who hoped he would become a lawyer--, took vows at an Augustinian monastery to begin a profoundly Christian life.  Luther impressed his superiors at the Erfurt monastery.  By 1507, he was an ordained priest and had offered his first mass.  By 1508, he had earned a degree in Biblical studies from the University of Wittenberg and become an instructor at that Augustinian institution.  

 
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