Martin Luther (November 10, 1483-February 18, 1546) was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, and was renowned for his enduring literary contribution of translating the Bible into the German language.
He became an Augustinian friar and in 1507 was ordained. In 1510 he visited Rome, where he was shocked by the worldliness.
He received his doctorate of divinity and in 1512 was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Wittenberg, where he was promoted to the position of district vicar.
In 1452, Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople, cutting off Europe’s land routes east to India and China. This motivated Columbus to seek a westward sea route, sailing from Spain in 1492. Then, in 1497, Vasco de Gama left Portugal and sailed around South Africa to India.
Greek scholars fleeing the Turkish invasion of the Byzantine Empire arrived in Europe, carrying their Greek art, architecture, and literature, beginning the Renaissance. They also brought their Greek Old and New Testament Scriptures, laying the foundation for the Reformation.
A notable theologian was Dutch priest Desiderius Erasmus (1460-1526), who published the first Greek-Latin translation of the New Testament in 1516, Novum Instrumentum omne.
He corresponded with Henry VIII’s Catholic Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and with an Augustinian monk in Germany, Martin Luther. Erasmus differed with Luther, preferring to reform the Church from within rather than leaving it.
Roland Herbert Bainton recorded in Here I Stand: A life of Martin Luther, 1950, that after studying the Scriptures, Luther wrote:
<I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant …> 1483ML001
He continued:
<Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement “The just shall live by faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through sheer grace and mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took a new meaning, and whereas before “the justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven …> 1483ML002
Luther concluded:
<If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and over-flowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.> 1483ML003
Martin Luther preached daily, and grew immensely popular through his exposition of the Holy Scriptures in the common language. After objecting to the methods Johann Tetzel employed to sell indulgences, Luther posted his 95 Theses, or debate questions on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, October 31, 1517. This began the Reformation.
For this he was fiercely attacked, especially by Johann Eck.
On April 18, 1521, the 34-year-old Martin Luther was summoned to stand trial before the most powerful king of that era, 21-year-old Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. He ruled “the empire on which the sun never sets,” spanning nearly 2 million square miles, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire in Europe from Germany to northern Italy, Austrian lands, Burgundian Low Countries, and the southern Italian kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, as well as colonies in America and the Caribbean. The Philippines were named after his son, King Philip II.
At Luther’s trial, called Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521, Charles dismissed Luther’s points as “an argument between monks” and ordered him to recant without having had his theses addressed.
As recorded in Luther’s Works: Career of the Reformer III, when ordered to renounce his views, Luther declared:
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Luther’s Collected Works recorded his closing line as,
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Declared outside the protection of the law, Martin Luther was kidnapped and hidden by Frederick III of Saxony in the Wartburg castle. There he translated the New Testament into the German language in just six months.
He wrote:
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As the Reformation spread, it unintentionally fueled an uprising called the German Peasants’ War in 1524. Mobs of poor peasants threatened the aristocratic ruling class. The revolt was put down with over 100,000 peasants slaughtered.
In 1525 he married a former nun and together they had six children.
Meanwhile, in 1527, Charles V’s unruly troops sacked Rome “raping, killing, burning, stealing, the like had not been seen since the Vandals,” and imprisoned Pope Clement VII for six months.
This was the same Pope who refused to annul the marriage of Charles V’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon, and Henry VIII, resulting in Henry’s breaking from Rome to start the Church of England.
Charles V used gold from the New World to fight the Turkish Ottoman expansion into Europe.
Among his many works, Martin Luther wrote:
<I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.> 1483ML007
Martin Luther is credited with writing:
<Where there are no Christians, or perverse and false Christians, it would be well for the authorities to allow them, like heathens, to put away their wives, and to take others, in order that they may not, with their discordant lives, have two hells, both here and there. But let them know that by their divorce they cease to be Christians, and become heathens, and are in the state of damnation.> 1483ML008
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A famous quote paraphrasing Luther’s views was from a novel about him written by the Anglican author Elizabeth Rundle Charles titled The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family (Thomas Nelson, 1864):
<If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that one point.> 1483ML010
In 1529, Martin Luther wrote his hymn, A Mighty Fortress (Ein ‘Feste Burg):
<A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.> 1483ML011
Martin Luther wrote in his Table Talk, 1569:
<Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but-more frequently than not-struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.> 1483ML012
Martin Luther remarked:
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In 1529, Muslim Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, with an army of 120,000 laid siege to Vienna, Austria. Torrential rains caused 10,000 of his supply camels to slip in the mud and break their legs. Unsuccessful in sending suicide bombers at the gates and tunneling under the walls, Suleiman beheaded 4,000 Christian hostages and left.
In 1532, he attacked Vienna again but was turned back.
Martin Luther first mentioned “the Turks” in his 1518 Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, as revealed by Robert O. Smith, Doctoral Fellow, Baylor University, in “Luther, the Turks, and Islam” (Currents in Theology and Mission, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 10/1/07). As recorded in Luther’s Works -American Edition, 55 volumes (Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955-1986), vol. 46:170-171, Martin Luther wrote:
<The Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God … If the Turk's god, the devil, is not beaten first, there is reason to fear that the Turk will not be so easy to beat…Christian weapons and power must do it … [The fight against the Turks] must begin with repentance, and we must reform our lives, or we shall fight in vain. [The Church should] drive men to repentance by showing our great and numberless sins and our ingratitude, by which we have earned God’s wrath and disfavor, so that He justly gives us into the hands of the devil and the Turk.> 1483ML014
In his Preface to the Book of Revelations, written in 1530, Martin Luther wrote that the “second woe” was:
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In his work, On War Against the Turk (1529), Martin Luther wrote:
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In Luther’s Works, 3:121-122, Martin Luther wrote:
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In his War Sermon Against the Turk, (1529), Martin Luther stated:
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James M. Kittleson, in Luther the Reformer: The Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986, p. 220), wrote that Archduke Ferdinand, under authority of Emperor Charles V, called for the Second Diet of Speyer in 1529:
<With Vienna under siege, the Diet was to discuss both the Turkish threat and the religious controversy together. Ferdinand declared that the fact that the Turks were advancing up the Danube had much to do with God’s anger over the existence of heretics within the empire. Both Turks and Luther were to be dealt with summarily.> 1483ML019
Eric W. Gritisch wrote in Martin-God’s Court Jester: Luther in Retrospect (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983, p. 69-70):
<Afraid of losing the much-needed support of the German princes for the struggle against the Turkish threat from the south, Emperor Charles V agreed to a truce between Protestant and Catholic territories in Nuremberg in 1532 …Thus the Lutheran movement was, for the first time, officially tolerated and could enjoy a place in the political sun of the Holy Roman Empire.> 1483ML020
In 1534, Suleiman the Magnificent led his Ottoman Turkish Sunni Muslims to conquer the Shi’a Muslims of Persia (Iran) and annexed most of the Middle East and huge areas of North Africa, including Barbary States of Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
As the Protestant Reformation was spreading in Europe, King Charles V of Spain, head of the Holy Roman Empire, fought Suleiman’s ships from North Africa which were raiding Spain’s coast.
In 1535, Charles won a victory against the Muslims at Tunis. Like the political disunity in 1442 in the Byzantine Empire, where Demetrius allied himself with Muslim Sultan Murat II against his brother Constantine XI, France, in 1536, allied itself with Muslim Sultan Suleiman against Spain’s Charles V.
France again allied itself with the Muslim Ottomans against Spain in 1542. In response, Charles V allied himself in 1543 with England’s Henry VIII and together they forced France to sign the Truce of Crepy-en-aonnois.
Nevertheless, Charles V was pressured to sign a humiliating treaty with the Ottomans. Muslim attacks continued against Spain from Muslim Barbary pirates of North Africa, resulting in the Muslim Ottoman Empire gaining naval dominance of the Mediterranean Sea.
Charles V presided over the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which began the Counter- Reformation to bring Protestant countries back under the Catholic Church. He oversaw the Spanish colonization of the Americas, yielding to the pleadings of the priest Bartolome’ de Las Casas to outlaw enslavement of native Americans.
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1483ML001. Roland Herbert Bainton, Here I Stand: A life of Martin Luther, 1950.
1483ML002. Roland Herbert Bainton, Here I Stand: A life of Martin Luther, 1950.
1483ML003. Roland Herbert Bainton, Here I Stand: A life of Martin Luther, 1950.
1483ML004. Martin Luther response at the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521, Luther’s Works: Career of the Reformer III.
1483ML005. Martin Luther, April 18, 1521, in his famous speech at the Diet of Worms. John Bartlett, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 155.
1483ML006. Martin Luther, Statement. William Neil, Ph.D., D.D., Concise Dictionary of Religious Quotations (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974). p. 9, No. 14.
1483ML007. Martin Luther, Statement. Robert Flood, The Rebirth of America (Philadelphia: Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986), p. 127.
1483ML008. Martin Luther, Statement. Ed Erlangen, Luther’s Werke, Vol. 51, p. 37. Larry Christenson, The Christian Family (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 1970), p. 25.
1483ML009. Martin Luther, Statement. Tryon Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thoughts-A Cyclopedia of Quotations (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1852; revised and enlarged by C.H. Catrevas, Ralph Emerson Browns and Jonathan Edwards [descendent, along with Tryon, of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), president of Princeton], 1891; The Standard Book Company, 1955, 1963), p. 88.
1483ML010. Martin Luther, Statement. Gary DeMar, God and Government-A Biblical and Historical Study, (Atlanta, GA: American Vision Press,1984), Vol. 1, p. viii. Elizabeth Rundle Charles titled The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family (Thomas Nelson, 1864). https://creation.com/battle-quote-not-luther
1483ML011. Martin Luther, 1529, in his famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress (Ein ‘Feste Burg). John Bartlett, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 156.
1483ML012. Martin Luther, 1569, in his Table Talk, 353. John Bartlett, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 156.
1483ML013. Martin Luther, Statement. Bless Your Heart (series II) (Eden Prairie, MN: Heartland Samplers, Inc., 1990), 4.8.
1483ML014. Martin Luther, in his 1518 Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, as revealed by Robert O. Smith, Doctoral Fellow, Baylor University, in “Luther, the Turks, and Islam” (Currents in Theology and Mission, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 10/1/07). Luther’s Works -American Edition, 55 volumes (Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955-1986), vol. 46:170- 171.
1483ML015. Martin Luther, 1530, in his Preface to the Book of Revelations.
1483ML016. Martin Luther, 1529, in his work, On War Against the Turk.
1483ML017. Martin Luther. Luther’s Works, 3:121-122.
1483ML018. Martin Luther, 1529, in his War Sermon Against the Turk. (Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Schriften, 65 vols. Weimar: H. Bohlau, 1883) 30:2, 195, cited in George W. Forell, Faith Active in Love: An Investigation of the Principles Underlying Luther’s Social Ethics, NY: American Press, 1954, p. 174).
1483ML019. Martin Luther. James M. Kittleson, in Luther the Reformer: The Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986, p. 220), regarding Archduke Ferdinand, under authority of Emperor Charles V, calling for the Second Diet of Speyer, 1529.
1483ML020. Martin Luther. Eric W. Gritisch, Martin-God’s Court Jester: Luther in Retrospect (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983, p. 69-70). Martin Luther. William J. Federer, What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur’an-A History of Islam & the United States (St. Louis, MO: Amerisearch, Inc., 2009, p. 133).
This post originally appeared at https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/martin-luther-november-10-1483-february-18-1546