The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences were written by Martin Luther
in 1517 and are widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The
disputation protests against clerical abuses, especially nepotism, simony, usury, pluralism,
and the sale of indulgences.
Background Luther's Ninety-Five Theses centers on practices
within the Catholic Church regarding baptism and absolution. Significantly, the Theses
reject the validity of indulgences. They also view with great cynicism the practice of indulgences
being sold, and thus the penance for sin representing a financial transaction rather than genuine
contrition. Luther argues that the sale of indulgences was a gross violation of the original
intention of confession and penance, and that Christians were being falsely told that they
could find absolution through the purchase of indulgences.
All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Saxony, in the Holy Roman Empire, where the Ninety-Five
Theses famously appeared, held one of Europe's largest collections of holy relics. These
had been piously collected by Frederick III of Saxony. At that time, pious veneration
of relics supposedly allowed the viewer to receive relief from temporal punishment for
sins in purgatory. By 1520, Frederick had over 19,000 relics, purportedly "including
vials of the milk of the Virgin Mary, straws from the manger [of Jesus], and the body of
one of the innocents massacred by King Herod." As part of a fund-raising campaign commissioned
by Pope Leo X to finance the renovation of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, Johann Tetzel,
a Dominican priest, began the selling of indulgences in the German lands. Albert of Mainz, the
Archbishop of Mainz in Germany, had borrowed heavily to pay for his high church rank and
was deeply in debt. He agreed to allow the sale of the indulgences in his territory in
exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Luther was apparently not aware of this. Even though
Luther's prince, Frederick III, and the prince of the neighboring territory, George, Duke
of Saxony, forbade the sale thereof in their respective lands, people in Wittenberg traveled
to purchase them. When these people came to confession, they presented their plenary indulgences
for which they paid, claiming they no longer had to repent of their sins, since the document
promised to forgive all their sins. Luther was outraged that they had paid money for
what was theirs by right as a free gift from God. He felt compelled to expose the fraud
that was being sold to the people. This exposure was to take place in the form of a public
scholarly debate at the University of Wittenberg. The Ninety-Five Theses outlined the items
to be discussed and issued the challenge to any and all comers.
Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in
the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also attested as 'into heaven'] springs."
He insisted that since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences
absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians,
he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.
Initial dissemination
On 31 October 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on
the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, according to university custom.
On the same day, Luther sent a hand-written copy, joined with honorable comments, to the
archbishop Albert of Mainz and Magdeburg, who was in charge of the indulgence sales,
and to the bishop of Brandenburg, the superior of Luther at the time. He put in his letter
a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,"
which became known as The Ninety-Five Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no
intention of challenging the church but saw his dispute as a scholarly objection to church
actions, and the voice of the letter is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire." Hillerbrand
writes that there is nevertheless an undertone of confrontation and dispute in several of
the theses, especially in Thesis 86, which poses the question: "Why does the pope, whose
wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of
Saint Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"
Within 2 weeks, copies of the Theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout
Europe. In January 1518 Christoph von Scheurl and other friends of Luther translated the
Ninety-Five Theses from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied them, making the
controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press.
Reaction On 15 June 1520, Pope Leo X issued a rebuttal
to Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, a papal encyclical titled Exsurge Domine, from its opening words.
This document outlined the Magisterium of the Church's findings of where the pope believed
Luther had erred. As early as 29 October 1521, the chapel at
Wittenberg began to turn away from private Masses. In 1522, much of the city began celebrating
Lutheran services instead of Roman Catholic services. Luther's popularity grew rapidly,
mostly because the general Roman Catholic church members were dissatisfied with the
corruption and "worldly" desires and habits of the Roman Curia.
As the Reformation progressed, another element drew adherents to the ideas and practices
that gradually became known as Lutheranism. Luther and others had urged that greater balance
be observed in the attention given to the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures versus the
long-accepted sources of tradition and reason in the formation of doctrine. This concept,
called sola scriptura, offered a basis for querying the tight hold Catholic prelates
then had over both the content of faith and over potentially infringing corollary practices
like indulgential penance. As availability of the recently invented movable type printing
press spread, literacy also began to grow among a wider population that was increasingly
getting exposed to books and began to hear the Bible read aloud in the vernacular at
church. The laity, now able to read and examine traditional creedal content, was encouraged
to test its fidelity to Scriptures; the Bible began to take on the character of an ur-text
for faith; and a new emphasis on personal piety resulted. This required a different
kind of internal balance between the new, wider accessibility of texts, and the need
for informed interpretation of the Scriptures: attendance at public preaching and lecturing
events grew. It also allowed individual ownership of a previously more contained theological
process, so that individuals found themselves more invested in understanding and living
out their faith. Placing his theses on a door as Luther did
was emblematic of the paradigmatic shift that took place throughout Europe, where matters
of the church became less an internal matter, and more open to extramural debate on issues
that had previously been taken as Papal-business only.
See also A Sermon on Indulgences and Grace
Andreas Karlstadt - another leader of the Protestant Reformation who in 1516 wrote a
series of 151 theses. The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards
References
Bibliography Erwin Iserloh, The Theses Were Not Posted:
Luther Between Reform and Reformation, trans. by Jared Wicks, S.J.
Palmer, R. R., A History of the Modern World ISBN 0-375-41398-7
External links Latin Wikisource has original text related
to this article: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum
The full text of The Ninety-Five Theses at Wikisource