Martin Luther: Thunderstorm Vow, a Staged Kidnapping and 300,000 Pamphlets

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Caught in a lightning storm as a young man, Martin Luther vowed to become a monk if he survived. Raised in a family that managed copper smelting businesses, he joined the Augustinian Order but was haunted by his sinfulness, confessing for up to six hours at a time. Reading Augustine of Hippo and the Apostle Paul, he concluded that justification comes by faith alone, which set him against the sale of indulgences funding St. Peter's Basilica, and on October 31, 1517 he is said to have posted 95 theses, written in Latin as a call for internal reform, at the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

Pope Leo X moved carefully because Luther's protector, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, was an imperial elector. At Augsburg in 1518 Cardinal Thomas Cajetan saw that faith alone threatened the church's role as mediator, and in 1521 the Diet of Worms placed Luther under an imperial ban. Frederick staged his kidnapping on May 4, and as Knight George at the Wartburg he translated the New Testament into German. The printing press carried his pamphlets across Europe, while Zwingli and Calvin split the movement and mutinous imperial troops sacked Rome in 1527.

The Treasury of Merit let the pope apply the good deeds of Christ and the saints to shorten time in purgatory.
Between 1517 and 1520 he produced 30 treatises that sold an estimated 300,000 copies.
By 1530 some 10 million copies of reform writings circulated in Europe.
Cities with a printing press before 1500 were far more likely to turn Protestant by 1530.
The 1526 Diet of Speyer let princes choose the religion of their own realms.

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