Martin Luther

Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, the second son of Hans Luder, a copper miner, and his wife Margarethe. His father aimed to make him a lawyer, and Luther entered Erfurt's law faculty after completing the humanities, but in 1505, after a vow made during a thunderstorm, he abandoned the law and entered the Augustinian friars, against his family's wishes. The shift was driven, by his own later account, by an intense personal anxiety about sin and salvation. As friar, priest and from 1508 professor at the new University of Wittenberg, Luther worked closely on the biblical text, especially Paul's Letter to the Romans. His reinterpretation of "the righteous shall live by faith"—that human beings are justified not by an accumulation of meritorious works but by trust in God's grace—became the theological core of the Reformation. On 31 October 1517 he posted, or sent in a letter, his Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg, and the printing press carried them across the German-speaking world within weeks. Summoned by the papal court and then before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521, Luther refused to recant, declaring "Here I stand, I can do no other," and was placed under imperial ban. Sheltered in Wartburg Castle by Elector Frederick of Saxony, he produced a German translation of the New Testament in about eleven weeks. Making scripture accessible in the vernacular contributed both to the formation of modern German and to the institutional independence of the Protestant churches. Luther went on to reshape worship, catechism and hymnody, ended monastic vows and married the former nun Katharina von Bora. He supported the princes in suppressing the Peasants' War of 1525, and late in life wrote viciously anti-Jewish tracts such as "On the Jews and Their Lies" (1543), texts later cited by twentieth-century antisemites and now treated as a dark part of his legacy. He died in Eisleben on 18 February 1546.