Ninety-five Theses

• 1. Introduction

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  "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." That jingle echoed through German towns in 1517, a promise that money could spring a dead loved one from the fires between heaven and hell. The man who could not stomach it was Martin Luther, then a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg. His answer took the form of the Ninety-five Theses, a list of propositions written that year for an academic debate. They are now remembered as the spark of the Protestant Reformation. But Luther later said he had remained a "papist" when he wrote them. He claimed he never wanted them widely distributed. So how did a set of debating points, framed as questions for scholars rather than firm opinions, become the opening of a schism that split the Roman Catholic Church? And why did a quarrel Luther himself called insignificant carry his name across Germany within weeks?

• 2. The Economy Of Salvation

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  Purgatory sat at the center of it all, a place Catholics believed existed between heaven and hell. When Christians sinned and confessed, they were forgiven and spared eternal punishment in hell, yet they might still owe a temporal punishment. That debt could be paid through works of mercy in life, or worked off in purgatory after death. This was the economy of salvation, and indulgences were its currency. An indulgence, which could be understood in the sense of "kindness", lessened the temporal punishment owed. Popes held the power to grant plenary indulgences, which gave complete satisfaction for any remaining punishment, and these were bought on behalf of people thought to be in purgatory. Under abuse of the system, clergy profited by selling indulgences while the pope gave official sanction in exchange for a fee. The doctrine rested on what was called the treasury of merit, a store of grace the church claimed it could distribute to the faithful.

• 3. Voices Before Luther

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  John Wycliffe had already denied that the pope held any jurisdiction over purgatory, long before Wittenberg heard of indulgences. Jan Hus and his followers went further, advocating a harsher system of penance in which indulgences were simply not available. Late in the 15th century, Johannes von Wesel attacked indulgences as well, and theologians at the University of Paris criticized the coin-in-the-coffer saying. The objections were not only spiritual. Political rulers watched local economies suffer when money for indulgences drained out of a territory. Some demanded a share of the proceeds, and others banned indulgences outright, as Duke George did in Luther's own Electoral Saxony. Into this landscape stepped a single, lucrative campaign that would test every one of these grievances at once.

• 4. The Tetzel Campaign

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  In 1515, Pope Leo X granted a plenary indulgence to finance the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It would apply to almost any sin, including adultery and theft, and all other indulgence preaching was to halt for the eight years it was offered. Johann Tetzel was commissioned in 1517 to preach and sell it, and his preachers carried strict instructions, far more laudatory than earlier campaigns. Because sales had been banned in Wittenberg and other Saxon cities, Tetzel worked the nearby towns instead, drawing Wittenbergers to travel out and buy. They returned to Luther's parish with a startling claim. They no longer needed to repent or change their lives to be forgiven of sin. Luther had preached against the abuse of indulgences as early as 1514, warning that they cheapened grace. Now his own parishioners were proof of the danger he feared.

• 5. Repentance Versus Receipt

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  "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent,' he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." That is the first thesis, and it sets the whole argument in motion. Luther treated repentance as the Christian's inner struggle with sin, not the external machinery of sacramental confession. The pope, whom he called the Vicar of Christ on earth, could release people only from punishments the church itself had imposed, not the guilt of sin. On purgatory he turned skeptical and blunt. Nothing definite could be said about the spiritual state of souls there, and he denied the pope held any power over them. He attacked the idea that payment instantly released a loved one, calling it an encouragement to sinful greed. The truly repentant Christian, he argued, has already been forgiven both penalty and guilt, and so has already received the only benefit an indulgence could ever provide. Worse, indulgences make true repentance harder, teaching people to avoid the very punishment that genuine sorrow desires.

• 6. The True Treasure

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  "Christians are to be taught..." Luther repeats this phrase as he lays out how the faithful should be instructed. Giving to the poor, he insisted, is incomparably more important than buying an indulgence, and buying one instead of giving invites God's wrath. In a striking turn he took the pope's side, saying that if the pope knew what was preached in his name, he would rather St. Peter's Basilica burn down than be "built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep". Then he struck at the foundation, the doctrine of the treasury of merit. The true treasure of the church, he wrote, is the gospel of Jesus Christ, a treasure often hated because it makes "the first last", echoing Matthew 19:30 and 20:16. He played on the image of nets, contrasting the gospel that catches wealthy people with indulgences that merely catch the wealth of men. He branded as blasphemy the claim that the indulgence cross with the papal arms was as worthy as the cross of Christ. He even relayed his congregants' sharpest objection, why the rich pope did not simply empty purgatory, or pay for the basilica himself.

• 7. Letter Or Door

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  On the 31st of October 1517, Luther sent a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz, under whose authority the indulgences were sold. The tone was loyal, even deferential. Luther assumed Albert had no idea what was being preached in his name, and enclosed some theses so the archbishop could see the uncertainty surrounding the doctrine. He did not condemn indulgences outright, nor the sermons themselves, which he had not heard firsthand. The famous image of a hammer at the church door is far less certain. Philip Melanchthon, who first mentioned the posting, named only the door of All Saints' Church and dated it to the 31st of October. Yet that conflicts with Luther's own statements that he raised his objections through proper channels rather than inciting a public quarrel. He may have posted the Theses in mid-November, or not on the door at all. Andreas Karlstadt had posted his own, more radical theses there in April 1517, when the relics were on display, a gesture some thought provocative. No copy of a Wittenberg printing of the Ninety-five Theses survives, unsurprising for a document whose importance no one yet recognized.

• 8. Out Of His Hands

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  By the end of November, Albert had the letter and the Theses, and asked theologians at the University of Mainz for their opinion before forwarding the matter to Rome. There Luther was immediately seen as a threat. Sylvester Mazzolini wrote A Dialogue against Martin Luther's Presumptuous Theses, fixing not on indulgences but on Luther's questioning of papal authority. Tetzel called for Luther to be burnt for heresy and had Konrad Wimpina write 106 counter-theses; when 800 copies reached Wittenberg, students seized them from the bookseller and burned them. Johann Eck, once Luther's friend, attacked him in the Obelisks, named for the marks used to flag heretical passages, and Luther fired back with the Asterisks. Frightened the situation was slipping away, Luther published a short German Sermon on Indulgences and Grace, his first widely successful work, reprinted twenty times. In October 1518 he faced Thomas Cajetan at Augsburg, who pressed him on the 58th thesis, which contradicted the bull Unigenitus promulgated by Clement VI in 1343. Luther refused to recant. As early as 1527, he and his friends raised a glass of beer to the "trampling out of indulgences". On the 31st of October 2017, the 500th anniversary, became a national public holiday across Germany, marking a debate Luther insisted he had only meant for scholars.