Martin Luther
Martin Luther, (1483-1546). German leader of the Protestant Reformation. The son of a miner, he became an Augustinian monk, was ordained as a priest (1507), and taught at the University of Wittenberg. In 1517 he launched an attack on the sale of Indulgences and nailed a list of his objections, known as the 95 theses, to the door of Wittenberg church. These criticisms found wide support in Germany and Luther gradually broadened his denunciation of abuses and certain traditional teachings of the Church. He defended his views before the Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms (1521). Despite attempts at reconciliation, the opposing sides grew further apart. Luther was ex-communicated for publicly burning a papal edict against him in 1521 and four years later married a former nun. After taking part in the drafting of the Augsburg Confession (1530), a statement of Lutheran beliefs, he gradually left the leadership of the Reformation to others. The most important of his many religious writings is his translation of the Bible, which established the German language in its modern form. Lutheranism is now the principal form of Protestantism in Germany and the national religion in the Scandinavian countries, with over 80 million members throughout the world.
