1483-1546. German Christian church reformer,
a founder of Protestantism. While he was a
priest at the University of Wittenberg, he
wrote an attack on the sale of indulgences
(remissions of punishment for sin) in 95
theses which he nailed to a church door 1517,
in defiance of papal condemnation. The Holy
Roman Emperor Charles V summoned him to the
Diet of Worms 1521, where he refused to
retract his objections. Originally intending
reform, his protest led to schism, with the
emergence, following the Augsburg Confession
1530, of a new Protestant church. Luther was
born in Eisleben, the son of a miner; he
studied at the University of Erfurt, spent
three years as a monk in the Augustinian
convent there, and in 1507 was ordained
priest. Shortly afterwards he attracted
attention as a teacher and preacher at the
University of Wittenberg; and in 1517, after
returning from a visit to Rome, he attained
nationwide celebrity for his denunciation of
the Dominican monk Johann Tetzel (1455-1519),
one of those sent out by the Pope to sell
indulgences as a means of raising funds for
the rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica in
Rome. On 31 Oct 1517, Luther nailed on the
church door in Wittenberg a statement of 95
theses concerning indulgences, and the
following year he was summoned to Rome to
defend his action. His reply was to attack
the papal system even more strongly, and in
1520 he publicly burned in Wittenberg the
papal bull that had been launched against
him. On his way home from the imperial Diet
of Worms he was taken into `protective
custody' by the elector of Saxony in the
castle of Wartburg. Later he became estranged
from the Dutch theologian Erasmus, who had
formerly supported him in his attacks on
papal authority, and engaged in violent
controversies with political and religious
opponents. After the Augsburg Confession
1530, Luther gradually retired from the
Protestant leadership. Formerly condemned by
communism, Luther had by the 1980s been
rehabilitated as a revolutionary socialist
hero, and was claimed as patron saint by both
East and West Germany.