This week marked the anniversary of a pivotal moment in history, touching off a schism that saw massive social, political and religious turmoil.
October 31st, 1517: Martin Luther brought Halloween to the Vatican a few centuries early when he sent his 95 Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz, an impassioned argument against the ability of the Pope to forgive sins. 500 years later, we know that his fiery disputation would go on to trigger a schism that would drastically reorder the established political order, further splinter Christian orthodoxy and serve as the intellectual bedrock upon which numerous conflicts would be fought. Today, French Canadian identity stems in part from Luther's Reformation, and Catholic-Protestant tensions would colour consequential policies in several countries in Europe and beyond.
Martin Luther’s life is fairly well-known, but why did a seemingly mundane theological dispute about indulges trigger a conflagration that would splinter Christian Europe in two? Some in the intervening years have portrayed Luther as a crusader against the corruption and largess of the Catholic Church, but at its core, Luther's issue with the sale of indulges was hardly political. A theologian, he believed that the Pope only had the authority to offer reprieve from punishment instituted by the church itself; that in matters of sin, repentance and absolution a sinner was entirely at the mercy of God himself. In a time where the Church required significant funds to finance its various works, the sale of indulgences represented a very lucrative revenue stream. To have a well-regarded religious scholar and monk dispute the fundamental ability of the Pope to assure passage into heaven was a direct threat the Church could ill-afford.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that Luther was the singular origin of the events that followed, but instead it is helpful to look at Luther's Theses as being the match which ignited a powder keg which had been laying dormant for centuries. Luther himself later wrote that the issue of indulgences would be rendered insignificant in light of the controversies that followed, and that he at the time hardly expected his writings to cause an outright break with Catholic orthodoxy. It would be the Church's efforts to first silence and then discredit him which triggered further doctrinal fissures between the Church and Luther's supporters. Others elsewhere in Europe seized upon the Vatican's momentarily diminished credibility to raise their own complaints with Catholic beliefs, giving rise to a raft of other Protestant strains of Christianity, their doctrinal differences worthy of an entire field of study.
There is a tendency in the study of history to (rightly) diminish the role of individual actors in history, but the various Reformation movements are perhaps unique in that they were not the accidental result of a natural evolution in Christian theology; the figureheads of each movement usually staked their very being to the legitimacy of their interpretation of Christian doctrine. Facing excommunication and potentially death, Martin Luther would tell Holy Roman Emperor Charles V "I cannot and will not recant anything, since to act against one's conscience is neither safe nor right."
If anything, the Protestant Reformation impresses upon those who study it the central role matters of religion played and continues to play in much of our history. We have Catholic schools in Ontario because French Canadians viewed Catholicism as an integral part of their identity; during the 1960 Democratic primary, future President John F. Kennedy would see his Catholic faith become a legitimate campaign issue in overwhelmingly Protestant West Virginia. Throughout recorded history religion has been used as a means of coercion, cohesion, to legitimize and to demonize; its institutions have both colluded with and antagonized governments. Knowing this, maybe you'll see the echoes of the Reformation in the world around you today.