Protection of Martin Luther
Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar whose spiritual director was Johann von Staupitz, was ordained to the priesthood in 1507, and on the following year, in 1508, he began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg, which was located in the Electorate of Saxony, i.e., inside the territory ruled by Prince-elector Frederick III. Therefore, Luther was a subject of the elector, by living at his domains.
Luther received two bachelor's degrees, one in biblical studies on 9 March 1508, and another in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology. On 21 October 1512, Luther was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg, succeeding von Staupitz as chair of theology. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg. In 1515, he was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia, which required him to visit and oversee eleven monasteries in his province.
From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, and on the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification—God's act of declaring a sinner righteous—by faith alone through God's grace. He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification", he writes, "is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness."
After a while, Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church; in particular, he disputed the view on indulgences. Luther attempted to resolve these differences amicably, first proposing an academic discussion of its practice and efficacy.
In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money in order to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Then, on 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albrecht von Brandenburg, protesting against the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses.
In 1520, Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce all of his writings, and when Luther refused to do so, excommunicated him in January 1521.
Then, to give him the right to a fair trial, Elector Frederick ensured that Martin Luther would be heard before the Diet of Worms in 1521; after Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw at the Diet, the elector also secured an exemption from the Edict of Worms for Saxony.
The Elector then protected Luther from the Pope's enforcement of the edict by faking a highway attack on Luther's way back to Wittenberg, abducting and then hiding him for several years at Wartburg Castle after the Diet of Worms.
Luther's disappearance during his return to Wittenberg was planned by Frederick III, who had him intercepted on his way home in the forest near Wittenberg by masked horsemen impersonating highway robbers. They escorted Luther to the security of the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach, where he remained disguised as "Junker Jörg".
Frederick protected Luther to safeguard the reputation of Saxony's University and to protect Saxony from external interference; since Saxony was a electorate for the imperial throne, neither the Popes nor the Habsburg emperors were willing to affect the imperial election by pursuing the matter against Frederick.
During his stay at Wartburg, which he referred to as "my Patmos", Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German and poured out doctrinal and polemical writings.
In the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and pilgrimages to doctrines at the heart of Church practice.
In On the Abrogation of the Private Mass, he condemned as idolatry the idea that the mass is a sacrifice, asserting instead that it is a gift, to be received with thanksgiving by the whole congregation. His essay On Confession, Whether the Pope has the Power to Require It rejected compulsory confession and encouraged private confession and absolution, since "every Christian is a confessor." In November, Luther wrote The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows. He assured monks and nuns that they could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win salvation.
