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Woodcut of an indulgence-seller in a church from a 1521 pamphlet Johann Tetzel's coffer, now on display at St. Nicholaus church in Jüterbog, Germany. Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg and town preacher, [3] wrote the Ninety-five Theses against the contemporary practice of the church with respect to indulgences.
Karlstadt, the dean of the Wittenberg theological faculty, felt that he had to defend Luther against Eck's critical commentary on the 95 Theses and so challenged Johann Eck, a professor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt, to a public debate concerning the doctrines of free will and grace.
The worldly excesses of the secular Renaissance church, epitomized by the era of Alexander VI (1492–1503), exploded in the Reformation under Pope Leo X (1513–1521), whose campaign to raise funds in the German states to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica by supporting sale of indulgences was a key impetus for Martin Luther's 95 Theses.
The sale of indulgences shown in A Question to a Mintmaker, woodcut by Jörg Breu the Elder of Augsburg, circa 1530. It wasn't until January 1518 that friends of Luther translated the 95 Theses from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press. [46]
Door of the Theses in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences (Latin: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum) are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Protestant Reformation, a schism in ...
Indulgences grant a degree of expiation of the punishments of purgatory due to sin. However, the misuse of indulgences within the Church largely contributed to Martin Luther writing his Ninety-five Theses. The main usage of the indulgences by Tetzel was to help fund and build the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
They advance Luther's positions against what he saw as abusive practices by preachers selling plenary indulgences, certificates believed to lessen punishment incurred for sin. Luther sent the Theses enclosed with a letter to Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg , on 31 October 1517, a date now considered to be the start of the Reformation and ...
28 theses [ edit ] The Heidelberg 28 theses were the basis of the disputation and represented a significant evolution from the 95 theses of the previous year from a simple dispute about the theology behind indulgences to a fuller, Augustinian theology of sovereign grace.