Martin Luther, excommunicated on this day in 1521, took on the then-greatest power in Heaven and Earth, the Roman Catholic Church. He’d been a devoted cleric for decades, but the over-the-top, carnival-like selling of indulgences in Germany, among other things, was too much for him to bear (“You can get your beloved mother out of Purgatory for only 1,500 Thalers. You want her out, don’t you? Well, don’t you?”) He nailed his complaints, the Ninety-five Theses, to the door of the Cathedral at Wittenberg, making the obscure monk the single biggest problem on Pope Leo X’s gold filigreed dinner plate. Using the cathedral’s door wasn’t a big deal; it had functioned as a community bulletin board for years. Having the theses translated from Latin to German and distributed around the country was a big deal, however. The Pope’s right to issue indulgences was a matter of canon law for Rome, but the significant profit center for His Holiness mattered more. ML was temporarily down, but not out - in fact, he up-ended the entire Western World. There was, in fact, a lot of major league freaky-deakiness to this influencer, which I now reveal.
© 2024 John Oliver
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