The German monk Martin Luther lived in a wealthy and luxurious family (Getty)

An Augustinian monk born in 1482 AD. His reforms established the current European political geography. He led the largest transformation ever in the history of the Western Church. He founded Protestantism, which is embraced by 500 million Christians in various parts of the world, and constitutes the most important pillars of politics in the major countries of the world. The Germans see in him the father of their nationalism and the initiator of the project. The first in the emergence of German as a literary language.

Birth and upbringing

Martin Hans Luther was born in the city of Eisleben in the province of Thuringia in central Germany on November 10, 1482 AD, to a rural family and an ambitious father who chose to work in the copper mining sector until he owned a number of its foundries.

Following the Catholic lifestyle, Martin's parents baptized their child early in St. Peter's Church, and he was named "Martin" because he was born on the night of the feast of Martin of Tours, one of the most famous saints in Gaul (he died in November 397 AD).

A number of Lutheran writings speak of a prosperous childhood that Martin lived among a luxurious bourgeois family, with a father who was a man of industry and wealth, and a mother who had property and wealth, while other writings depict him as a child full of complexes and contradictions due to a state of misery, poverty, deprivation, anxiety, grief, uncertainty, and fear of everything, with a pessimistic outlook. He was controlled by the cruelty and excessive violence he was subjected to at home and school, and misery in the arms of a mother haunted by fear of evil spirits, envy, and witchcraft.

Some accounts also say that he practiced begging until he became a professional, and this caused him cowardice, hesitation, and a view of Christ in terms of judgment as a harsh, frightening, and terrifying judge.

Scientific training and religious education

At the age of seven, Hans sent his son to Mansfield City School, where he learned Latin grammar, the Ten Commandments, some hymns and prayers, the creeds, rhetoric, logic, and history. During his pre-university studies, he also learned teachings about asceticism, austerity, humility, and monasticism, and he completed his secondary studies with distinction when he was 18 years old.

In May 1501 AD, Martin joined the University of Erfurt, where he studied philosophy with Professor Bodocus. He also studied grammar, logic, astronomy, geometry, metaphysics, music, history, and philosophy. Aristotle’s philosophy dominated these sciences and theological sciences, and he read the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventera, and others. .

He achieved great excellence and came in second place among 17 students. The university honored him in a memorable celebration and accepted him to study law to fulfill his father’s dream. His thirst for knowledge and his genius in the arts appeared to the point that his friends nicknamed him “Martin the Philosopher.”

Monument to Martin Luther (Shutterstock)

Monastic life

On July 2, 1505 AD, Martin Luther was faced with an event that changed the course of his life. He was exposed to a severe storm that shook the entire space around him. He felt death surrounding him from all sides when a tree fell in front of him from the intensity of the wind. He shouted, “Saint Anne, if you save me, I will become... A monk for the rest of my life."

Anna is the mother of the Virgin Mary, who was mentioned in the Holy Qur’an in Surah Al Imran, and the books of the New Testament, including the Gospels and letters, were excluded from her. She was mentioned only in canonical books of the second degree called the Apocrypha, specifically in the Epistle of James.

Martin entered the Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt and chose it from among 20 monasteries due to the strictness of its regime. He had to wake up every day at one in the morning, pray 7 times a day, be satisfied with one meal a day, and boycott meat, cheese, butter, and eggs for half the year. With fasting and staying up late, one must humiliate oneself and force it to be humble. The humiliating work of cleaning.

Luther devoted himself to the work and sports of the monastery with the enthusiasm of someone who only cares about mortifying the body in order to revive the soul and get rid of fears and obsessions in order to reach a state of psychological peace, but he rejected the sport of begging that the people of the monastery practiced, as he was exempted from it as every university student who joins the life of the monasteries.

There was something in the church laws that exempted Martin from continuing, as during the probation period he could review himself, but he remained until the monastery decided in April 1507 AD to ordain him as a priest who could lead the Mass and sponsor the miracle of transforming bread and wine into the body of the Lord, according to Catholic belief.

In the monastery, Martin Luther met with his teacher and spiritual guide, Stubbins. He was vicar general of all the Augustinian monasteries in Germany. He had a great impact on Luther’s life, especially in the spiritual aspect. He guided him and freed him from the perception that caused him great misery even while he was in the monastery.

Rome trip

Despite the anxiety and disorder that Stubbins noticed in Luther, the teacher found in his boy intelligence, an active mind, and a keen mind, so he took him to the Faculty of Theology at the University of Wittemberg to teach Aristotle’s philosophy in 1509 AD.

In the fall of 1510 AD, Professor Stubbins asked Martin to go to Rome to raise a complaint about the existence of some differences in the Augustinian monasteries regarding their union into one association.

Luther was happy with this opportunity, which took him to a holy place where the Pope - Christ's agent on earth and the successor of Saint Peter - lived. His dream was to find his salvation and comfort in the spot that kept the relics of the saints and their relics, so he began to go to churches, cemeteries, and holy places, asking to obtain the largest number of indulgences.

But he found something else. He found pictures and scenes that left him confused, facing questions and reviews. He saw the extravagance and luxury the monks and clergy lived in, and the priests frolicking in bliss as if they were rulers and princes and not teachers, missionaries, and servants of the church.

He also saw some drawings that the mind and heart are uncomfortable with. Whoever is established as a saint in the Church of John, his mother’s soul will emerge from purgatory and be relieved of his torment. But he did so while believing that his mother would not attain this result because she was still among the living. In front of the Church of Rome, he ascended 98 steps on the The holy ladder that Christ was said to have climbed to appear before Pilate, but his mother and father did not receive anything of what they expected.

In the monastery, Martin Luther met his teacher and spiritual guide Stubbins (Getty)

Indulgences and relics of saints

What most provoked Martin was the practice of selling indulgences. It is an idea in the Catholic Church, and it is a custom that goes back centuries before the Journey to Rome. Some church theorists saw that the saints performed good deeds that were sufficient for their salvation and exceeded their need, and they saw that these surplus deeds could In accordance with justice, it should be kept in the treasuries of the church to be given to those who need it by request in the form of indulgences.

Some prominent figures, such as Thomas Aquinas and Saint Bonaventure, wrote about this, and the Church granted a large number of these instruments to those who volunteered in the Crusades over a period of about two centuries between 1096 AD and 1291 AD.

This is accompanied by the doctrine of visiting the relics of saints. Some popes in Rome granted indulgences to those who visit the remains of saints and some of their belongings in their places. For this reason, King Frederick of Saxe strove to collect the largest number of relics of saints on his trip to Jerusalem (Jerusalem) in 1493 AD, one of which was one of the saint’s teeth. Jerome, 4 parts of John Chrysostom's body, 4 strands of the Virgin Mary's hair, and a piece of Jesus' scroll.

In 1509 AD, the number of relics of saints in Rome reached about 50,000 pieces, and in 1518 AD the number of relics reached enough to be exempt from purgatory for 127,799 years. The Church used this large wealth whenever it needed to raise money.

Luther returned from his trip with many questions that prompted him to review and contemplate until he arrived at the idea of ​​“the righteousness of God.” Indulgences are not a path to salvation. Rather, good deeds themselves are merely a means to attaining faith for which salvation is given as a reward. This idea developed until it later became one of the pillars. Fundamental to the Protestant faith.

The battle of the indulgences

In 1513 AD, Pope Leon Provinces of Europe.

With the torrent of money flowing to Rome, the English, Spanish, French and German rulers protested when they saw the campaigns of indulgences draining their money and endangering their economies for the sake of Rome. To calm the anger of these kings, the Pope entered into bargains with them, and the Germans were the least fortunate in his offers because they did not meet in a strong monarchy like others.

Some German states rejected the Pope's project, and this issue became a preoccupation with Martin Luther. He preached against it on October 31, 1516 AD. He also delivered a sermon in the spring of 1517 AD in which he said that repentance is the rejection of indulgences, objecting to forgiveness being accomplished in isolation from good deeds. Once the money was paid to the church without an admission of guilt.

At this time, the Dominican priest John Tetzel was active in the German states to promote indulgences, gathering the public and designing dramatic scenes about purgatory and hell, extracting money from the poor under pressure from the threat of bad fate and the miserable condition in which their relatives would live after death.

As indulgences were rejected in the states that were outside the control of Albert, Bishop of Mainz, a German ally of the Pope, the common people, fearful of the miserable fate and pitying their ancestors, would leave the states of Wittemberg and Saxe and cross the borders to buy indulgences.

Martin Luther, one of the reformers in the Renaissance era in Europe (Getty)

Issues of belief were subject to turmoil and chaos, and people would not finish listening to Tetzel’s sermons, so they would take out money to buy instruments laughing, and in this regard, the anger of the princes of the states that rejected the deal between the Pope of Rome and the Bishop of Mainz increased, and Martin’s anger increased until he broke out on the night of the celebration of All Saints’ Day on October 31/ October 1518 AD, he hung a paper containing 95 objections in Latin on the door of the Church of All Saints in Wittberg.

The choice of language and place indicates that Luther wanted to address his objections to the clergy, not the common people, but Albert did not care about the objections, and contented himself with sending them to the Pope of Rome without entering into a discussion with its author.

Neither the Bishop of Mainz nor Luther himself expected what happened. Dr. Martin's students carried the objections to their rooms and began translating them into German. Because the printing press was an amazing new invention at that time, the objections spread to all German states and neighboring regions, and became the talk of the people everywhere. A valley and a club.

There were signs of the coming battle. Objections to Luther’s protests preoccupied the clergy in more than one place. Tetzel asked the professors of the University of Frankfurt to study them. They announced that they contained 116 errors of belief. He then submitted a report to the Pope of Rome that Luther was a heretic who should be tried.

A report was also issued accusing Luther of saying that church authority is not infallible and that the Christian must return directly to the Bible and rely on the Holy Spirit himself. The voices of the Frankfurt Monastery preachers raised the need to sell indulgences and burn Martin Luther.

Luther tried to calm the situation, but the conflict reached its peak when Tetzel himself burned the 95 objections in front of the people, and Dr. Martin's students responded by burning indulgences.

Controversy and conflict grew in opposite directions. Martin Luther, for his part, explained his teachings in university lessons and church sermons, and his opponents at home and abroad rose against him, widening the gap between Rome on the one hand and the German leadership and masses on the one hand.

Luther explains to the monastery that he does not win the sympathy of the Dominicans, followers of Thomas Aquinas, but he wins more students and young supporters. Then he sends a letter to the Pope explaining his opinion and declaring his loyalty until he says, “I accept your voice as if it were the voice of Christ.”

But the official in charge of legal affairs in Rome says it explicitly: Whoever denies the Church the right to dispose of indulgences is considered a heretic, so the Pope issues an order for Martin Luther to appear in Rome to stand trial.

German nationalism

Martin Luther refused to be tried in Rome, so he wrote to the protector of King Frederick of Saxony.

Here the issue turned into a national issue when King Frederick, known as the Wise, refused to try Martin outside of Germany. Then he tried to convince Emperor Maximilian of this and to limit himself to a debate in Augsburg. The German masses read Martin Luther’s writings voraciously, and saw in them an emancipation from Rome’s control over funds in the name of indulgences, and the leaders The Germans saw in Luther's writings and the interaction of the masses with them an opportunity for national revival, while Rome did everything in its power to suppress the experience and impose its control. The conflict intensified and Frederick the Wise refused to hand over Luther and did not suppress his anger in the face of the representative of Rome and said that he did not need anyone to remind him of his duty as a Christian.

Then came the news of the death of Emperor Maximilian on January 11, 1519 AD, which served as a truce and an opportunity for Luther and the German leaders to gain greater power from the support of the masses at the beginning of the reign of the new Emperor, Charles V.

Martin Luther wrote a pamphlet entitled “To the Noble German Christian Nation,” in which he says: “The time of silence has passed and the time of speech has come,” and he called on the Germans to shake off foreign interference in their affairs. When the pamphlet was published in German in August 1520 AD, readers seized it until it ran out. 5000 copies in 6 days.

Martin Luther passed away and left behind a new Christian doctrine that is now embraced by more than 500 million around the world (Getty)

Declaring Martin Luther a heretic

Then the Pope of Rome issued a decree threatening Luther and all his followers with excommunication. Luther responded by inviting professors at the University of Wittemberg, friends, and students. Then he lit a big fire and burned in front of everyone the books of canon law and the Pope’s decree, thus declaring his independence from the Catholic Church. When the Pope received the news, he actually issued a decree. January 3, 1521 AD: An excommunication order was issued against Luther and his followers, declaring him a heretic outside the Church of Rome.

This announcement meant that Martin Luther would be tried to meet the fate of his predecessor, John Huss, by burning, but the efforts of Frederick the Wise succeeded in convincing the new Emperor Charles V to try Luther in Worms before the German Diet, not in Rome.

On April 2, 1521 AD, Luther began his journey to Worms. On his way, crowds came out and he delivered speeches in every city. A nation rallied around his cause, seeing in him its salvation. This presented a great challenge to Emperor Charles V, who attended the trial, and was certain that the shedding of Luther’s blood was a gateway to massive strife that threatened his rule. In its beginnings.

This is what Luther confirmed in his defense before a session whose hall was surrounded by German masses. Martin Luther did not back down from his adherence to resorting only to the Holy Scriptures and denounced the injustice of the papacy. After the trial, the Emperor issued a fixed-term security bond for Martin Luther, after which he would be tried and punished with him and his followers.

The imperial order seemed strict and satisfactory to the Pope, but it hinted at something dangerous, which Frederick understood, so he acted wisely. During Luther’s return to Wittemberg, five knights intercepted his carriage, kidnapped him, and disappeared in the middle of the dense forests. The news spread until his followers mourned him, cried, and prayed to God to grant them a monk like him to continue his journey.

In the darkness of the dense trees, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther stayed in the Alvartebug Castle under the name of the Knight George. His beard grew long and his hair grew, unlike the custom of Catholic priests in his time. He disappeared in the clothes of knights. In his retreat, he wrote sermons on a number of Sundays and holidays in the German language, and in the rising, rebellious evangelical spirit. In addition to sermons and letters explaining Reformed thought, then came the work that had the greatest impact on the development of evangelical thought, which was Luther’s translation of the New Testament into the German language.

Storms of change

But outside the castle, the storms of revolution and the winds of change were sweeping all the German provinces, accompanied by the national spirit. Mass was held in the German language, monks were getting married, pictures and statues were removed from Catholic churches, priestly vestments were disappearing, and the masses came out calling for democratic rule. Even Luther himself was surprised by these powerful waves. He was afraid that it would eat everything, then he wrote letters to calm down, and he saw no choice but to go out to Wittemberg at the beginning of March 1522 AD.

Martin Luther's writings were spreading like wildfire, as one of his books was sold out of 40,000 copies in 6 days. Luther's call for Christian freedom thrilled the hearts of the peasants who strongly desired freedom from the princely tithes and the church, and they supported their ideas with evidence from the Holy Bible, which Luther translated it into German in an easy way.

The change took the form of a political, economic, and national revolution. The doctrinal changes also took a revolutionary form with their symbolism in challenging the Church of Rome. Monks were forced to leave their monasteries, and children were forcibly prevented from being baptized. This rush alarmed Martin Luther himself, and he began to struggle in directions between the revolution against the Church of Rome and the efforts... In calming his companions such as Karlstadt, Thomas, and Clarius, and resisting their call for radical, violent, and rapid change, and at this time, the King of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, died on May 5, 1525 AD, in the absence of his beloved monk, distressed.

Peasants' revolution

The nationalist spirit among the Germans grew, the peasants' feeling of injustice increased, and the enthusiasm increased with the writings of Martin Luther in revolt against the princes and the Catholic Church until he said to them, "Your tyranny can no longer be tolerated, and the people's disgust for you has reached the limit." And the flames of burning flames raged in the sermons of his comrades. All of this ignited a great revolution that was overturned. To a dangerous civil war, the peasants are destroying palaces and fortresses, and their spiritual leaders say, "You will not have a decent life if one of these princes remains alive."

Once again, he was terrified by the destructive rush to violence, so he said to the princes, “Fight these peasants like rabid dogs.” The princes gathered after the surrender, organized their ranks, hired Italian and Spanish fighters, and killed the peasants in horrific ways and crushed them in horrific ways. He fell once again into the hands of Luther, and he regretted it. On his statement against the peasants whom he had provoked, but it was too late, the masses became disillusioned with him after they hated the oppressors against whom they revolted with him.

This revolution did not subside and the civil war did not end until a large number of churches in Germany had accepted Lutheran principles, and Luther had become a national leader in whom the people believed and who were feared by the princes, a number of whom embraced his call for change. Germany was then divided between Lutheran and Catholic churches.

Marriage of a priest and a nun

Calls for reform and change became the slogan of the era, and they moved every nerve in society, and in the Nemich Monastery in Saxony, nuns found in the writings of Martin Luther a hope of getting rid of the injustice that had befallen them from families that imposed on them a monastic life in order to get rid of their share in the inheritance.

Luther intervened and attached some of them to their families, and worked to enroll some of them in work, and he married one of them, Catherine of Burra, on June 13, 1525 AD, in a reversal of what he had decided before, who refused to marry because he was being pursued as a heretic threatened with death. This revolutionary, reformist marriage raised objections from Catholics and among Reformists too, but in the end he succeeded, settled down, and produced children.

The calls for civil wars subsided and the atmosphere calmed down, so Martin Luther began tours with his companions Spalatine and Melanchthon in 1527 AD and 1529 AD to visit the churches that had embraced the principles of reform. He discovered that the rapid spread of his reform call in the churches of Germany had left him with a great burden in providing leaders and teachers capable of explaining the evangelical visions, and so he wrote Two books are “The Fundamentals of the Detailed Faith” and “The Fundamentals of the Brief Faith” in the German language. These two books have been widely disseminated among the people.

Declaration of Protestantism

In light of the rapid growth in acceptance of the Lutheran reform throughout the German provinces, the efforts of the princes of the Catholic provinces in the war against it increased. They met in the German Diet and issued resolutions banning Luther’s calls in the Catholic provinces, preventing the establishment of any Lutheran church in any area where there was a Catholic church, and unleashing the Catholics in Publicity in Lutheran church areas.

In the face of these decisions, the princes of the North and the princes of 14 provinces in the South met and announced their protest against these decisions and raised the phrase “We protest.” That is why the people of the Lutheran mission were called Protestants.

When the external conflicts subsided, Charles V wanted to pay attention to the internal German problem and end the division, so he called for a council at the level of the nation and the church attended by Catholics and Protestants. The council was held in Augsburg on April 8, 1530 AD in the absence of Martin Luther, and the Protestants made many concessions, but the council He did not reach any agreement, so Charles V rejected the position of the Lutherans, and wrote to the Pope, “Only violence will benefit.” He gave the Protestants until April 15 to withdraw their position, so their delegation withdrew and returned to Wittemberg unharmed. They became absorbed in their call, and began to gather together in defense of it. They issued a mutual defense treaty in 1537 AD.

Luther also engaged in writing, preaching, and traveling to Protestant churches. He believed that the duty of teaching the principles of the Reformation was greater than working to expand the spread of Islam. For years after the Council of Augsburg in 1530, he had no choice but to spread his teachings, despite the illnesses he was suffering from.

On January 13, 1546 AD, he made a trip from his home in Wittemberg, at the end of which he arrived in Eisleben, his hometown on January 31, 1546 AD. He was active in preaching and communicating with the companions of the reformist mission, and he made a great effort in this despite his ill health and the harsh cold of the north in January. /January and February.

On February 16, he stayed at his headquarters as his illness became severe, and his followers visited him feeling that they were saying goodbye to him. At three in the morning on Thursday, February 18, 1546, Martin Luther died in the city where he was born and baptized.

Martin Luther's legacy

Martin Luther passed away and left behind a new Christian doctrine that is now embraced by more than 500 million around the world. It was characterized by revolutionary doctrines and ideas that objected to the Church of Rome, believed that the Pope could make mistakes, rejected indulgences, believed that pardoning the guilty was a gift from God, and relied on the Holy Bible. It interprets it directly and interprets it on the surface of the text. It sees the right of every Christian to read the book. It rejects referring to the laws of the councils. It permits prayer in local languages. It permits the marriage of monks. It sees the priesthood of all believers, which means rejecting the ecclesiastical organization of priests.

The totality of Protestant ideas goes back to the ideas of Martin Luther, although they were later divided into sects and churches grouped into 7 families. It is noted that they were all influenced by Islamic thought, especially the Zahiri doctrine that Ibn Hazm spread in Andalusia. Sheikh Amin Al-Khouli wrote a brief study on that and presented it to The Sixth World Religions Conference in Brussels in 1935, where he was the delegate of Al-Azhar.

Martin Luther's call and revolution were supported by a German nationalist spirit that found its strength in his thought and movement. He also provoked this spirit, as he called his ideas "our theology" and "German theology." His intellectual and revolutionary activities and his writings that spread throughout the provinces imposed the German language as the language of literature. .

The masses accepted his books, which he wrote in their colloquial language, to the point that they were sold in bookstores and food outlets. He used to say: We should not ask, as donkeys do, for the Latin letters to teach us how to speak German. Rather, we should ask the mothers in their homes and the children in their homes. The streets and the common people in the market, we must guide them in translation, and they will understand us and know that we are addressing them in German.

Martin Luther was not the first reformer in the Renaissance. Rather, he was preceded by a number of intellectuals and priests who were destined to be excommunicated by decision of the Pope and burned by order of the Emperor. However, conditions had matured during the years of Luther’s activity, until his ideas turned into a German national revolution that spread in Western Europe and waged conflicts. Violence with Catholicism reached its peak in the Thirty Years' War between 1618 AD and 1648 AD, which led to a decrease in the population of Germany by about 30%, and ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which approved Protestantism as a Christian doctrine, and led to the establishment of nation-states in Europe.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites