Martin Luther and the Reformation The Reformation was born in the little states. Without them it could not have survived, nor could it have survived without the rivalry between Spain and France. Like the humanists, the Reformers were opposed to the cloister and were thoroughly committed to life in the world. The culture roughly described as humanist, and the Reformation, arose as papal vitality ebbed. Both movements were movements of emancipation, drawing their inspiration and their legitimacy from an earlier period. In their recasting of values, and their attempt to shape new views of man, the Humanists and Reformers were akin, but their visions of life and of human capacity and their sources of authority were quite different.
Martin Luther was born on November 12 1483. His father, Hans Luther, was a miner and his mother, Margaret Luther, worked at home. Martin was named after Saint Martin because he was born on the day of Saint Martin.
Martin Luther, commemorated on February 18 Evangel...
Luther Bible, 1534
English: On the Jews and Their Lies (old german: V...Martin was born in a small town in the mountains of Germany called Eisleben. When Martin was six months old his family packed their few pieces of furniture into a cart and went to live in a small house in Mansfeld, where Martin was raised. Martin had many brothers and sisters (the exact number is not mentioned in the book). Martin was always playing with the babies and helping his mother anyway he could.
Martin began school when he was seven years old. He went to a cathedral school a distance away from his home. At first Martin was carried by one of the older boys in his studies. He thought school would be a happy place, but he found out it wasn?t. Here a few boys had to sit in a dark, cold and dirty room, doing the bidding of a teacher who did not care whether the boys learned or not. ?The priests themselves did not like to teach?. They hired wandering university students to teach for them. The pay was so small it barely provided food for the teachers. Martin was 18 when he went to the University of Erfurt. His father was proud to be able to support his son in college. Hans did not want Martin to become a miner like he was, he wanted him to become a lawyer. Martin thought of the university as a good place to be, but he was lonely because he did not know any students.
During college, Martin decided to become a monk. He wrote a letter to his father telling him the news. His father was mad and disgusted with Martin. Hans told Martin that he should become a lawyer, which was the whole point of Martin attending college. After Martin became a monk, he became a priest, and soon held his first mass.
Martin was sent to Wittenberg to teach. Martin thought that Italy was much different from Germany. He made friends with many of the monks that he traveled with. He traveled all over teaching his beliefs, many people were against what he was teaching and many people were not. The people who believed in Martin?s protest against the Catholic church were called Lutherans. Martin also wrote many pamphlets and sent them to Wittenberg to be printed and sold. People throughout Germany read them with joy, for they knew that this meant that Martin was still alive and, and wrote for them. Many of Martins old friends told him that he was banned from church and state because of his translation of the bible. They thought that he was questioning the beliefs of the church and defying their orders.
Marin Married Katherine Von Bora on June 13, 1525. Martin had three kids, but one died when she was a baby.
When Martin became older and his health was failing him, he was saddened by the news that some of his followers were being put to death because they refused to give up their Lutheran beliefs. Martin Luther died on February 17 1546.
Martin Luther, author of the text of Christ lag in...
English: Martin Luther died in this house in 1546 ...
English: Portraits of Hans and Margarethe Luther (...