233
Martin Luther preaches from the
pulpit in this painting in the Church
of St. Mary in Wittenberg. The presence
of the crucified Christ is a symbol of a
direct relationship with God.
Misunderstanding God
Church services in the Middle Ages
were held in Latin, a language that
most people did not understand.
The authorized version of the
Bible—a 4th-century translation
from the original Hebrew and Greek
by St. Jerome known as the
Vulgate, meaning “commonly used”
—was also written in Latin. As a
result, most churchgoers relied
upon their priests to explain the
truths of Christianity to them.
Priests held considerable power
over their congregations and
tended to advocate the traditions of
the Catholic Church, rather than
going back to the original texts.
Although this meant that there
was a consistency to Catholic
teaching across Europe, there
were obvious dangers as well.
For instance, how could people in
the churches be certain that their
priests were teaching them what
the Bible really contained? How
could they check the truth of
what they heard?Conflict with Rome
The Reformation began because
a German monk, Martin Luther,
believed that people were being
deceived—sometimes unwittingly
—by the priests and leaders of the
Catholic Church of the day.
Luther was angered by the
preaching of the Dominican Johann
Tetzel, who had arrived in the
villages near Wittenberg, Saxony,
where Luther was a parish priest
and university professor. Tetzel
was essentially on a fundraising
mission for the Church: in Rome,
Pope Leo X was raising money to
build a vast church, the Basilica
of St. Peter; and, closer to home,
the German Cardinal Albrecht
needed to repay a loan taken out to
defray the expenses of his position.
Tetzel had been authorized to sell
certificates, called indulgences,which claimed to release people
from the threat of suffering for their
sins in purgatory after their death.
Indulgences had been available
in the Catholic Church for many
centuries, but Luther was appalled
at Tetzel’s blatant sales tactics,
which frightened people with
terrible images of how much their
deceased loved ones were suffering
in purgatory. “As soon as the coin
in the coffer rings, the soul from ❯❯See also: The power of the shaman 26–31 ■ The personal quest for truth 144 ■ St. Augustine and free will 220–21
■ Mystical experience in Christianity 238
CHRISTIANITY
A Christian is a
perfectly free lord of all,
subject to none. A Christian
is a perfectly dutiful servant
of all, subject to all.
Martin Luther