7 Joan of Arc 7

death unless she took back her claims. She hesitantly
signed a statement indicating that she recanted, but many
historians think she did not understand what was meant.
After signing the statement, Joan’s punishment was
changed from death to life imprisonment. A few days later,
she again asserted that she had been divinely inspired,
which was taken to signify relapse. As a result, on May 29,
the church court decreed that Joan was to be handed over
to the civil authorities. They did so the next morning, and
she was burned to death at the stake.
More than 20 years later, on the order of Pope Calixtus
III following a petition from the d’Arc family, proceed-
ings were instituted in 1455–56 that revoked and annulled
the sentence of 1431. Joan was canonized by Pope Benedict
XV on May 16, 1920.

Martin Luther

(b. Nov. 10, 1483, Eisleben, Saxony [Germany]—d. Feb. 18,
1546, Eisleben)

M

artin Luther was the preacher, biblical scholar, and
linguist whose Ninety-five Theses—an attack on
various Roman Catholic ecclesiastical abuses—precipitated
the Protestant Reformation.
Luther was the son of a prosperous copper miner. In
1502 he graduated from the University of Erfurt. He took
his M.A. in 1505, afterwards entering the monastery of the
eremitical order of St. Augustine. He was ordained priest
in April 1507, and in 1508 he went to the University of
Wittenberg, where he took his Doctorate of Theology in
1512 and received the chair of biblical theology.
After a long period of religious doubts and guilt at
what he saw as his failure to obey God’s law, Luther found
relief through a sudden conviction that justification came
through faith; that salvation is a divine gift of grace; that