photo via @thesenanschlag
Let’s face it, the average person doesn’t care about another history figure from the time of Jesus. Peter the first might as well be Peter Pan. It’s an unfortunate reality, but understandable when we’re inundated with information. Overwhelmed or not, there is one man that’s bound to show up in trivia that you need to know and that is Martin Luther. Luther was a German monk turned radical icon who spoke out against the Catholic church. A total rebel for his time, these are the tidbits you should know to be in the know aka TRIVIA READY!
- He was a devoted monk, going to extreme measures to prove his devotion.
- Wrote the 95 Theses which questioned the catholic church. He nailed it to a church door and it went viral. The 95 Theses are said to be the catalyst to the Protestant Reformation and was aided by the printing press. He didn’t expect it to receive as much attention as it did, but it did and its popularity wasn’t something he could control.
- He was given the choice to recant or be arrested by the heads of the Holy Roman Empire at a meeting known as the ‘Diet of Worms‘. Worms for the name of the German city. He chose the later and was labelled a heretic in the ‘Edict of Worms‘
- His actions are in direct relation to the revolt that lead to monks, priests, and nuns abandoning the church. The first steps of the reformation, Luther didn’t realize how radical his ideas were and spoke out against the revolutionaries.
- Translated the Bible making it accessible to the average person.
These are the top five facts I found interesting about Martin Luther, but there are a lot more, explored thoroughly in the PBS documentary ‘Martin Luther’. A long, but solid historical documentary it’s worth the time if you’re interested in learning about history and how it feeds into the way we communicate today. I didn’t even get into the printing press and how that was one of the main catalysts of the revolution…thats for another post. 🙂
-J.
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