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Pentecost
Reformation

The Ninety-Five Theses

The spark of the Protestant Reformation.

1517Wittenberg, Saxony

Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and university professor, published ninety-five theses challenging the sale of indulgences. What began as a call to academic debate became the Reformation that reshaped Western Christianity.

Martin Luther posts the Ninety-Five Theses at Wittenberg, 1517 — 19th-century engraving.
19th-c. engraving, 1878 — Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In October 1517, Martin Luther — a friar and professor of theology at Wittenberg — objected to the sale of indulgences, by which the faithful were told they could lessen the punishment for sin through payment. He wrote ninety-five theses, propositions for debate, and (tradition says) posted them on the door of the Castle Church.

Luther's intent was a scholarly disputation within the Church. But the theses, printed and spread quickly, struck a far deeper nerve. The questions he raised — about authority, grace, and the gospel itself — could not be contained, and Luther was eventually excommunicated.

From that spark came the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and later traditions, each described on its own page in the Theologos library. The reasons for the separation, in the reformers' own words, belong with those traditions; here the event is recorded as the turning point it became.