CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

An old (just look at the aesthetic & tech) Wittenberg website states that Luther's posting of the 95 theses OTD 1517 was a myth [broken link: https://luther.de/en/legenden/tanschl.html]

The new website tilts back the other way

https://lutherstadt-wittenberg.de/en/see-discover/sights/castle-church 2/n

Castle church with theses door The Wittenberg Castle Church is probably the most famous and popular attraction in the old he world-famous Theses Door, now a popular photo spot, is no longer the original door on which Luther probably nailed his 95 theses. The door that now stands on this " site is cast in bronze and has Luther's theses on it. The castle tower, visible from a great distance, is framed by a line from one of Luther's hymns, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." Thetower originally belonged to Wittenberg Castle along with a second tower that had been removed. Since 1996, the castle church has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. B~ (7

CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

Heiko Oberman, in Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (1982; English 1989), adheres to traditional Story of 95 Theses. #ReformationDay 3/n

...Barely two weeks after being posted, the theses had circulated all over Germany, Luther reported; and understandably so, “for all the world i complaining about indulgences.”*' According to university records there was a disputation on the theses in Wittenberg, as Luther had desired. But against his wishes they were translated into German and printed in Nurem berg. No copy of this edition has survived. Luther affixed a handwritte “list” to the church door and only then sent a second version of the Lati theses to the printer, first in Wittenberg and then in Nuremberg, Leipzig and Basel.Luther later described the echo he found as a depressing success: “The publicity did not appeal to me. For I myself did not know what an indulgence was, and the song was getting too high for my voice"...

CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

n contrast to Oberman, Richard Marius, in Martin Luther: The Christian Between God & Death (1999), explains the nature of the historical controversy over the truth of the tradition that Luther posted the 95 Theses OTD 1517. #ReformationDay 4/8

4/n

...For many years it was supposed that someone copied the theses off the door, translated them from atin into German, and had them reprinted so that they flew over Germany and made Luther a hero overnight. Certainly the theses were quickly translated and circulated and Luther suddenly was propelled into fame. But in 1961 a German Catholic scholar, Erwin Iserloh, raised a question: Were the theses posted? In the current mood of Catholic ecumenicity, Iserloh was sympathetic to Luther. But he consid- red these facts. Nowhere in his table talk in later years did Luther speak of posting the Ninety-five Theses on the church door. In none of his own works reviewing the beginning of the controversy does he mention any public posting. He recalled that he preached to his people about grace and remission fo sins against the shallow proclamations of the indulgence sellers, and he seems to have discussed the matter in private with associates and to have sent copies of the theses to learned friends. But none of this resembles a public act of hammering the theses onto a church door and calling for a disputation. Iserloh holds that the story of the nailing of the theses to the church door comes from the pen of Philipp Melanchthon, who wrote a short summary of Luther’s life a few months after Luther died. Melanchthon (1497-1 560) was a professor of Greek, with a mind much more orderly (and commonplace) than Luther’s, and one of Luther’s closest colleagues. He was to become

CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

Then, in 2006, a new archival find of a contemporaneous reference seemed to lend credence to the story of the nailing of the 95 Theses to the church door OTD 1517--tho perhaps not by Luther himself (feature film 1953; docu 2008)

https://www.ekd.de/Martin-Luther-Thesenanschlag-14255.htm

http://www.lutherbase.de/aspects.html#WittenbergSchlosskirche/FilmclipLegendeThesenanschlag

5/n

scene from 2008 documentary

CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

Since then, the pendulum on the nailing of the 95 theses to the church door OTD 1517 has swung back & forth.
Here, a Tübingen theologian & church historian dismisses it as a legend reflecting the Protestant need for symbols of the faith (2016)
https://n-tv.de/panorama/Luthers-Thesenanschlag-ist-eine-Legende-article18937366.html 6/n

CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

In 2018, 2 historians from the historical Luther sites set forth the case for the authenticity of the tradition that he nailed the 95 theses to the church door OTD 1517:

Luthers Thesenanschlag laut Historikern mehr als bloss Legende https://ref.ch/news/luthers-thesenanschlag-laut-historikern-mehr-als-bloss-legende/ 7/n

CitizenWald, 7 months ago

Things October 31 is besides #Halloween: #Reformation Day, celebrating the date in 1517 when Martin #Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg--or did he?

Book historian Andrew Pettegree, who accepts the tradition, makes the key points in Brand Luther (2017):

• Even Luther did not see the Theses as extraordinary
• Regardless of the authenticity of the church door story, it was the new #print culture that made them revolutionary 8/8
  @dbellingradt
  #BookHistory @bookhistodons

the theses is overwhelming. We know that the Wittenberg press had been established largely to serve the interests of the university, and aca- demic ephemera of this sort dominated the output of the first print shops.* We can also call in evidence the relatively recent discovery of Rhau-Grunenberg’s September printing of the theses on Scholastic theology.*® This provides critical evidence for the existence of a Rhau- Grunenberg broadsheet prototype of the ninety-five theses on indul- gences. For the earlier broadsheet Rhau-Grunenberg used what was clearly his house style, dividing the theses into blocks of twenty-five. This was precisely the form in which the Nuremberg and Basel reprints of the ninety-five theses on indulgences were presented, suggesting they were set up on the basis of a lost Wittenberg original. This really crucial