Thread by @exC_Esther

The Catholic Church tortured & killed those that simply rejected their teachings; burnt at stake those that questioned them.

But somehow spared Martin Luther - the guy who led a whole protest against Catholicism, nearly uprooting their dominion. Ever wondered why?

Read on...

By 16th c. the Church became v powerful & dominant. Thereby corrupt. It had immense political & spiritual power over the Roman empire and the emperor.

It made salvation a business enterprise. It began selling INDULGENCES saying ppl's punishment for sins could be reduced.

What are INDULGENCES?

Catholic Christianity of that time taught that sin was of 2 types: Mortal sin which directly earned hell after death & Venal sin which was a few years of purification in purgatory - an interim state between life on earth & eternal life in heaven.

It was promoted widely that purchasing Indulgences could reduce time in the purgatory. Priests, aristocrats, entrepreneurs who wanted money for their projects would hire salesmen (pardoners/quaestors) to sell indulgences. Corrupt salesmen soon started promising salvation itself.

The quaestors forced ppl to buy indulgences from them. They threatened eternal damnation to those who refused to buy.

Along came Martin Luther, a devout Catholic monk from Wittenberg, Germany. He loved the church but was disillusioned by this one practice.

In 1517 he nailed his disillusionment as 95 theses to the church door. He wanted to spark a debate thinking that would lead to the reformation of his beloved church. But what began as an objection to one practice resulted in the creation of a whole new brand of Christianity.

Luther was tried at the council of Diet of Worms for heresy by Charles V - a devout Catholic & was excommunicated. The council declared him an outlaw & demanded his arrest.

But Luther was never arrested.

How did he escape the powerful evil vigilant eye of the Catholic Church?

Why wasn't Luther arrested & executed like other critics?

On the contrary, his dissent made him a celebrity right under the nose of the Catholic church. He got away nearly demolishing a 1000-yr regime & he got to start his own brand of religion.

Who protected him & why?

The answer has much to do with politics & less with religion.

Germany was part of the Roman empire. The emperor had authority over the regional princes of Germany, who didn't want to submit to the imperial authority.

One such prince was Frederick III, Elector of Saxony.

In 1502, Fred founded the Wittenberg University. Luther was appointed a professor of Bible and theology here. He was the star professor of the univ.

Here Luther studied the Bible more closely. The more he read the more his concern grew about the church's practice of indulgences

Interestingly, Fred, too, ran a 'Salvation Shop.' He collected C relics & displayed them for public veneration, for a fee. The church taught that venerating the relics would reduce purgatory time by a few million years.
The first phase of his univ was funded by indulgence money!

After Luther's trial Fred saved him from arrest, by getting him abducted. Fred hid Luther at his Castle. Here Luther translated the Bible into German & wrote Lutheran teachings. Their wide distribution made Luther popular making it politically risky for the church to pursue him.

The invention of printing press at this time helped propagandize Luther's ideas. Information disseminated quicker & wider. Anti-papal essays reached large no. of people at once. Print shops sprouted all across Europe. Luther became more popular.

Propaganda aided Protestantism!

Luther's dissent for Catholic practices became the basis for Protestantism. But Fred nvr publicly declared allegiance to Protestant theology. He stopped displaying his relics but held on to them & his Catholic faith.

If Fred didnt support Luther's theology, why'd he protect him?

The reason is political.

In fact the term Protestant began as a political category of ppl & not as theological. It referred to the German princes who did not want to submit to the political authority of the Roman empire. It referred to those who supported Luther in his dissent.

The German princes who wanted to rule independent of the emperor supported Luther publicly. Supporting Protestantism indicated that they opposed the imperial authority & thereby its official church. Whether the princes blvd in Protestantism or not, they converted. For politics...

Conversion of a prince meant conversion of the entire territory. When the conversion numbers increased conflicts grew. A war broke out between pro-Catholic Roman empire & pro-Lutheran German princes. It soon turned into pan-European war which killed 20% of Europe's population.

Fred’s motives for supporting Luther were political- Saxony's autonomy& the curtailing of power of Roman authority & greed of the corrupt church.

Q is who helped whom? Did Fred gain politically by using Luther's dissent or did Luther gain religiously by using Fred's protection?

What we can tell for sure is that without Fred's politically motivated defense of Luther, Protestant movement would have been nipped in the bud & Luther would been known today as a heretic who was burnt at stake & Catholicism would've been the only umbrella of Christianity today.

Luther's success motivated other later C'ity brand creators. All they had to do was weave together propaganda, politics & religion.

A simple objection to selling indulgences became a movement that changed world history only bcz politics aided the propagandization of religion!

Correction: Christianity of that time taught that sin was of two types.

It is not Catholic Christianity as distinct brand of Christianity because there was only one, back then.