Martin Luther was a famous religious reformer. Born in Esleben, Saxony, Germany, his family moved to Mansfeld at the age of 2. His father, Hans Luther, worked as a miner and started by renting three small furnaces from the lords. Martin Luther's parents were devout Christians, so he received a strict religious education from an early age. In the spring of 1501 he entered the university of Erfurt, the most famous university in Germany at the time, where he received a bachelor's degree in arts in the autumn of 1502 and a master's degree with honors in 1505. During his university years, he began to be influenced by secular ideas against the Pope.
Shortly after graduating from college, 22-year-old Martin Luther, despite the objections of his relatives and friends, entered the Monastery of St. Augustine as a monk, hoping to make God forgive his sins through asceticism. In 1512 he received a doctorate in theology from the University of Wittenberg and became a professor at the university for 512-1513, and gradually established his religious doctrine of "justification by faith". He believed that the salvation of a person's soul depended only on one's sincere faith, and did not require the authority of the external Church of Good Deeds at all. This doctrine is contrary to the Catholic theory of salvation and fundamentally negates the dominance of the religious and monastic classes over society.
Germany was deeply exploited by the Pope at that time, and had to pay the Pope a tax of 300,000 Gourdons (a unit of goods at that time) every year, and on the eve of Halloween in 1517, the Pope sent people to Germany to sell a large number of "indulgences" Claiming that god would absolve him of his crimes as long as he paid money, Martin Luther was often dissatisfied with the pope's approach, so he wrote the Ninety-Five Theses and posted it on the door of the Castlesall Church in Viborg.
In the "Theses," he denounced the practice of selling "coupons" in papal history, put forward the principle of "believing in what is rare and you can get it," and opposed the use of money. The Theses aroused strong repercussions, inspired the people's fineness and opposition to the supremacy of the ecclesiastical power, ignited the flame of the German Reformation, and made Luther a spokesman for the German nation for a while, in 1519, the Roman theologian John Eyck and Martin Luther launched a great controversy in Leipzig, this great debate became a major turning point in the source of Lutheran Reformation students, in 1520, in order to spread his ideas more generally, Martin Luther wrote a series of articles and pamphlets, Publishing the "Open Letter to the German Nobility", "The Church is Gardened Babylon", and "Christian Freedom", which are known as the three major treatises of the Reformation, on June 2 of that year, the Pope issued an order that Martin Luther would withdraw 41 of the Ninety-Five Theses within 60 days, otherwise he would be expelled from the church, and Luther was unmoved and openly burned the pope's order.
In 1521, Luther attended the Conference of the Worms Empire, convened by the Kaiser.
Previously, friends had advised Luther not to go, fearing that he would provoke the disaster of death, but Luther made Worms have as many devils as the tiles on the roof, and I still had to go calmly, "Accompanied by more than 100 Saxon nobles, in the triumphant greeting line along the road, Luther reached Worms. He defended himself with righteousness and solemnity, and won the sympathy and support of the people of Worms City. At the meeting, he solemnly declared: "I stand by my own opinion and will never repent!" A complete break with the Holy See. The Kaiser had no choice but to release Luther, but on behalf of the Pope expelled Luther from the church.
To avoid persecution by the church, Luther went into seclusion to Wartburg to translate the Bible into German.
In 1525, at the age of 42, Luther married a defecting nun, Paula, and challenged Catholic asceticism with practical action. In 1543, a German translation of the Bible was published by Luther, in which Luther restored the spirit of early Christian democracy and equality, providing the people with ideological weapons against the Catholic Church. He also added his claim that "faith in Jesus is salvation" as the main doctrine of Protestantism. In addition, his translation of the Bible uses the German Chinese, a unified language that became an important link between the divided German states.
In February 1546, Luther died of illness and was buried in the necropolis of Wittenberg Cathedral at the age of 63. After his death, the Protestantism he founded spread throughout Europe, setting off a vigorous Reformation movement.