Religion: Luther & the Church Door

Every schoolboy thinks he knows how the Reformation began: on Oct. 31, 1517, Augustinian Friar Martin Luther took hammer in hand and nailed his list of 95 angry theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. That challenge to church teaching has always been said to mark Luther’s real break with Rome, and for more than 400 years Protestants have celebrated the anniversary of this clerical Sarajevo.

Now comes a respected German historian who says this tale of Luther’s dramatic Thesenanschlag (thesis posting) is pure legend. Dr. Erwin Iserloh, Roman Catholic professor of church history at Trier, declares that Luther merely mailed off copies of his theses to two of his ecclesiastical superiors, the Bishop of Brandenburg and the Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mainz, and let it go at that. Iserloh points out that the writings of Luther himself never mentioned nailing the theses on a door; the first record of the story, in fact, was written after the heretic’s death in 1546 by his disciple, Philipp Melanchthon, who was nowhere near Wittenberg at the time. Iserloh also cites a letter Luther wrote to Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, in 1518, stating firmly that “no one knew of my intentionto dispute—not even my best friends.”

Iserloh’s arguments have roused German Protestant historians and set off a stir of headlines in the German press. Sighed one confused Rhineland layman: “Next thing they’ll be claiming that Jan Hus wasn’t burned at the stake.”