The papacy even wielded military power. ibid.
Luther’s trip to Rome had brought only disillusion and doubt. ibid.
Selling Indulgences – charging the faithful for entry into Heaven. ibid.
31st October 1517 Luther sat down and penned a furious litany of criticism. Ninety-five stinging bullet points. ibid.
The thesis would spread like wildfire. ibid.
The penalty for heresy was death. ibid.
The Church’s greatest conflict in its history. ibid.
95 theses – 95 stinging attacks on the mighty Catholic church and its head the Pope. Luther has no idea that with his one gesture he has unleashed a hurricane. A storm of violence that will rage across Europe. Martin Luther II: The Reluctant Revolutionary
Luther was charged with heresy. ibid.
Luther painted a vivid picture of the financial drain that was Rome. ibid.
Luther and his followers were beginning to see the struggle with Rome was an epic battle with the devil himself. ibid.
To set down in detail a whole new system of faith. ibid.
Luther now attacked the very heart of the Church’s power – the system of sacraments. ibid.
In the winter of 1520 Luther finally received the bull of excommunication from Rome. ibid.
A depression that was accompanied by a vivid sense that the devil was haunting him. ibid.
An unstoppable rebellion and spreading from the grass roots up. The first steps of what would become the Reformation. ibid.
A series of peasant uprisings flared up across the country. ibid.
Luther would always hold to this vision of apocalyptic Biblical conflict. ibid.
After the peasants, one of his most infamous targets would be Judaism. ibid.
Protestantism swept across Germany and then on to France, the Netherlands, Belgium. But in every place it took a different form. ibid.
Luther would finally die in the year 1546 seized by a crippling heart attack. ibid.
Luther’s ideas turned out to be much more radical than he realised. Alister McGrath
Protestantism developed its sense of identity primarily in response to external threats and criticisms rather than as a result of shared beliefs. In one sense, the idea of ‘Protestantism’ can be seen as the creation of its opponents rather than of its supporters. Alister E McGrath, ‘Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First’
God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He then but reveal Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen? John Milton, Areopagitica 1644
Here stand I. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. Martin Luther
For, where God built a church, there the devil would also build a chapel. Martin Luther
A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon. Martin Luther
Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God. Martin Luther
Would the Protestant Reformation have happened without the printing press? Would the American Revolution have happened without pamphlets? Probably not. But neither printing presses nor pamphlets were the heroes of reform and revolution. Rebecca MacKinnon
The Protestant Reformation had a lot to do with the printing press, where Martin Luther’s theses were reproduced about 250,000 times, and so you had widespread dissemination of ideas that hadn’t circulated in the mainstream before. Nate Silver
Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. Stanley Hauerwas
But then came the Reformation ... paintings became condemned here as Roman, idolatry; they had to go. Face of Britain by Simon Schama, BBC 2015
The Reformation ... woodwork was destroyed by fire or the axe. Carved With Love: The Genius of British Woodwork III: The Divine Craft of Carpentry BBC 2013
The Act was one of several which, in the course of this parliamentary session, would utterly destroy the dispensation of a thousand years. The proponents of change claimed that they were only restoring the ancient privileges of the English Church, but the evidence suggests that this was a theory devised merely to justify wholesale ‘reformation’. Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More p347
We live in an age of religious extremism, an age of terror and violent slaughter. We are locked in a bewildering ideological battle with religious fundamentalism. It’s a battle that’s taken most of us by surprise … We’ve been here before, here at home, here at the very heart of our own civilisation. Exactly 500 years ago the breach within Christianity tore Europe, England and the Church apart … The same apocalyptic violence as now. It’s own very own jihad. It’s called the Reformation. The Protestant Reformation was also a political and cultural revolution. It unleashed bloodshed, terror and the destruction of religious art. David Starkey, Reformation: Europe’s Holy War, BBC 2017
A spiritual empire bigger than the Caesars. It’s hard to overestimate the power of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages. It was a vastly wealthy, bureaucratic machine at the heart of Europe. ibid.
Indulgences were often sold to finance Church schemes … And for one German monk this was an abomination. On 31st October 1517 Martin Luther very publicly denounced this scandal. ibid.
By taking on the power of the Church, Luther has become a local legend, a figurehead for a populist, anti-establishment movement. ibid.
A stream of heretic works followed Tyndale’s New Testament to England. ibid.
Henry himself was left looking for a new policy. ibid.
England was on the road to its Tudor Brexit. ibid.
Thomas More was beheaded in 1535. ibid.
Luther’s Reformation was fuelled by religious fundamentalism and political opportunism. Henry’s was triggered by lust and a hunger for dynastic power. ibid.
Pope Leo X was in a dash for cash. He was rebuilding St Peter’s Basilica, the biggest church in the world. But to some, the Pope’s sale of Indulgences to pay for this looked cynical and greedy. On October 31st 1517 a German monk is said to have strode up to Castle Church in Wittenberg, Saxony, and nailed 95 arguments against the Church’s behaviour to the oak door. His name was Martin Luther. Andrew Marr’s History of the World V: Age of Plunder, BBC 2012
The Reformation ... relics in their thousand were destroyed. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Treasure of Heaven: The Story of Relics and Reliquaries, BBC 2011