For a study guide see page 22.
mentioned in a sketch of Luther’s life written shortly aſt er his death by a colleague, Phillip Melanchthon, who didn’t arrive in Wittenberg until 1518, well aſt er the alleged act. While some scholars (including this author) still
argue that such a posting really did take place, all agree that the more important “posting,” which we know occurred that day, was in the mail as an enclosure to a letter addressed to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, head of the German church. T e original, dated letter is in an archive in Stockholm, Sweden. But the notion that the 95 T eses were, from their inception, a protest rests on the mistaken idea about the function of such “theses” in late-medieval university life. In those days, to receive any university degree students had to defend theses, usually composed by their professors and posted on the churches’ doors in advance of the oral defense. In addition, as a professor of theology,
Luther had the right to hold “quodlibital disputa- tions”—debates on any subject whatsoever to clarify
church teaching, which usually were presented in the form of theses. In the case of the 95 T eses, Luther was clearly thinking in those terms. His intent wasn’t protest but open debate about an issue over which there was great uncertainty: What were indul- gences and how did they relate to a Christian’s sorrow over sin? It was the reactions to Luther’s
theses—the archbishop sent them to Rome because he sus- pected they contained heresy— that turned a sharp inquiry over church practice and teaching into protest and reform.
On Oct. 31, 1517, Luther “posted” the 95
Theses in protest against the church. Here modern historians have questioned two things. Since the 1960s some scholars have thought it highly unlikely that Luther ever nailed the 95 T eses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. T ey point to the fact that Luther never mentions it. Also, the posting is fi rst
Katie Luther escaped her convent in (or next to) herring barrels. An early chronicler of Katharina (von Bora) Luther’s escape with 11
other nuns noted that they were jammed into the fi shmonger’s wagon “like herring
barrels.” We might say they were packed in like
sardines. Later, sloppy readers took this to mean that Leonard Koppe, who regularly delivered fi sh to Katie’s monas-
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