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power of the Papacy in present-day Italy. He said the Church and the pope had lost their way. People liked Luther, and he used his intelligence and popularity to take on the powerful Church. He closely studied the Bible and believed its words, not the pope sitting far away in Rome, should influence a person’s life. BUYING SALVATION According to the Catholic Church, an indulgence lessened the amount of time a person’s soul spent in purgatory, the place where impure souls atoned for their sins on the way to heaven. The Church believed that no one could do enough good deeds to make it to heaven. However, the saints, according to Catholic tradition, had done the heavy lifting for everyone and their surplus of good works was banked in a treasury of sorts. The Church sold access to that treasury. The Church even sold indulgences for those who planned to commit sins in the future. In 1517, Luther drew up ninety-five theses, or statements, and nailed them to the door of a Catholic Church in Wittenberg. The document stated his grievances with the Church, going well beyond the sale of indulgences. It sug- gested, to the shock of many, that the popes were naturally limited by God. Luther said the pope had no authority to release souls from purgatory and Christians could be saved from damnation only through their faith. Church leaders called Luther to appear before the Diet of Worms, an assem- bly of Church officials, and answer for his actions. (Diet is a formal assembly of officials, and Worms was the city in Germany where the meeting took place.) “Here I stand,” Luther supposedly said, “I cannot do otherwise.”

Luther refused to retract his statements, and the damage was done. The resulting Protes- tant Reformation created a cultural, spiritual, and intellectual upheaval that split the Catho- lic Church. Thousands of Catholics formed their own denominations free of papal authority. By the end of the Reformation, Lutheranism had

A statue of Martin Luther in Berlin.

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CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY, RELIGION, AND TRADITION