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Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation


Martin was very reluctant at first but eventually agreed to go to Rome. He was originally astonished with the beauty of all the religious architecture and relics, but quickly grew averted from this way of thinking. He was astonished to see priests associating with and purchasing prostitutes, monks peddling indulgences, and the pope riding on his horse dressed in golden armor and precious jewelry, while the peasants around him begged and suffered in total poverty. Martin became very angry at what he saw, thinking that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church had become corrupt and unfocused with their goal of being loyal men of God. In his opinion, they were being hypocritical, defiling their vows of chastity and poverty. The apex of Martin's disillusionment with the Church was towards the selling of indulgences. Indulgences were the accepting of monetary donations to the Church in exchange for clergymen to release a deceased relative from purgatory or Hell. These enraged Martin. .
             In 1517, Martin organized his complaints into a series of brief notices entitled the "Ninety-Five Theses." He brazenly nailed them to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg for the townspeople to observe as they attended mass. The clergymen became outraged at the content of his Ninety-Five Theses and the subsequent attention they received from the townspeople. Martin mercilessly attacked the policy of selling indulgences. The Church's main purpose of selling indulgences was to fund the construction of St. Peter's Basilica and other projects. Martin commented on this through statements such as, "It is a wrongful act, due to ignorance, when priests retain the canonical penalties on the dead in purgatory." Martin's clear focus on averting people from buying-into the topic of, and purchasing indulgences, and his verbally-aggressive means of doing so worried the clergy of All Saints' Church and even the pope himself.


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