id="id00039">FOOTNOTES

[1] Text as given in the Berlin Edition of the Buchwald and others, Vol. I pp. ix ff.

[2] I. e. The example set by preserving and collecting them.

[3] "There is moderation in all things."

[4] "I shall not be better than my fathers." Cf. 1 Kings 19:4

[5] Des Pabats Drecet and Drecketal. Luther makes a pun on decreta and decretalia—the official names for the decrees of the Pope.

II DR. MARTIN LUTHER TO THE CHRISTIAN READER[1] EDITION OF 1545

Above all things I beseech the Christian reader and beg him for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, to read my earliest books very circumspectly and with much pity, knowing that before now I too was a monk, and one of the right frantic and raving papists. When I took up this matter against Indulgences, I was so full and drunken, yea, so besotted in papal doctrine that, out of my great zeal, I would have been ready to do murder—at least, I would have been glad to see and help that murder should be done—on all who would not be obedient and subject to the pope, even to his smallest word.

Such a Saul was I at that time; and I meant it right earnestly; and there are still many such today. In a word, I was not such a frozen and ice-cold[2] champion of the papacy as Eck and others of his kind have been and still are. They defend the Roman See more for the sake of the shameful belly, which is their god, than because they are really attached to its cause. Indeed I am wholly of the opinion that like latter-day Epicureans,[3] they only laugh at the pope. But I verily espoused this cause in deepest earnest and in all fidelity; the more so because I shrank from the Last Day with great anxiety and fear and terror, and yet from the depths of my heart desired to be saved.

Therefore, Christian reader, thou wilt find in my earliest books and writings how many points of faith I then, with all humility, yielded and conceded to the pope, which since then I have held and condemned for the most horrible blasphemy and abomination, and which I would have to be so held and so condemned forever. Amen.

Thou wilt therefore ascribe this my error, or as my opponents venomously call it, this inconsistency of mine,[4] to the time, and to my ignorance and inexperience. At the beginning I was quite alone and without any helpers, and moreover, to tell the truth, unskilled in all these things, and far too unlearned to discuss such high and weighty matters. For it was without any intention, purpose, or will of mine that I fell, quite unexpectedly, into this wrangling and contention. This I take God, the Searcher of hearts, to witness.

I tell these things to the end that, if thou shalt read my books, thou mayest know and remember that I am one of those who, as St. Augustine says of himself, have grown by writing and by teaching others, and not one of those who, starting with nothing, have in a trice become the most exalted and most learned doctors. We find, alas! many of these self-grown doctors; who in truth are nothing, do nothing and accomplish nothing, are moreover untried and inexperienced, and yet, after a single took at the Scriptures, think themselves able wholly to exhaust its spirit.

Farewell, dear reader, in the Lord. Pray that the Word may be further spread abroad, and may be strong against the miserable devil. For he is mighty and wicked, and just now is raving everywhere and raging cruelly, like one who well knows and feels that his time is short, and that the kingdom of his Vicar, the Antichrist in Rome,[5] is sore beset. But may the God of all grace and mercy strengthen and complete in us the work He has begun, to His honor and to the comfort of His little flock. Amen.

FOOTNOTES

[1] From the Preface to the Complete Works (1545). Text according to the Berlin Edition of the Buchwald and others, Vol. I, pp. xi ff.

[2] Evidently a play on the Latin frigidus, often used in the sense of "trivial" or "silly"; so Luther refers to the "frigida decreta Paperum" in his Propositions for the Leipzipg Disputation (1519).

[3] i. e. Frivolous mockers at holy things.

[4] See Prefatory Note to the Fourteen of Consolation, below, p.109.

[5] Long before this Luther had repeatedly expressed the conviction that the Pope was the Antichrist foretold in 2 Thess. 2:3 f., and Rev. 13 and 17.

THE DISPUTATION OF DOCTOR MARTIN LUTHER
ON THE POWER AND EFFICACY OF INDULGENCES
(THE NINETY-FIVE THESES)
1517
TOGETHER WITH THREE LETTERS EXPLANATORY OF THE THESES

INTRODUCTION

"A Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" [1] is the full title of the document commonly called "The Ninety-five Theses." The form of the document was determined by the academic practice of the Middle Ages. In all the Mediæval Universities the "disputation" was a well-established institution. It was a debate, conducted according to accepted rules, on any subject which the chief disputant might elect, and no student's education was thought to be complete until he had shown his ability to defend himself in discussions of this kind. It was customary to set forth the subject which was to be discussed, in a series of "theses," which were statements of opinion tentatively advanced as the basis of argument. The author, or some other person he might designate, announced himself ready to defend these statements against all comers, and invited all who might wish to debate with him to a part in the discussion. Such an academic document, one out of many hundreds, exhaling the atmosphere of the Mediæval University, is the Disputation, which by its historical importance has earned the name "The XCV Theses."

The Theses were published on the Eve of All Saints (Oct 31), 1517. They were not intended for any other public than that of the University,[2] and Luther did not even have them printed at first, though copies were forwarded to the Archbishop of Mainz, and to Luther's own diocesan, the Bishop of Brandenburg. The manner of their publication too was academic. They were simply posted on the door of the Church of All Saints—called the "Castle-church," to distinguish it from its neighbor, the "Town-church"—not because more people would see them there than elsewhere, but because that church-door was the customary place for posting such announcements, the predecessor of the "black-board" in the modern German University. It was not night, but mid-day[3] when the Theses were nailed up, and the Eve of All Saints was chosen, not that the crowds who would frequent the next day's festival might read them, for they were written in Latin, but because it was the customary day for the posting of theses. Moreover, the Feast of All Saints was the time when the precious relics, which earned the man who "adored" them, long years of indulgence,[4] were exhibited to worshipers, and the approach of this high feast-day put the thought of indulgences uppermost in the minds of everybody in Wittenberg, including the author of the Theses.[5]

But neither the Theses nor the results which followed them could be confined to Wittenberg. Contrary to Luther's expectation and to his great surprise,[6] they circulated all through Germany with a rapidity that was startling. Within two months, before the end of 1517, three editions of the Latin text had been printed, one at Wittenberg, one at Nürnberg, and one as far away as Basel, and copies of the Theses had been sent to Rome. Numerous editions, both Latin and German, quickly followed. Luther's contemporaries saw in the publication of the Theses "the beginning of the Reformation," [7] and the