Martin Luther

Lived

1483–1546

Era

Reformation

Where

Wittenberg, Saxony

Tradition

Lutheran

The ninety-five theses, and the German Bible

An Augustinian friar and professor at Wittenberg whose objections to the sale of indulgences in 1517 opened an argument he had not planned, and which within four years had him excommunicated and outlawed.

Why it matters

Justification by faith alone was the centre of it, arrived at through his own protracted terror about whether God could be satisfied. Hidden at the Wartburg after Worms, he translated the New Testament into German in eleven weeks, and the finished Bible did as much to fix modern German as any single book has done for any language. He also wrote hymns, married a former nun and made the parsonage a Protestant institution, and late in life wrote a tract about the Jews so vicious that the Lutheran churches have formally repudiated it; both are his.

In the record

1. 1517 AD Reform

   The Reformation begins

   It begins with his objection to indulgences

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.