The Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther may constitute one of the best known and yet least understood of his writings. Given the terseness of individual theses, the technical nature of many of the arguments and the debates over the history of the document, this is hardly surprising. In addition to the overview of penance and indulgences in the volume introduction, a twenty-first-century reader needs to consider certain other historical and literary aspects of the document.
Historical Considerations
By the Late Middle Ages indulgences had become a central part of piety for many people in the Western Church but were also a useful means of financial support for a cash-strapped papacy, so that indulgence preaching was labeled a sacrum negotium (holy business). When Leo X proclaimed a plenary âPeterâs Indulgenceâ in 1515, the stated reason was to raise money to rebuild the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Rome. Half of the money raised, however, was to go to the Augsburg banking family, the Fuggers, in order to pay a debt owed by Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg, as described in the introduction. The religious benefits attached to the indulgence were surely also part of Albrechtâs concern. In any case, at the time of writing the Ninety-Five Theses Luther knew nothing of these financial dealings.
To proclaim this indulgence Albrecht settled upon the well-known Dominican preacher, Johann Tetzel (1465-1519), and he asked his court theologians to prepare a booklet, the Summary Instruction, which described the limits and benefits of this indulgence for potential preachers. Some of Lutherâs objections in the Ninety-Five Theses arose from this source and from Tetzelâs preaching, some of which likely overstepped the boundaries of the Summary Instruction. According to contemporary accounts and pictures, he would have been met at a townâs gates by all the important government and church officials, who would have processed to the townâ main church where the papal coat-of-arms and the papal bull decreeing this indulgence would be prominently displayed, while all the organs and bells in the townâs churches sounded. All other preaching would be halted so that the citizenry had opportunity to give full attention to Tetzel and the indulgences he had to offer.
Although banned from electoral Saxony, Tetzel set up shop around the edges of electoral Saxony where Wittenbergâs citizens could undertake the short journey to purchase this religiously valuable blessing. Those who purchased such certificates began showing them to their priests at home, including to Martin Luther, Augustinian friar and preacher at St. Maryâs, the city church in Wittenberg, and describing Tetzelâs preaching.
Besides his own uncertainty about indulgences, Luther encountered uncertainty and complaints about indulgences from laypersons and rumors about exaggerations in Tetzelâs indulgence preaching. Then, having obtained a copy of the Summary Instruction, he began serious investigation concerning the nature of indulgences in the summer of 1517, researching the books of Canon Law and asking experts for their assistance. What this study revealed to Luther was that the ancient church had understood the satisfaction owed for temporal punishment of sin quite differently than the church of his day and, in his opinion, that the pope had authority over and, thus, could offer indulgences only for ecclesiastical punishment established in canon law, which had nothing to do with divine punishment.
For the debate over the posting and distribution of the Ninety-Five Theses, see the volume introduction. In addition to sending copies to the archbishop of Mainz on 31 October 1517 and at nearly the same time to the bishop of Brandenburg, it is also certain that Luther sent copies of the Theses to his friends, including Johannes Lang (ca. 1487-1548), where in a letter dated 11 November 1517, Luther asked for Langâs feedback. Lutherâs later recollections of these times occasionally single out 31 October. In the November letter to Lang, Luther simply passed along the theses as to a friend (apologizing for not having sent them sooner). This reflected the fact that, as he stated in his introduction to the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther expected people from a distance to respond by letterâa unique request regarding theses for debate. Scholars agree that no public disputation ever took place, as Luther later admitted, although the faculty of the University of Mainz, to which the archbishop gave responsibility to judge Lutherâs theses, assumed in their judgment of December 1517 that such a disputation must have taken place, as would normally have occurred in such cases.
Fig. 1.1 Summary Instruction.
Even if Luther did print and post the Theses for debate, he had no notion what the results of such a debate would be and certainly did not have in mind attacking the papacy and certainly not splitting the churchâsomething he never claimed to have done in any case. Indeed, in letters from early 1518, Luther seemed rather surprised at how widely the Theses had been disseminated. Luther wrote and distributed the theses as a matter of pastoral and theological concern, showing every respect for his ecclesiastical superiors by informing and warning them of the Thesesâ content.
Literary Considerations
Luther clearly composed the Ninety-Five Theses as theses for debate. Yet, when compared to other theses that he and other professors were composing at around the same time, the Ninety-Five Theses contain some turns that were decidedly not intended for classroom debate using logic and syllogisms. They have a far more rhetorical flare than one finds in other university theses, both before and after 1517. Indeed, it may help to consider this document as a mixture of logical argument and impassioned speech, as Luther addresses what he viewed as a looming pastoral and theological problem in the church. His defense of the Theses published in the summer of 1518 contains lengthy arguments, gleaned from Scripture, the church fathers, papal decrees, and canon law, and thus takes the form of an academic debate. But the Theses themselves, the letter to Albrecht, and the Sermon on Indulgences and Grace aim at both the head and the heart of the reader (although Luther would hardly have made the same distinction between the two that todayâs readers do).
As an example of a tightly constructed logical argument, there are the first four theses, which briefly outline Lutherâs assumptions about the nature of penitence. Similarly, theses 5-20 provide a focused argument about the limits of papal authority in giving indulgence. Again, theses 56-68 address the single q...
