The Protestant Reformation is conventionally dated from Martin Luther's act of public theological defiance on 31 October 1517. What was the act?
Luther sent the *Ninety-Five Theses* to his ecclesiastical superior Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz on 31 October 1517 — and may also have nailed a copy to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church the same day, though the door-nailing detail is from a single later source (Philip Melanchthon, writing in the 1540s) and is now substantially questioned. The other three events all happened later: Luther burned the bull *Exsurge Domine* at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520; he refused to recant at the Diet of Worms on 18 April 1521; he completed the New Testament translation in 1522 while in protective custody at the Wartburg.
Read the full facts →The Reformation was a 16th-century religious movement that split Western Christianity into Catholic and Protestant branches. It began with Martin Luther's challenge to the Catholic Church in 1517 and produced a reorganisation of European religion, politics, and culture that has lasted to the present.
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