Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
tackling a figure who is, well, to put it mildly
colossal. That might be an understatement. Right.
We're talking about a man whose shadow stretches
across 500 years of history. You see his name
on churches. You see his face on statues. You
hear his hymns. If you speak German, he basically
helped create your modern language. Even in English,
so many of our idioms are ways of phrasing things,
you can trace them back to his Bible translation.
We're talking, of course, about Martin Luther.
And it is almost impossible to overstate his
impact. But that's actually, you know, the problem
we face when we try to talk about him. Well,
so? Well, when you deal with a figure of Luther's
magnitude, the great reformer, he stops being
a person and he starts being a marble statue.
We see the hero of history, the guy who stood
up to the emperor, hammer in hand, fearless and
unshakable. Exactly. We see the icon. But today,
our mission, our whole goal for this deep dive
is to, I guess, take a sledgehammer to that marble.
I like that analogy. We want to move beyond the
myth and find the human being underneath. And
based on this massive stack of sources, documents,
letters, and historical records you brought to
the table, that man underneath was, well, he
was complicated. Complicated is certainly the
diplomatic word for it. He was a man of profound,
almost violent contradictions. I mean, that's
what we're going to explore today, right? How
a humble monk who was literally paralyzed by
a terror of hell ended up shattering the unity
of the Roman Catholic Church. And it's not just
that. This is a man who translated the Bible
for the common people, which is this incredible
act of democratizing faith. Right. Yet he also
wrote things in his later years that are, I mean,
they're deeply disturbing and problematic. Oh,
absolutely. Yeah, we're definitely going to get
into all of that. This isn't the sanitized Sunday
school version where he, you know, nails some
paper to a door and everyone lives happily ever
after. No, this story is full of lightning bolts,
smuggling nuns and herring barrels, shouting
matches with cardinals. And some truly dark,
dark chapters that often get left out of the
highlight reel. It really is a story that defies
any simple categorization. For sure. But if you
want to understand the Western world today, our
ideas of individuality, conscience, and authority,
you have to grapple with Luther. And to do that,
you have to grapple with his demons, both real
and imagined. So let's start at the very beginning.
Before the hammer, before the 95 theses, let's
talk about the making of the monk. Where does
Martin Luther come from? Because I think we need
to understand the world he was born into to understand
why he did what he did. Absolutely. So he was
born on November 10th, 1483 in Aislebin in what
was then the Holy Roman Empire. Now, we have
to pause there. The world of 1483 is not our
world. It's a world of absolute terrifying precariousness.
What do you mean by that? Well, the Black Death
was still a recent memory. It would sweep through
every few generations. Child mortality was...
And it wasn't just physical danger, right? It
was... The spiritual atmosphere was totally different
from today. Correct. The world was enchanted,
but not in a, you know, a Disney way. It was
enchanted with dread. For the average person
in Saxony, the air was thick with demons, witches,
hobgoblins, and evil spirits. Everything was
a spiritual battle. And God is presiding over
all of this. Yes, but not necessarily a gentle
shepherd god. This was God the judge, the almighty
who could strike you dead at any moment and cast
you into eternal fire. The anxiety level of the
average medieval person about the state of their
soul was, I mean, it was off the charts compared
to today. And into this high anxiety world, Martin
Luther is born. His parents were Hans and Margrethe
Luther, the spelling changed to Luther later,
and his dad, Hans. He wasn't theologian or a
priest. He sounds like a character we'd recognize
today. Oh, Hans is the original tiger dad. No
question. Hans Luder was a quintessential self
-made man. He wasn't a peasant, but he wasn't
nobility either. He was part of that rising trading
class. He worked his way up from basically nothing
to become a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters.
Copper mining in the 15th century. That doesn't
sound like a desk job. It was dirty, dangerous,
brutal work. But Hans was ambitious. He was hardworking
and he wanted to rise in society. He eventually
became a town counselor. And naturally, he wanted
that same success and more for his son. He saw
Martin as the vehicle for the family's social
ascension. 100%. The classic ambitious father.
I read that he had a very specific career path
mapped out for Martin. He didn't say, follow
your passion, son. No. No, the vision was, secure
the family fortune. Hans Luther wanted his eldest
son to be a lawyer. That was the golden ticket
in the Holy Roman Empire. Law meant social mobility,
it meant financial security, and it meant prestige.
So he spares no expense on Martin's education.
None. He poured the profits from the copper mines
into Martin's schooling. He sent him to the best
Latin schools in Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach.
And Martin didn't exactly look back on those
school days with fondness, did he? No, definitely
not. Luther later described his education as
purgatory and hell. Wow. He really didn't mince
words. Was he just, you know, complaining? Or
was it actually that bad? It was likely that
bad. I mean, the teaching style of the time was
just brutal. It was all rote learning. Memorize,
recite, repeat. The trivium grammar, rhetoric,
logic. It was a rigid system designed to break
the will and form the mind. And if you messed
up. If you missed a disclension in Latin, you
got the rod. It was physical discipline mixed
with mental exhaustion. But the thing is, Martin
was brilliant. He was very, very good at it.
So the system worked in a way. It produced a
disciplined mind. It did. By 1501, he's 17 years
old, and he enters the University of Erfurt.
It was one of the best universities in Germany
at the time. I think he had a nickname for it,
too. He called it a beer house and whore house,
which, you know, gives you a sense of the student
life there. But he kept his head down. He woke
up at 4 a .m. every day for rote learning and
spiritual exercises. He received his master's
degree in 1505. So he is checking every box.
He's the star student. And following his father's
strict plan, he enrolls in law school. Hans Luther
is probably, I don't know, popping the mead.
He must have been so proud. The plan is working.
The investment is about to pay off. Everything
was going according to plan until July 2, 1505.
The inciting incident. The lightning bolt. Quite
literally. Luther was riding back to university
after a trip home to visit his parents. He gets
caught in a violent thunderstorm near the village
of Stotternheim. And again, we have to put ourselves
in the mindset of a medieval man here. This isn't
just, oh, dangerous weather, I might get wet.
This is divine wrath. This is God speaking through
nature. It's the judge coming for her. Exactly.
The sky turns black. The thunder shakes the ground.
A lightning bolt strikes right near him. Some
accounts say it knocked him from his horse. The
air smells of ozone and sulfur. He is terrified.
He thinks this is it. I am dying and I am not
ready. I am going to hell. And in that moment
of sheer panic, he cries out. But he doesn't
cry out to God directly, does he? No, he cries
out to Saint Anna. Help, Saint Anna, I will become
a monk. Why Saint Anna? What's the significance
there? She was the patron saint of minors, his
father's patron saint. It was an instinctual
cry to the protector of his family. But the content
of the cry, I will become a monk. That was the
pivot point of his entire life. That is a massive
overcorrection. He goes from I don't want to
die to I'll drop out of law school and join a
monastery. It sounds so impulsive. It was impulsive.
But in the medieval mind, a vow made to a saint
during a moment of mortal peril was a binding
contract. He survived the storm and he viewed
that cry for help as an unbreakable vow. It was
like you saved my life. Now my life belongs to
the church. So he really felt he had no choice.
He felt compelled by honor and by fear. Two weeks
later, he throws a farewell party for his university
friends. He gives away his expensive law books,
his loot. And on July 17th, 1505, he walks into
St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt, the Black
Cloister. I can just imagine his dad, Hans, was
absolutely thrilled about this development. Furious
doesn't even begin to cover it. Hans saw it as
a complete waste of an expensive education and
a betrayal of his duty to the family. When Martin
later tried to reconcile with him, Hans said
something like, God grant that it was not an
apparition of the devil. He thought Martin was
hallucinating. He thought his son was throwing
his entire life away because of a bad dream in
a storm. So Martin trades the law books for the
cowl. He becomes an Augustinian friar. But this
didn't exactly solve his anxiety, did it? I mean,
he went there to find peace with God, but the
sources say he found the opposite. That's the
great irony of his life. He dedicated himself
to the monastic life with an incredible, almost
frightening intensity. He was an overachiever
at being a monk. What does that even look like?
Fasting until he was skeletal, long, long hours
of prayer, sleeping without blankets in the freezing
winter to mortify the flesh, frequent confession.
And he wasn't doing this to show off. No, no,
not at all. He was doing it because he was terrified.
He was trying to solve a spiritual math problem
that couldn't be solved. The theology he was
taught said that you had to be contrite, truly
sorry for your sins, and then do penance to be
forgiven. Okay. But Luther's brain was too analytical
for that. He would ask himself, am I really sorry
or am I just afraid of being punished? If I'm
just afraid, then I'm not truly contrite. If
I'm not contrite, I'm not forgiven. If I'm not
forgiven, I'm going to hell. That's a spiral.
It's a feedback loop of anxiety. He called it
Anfechterung. It's a German word that's hard
to translate perfectly. It means spiritual trial,
terror, despair, assault. He felt that God was
not a loving father, but a jailer and hangman.
He had this quote that really stuck with me.
I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God
who punishes sinners. He hated God. That's a
heavy, heavy admission for a monk to make. It
was his crisis point. He was spiraling. He was
driving his superiors crazy. His confessor was
a man named Johann von Staupitz, the vicar general
of the Augustinian order. Luther would confess
for hours and hours over the tiniest infractions.
I can't imagine being on the other side of that
screen. Staupitz eventually told him, Martin,
God is not angry with you. You are angry with
God. Staubitz sounds like a pretty good therapist
for the 16th century. He really was. And he made
a brilliant management decision. He realized
that Luther had too much time to just sit and
think about himself, to obsess. He needed a job.
He needed a distraction. So Staubitz ordered
him to pursue an academic career. He basically
said, go get your doctorate and teach the Bible.
Go study the scriptures so you stop obsessing
over your own thoughts. Exactly. And that one
order changed history. Because it sent Luther
to a new, small university in a town called Wittenberg.
Okay, so let's move to part two, Wittenberg.
This is where the magic happens. Luther becomes
a professor of theology in 1512, and he starts
lecturing on the Bible. Psalms. Romans, Galatians.
And this is where the aha moment occurs. It wasn't
overnight. It was a process over several years,
what scholars call the tower experience. But
as he is wrestling with the text, specifically
Paul's letter to the Romans, his entire worldview
shifts. So unpack that shift for us, because
theological terms can get dry pretty fast. But
this is the engine of the entire Reformation.
What was the old way of thinking and what was
Luther's new way? Okay, so the old way, the Catholic
view at the time, was essentially what we call
synergism. Cooperation. Yes. The idea was that
God offers grace, but you have to do your part.
You cooperate with that grace. You earn merit
through the sacraments, through good works, through
charity. It's like a spiritual ledger. You sin,
you get debt, you do penance, you pay it off.
Which explains Luther's anxiety perfectly. Yeah.
You can never be sure the ledger is balanced.
You never know if you've paid enough. Precisely.
It's a treadmill of spiritual anxiety you can
never get off. But while studying Romans 1 .7,
the just shall live by faith, Luther realized
something else. He looked at the Greek word for
justice or righteousness. He concluded that righteousness
isn't a standard we have to meet or achieve.
It's a gift God gives. Wait, explain that distinction
with an analogy if you can. Okay. Imagine you
have a massive credit card debt, millions of
dollars. You can never, ever pay it off. The
old way says, here's a payment plan. If you work
hard every single day for the rest of your life,
maybe you can pay down the interest. An impossible
task. Right. The Luther way says, someone else,
Christ has already paid the bill in full. The
debt is gone. You just have to accept the receipt.
So it's a one -way street, not a cooperation.
Exactly. The theologians call it monergism. For
Luther, it became soulified, faith alone. He
realized that you are not justified because you
are good. You are justified because Christ is
good. And he gives that righteous status to you
as a gift through faith. Luther said when he
understood this, I felt that I was altogether
born again and had entered paradise itself through
open gates. So the pressure is off. The anxiety
is gone. The jailer God became the loving father.
It must have been incredibly liberating for him.
It shattered his medieval anxiety. But it was
about to shatter the peace of the church, too.
Because while Luther is in Wittenberg discovering
that grace is free, the church hierarchy is doubling
down on the idea that grace is for sale. Which
brings us to the indulgence crisis. This is the
spark that lights the powder keg. And to understand
this, you really have to follow the money. Because
this wasn't just about theology. This was about
construction projects and high finance. So who
are the key players here? Okay, you have Pope
Leo X in Rome. He's a Medici, very cultured,
very expensive tastes. He is rebuilding St. Peter's
Basilica, that magnificent structure we see today
in the Vatican. That costs an absolute fortune.
An expensive taste requires deep pockets. Very
deep. And then you have Archbishop Isbarbrecht
of Mainz in Germany. He's a young, ambitious
noble. who wants to be the primate of Germany.
To get that job, he has to pay the pope a huge
fee. Then he doesn't have the cash. No. So he
borrows it from the Fuggers. They were like the
Rothschilds or the Goldman Sachs of the 16th
century. The biggest banking family in Europe.
So the archbishop is in debt to the bankers and
the pope needs money for his building. It sounds
like a modern financial scandal. It basically
is. So they hatch a plan. The pope authorizes
a special plenary indulgence to be sold in Germany.
An indulgence was technically a remission of
the temporal punishment for sin, basically buying
time off from purgatory for yourself or your
deceased relatives. And the money gets split.
Yep. Half the money goes to the pope for the
basilica. Half goes to the bankers to pay off
Archbishop Albrecht's loan. It's a fundraising
scheme. It is. And to run the scheme, they hire
a closer, a man named Johann Tetzel. This guy
was the Billy Mays of the 16th century. A real
showman. He was a Dominican friar with a flair
for the dramatic. He would come into town with
crumpets and banners. He'd preach a sermon that
would terrify you about your dead parents suffering
in the flames of purgatory. And he had that famous
jingle. He did. It's attributed to him. As soon
as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from
purgatory springs. That is catchy. I hate it,
but it's catchy. And terribly manipulative. Luther
thought so, too. he was a pastor in wittenberg
his own parishioners were crossing the river
to buy these indulgences from tetzel and coming
back claiming they didn't need to repent anymore
because they had bought a ticket to heaven luther
The man who spent years agonizing over true repentance
must have been absolutely furious. He was outraged.
He saw it as spiritual fraud. He believed it
was giving people a false security. He thought
the Pope was being misled or that the people
were being scammed out of their salvation. So
on October 31st, 1517, he decides to start a
debate. This is the day that everyone knows,
Reformation Day. He writes the 95 Theses. Or
to give it its full title, The Disputation on
the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. Now we
have to address the image everyone has in their
head. Luther, hammer in hand, dramatically pounding
these papers onto the door of the castle church
in Wittenberg. Factor fiction. It's debated.
A lot of serious scholars think it might be a
legend. The story comes from Philip Melanchthon,
who was Luther's right -hand man, but Melanchthon
wasn't actually in Wittenberg in 1517 when it
supposedly happened. luther himself in all his
writings about that time he never once mentioned
nailing them to the door So he might have just
mailed them. We know for a fact he mailed them.
He wrote a very respectful letter to his bishop,
Albrecht of Mainz, the guy in debt. And he enclosed
the theses. He was following proper academic
protocol. He wanted a scholarly disputation among
theologians. But whether he nailed them or mailed
them, they didn't stay in the envelope? No. And
this is where the technology of the day comes
in, the printing press. This is the first time
in history a message goes truly viral. Luther
wrote the theses in Latin, intended only for
scholars, but some of his friends translated
them into German without really asking him. They
printed them. And they went everywhere. Everywhere.
It was a firestorm. Within two weeks, they were
all over Germany. Within a month, they were all
over Europe. Luther woke up one day and found
out he was the most famous or infamous man in
the Holy Roman Empire. And the content wasn't
just dry theology. I mean, some of it was pretty
spicy. Oh, absolutely. Thesis 86 is a classic
zinger. He asks, why does the pope, whose wealth
today is greater than the wealth of the richest
Roman emperor, build the Basilica of St. Peter
with the money of poor believers rather than
with his own money? Ouch. That's a direct shot
at the wallet. It was. And that's why it resonated
with so many people. It tapped into a deep vein
of German resentment against Rome, you know,
taxing them to build palaces in Italy. Luther
suddenly became the voice of that national frustration.
So the cat is out of the bag. The feces are everywhere.
How does the empire strike back? This brings
us to part three of our story. Initially, Rome
was very slow to react. Pope Leodex, he dismissed
it as a monkish squabble. He famously said, Luther
is a drunken German. He will feel different when
he is sober. Famous last words. Indeed. But as
the sales of indulgences plummeted, the church
realized they had a serious problem on their
hands. The money was drying up. They had to act.
They send in the heavy hitters. They do. In 1518,
Luther is summoned to Augsburg to meet with Cardinal
Cajetan. Cajetan was a brilliant theologian,
a top -tier Dominican intellectual. He expected
Luther to just show up, recant. kiss the ring
and go back to his monastery. But Luther isn't
really the shut up type. Not at all. The meeting
turned into a shouting match. Luther insisted
that the pope was not above scripture. Cajetan
insisted on papal authority. It ended with Luther
having to literally slip out of the city at night
to avoid being arrested. A narrow escape. And
then things escalate even further. The Leipzig
debate in 1519. Right. This was against another
brilliant debater named Johann Eck. And Eck was
a shark. He was a skilled debater who knew exactly
how to trap Luther. He pushed Luther on point
after point until he got him to admit that popes
and even church councils could make mistakes.
Which is heresy. It is absolute heresy. Eck then
compared Luther to Jan Hus, a Czech reformer
who had been burned at the stake a century earlier
for saying similar things. And Luther, in the
heat of the debate, essentially said, yes, Hus
was right about some things. That was crossing
the Rubicon. That was it. By admitting that,
Luther had declared war not just on indulgences,
but on the entire authority structure of the
church. So the church has had enough. In June
of 1520, the pope issues a bull. Exurge Domine.
Arise, O Lord, and judge your cause. A wild boar
has invaded your vineyard. It condemned 41 of
Luther's errors and gave him 60 days to recant
or face excommunication. And how does Luther
respond to this terrifying threat from the vicar
of Christ? He burns it. He burns the pope's decree.
Publicly. In Wittenberg, he throws the papal
bull onto a bonfire of canon law books, surrounded
by his students. That is the point of no return.
So formal excommunication follows in January
1521. He's officially kicked out of the church.
but he's still a subject of the empire. So now
the Holy Roman Emperor himself, Charles V, gets
involved. The Diet of Worms, April 1521. This
is the climax of the early Reformation. It's
the big showdown. And Diet of Worms always sounds
funny to modern ears, but diet just means assembly,
and Worms is a city in Germany. Correct. So Luther
is summoned to appear before the emperor. He's
given a guarantee of safe conduct, but he knows
what happened to Jan Hus. He had safe conduct
too, and they burned him anyway. His friends
begged him not to go. He goes anyway. He goes.
He said he would go to worms even if there were
as many devils as tiles on the roofs. He stands
before the emperor, the princes, all the assembled
power of Europe. There's a pile of his books
on a table in front of him. A pretty intimidating
scene. Immensely. The prosecutor points to the
books and asks him two questions. Are these your
books? And will you recant what you've written
in them? And he asks for time. He does. And this
is a moment that really humanizes him. The first
day, he speaks quietly, almost in a whisper.
He asks for a day to think about his answer.
He wobbles a bit. He was clearly intimidated.
You can imagine him in his room that night thinking,
am I really right? Is everyone else in 1 ,500
years of history wrong? But he comes back the
next day. He comes back with his resolve stiffened.
He delivers the speech that, in many ways, defines
the modern idea of individual conscience. He
refuses to divide his books into good and bad.
And he says, And the famous line, Here I stand,
I can do no other. Did he actually say that?
It's a bit like the church door story. Scholars
generally agree that the specific words, here
I stand, I can do no other, were likely added
in later printed versions to make it punchier,
more dramatic. But the sentiment is 100 % accurate
to what he said. Witnesses at the time said he
raised his arm like a knight winning a tournament
bout. He had taken his stand. And the verdicts?
The Edict of Worms. It declares him an outlaw.
We want him to be apprehended and punished as
a notorious heretic. The edict essentially made
it legal for anyone to kill him without consequence.
He was bird free, as they said. A dead man walking.
Which brings us to one of the most cinematic
twists in history. The kidnapping. Yes. So Luther
is traveling back home from Worms. Suddenly,
in the forest near Wittenberg, a group of armed
horsemen surround his wagon. They pull him out,
they curse at him, and they ride off with him
into the woods. But they weren't enemies. No.
It was a setup. It was orchestrated by his protector,
Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony. Frederick
wanted to keep Luther safe, but he couldn't be
seen openly defying the emperor, so he staged
a fake kidnapping and had Luther hidden away
at the Wartburg Castle. Clever. Plausible deniability.
Exactly. Even Frederick didn't want to know exactly
where Luther was so he could honestly tell the
emperor, I don't know. So Luther disappears.
The world thinks he might have been captured
and killed. Yeah. But he's actually sitting in
a castle growing a beard and going by the alias
Junker Jorg Knight George. And this period of
exile at the Vorkberg is incredibly productive.
He's isolated. He's fighting with depression
again. He talks about fighting the devil in his
room, hearing noises. There's the famous story
of him throwing an ink pot at the devil. But
he channels that energy into work. The translation
project. This is monumental. He decides to translate
the New Testament from the original Greek into
German. And he does it in just 11 weeks. 11 weeks.
That is blindingly fast. It's an incredible feat
of intellect and focus. But it's more than just
the speed. It was the kind of German he used.
He used the Saxon chancellery dialect, which
was sort of a middle ground that was intelligible
to both northern and southern Germans. He wanted
a German that could be understood by the mother
in the home, the children on the street, the
common man in the marketplace. Before this, German
was just a mess of different dialects, right?
A Bavarian might not understand a Saxon. Right.
Luther's Bible helped standardize the modern
German language. It gave the German people a
unified voice. And crucially, it put the Bible
into the hands of ordinary people. You didn't
need a priest to tell you what it said anymore.
You could read it for yourself. That is the ultimate
democratization of religion. But while he's up
in the castle translating down in Wittenberg.
Things are getting a little crazy. Complete chaos.
Without Luther there to steer the ship, more
radical reformers took over. Men like Andreas
Karlstadt and a group called the Zwickau Prophets.
They started smashing statues in churches, destroying
images, preaching radical social revolution.
This is the Pandora's box problem. Once you say
question authority, people start questioning
all authority. Exactly. And Luther did not want
chaos. He was a conservative revolutionary. He
wanted to reform the theology, not overturn the
entire social order. So in 1522, he comes out
of hiding and returns to Wittenberg. A huge risk.
A massive risk. He preaches a series of sermons
called the Invocavit sermons. He calms the mob.
He effectively says, faith needs to be free.
You can't force people to believe. He pushes
the radicals out and restores order. He becomes,
ironically, the conservative force within his
own reformation. But the fire was already spreading
beyond just church statues. And this leads to
the Peasants' War in 1524. This is a tough chapter
for Luther fans to reconcile. It is the most
controversial moment of his political life. The
peasants in Germany had valid, longstanding grievances.
They were being crushed by taxes and serfdom.
They heard Luthi talking about Christian freedom
and the priesthood of all believers, and they
interpreted that politically. They thought he
was on their side. They thought Luther was their
champion against the oppressive lords. They launched
a massive rebellion across Germany. And what
was Luther's initial reaction? At first, he tried
to mediate. He wrote a pamphlet scolding the
princes, telling them they were being too harsh
and tyrannical. But as the violence grew, as
the peasants started burning castles, killing
nobles, creating total anarchy, Luther turned
on them viciously. He wrote another pamphlet
with the title that tells you everything you
need to know. Against the murderous, thieving
hordes of peasants. And the content is shocking
to modern readers. He told the nobles to smite,
slay, and stab the rebels like they were mad
dogs. He said there was nothing more poisonous,
hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. He sided completely
with the state power. Why? He did. He believed
that while all people are equal before God in
the spiritual realm, in the earthly realm, you
must obey the authorities that God has established.
He feared chaos more than he feared tyranny.
The result was a massacre. The princes crushed
the rebellion. Thousands upon thousands of peasants
were killed. And Luther lost the support of the
common peasantry largely after that. He became
the theologian of the princes. It secured the
Reformation's political survival for sure. The
princes protected him, but it came at a terrible
human cost. It defined Lutheranism as a state
-supported religion, not a popular uprising.
And right in the middle of all this death and
chaos, Luther decides to do something. Surprisingly
cheerful. He gets married. Yes. It's a great
story that contrasts so sharply with the war.
In 1523, he helped a group of 12 nuns escape
from a convent in Nimshin. How did he get them
out? He had a merchant friend smuggle them out
of the convent, hidden in empty herring barrels.
Classic romance. Nothing says I love you like
the smell of pickled fish. Well, once they were
out, he felt responsible for them. He managed
to marry most of them off to various friends
or students, but there was one left, a woman
named Katharina von Bora. She was 26. Luther
was 41. She was stubborn and intelligent. And
she had her eye on Luther. She did. She basically
told a friend, I won't marry anyone else. I'll
marry Dr. Luther. And he did it. He did. Even
his friends were shocked. His closest ally, Melanchthon,
thought it was a reckless move during such a
chaotic time. But Luther said he did it to spite
the devil. And to set a precedent. Exactly. He
wanted to prove that clerical marriage was good
and biblical. They moved into the Black Cloister.
his old monastery, which the elector gave them
as a home, and Katie, as he called her, took
charge. She was incredible. She managed the finances,
the brewery, the farm, the dozens of students
who boarded with them. They had six children.
It turned out to be a genuinely happy marriage.
It did. It wasn't romantic initially, but it
became a deep and loving partnership. He called
her My Lord Katie. It established the model of
the Protestant parsonage, the pastor and his
family living as a pillar of the community, not
set apart in a celibate tower. So we've had the
monk, the rebel, the husband. Now we have to
look at the older Luther. And this is where the
picture gets darker. Part six. controversies
and his darker years we can't avoid these as
Luther got older he got crankier he got sicker
and he became much more stubborn let's talk about
the bigamy scandal first this one always surprises
people The Philip of Hesse Fair in 1539. So Philip
was a leading Protestant prince, a crucial ally
to the movement's military defense. He was trapped
in an unhappy political marriage, but he had
fallen in love with a lady -in -waiting and wanted
to marry her. Divorce wasn't really an option
politically. So he asked Luther for advice. He
does. And Luther, along with Melanchthon, makes
a terrible calculation. They look at the Old
Testament patriarchs, Abraham, Jacob, who had
multiple wives, and they advise Philip. to marry
her secretly as a second wife. Bury me. Technically,
yes. They argued it was at lesser evil than divorce
or ongoing adultery. But of course, in the courts
of Europe, nothing stays secret. It leaked. It
became a huge scandal. And to make it worse,
Luther then advised Philip to tell a good, strong
lie to cover it up. That is... not great moral
leadership. It damaged his reputation significantly.
It looked like he was bending God's law to please
a powerful political patron. It showed he was
willing to compromise his ethics for what he
saw as political necessity. But the biggest shadow
over Luther's legacy, the one that is impossible
to ignore, is his attitude toward Jewish people.
Yes, this is the most difficult and painful part
of Luther's story. and we have to face it head
on it didn't start that way though there was
a shift no it didn't in 1523 earlier in his career
he wrote a treatise called that jesus christ
was born a jew In it, he advised kindness. He
argued that Jewish people hadn't converted to
Christianity because the Catholic Church had
been so corrupt and had treated them so badly.
He thought that if he presented the pure gospel,
they would convert in large numbers. It was a
missionary strategy. Be nice and they'll join
us. Exactly. But they didn't join. They remained
Jewish. And as the years went on, Luther took
this rejection very personally. He became bitter
and hostile. He couldn't understand why anyone
would reject his truth unless they were stubborn
or evil. And in 1543, just three years before
his death, he writes on the Jews and their lies.
It is a horrific document. There is no other
way to describe it. It is violent, hateful rhetoric.
What specifically did he call for? He called
for burning their synagogues and schools, for
destroying their prayer books, forbidding rabbis
from preaching on pain of death, seizing their
property and expelling them from the land. He
called them envenomed worms and the devil's people.
That sounds like a blueprint for what happened
in the 20th century. Many historians argue that
it provided the theological and cultural groundwork
for the Nazis later on. The Nazis absolutely
co -opted this book. They reprinted it and displayed
it at rallies. Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken
Glass in 1938, happened on Luther's birthday,
November 10th. A pro -Nazi bishop at the time
even applauded the burning of synagogues as a
fitting tribute to Luther. That is chilling.
And to be clear here, though, Luther's motivation
was theological, not racial. Correct. That is
the important distinction historians make. It
was religious anti -Judaism, not modern racial
anti -Semitism. If a Jewish person converted
to Christianity, Luther would have accepted them
as a brother. It wasn't about blood for him,
but the rhetoric, the violence of the language.
It absolutely laid a groundwork of hatred in
Germany that was easily exploited by racists
centuries later. It's a stain on his legacy that
you can't wash out. You can't. And modern Lutheran
churches have formally repudiated these writings.
They've apologized for them. But you can't study
Luther without facing this darkness. It shows
that he was a man capable of incredible courage,
but also incredible hate. So we have this deeply
complex man, a genius, a revolutionary, a husband,
a bigot. Let's go to his final years, part seven.
His health was failing badly. He suffered from
Meniere's disease, which causes awful vertigo
and tinnitus, a constant ringing in the ears.
He had kidney stones, cataracts. He was in constant
pain. And pain makes you grumpy. Incredibly.
He admitted it himself. He said, they're teaching
me to be rude. He was fighting everyone, the
Pope, the Jews, the lawyers, even his own supporters
sometimes. He was just tired and angry. And how
does the end come? In 1546, he travels back to
Eisleben, the very town where he was born. He
went to mediate a dispute between the Counts
of Mansfeld regarding those copper mines. Full
circle. Born in Eisleben, dies in Eisleben. He
preached his last sermon there. On February 18th,
1546, he had severe chest pains. He knew it was
the end. And even on his deathbed, people were
watching to see if he would recant. Exactly.
The stakes were still that high. If he recanted
at the last moment, the whole Reformation might
collapse. His friends, Justice Jonas and Michael
Coelius, were with him. They shouted in his ear,
Reverend Father, are you ready to die trusting
in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the
doctrine which you have taught in his name? And
his an - A distinct yes. He died shortly after.
But he left one last note, didn't he? Yeah. A
scrap of paper found in his pocket after he died.
He did. It's the perfect epitaph for his whole
life, really. A mix of Latin and German. The
last line reads, We are beggars. This is true.
Wir sind bettler. Hach ist wirum. We are beggars.
What did he mean by that? It goes right back
to his core discovery in that tower. We come
to God with empty hands. We don't earn anything.
We don't trade our good works for salvation.
We can only beg for grace, and it is given freely.
It was a final confession of humility from a
man who often seemed so arrogant. It was him
admitting that despite all his works, all his
writing, all his battles, at the end of the day
he was just a beggar before God. So I'll try
to sum up the legacy. It's massive. It's incalculable.
Religiously, he permanently split Western Christianity.
He created Protestantism as a major branch of
the faith. Culturally. The German Bible. He shaped
the modern German language. And the music. We
haven't touched enough on the music. He wrote
these powerful hymns like, A mighty fortress
is our God. He introduced congregational singing.
Before Luther, the choir sang in Latin. After
Luther, everyone in the pews sang together in
their own language. He turned church into a participatory
event. And politically. You have the concept
of the two kingdoms, this idea of a separation
between the authority of the church and the authority
of the state. And you can't forget the legend
of the swan. Oh, right, the swan prophecy. Jan
Hus, the reformer who was burned at the stake
in 1415. The name Hus means goose in the Bohemian
language. And the legend says that as he was
burning, he prophesied, Today you will roast
a goose, but in a hundred years' time you will
hear a swan sing. You had better listen to him.
And Luther is the swan. That's how the Lutherans
saw it. That's why you often see a swan as a
symbol in Lutheran art. So here we are at the
end of this deep dive. We've unpacked the monk,
the reformer, the husband, the anti -Semite.
It's a lot to hold in your mind at once. A lot
of contradictions. It is. It forces us to confront
the nature of great men in history. We want our
heroes to be simple. We want perfect marble statues.
Luther just refuses to be that. He illustrates,
maybe better than anyone, that profound genius
and incredible courage can coexist with deep,
ugly flaws and prejudices. The same passion that
gave him the courage to stand alone against an
empire also fueled his later hatreds. You don't
get the one without the other. It raises a provocative
question for me and for you listening. If Luther
had died in 1521, right after the Diet of Worms,
He would be a pure martyr, an uncomplicated hero
of conscience. We wouldn't have the anti -Semitic
writings. We wouldn't have the incitement against
the peasants. He would be remembered very, very
differently. But we also might not have the complete
German Bible, or the stable church structure
he built later, or the hymns. Exactly. History
is messy. You can't just cherry -pick the parts
you like. It certainly is. And that is why we
do these deep dives, to look at the full picture,
warts and all. And with Luther, there are plenty
of warts. but the picture is undeniably powerful.
Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Thanks for taking this deep dive with us into
the life of Martin Luther. It's been a wild ride.
A fascinating one. Thanks for having me. See
you next time.