Commentaries and Podcasts

Martin Luther, In Life and Death, Part 6: the Indulgence Dispute.

Here we will continue our presentation of Martin Luther in Life and Death, and we are still in the portion of this endeavor which concerns Luther's life. Today we hope to focus upon the dispute concerning indulgences. The Roman Catholic Church dogmas on indulgences were the primary complaint against the church in Martin Luther's famous 95 theses, and these would ultimately spark the Reformation. Doing this, we shall also discuss a man named Johann Tetzel, the leading Romish Catholic indulgence preacher of this time.

In our last presentation in this series, we hope to have illustrated the humanist influences in the court of the de Medici papacy of Leo X and in the courts of the German archbishops, especially in that of Albrecht of Brandenburg, the archbishop of both Mayence and Magdeburg. These men were not only surrounded by immoral humanists who scoffed at the Christian religion, but they also led lavish and immoral lifestyles which required vast sums of money to maintain. Besides his lifestyle, we saw that Bishop Albrecht was heavily indebted to the Fuggers, the banking family of Augsburg. He was counting on the sale of indulgences in the churches of Germany to pay off the bankers, after he had split the proceeds with the pope. The pope would use his half of the indulgence money to help finance his building projects in Rome.

To sell the indulgences which both the pope and the archbishop required, the Roman Catholic Church would have to convince the German people to buy them. To do this, they needed propagandists within the Church. A man named Johann Tetzel became the leading of these propagandists, who went from church to church preaching indulgences. For this cause Tetzel should be the poster child exemplifying just how a man with a doctorate degree in Theology could be nothing more than a whore for the state. He also exemplifies the childish level at which religion is peddled to the masses of the people, and how that was just as effective five hundred years ago as it is today. In fact, the Grahams, Hagees, Warrens and Osteens of today all have their forerunner in Johann Tetzel. They are whores for the State no differently than Tetzel, except that the goals of the state have now changed.

The Devil in Luther's Dreams, Part 4

Here is our fourth discussion on the Roman Catholic Church and the humanists of Martin Luther's Germany. This is really a sub-topic in a broader discussion which we hope to continue throughout the coming year, which we have titled Martin Luther in Life and Death. In our first presentation in this endeavor, we discussed aspects of Luther's own life, and we saw that he himself was a humanist, one of the so-called “poets”, who upon having had an epiphany, suddenly turning to Christianity and joined a monastery.

From there we have been presenting a series which we have subtitled The Devil in Luther's Dream, where we have hoped to illustrate the nature of the Roman Catholic Church that the humanist-turned-priest Martin Luther had later sought to reform, and when he found that he could not reform it, he sought to liberate himself and his German Catholic Church from its clutches. What we call the Reformation should in that essence have instead been called the Liberation. It would eventually result in the 30 Years' War and the destruction of much of Medieval Germany.

We have been following something called The Reuchlin Controversy, and that is because the historian that we chose to follow for this series, Johannes Janssen, had wisely chosen this controversy as the centerpiece in order to describe the turmoil which was rising in Germany at the time. There were many Germans, as well as Italians, who sought to destroy the books and the writings of the Jews. As this issue was once again surfacing in Germany, the lawyer, Cabalist and humanist philosopher Johann Reuchlin came to the defense of the Jewish writings in published booklets of his own. As Reuchlin was opposed by the Theologians of the University at Cologne, which was Germany's largest university, the case came to be heard in the courts of bishops, the emperor, and then the pope. It not only became a defining case in the struggle between Christianity and the survival of Judaism in Europe in Luther's time, but we have also seen that the greater number of Germany's humanists and young pagans, whose new philosophy was the direct result of humanism, were rallying to Reuchlin's side of the debate.

The Roman Catholic Persecution of the Early British Christian Churches

Some of the notes used for the program, the excerpts from Bede's Eccleiastical History and the Chronicles of Ireland, follow below.

The Devil in Luther's Dreams, Part 3

This is our third presentation of what we have loosely titled The Devil of Martin Luther's Dreams, invoking the myth that Luther had thrown his inkwell at the devil literally, when indeed he threw his inkwell at the devil by spilling it out onto hundreds of pages of paper in his writings against both the Roman Church and the Jews. The purpose of these presentations is to describe the devil which Luther was railing against, a Roman Catholic Church fully infiltrated by humanists who scoffed at religion, except as a device by which to fleece the common people of Europe, and especially of Germany.

We have been discussing the humanists in the educational institutions and monasteries of Germany, and also of Italy, in the 15th and 16th centuries. There are some things taken for granted which we had presumed that people would understand. Among those, is that before the Reformation, for Christian Europeans there was no advanced education outside of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The universities and monasteries were the educational system, and they all operated somewhere within the Roman Church structure. Therefore humanists within the church were not really a force which was contrary to the Church itself, although many of them despised the papal authority, but rather if they continued to prevail they would change the entire Church theology to something other than Christianity, and if the Roman Catholic Church continued to dominate European government, religion and education, then the people would have no choice but to submit to the whims of the humanists. In the background was the Jew, playing an influential role in all of this while avoiding any of the blame.

The Devil in Luther's Dreams, Part 2

The purpose of this series of presentations, entitled The Devil of Luther's Dream, is to show the condition of the Catholic faith in Germany at the time of Martin Luther, the character of the Roman Catholic Church, and the extant struggle which Christians such as Luther were having with both Jews and Humanists, many of whom who were basically Catholics-turned-pagan, and a great number of them were monks and priests. Understanding these things, we may better understand the causes of the Reformation, and why Martin Luther and many others believed that it was necessary.

In our last program, we exhibited the fact that the celebrated Catholic priest, Erasmus, was actually a humanist and not at all a Christian. In turn, Erasmus had fostered the development of an entire collection of fellow humanists inside the Catholic church organization in Germany. However we also were able to see in the words of Albert III of Pio, the Prince of Carpi, and from his own correspondence with Erasmus, that humanism had already become prominent within the structure of the Catholic church in Italy, and that many more conservative Italian Catholics were dissatisfied with that development, himself included. Carpi had spent much of his time over several decades challenging and feuding with Erasmus, until he was left bereft of his principality by Charles V of Germany, the Holy Roman emperor.

What follows below are all of the extant quotes from the Classics concerning the Druids which I [WRF] am aware of. Of course, there may be others. These are interspersed with some of my own notes. [Click here to read.]

The Devil in Luther's Dreams, Part 1

Last week, in the first installment of this series, which we shall re-title “Martin Luther in Life and Death”, we gave a background on the life of the Reformer, and the events which sent him on the course which he followed. To fully understand Martin Luther as well as this entire period of German history, we must understand the work of John Wycliffe, and the earlier and notable Czech reformer Jan Huss, who inspired the Hussite Wars in rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church in the opening quarter of the 15th century, a hundred years before Luther's own contentions with the church were published. Later, even Luther considered himself a Hussite. We shall present pertinent information about these men in the near future.

However now, in order to understand the pressing need for what is called the Reformation, we must understand what it was that men such as Luther sought to reform. His initial desires were not to break from the Roman Church, but to bring Church policies into line with Scripture. When he saw that was impossible, only then the Lutheran Church was formed. Last week, presenting a summary of Luther's life and some of the myths surrounding it which was written by John Tiffany, we saw the story of The Devil and Luther's Inkwell. Because Luther had written that he “threw his inkwell at the devil”, the myth arose that he was pestered at night by a demon and he had thrown his inkwell to chase it away. Yet it is more likely that Luther was describing the publication of his 95 Theses as the throwing of his inkwell at the devil, the devil being the Roman Church itself.

Sven's notes are found in his article The Druids and the Early British Church

The following notes represent the citations from various books quoted by William Finck during the audio presentation. The writings of Bede, Gildas and Nennius are found in the References section here at Christogenea.

From The Annals of Ireland translated from The Original Irish of The Four Masters by Owen Connellan in 1846, from a footnote on the Druids found on page 75:

About nine centuries before the Christian era, according to our ancient annalists, Tigearnmas, monarch of Ireland, of the race of Heremon, was the first who introduced Druidism and the worship of idols into Ireland; and it is stated, that while worshipping the idol Crom Cruach, the chief deity of the Irish Druids, along with a vast assemblage of his subjects at Magh Sleacht in Breifne, on the feast of Samhuin, (one of their deities, the day dedicated to whose rites was the same as the last day of October), he himself, with three-fourths of his people, were struck dead by lightning, as a punishment from heaven for his introduction of idolatry into the kingdom. Magh Sleachta signifies either the Plain of Adoration, or the Plain of Slaughter, and obtained its name from the Druidical rites performed there, or from the human sacrifices which the Pagan Irish offered up to the deities of Druidism, as the Canaanites offered up their’s to Moloch. In this place stood a famous temple of the Druids, with the great idol Crom Cruach surrounded by twelve minor idols, composed of pillar stones, and decorated with heads of gold....

Martin Luther: In Life and Death, Part 1: Did Luther Change the World?

Martin Luther's famous “95 Theses” were written in 1517 and are generally considered to be the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, however there were certainly many related historical events and many martyrs of reform before Luther came along. Popularly the theses are more fully titled The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. My own translation of the original Latin title might be A Dispute Regarding the Proclamation of the Power of Indulgences (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum). However in spite of its title, besides the sale of indulgences the disputation also protests against many other clerical abuses. It especially mentions nepotism [favoring of family members by church superiors], simony [the purchase of offices within the church], usury [which had recently been allowed by Rome], and pluralism [agreement that other religions have legitimacy, which allows multiculturalism and leads to ecumenism – in Rome at the time, this primarily allowed for the legitimacy of Jews].

October 31st is called Reformation day, which is celebrated as a religious holiday in many places in Europe. Some sources state that on this day in 1521 Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms. That is not true. Other sources say that October 31st was the day in 1517 that Luther had nailed his 95 “theses” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Whether the original publication of his disputation with the Roman Catholic Church ever happened in precisely that manner is also arguable, and here we will see that and several other myths about Luther called into question. Whether or not the story is true, it has for five centuries been used as a powerful symbol representing the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.