On 31 October 1517, the German Augustinian friar Martin Luther — by tradition — nailed 95 theological complaints to a church door, beginning the Reformation. Which church?
Wittenberg, in Saxony, was the small university town where Luther taught theology. The Castle Church (the *Schlosskirche*) had a notice-board door used for academic announcements; that's where the theses went, in standard Latin academic format. The nailing-to-the-door story is contested — the actual mechanism may have been mailing the theses to the archbishop — but the 31 October 1517 date is solid. The proceeds from indulgence sales Luther was protesting were being used to rebuild St Peter's. Cologne Cathedral is medieval but irrelevant; the Frauenkirche in Munich is 15th-century but had nothing to do with the Reformation.
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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