Martin Luther grows in the chief town of the county, Mansfeld, where its family settled in 1484. His/her father, minor of country origin, arrived to a relative ease and Martin could make studies with Magbourg and Eisenach, then it entered to the university of Erfurt (graduate in 1502, Master in philosophy in 1505).

Whereas his/her father wished that he attend the Faculty of Law, it failed to be reached by the lightning, which decided it to become monk. Its piety was marked by the tendencies of the time: live conscience of death, in particular of sudden death without spiritual preparation; concern as for the judgment of God.  
 

Luther is then professor of Holy Scripture with Wittenberg. Its teaching shows it worried by a spiritual search. As of its entry with the convent, it tries to fill, by various works of mortification, the infinite distance which it feels between the holiness of God and the fallible nature of the human being. But, between 1513 and 1519, it becomes aware that safety is not the crowning of human merits, even acquired with the assistance of the grace, but only the work of the grace of God - which saves the human being free -, and that the infinite distance which separates the man from his creator is filled by the arrival on ground of Jesus-Christ. The fear of the divine judgment is thus alleviated: the Christian life consists in accepting the love of god and not accumulating good works, which would make it possible to repurchase its sins.

It is in particular the bringing together of the piety of the Book of the Psalms and of the preaching of the Paul apostle to the Romans - “the Juste will live by the faith” - which produces the merry conviction of Luther and who carries out it towards “experiment of a divine love, of which it always feels makes indignant”. The Christian is at the same time right and sinning. God takes on him the sins, death and the hell, but the man remains a sinner, because the covetousness of the evil remains in him.

 The progressive discovery of this design of the hello leads Luther to take party in precise debates, thus joining the position of humanistic in favor of a reform of the theological studies: it is necessary to teach before all the Writing and the biblical languages to be able to work on the original texts. In addition, he was opposed Tetzel, to German preacher who sold, with the profit of the rebuilding of the Saint-Pierre basilica of Rome, of the letters of indulgences. Those, drawn by the Church in the treasure of the merits of Christ, the Virgin and the saints, make it possible to exonerate certain sins and give part of the sorrows of the purgatory. On October 31st, 1517, Luther writes “95 theses” against the “virtue of indulgences” which it makes placard on the doors of the cathedral of Wittenberg. The invention of printing works allows a broad diffusion of the text, which impassions the intellectuals of the time.  
 
Various ruptures

Estimating the authority of the pope threatened, the Holy See tries to obtain a retractation. Luther answers that it is necessary to show to him, Ecriture with the support, that it is in the error. He then affirms (“argument of Leipzig”, July 1519) that the authority of the Bible is higher than that of the pope, the councils and the magister.

On June 15th, 1520, Leon X summons Luther to retract, condemning his positions on the grace, the sin, the sacraments, the communion under the two species (bubble Exsurge Domine). Luther answers this injunction by publishing, of August to October 1520, three writings having proclamation value. With the Christian nobility of the German nation on the amendment of the condition of Christian the principle of “universal priesthood affirms”: the laymen, from their baptism, are priests like the clerks; there does not exist between them of difference “of gasoline” but only “of function”.

If the pope and the clergy do not carry out the reform of the Church, it is up to the laymen to deal with it. In addition, the biblical revelation is directly accessible to the reader who has the faith. The Holy See does not have any authority when he contradicts the Writing. Be a prelude to on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church supports that the Gospel is prisoner in Rome, new Babylon. The sacraments became means of control to the profit of the Church; two only are biblical: baptism and the Holy Communion. The mass is by no means a sacrifice. The Treaty of the freedom of the Christian describes the Christian like “the freest man”: “main of all things, is fixed with nobody”. At the same time, it “in all things most obliging of the servants, and is fixed with all”.  

These writings obtain an immediate success. Charles Quint gives the order to burn the books of Luther, who retorts by delivering to the flames, with his students, the bubble Exsurge Domine. In answer, on on January 3rd, 1521, a new bubble, Of this romanum pontificem, censures Luther and his partisans. This rupture is ratified by a report of dissension to the diet of Worms (April 1521), chaired by Charles Quint. Luther declares: “Unless one does not convince me by certificates of the Writing - because I believe neither in the pope nor with the councils alone, since it is clear that they often were mistaken and contradicted -, I am bound by the texts scripturaires which I quoted and my conscience is captive words of God. I then neither want to retract me of nothing, because it is neither sure nor honest to act against its own conscience.” With these remarks, the official of Trier retorts: “Gives up your conscience, Martin brother. The only thing which is without danger consists in being subjected to the established authority.” A famous joke of Boileau will say that “any Protestant is pope, Bible with the hand”.  

Luther is put at the round of applause of the Empire: he can be stopped and condemned to death, but Frederic III the Wise one protects it by giving him asylum under the name of “Georges knight” to the castle from Wartburg (May 1521). Luther written there of new works to define its positions: he blames the monastic vows, which, conceived like a work, are for him contrary with the hello by the grace alone. He begins the translation in German of New Testament. During this time, its most radical partisans, led by Andre Karlstadt, even impose many changes on Wittenberg, causing various disorders. Anxious, Luther takes again the head of the movement which he had impelled (March 1522) and affirms that the renewal of the practices must take place gradually, as the awakening of the consciences. In fact, the ceremonies of the worship will be modified only in 1526.  

Hero of the various protestors, Luther is thus brought to break with some of them. For much, the new manner of understanding the Gospel must involve a total change of their situation. Dissatisfied with its fate, the minor nobility rebels in 1522, but Luther refuses to join with this “revolt of the knights”. Thomas Müntzer, a former disciple, preaches from now on a spiritualistic theology founded on the participation in the sufferings of Christ: he opposes “Christ land-mark” to “soft Christ”, allotted to Luther. He binds to a protest movement of peasants, whom he regards as the “community of the elected officials”. Luther claims initially the tolerance for his adversaries, recalls to the princes the duty of reforms and tries to divert the peasants of the armed struggle (Exhortation to peace). But the flashover is general and, little time afterwards, Luther write one makes out of a great violence, Against the fatal and plundering hordes of the peasants, in whom it guarantees the brutal repression exerted against those which took the weapons (and were made beat on on May 15th, 1525 with Frankenhausen).  

For Luther, indeed, resistance to the authority can be only passive. Its theology of the “two reigns”, the spiritual one and the temporal one, develops the emancipation of the second, which goes against the medieval design. The events of 1525 contribute to it: legatee directly by God because of the sin, the temporal government constitutes an expression of his love; it is necessary to maintain a minimum of law and order and to ensure the cohesion of the world. In this theological line, the development of the State will be developed.  

A third rupture with humanistic optimism is added to those operated with the nationalism of the knights and the social revolt of the peasants. It takes the form of a controversy with Erasme - near to him however on certain points (like the need for a biblical revival) -, which supports that the man takes part partly in his safety. At the end of 1525, Luther retorts by servo arbitrio (Of the serf referee), where it reaffirms with strength that safety is a gift of God.  
 
Beginnings of Protestantism

The same year, Luther marries a former Cistercian nun, Catherine de Bora. They will have six children. The joys which gets a plain family are regarded as a gift of God by Luther, who refuses the celibacy of the ecclesiastics. In Protestantism, the pastoral family will tend to become a model of Christian family.  

The new organization is specified as from 1526, date on which a Protestantism Lutheran is constituted, of which Philippe Melanchthon, the collaborator main thing of Luther, will be an important craftsman. Other movements of reform are also organized by being subject to its influence more or less, but the political situation of the innovators is fragile: with the second diet of Whorl (April 1529), of measurements are taken against them, which they answer by a “protest”: they from now on will be qualified “Protestants”. An alliance is then required between the reforming movements German and Swiss. But the conference of Marburg (October 1529) does not lead to a complete doctrinal agreement. An agreement is carried out on fourteen points; fifteenth, which relates to the Holy Communion, remains conflict. There is a consensus for the communion under the two species and for the rejection of the catholic doctrines of the transsubstantiation (conversion of the substances of the bread and the wine into substance of the body and the blood of Christ). According to Luther, the words of Christ “this is my body, this is my blood” mean that, at the time of the Holy Communion, the bread and the wine are, at the same time, bread and wine and body and blood of Christ (doctrines of the consubstantiation). Zwingli, on the contrary, regards the Holy Communion as a memorial of the death of Christ and a symbol of his presence (sacramentary doctrines). Protestantism remains a plural reality, and Luther will be only one reformer among others, even if he is always regarded as the spiritual father of the Reform.  

Luther continues his activities of professor and theologist. He is the initiator of the literary kind of catechism (the Roman Catholic Church will write one of them, in its turn, to counter the influence of Protestantism) and publishes, in 1529, the Great Catechism, intended for the preachers, as well as Small Catechism, for the children. Generally, it is favorable to the instruction and proposes, in 1530, to make the school obligatory. The call to “universal priesthood” requires that each Christian controls his religion and reads the whole of the texts of the Bible, whose complete translation by Luther appears in 1534. This one is capital, on a literary level, because it contributed to replace the many Germanic dialects by a single language, modern German.  

Luther also played a big role in the evolution of the music: within the framework of catholic piety, the latter could be good or a bad work; monophony and the Gregorian sound were privileged, the other kinds being able to be regarded as diabolic. Luther makes music one of the consequences of evangelic, foreign freedom with the idea of hello; he composes itself the text and the melody of 36 canticles. It is through the word that the music can have a theological dignity in itself: it is a terrestrial reality, and the esthetic pleasure is not condemnable. This is why Luther shows a partisan of the polyphony.  

On the political plan, the periods of conflict alternate with the periods of negotiation, but Luther, always with the round of applause of the Empire, does not cross the borders of the electorate of Saxony. He thus does not take part in the diet of Augsburg (1530), where Melanchthon writes a confession of faith, the Confession of Augsburg, which tries to minimize the doctrinal dissensions with Catholicism. Luther however dissuades it to go further in the way of the compromise. Itself writes from the point of view of a council the Articles of Smalkalde (1536). But it is Melanchthon which will represent Protestantism Lutheran, because Luther is not invited to the conferences of Haguenau, Worms and Ratisbon. In 1545, a council is convened to Thirty (Italy) by the pope Paul III. The Protestants refuse to join to it, and Luther writes a virulent lampoon, Against the Roman papacy founded by the devil. The rupture is complete: the council opens on on December 13th, 1545. Luther dies during a stay in his birthplace, on on February 18th, 1546.