How It's Used

"By the turn of the millennium, Father Neuhaus had traveled a long distance from the gritty young ghetto priest who made headlines in the 1960s, leading demonstrations against the Vietnam War and getting arrested as a McCarthy delegate at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

"'Friends teased him that Martin Luther nailed a mere 95 theses in one manifesto on a church door in Wittenburg, whereas Father Richard seemed to draft whole manifestos every three or four years' said Michael Novak, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, in a remembrance published Friday in the National Catholic Reporter."

—Stephen Miller, "Remembrances: Restless Intellectual Yoked Catholics and Evangelicals," The Wall Street Journal, January 10, 2009, p. A6.

"Perhaps it is an event in a foreign land in the ninth year of Henry's reign that stands as the most significant in all Christendom since the Crucifixion (which we accept as historical fact: the Resurrection, more significant to those who hold the Christian faith, is not for atheists like me). On October 31 1517, when the German priest Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, he changed the destiny not merely of a nation but of Western civilisation. We cannot delude ourselves that Henry, once he understood that this event had happened, was touched by it; he was not the theological type. Ironically, he was made defender of the faith by the Pope in 1521 for defending the Catholic Church against Luther (in a politically useful book ghost-written by Thomas More). Yet when a combination of his desire for a male heir to secure his dynasty and his carnal appetite for Anne Boleyn made it imperative that he end his marriage to Queen Catherine, the Reformation began almost by accident."

—Simon Heffer, "Thank Henry VIII for laying the foundations of freedom The break with Rome created a dynamic middle class, industrial revolution and an empire," The Independent (UK), April 22, 2009.

"Pure accident led to me to arrive in Geneva from Avignon, 200 miles down the river Rhone, but there couldn't be a better journey on which to contemplate Calvin's place in history. Avignon symbolised all that was corrupt, political, and in a word, mediaeval about the papacy: for nearly a hundred years the papacy retreated there from Rome and the cardinals built themselves wonderful palaces in Avignon itself and in Villeneuve lès Avignon across the river.

"The most beautiful of all was built a century after the popes returned to Rome by Cardinal della Rovere; when he was later elected pope and moved to Rome he set about rebuilding St Peter's. To raise the money for this, his successor Leo X decreed a huge sale of indulgences across Europe, and when these came to Wittenberg they so enraged an Augustinian friar named Martin Luther that he nailed his 95 theses to the cathedral door there and gave future historians a date for the start of the reformation."

—Andrew Brown, "From Avignon to Geneva," The Guardian (UK), May 28, 2009.

"Now the Lutheran Church is preparing to celebrate its own Jubilee. A "decade of Martin Luther" has been proclaimed in the run- up to the year 2017, the 500th anniversary of Luther's brazen act of nailing his 95 theses to the castle church door of Wittenberg, Germany, the act that sparked the Reformation. Each year of this Luther decade will be devoted to a single theme."

—James Reston Jr., "Purification starts with the truth ; Catholics. Lutherans. Muslims. Americans. We all need a moment of self-reflection to process our transgressions and move forward toward a better self. And this doesn't mean dilution," USAToday, July 6, 2009, p. A11.

"Under the shrewd direction of Tony Tsendeas, the zaniness unfolds on a handsome set that evokes both 16th-century civilization and the ideas that informed it. (Paul Christensen is the designer.) A model of the Earth dangles over a floor painted with a glossy astronomy chart. To the left, Faustus's office -- a desk and cupboard cluttered with books, pharmaceutical paraphernalia and a human skull -- suggests a Renaissance vanitas painting. To the right, a wall represents the Wittenberg church door to which Luther's 95 Theses (the text that sparked the Reformation) were famously nailed; the wall rotates to become an oversize pulpit."

—Celia Wren, "'Wittenberg': Hamlet Goes to College," The Washington Post, September 2, 2009, C02.

Also Known As (AKA)

The 95 Theses

Links

Related on eAlmanac
The Fifth Modernization

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on the Ninety-Five Theses
The Ninety-Five Theses in English

Product Links
The Reformation by Diarmaid McCulloch