Original subtitles

(commanding music)

- [Hugh] In a time of kings and princes,

power was in the hands of the few.

(hammer thuds)

Then one man broke through.

- This is extortion.

- [Hugh] Challenging an empire with little more

than an idea.

- [Martin] You are murderers, traitors, liars!

- [Hugh] It was a protest born in a thunderstorm

(thunder crackles)

and announced with a nail.

(hammer thuds)

- The time for silence is over.

The time to speak has come.

(crowd cheers)

- [Hugh] The movement spread faster than anything before

thanks to the newest technology

and the oldest truths.

- We should reject both Pope and councils.

- [Hugh] The man at the center had no desire to be king,

but his story would engage millions

and inspire generations in the quest for truth.

- I am bound to defend the truth with my blood and death.

I cannot and I will not retract anything.

(rooms stirs)

- [Hugh] Few have played a greater role

in shaping our modern world.

- If I am shown my errors,

I will be the first to throw my books on the fire.

- [Hugh] His name, Martin Luther.

(momentous music)

(music fades)

- I cannot and I will not retract anything.

(room stirs)

(glowering music continues)

- [Hugh] A brash young monk named Martin Luther

had just infuriated the most powerful leader in Europe,

Emperor Charles V,

and Charles now wanted Luther dead.

(glowering music)

Luther had no army to shield him.

Instead, he had a different kind of protection,

popular support.

Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press,

Luther's protest against the church had transformed him

into Europe's first celebrity.

- He is the first theologian

who had mass media behind him.

- [Hugh] Burning Luther's writings

would not stop the inevitable showdown

of the old against the new,

the medieval versus the modern.

- The thing about gigantic personalities

is that when they get things correct,

they're able to achieve good that nobody else can achieve.

When they get things wrong,

they tend to do damage that nobody else would've done.

Luther's a classic example of that.

- His notoriety made him a figure

you couldn't just dismiss or get rid of.

(weighty music)

- [Hugh] Getting rid of Martin Luther

would now preoccupy the most powerful people on earth

for decades.

The stage was set for one of the biggest battles

of the millennium,

featuring a boisterous media-savvy monk

against the emperor, the Pope, even Henry VIII.

(brooding music)

The origin of the conflict

flowed from a deceptively simple question,

a riddle of sorts,

that Luther had wrestled with for years.

The question goes like this:

"Am I a good person?"

(hammer thuds)

(tender music)

- (whimpers) Uh, uh, ah! - Oh.

- [Hugh] Even children understand the difference

between good and evil.

Regardless of age,

most every person recognizes

they have sometimes strayed

away from the good

and toward the bad.

The natural response is to work a bit harder

in the hope that one's good deeds outweigh the bad.

- Pff! Ah. (laughs) - Urgh!

- [Hugh] It follows that if there is a heaven,

most people assume they'll get in,

because they believe they've been good enough

to earn whatever reward is out there.

Martin Luther did not.

(wretched music)

To him be in good enough for God

made no sense at all.

Instead, his conscience would convict him

as an unworthy sinner.

- We all do our best.

Well, most of us think we do our best most of the time.

Luther didn't.

- What was his struggle?

His struggle was, in a way, the same thing

we all are going through:

"How do I get God's love?

How do I get salvation?

How can I, a big ugly wretched sinner, be saved?"

(Martin whispers)

- [Hugh] For decades Martin Luther felt his guilt

so deeply he couldn't imagine a way out.

In his mind good deeds could never save him.

He fell into despair.

Then Luther found an opening,

an idea so unexpected, so revolutionary,

it would upend the church and reframe history going forward.

- The very fact that we're still talking about it

500 years after the fact

says that Luther was onto something.

(shoes clop)

(cart rattles)

(Hans speaks in German)

- [Hugh] Daily life in 15th-century Europe wasn't easy.

Half of all children would not live to see adulthood.

Disease was rampant; food, often in short supply.

For the poorest and most desperate,

there was no safety net

other than the occasional gift

from those with something to spare.

(Hans speaks in German)

(resolute music)

(metal clinks)

Life was slightly better in the city of Mansfield

thanks to a thriving copper industry,

where a manager named Hans Luther was moving up the ranks.

Hans came to realize

he'd need a solution to the constant stream

of legal arguments that slowed his operation.

In the early 1490s,

he saw the answer in his son Martin,

grooming him for a university education

with an eye toward a career as a lawyer.

- There were frequent conflicts

between the miners and the smelters.

I think Luther's father thought

it would be helpful to have a lawyer in the family

to help resolve some of those kinds of problems.

(thoughtful music)

- [Hugh] By his early 20s,

Martin Luther had fulfilled his father's expectations

to the letter,

earning bachelor's and master's degrees in record time,

but as he began law school,

something wasn't right.

- [Martin] Father.

- [Hugh] Luther left school suddenly midterm

and traveled home to meet with his father.

- That's just it.

- [Hugh] Hans' hope for a lawyer in the family

was about to be dashed.

- Who do you want to be?

- [Hugh] Martin wanted to please his father,

but his law courses seemed trivial.

- [Martin] Please.

- What is it?

Answer my question.

- [Hugh] Especially in light of Martin's deeper concerns,

fears that we're about to reach a breaking point.

- [Hans] Get out.

(Martin speaks in German)

(momentous music)

(thunder crashes)

(wind howls)

(thunder crashes)

(leaves rustle)

- [Hugh] Like most people of the era,

Luther saw acts of nature

as acts of God.

(rain patters)

For Luther the intensity of this storm

brought his conscience to the surface.

(thunder crashes)

- Please. (whispers)

- [Hugh] That night Luther made a promise:

if his life was spared,

he would become a monk.

- Man must first cry out that he sees no hope.

In this disturbance salvation begins.

When man believes himself to be utterly lost,

the light breaks.

(determined music)

- [Hugh] Within days, Luther arrived

at an Augustinian monastery,

casting off law school

and all the expectations of his father.

Hans believed Martin was throwing his life away.

Plus, a vow of celibacy meant no grandchildren.

(table thuds)

- His father was not happy

about his decision to go into the monastery

and made no bones about it.

- [Hugh] The decision to become a monk

wasn't likely a spur-of-the-moment choice.

(severe music)

Martin Luther's heart was already heavy,

fearful of an all-powerful God

with impossibly high standards.

For Luther his feelings of guilt

foster tremendous feelings of fear.

- He was scared stiff before a wrathful God.

(whip thuds) - Argh. (pants)

- [Hugh] Luther hoped that punishing himself for his sins

would be pleasing to God.

He beat himself,

fasted for days,

(aching music)

slept outside in the cold,

but the extreme austerity just didn't seem to be working.

Luther still felt the guilt of his sin.

- I was myself more than once driven

to the very abyss of despair

so that wished I had never been created.

Love God?

I hated him.

- A monk that was driven,

that was not able to sleep,

because he's saying,

"Am I doing everything?

Am I doing everything that the church requires?

Am I obeying all the rules

of my religious orders, the Augustinian?

Uh-oh, have I said the right prayers?

Uh-oh, I'd better do this, or I'm going to hell."

- His problem was that he didn't believe any

of what he was doing as a monk

was really helping him to escape God's judgment.

(monks sing in Latin)

- [Hugh] Luther's supervisor and friend Johann von Staupitz

understood that the church's right of confession

was designed to bring relief

to those burdened with guilt,

forgiveness for every kind of sin.

Luther confessed, but he found little reassurance.

While some monks might make their confession

in a few minutes,

Luther could go on and on for hours.

- (faint) It is not I!

- [Hugh] Fearful that even one unconfessed sin

might be his undoing.

- He went to confession.

He repented, he atoned,

and it still dawned on him:

"But I don't feel saved.

I don't feel happy.

I'm not at peace.

I'm still agonizing.

I feel unable

to earn and achieve God's love, mercy, and salvation."

This is the angst that he had.

- We have accounts of him leaving the confessional

after several hours

of pedantically cataloging everything he'd done wrong

and then him going straight back in again

because he'd forgotten something.

One has to feel sorry, I think,

for the person he was confessing to.

It was a full-time job.

- At one point his confessor told him

to go away and come back

when he had something really important to confess. (laughs)

- [Hugh] Despite his internal struggles,

Luther was a good student

and earned the respect of his peers.

- He was an incredibly hard worker.

Because of this

and because of his native intellect

and because of his passion,

he advanced in the monastic community very quickly.

(solemn music)

- [Hugh] After two years of preparation,

Luther was ordained,

celebrating his first Mass in 1507.

For Martin this was a moment of raw fear,

as he felt the full weight of his unworthiness before God.

Once again, Luther's conscience was condemning him.

(modest music)

- Who am I

that I should lift up mine eyes

or raise my hands to the divine majesty?

And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say,

"I want this. I ask for that"?

For I am dust and ashes and full of sin

and I am speaking to the living eternal and the true God.

- [Hugh] As a priest Luther believed

he had now reached his highest calling.

Luther's father wasn't so sure,

wondering if Martin's call to the monastery

came not from God

but from the Devil.

Luther's friends in the monastery had no such worries.

Soon afterward, they chose Luther

to go as their emissary on a journey,

the longest Luther would take in his entire life.

He walked 800 miles across the Alps to Rome.

(folk chatter) (insubstantial music)

Rome was the seat of the Catholic Church,

and Luther expected a deeply reverent city,

reflecting wise and pious leaders.

What he got instead was disillusionment.

(shadowy music)

No one in Rome seemed to take God very seriously.

The depravity here in the church's holy city

led Luther to wonder

if anything the church had told him was true.

- [Martin] Where God builds a church,

the Devil puts a chapel.

- Of course, the brothels and the alcohol abuse,

here's a small-town German boy (laughs)

in the provincial capital.

- He's outraged by what he sees,

but so is everyone else.

- There was a lot of open jesting, almost mockery,

about the church in Italy

that would not have been common in Germany.

(shoes clop)

- [Hugh] After returning from Rome, Luther's distress grew.

(limping music)

Staupitz long believed

the best way to relieve Luther's angst

was to keep the young monk busy.

He'd previously persuaded Luther

to earn a doctorate in theology.

- Staupitz also knew that Luther was the person

who had a mind for learning and theology.

He basically forced Luther into getting this doctorate.

Luther protested, did not want to do that.

- [Hugh] Now, a new challenge,

Staupitz arranged a position for Luther

in the faculty of the new university in Wittenberg.

Luther's quest continued.

- "He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul,"

you at, at, at the back,

what does this mean?

Oh, um, anyone?

No?

If had it not been for Dr. Staupitz,

I should've sunk in hell.

Johann told me I should become

a professor of theology and a preacher.

I told him that would be the death of me.

He replied, "Oh, that's quite all right.

God has plenty of work for clever men in Heaven."

(book thuds)

(Tetzel speaks in German)

- [Hugh] The city of Wittenberg

was something of a backwater,

and the university wasn't well-known,

but that began to change in 1517

when a traveling friar named Johann Tetzel

set up his controversial fundraising scheme nearby.

Tetzel told the townsfolk

that the documents he was selling,

called indulgences,

could erase the consequences of their sins.

The appeal was irresistible.

Many from Luther's church in Wittenberg

were taken in by Tetzel's claims.

- A practice that surely looks

an awful lotta the time

something like salvation for sale.

(sparse music)

- [Hugh] Traditionally,

the medieval church saw confession,

not indulgences,

as the way to address humanity's moral problem.

Sins are unacceptable to God,

but confessing to a priest

could bring forgiveness and restoration.

Yet even those who confessed regularly

still expected many years in purgatory

before could reach Heaven

until Johann Tetzel's indulgences offered

to shortcut the process for money.

- What's this?

(man speaks faintly)

This is extortion,

a scheme completely opposed to religion.

Its only intent is profit for unprincipled men.

- I think he saw a great dishonesty with it,

that you were fleecing people,

people who were already struggling.

(gloomy music)

- [Hugh] The corruption was not just a local problem.

The tentacles stretched all the way back to Rome.

- One of the external reasons and contributing factors

to the success of the Protestant Reformation,

everybody knows,

was namely the corruption,

at the time,

of the Catholic Church,

which we can't deny.

- [Hugh] Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome,

in 1517 it had not yet been built.

There were plans,

but the work was stalled

because Pope Leo X didn't have the funds.

- He's engaged in trying to update buildings

in the city of Rome itself

to transform it into a nicer place to live,

so he needs money.

- They need money to build Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome,

the very structure tourists see today.

When you walk inside, it's so huge

it sucks the breath outta your lungs,

so this is a terribly expensive building.

How they gonna build it?

- [Hugh] Funds were raised through the sale of indulgences,

and no one sold them more aggressively than Johann Tetzel.

As an unabashed salesman, Tetzel was unmatched.

He'd tell peasants

their dead relatives were screaming in pain in purgatory

begging for relief

which a simple coin could provide.

- Tetzel was a self-promoter from start to finish.

This guy (chuckles) was just

(laughs) a fake right to the bottom.

- They would persuade poor peasants to give their last coins

to get mother out of purgatory, this sort of thing.

Well, Luther had a perfect fit over this.

- [Hugh] From Luther's perspective

the sale of indulgences was leading people away from God.

- Before long all

the churches, palaces, walls, and bridges of Rome

will be built out of our money.

Why doesn't the Pope build Saint Peter's

out of his own money, hmm?

He is richer than Croesus.

He would do better to sell the Basilica

and give the money to the poor people who are being fleeced

by these hawkers of indulgences.

- [Hugh] To address the problem,

he invited an academic debate on the issue.

He began by writing 95 debate topics or theses.

(ominous music)

Then, in the most iconic moment of the era,

Luther nailed his 95 Theses

to the church door in Wittenberg.

- Those who believe

that through these letters of indulgence,

they are made sure their own salvation

will be eternally damned

along with their teachers.

- [Hugh] Although whether the 95 Theses

were ever actually nailed to the church door in Wittenberg

is still debated.

- We don't know if they were posted.

I tend to think not.

- I think the theses were nailed.

I think it's hard to make an argument

that they were not posted.

- Most people when they're going

into church on a Sunday morning

are not gonna stop and read 95 theses

in a language they don't understand.

- I tend to think, personally,

that he did post them somehow in Wittenberg.

The castle church door would be an obvious place to do it.

- The door of the castle church in Wittenberg

was the university bulletin board.

The reason things were posted on that door

is because that's where you posted public notices.

- [Hugh] Whether the 95 Theses were nailed or just mailed,

the result was the same, indifference.

No one wanted to debate Luther.

(intrigued music)

The entire Reformation might've stalled right there,

except for a new invention

that had recently arrived in Wittenberg,

a game-changing technology called the printing press.

Before the printing press,

making books was an excruciating process.

Each word was painstakingly written out by hand.

It could take years to create just one copy of a book.

In the mid 1400s,

Johann Gutenberg perfected the movable type printing press,

a process that could turn out in seconds

what formerly took months,

but the printers still had one problem, content.

They needed material

that would go viral, create controversy, and boost sales.

Nothing really caught on

until they found Martin Luther's 95 Theses.

It was perfect.

Without Luther's knowledge

printers began churning out copies by the thousands.

- [Martin] It is a mystery to me

how my statements were spread to so many places.

They were meant for academic circles.

They were written in such a language

that the common people could hardly understand them.

- The printers are always looking

for stuff that's gonna sell.

Challenging indulgences and their validity, that was a topic

that, I think, the printers thought would sell.

- They spread like wildfire.

10 days, they're in Spain. That's incredible.

- The striking of a match in 1517,

a bonfire the flames of which are still burning.

- How shocked he was

that everything he said

was suddenly out there.

(slinking music)

- [Hugh] Although the 95 Theses were written

for academics, not peasants,

one thing was clear to all:

the document denounced the sale of indulgences.

Luther had struck a nerve,

rousing dormant perceptions

that the Pope had too much power

and wanted too much money from the German people.

(man speaks faintly)

- This is mine.

- Oh, really?

- Where did you get these?

- It's everywhere.

- [Hugh] At first Luther was unaware

his ideas were propagating.

- These have been printed.

- Yes.

- [Hugh] It soon became clear

he was something of a celebrity,

the author of an accidental bestseller, a work

that boldly proclaimed the corruption on everyone's mind.

- There was this suspicion

that the whole thing was a kind of spiritual con.

It was a matter of Luther, as it were,

simply lighting the tinder that was already there.

And the thing blew.

- He draws this picture, and he says,

"I see them in Rome now

drinking their fine Italian wines

and laughing about the stupid beer-drinking Germans

whose tax money has paid for it all."

- But there are other situations out there.

You have got the rise

of nations who are craving land.

At the time of Martin Luther,

close to 50% of the land of what we call Europe

was owned by, guess who,

the Catholic Church.

You got kings who will say,

"I want that,"

and all of a sudden,

you got an articulate masterful writer and speaker

who is speaking out

against this corruption of the church

and giving the kings the rationale they need

to go after that power.

(tense music)

- [Hugh] When a copy of the 95 Theses reached Pope Leo X,

he dismissed it, thinking Luther was a minor player

who posed little threat to the Catholic Church.

It would rank among the biggest miscalculations

in church history.

(brooding music)

Despite the newfound attention,

Martin Luther had no desire to start a revolution in 1517.

He thought the 95 Theses would help the Catholic Church,

not divide it.

- He's not intending to break dramatically

with the Catholic Church.

If you, probably, told him in 1517,

"Well, by the way, 20 years from now,

this is gonna be the situation,"

he woulda thought you're crazy.

- Avoid those who search for your soul in a money bag.

- [Hugh] In his sermons and writings,

Luther continued to critique what he saw

as fixable errors in church practice.

- Suppose you say,

"Then I will never again buy an indulgence."

I reply, "Good."

My will, desire, plea, and counsel are

that no one buy an indulgence.

Let the lazy and sleepy Christians by indulgences.

You run from them.

Some now want to call me a heretic.

I consider such blathering no big deal,

especially since the only ones doing this

have darkened minds and have never even smelled a Bible.

(audience laughs)

- Was mutiny, it was heresy,

it was revolt, it was a revolution,

and, of course, it inflamed opinion.

People wondered how he could stay alive day after day.

- [Hugh] Before long, the heretic label began to stick.

Church leaders sought to contain Luther

as they had many other insurgents

in the centuries past.

- I consider such blathering no (faint).

- It's not that opposition to the church was unimaginable

so much as when dissident movements arose,

they were successfully contained:

combination of persuasion,

the exertion of political suppression when necessary,

violent punishments for those who refused to capitulate.

(bell tolls)

- [Hugh] 100 years earlier a priest named Jan Hus,

like Luther, had criticized the Catholic Church.

It was an era when the church believed it necessary

to physically stop those who might lead people

away from God.

Jan Hus was declared a heretic and burned at the stake.

- As they said at the time, things like, for example,

"murderers kill bodies,

but heretics kill souls."

- [Hugh] Luther would express a kinship

to Hus's ideas publicly.

(fire whooshes)

- I have been teaching and holding

all the things taught by Hus.

We are all Hussites,

including the apostle Paul.

(fire crackles)

- [Hugh] Luther's friends suggested he keep quiet,

but Luther didn't see the danger at first.

(men chatter)

Luther assumed that

when Tetzel's corrupt sale of indulgences

was brought to the Pope's attention,

the church would take corrective action,

but unlike modern popes,

Leo wasn't overly concerned

with the details of theology.

In this era popes focused more on political matters.

- They're chosen because they will be

effective administrators

of a giant wealthy complicated institution,

so they're chosen because people think,

"Hmm, this person would be a really good CEO."

They are a CEO of the largest institution

in Western Europe.

- [Hugh] A member of the powerful Medici family

of Florence, Leo enjoyed the luxury

the papal coffers could provide,

and Luther's opposition to the sale of indulgences

threatened the flow of money to the Vatican.

- If you're talking about the church

as the leadership of the church,

the bishops, especially the bishop of Rome, who's the Pope,

they woulda found him to have been

a troublemaker, a loudmouth, a know-it-all,

a dead-wrong monk who had gone wrong.

- [Hugh] Leo wanted Luther brought to Rome for trial,

but the extradition was blocked

by Luther's powerful prince, Frederick the Wise of Saxony,

who wanted to protect his star professor.

If he had been sent to Rome,

we may've never heard of Luther again.

(men sing in Latin)

Luther would now be questioned on German soil

in the city of Augsburg.

- Now I must die.

What a disgrace I will be to my parents.

- Luther's questioner was Cardinal Cajetan,

one of the most skilled theologians of the era.

- [Cajetan] Stand (faint).

- [Hugh] For Luther Cajetan had all

the authority and power of the Pope himself.

- He once described it as the bad cop.

He's trying to break him:

"Bring the big man in,

bring the interrogator in,

and break Luther if you can."

- [Hugh] But when Cajetan asked Luther

to retract his statements about indulgences,

Martin would not.

(glowing music)

Cajetan produced the official papal pronouncements

that allowed for the sale of indulgences.

Catholic Church law was on Cajetan's side.

Luther was cornered, and he knew it.

His reply was both disrespectful and obtuse.

- Ah, yes, you said that the merits of Christ

are a treasure.

This says that he acquired a treasure.

To be and to acquire do not mean the same thing.

Do not think we Germans are ignorant of grammar.

- [Hugh] Luther then grounded his position

in an even more outrageous statement.

- His holiness abuses scripture.

I deny that he is above scripture.

- The conversation more quickly turns

to "do you accept the authority of the Pope?"

so in many ways,

the condemnation of Luther

was first and foremost

for his unwillingness

to accept the authority of the church.

- [Hugh] Cajetan was appalled

by Luther's blatant contempt for papal authority

and his rudeness.

- Cajetan is not a clear Christian thinker.

He is about as fit to deal with this situation

as a donkey is to play the harp.

- Indeed, some of Luther's friends will be concerned

that he showed such great disrespect

for such important percentages.

- If he didn't like you, I think, he'd tell you

to your face.

He was a very, very straightforward person.

- [Hugh] Luther's friends believed

his scandalous statement put him

in grave danger.

They persuaded him to escape the city.

Slipping past the guards,

scurrying back to the relative safety of Wittenberg.

(resolute music)

A more cautious man might've laid low,

but Luther did the opposite,

agreeing to a very public debate

in the city of Leipzig.

The event captured the popular imagination

like a heavyweight prizefight.

Between rounds there was even a jester

to entertain the crowd.

Luther's opponent, Johann Eck, scored points as a debater,

but his performance was not a crowd-pleaser.

Many saw Eck as vain,

seeking only to enhance his reputation.

Luther, in contrast, knew exactly

how to connect with his listeners.

(Martin clears throat)

- I am being misunderstood by the people,

so let me be clear in my own language.

I simply assert

that the simple layman armed with scripture

is to be believed above a pope or a council without it.

(men laughs)

- It's a sparring match.

The great debaters of the day would've been akin

to the rock stars and movie stars of our day.

- As for the Pope's decree on indulgences,

I say that neither the Church nor the Pope

can establish articles of faith.

These must come from scripture.

God once spoke through the mouth of a donkey.

(audience laughs)

I will tell you straight what I think.

I am a Christian theologian.

I want to believe freely

and be a slave to the authority of no one,

whether council, university, or Pope.

(man speaks in foreign language)

- [Hugh] One thing was clear:

Luther had rejected the Pope and the church

as the ultimate source of authority.

Instead, he hangs everything on the Bible.

- At the time, Luther, I think, is astounded

that he finds himself saying this,

but later on, he actually gives that credit

for, in a sense, helping him to see the implications

of his own ideas more clearly.

- In a way, I think,

that forced admission frees him

to articulate ideas that he's had for a while.

It frees him to put himself forward as a Reformer.

(man speaks in foreign language)

(insubstantial music)

- [Hugh] Luther's rejection of the Pope's authority

remains the central difference

between Protestants and Catholics

to this day.

- The Catholic perspective, even today, I think, would say,

"Let's not confuse

particular misuses of authority

with the notion of authority proper to itself."

- [Hugh] Pope Leo wasn't happy about Luther's statements,

but he measured his response, hoping to stay

on the good side of Luther's prince and protector,

Frederick the Wise.

Frederick had something Leo desperately wanted,

influence on the choice of the next emperor.

In the early 1500s, Germany didn't exist as a nation.

The German people lived in a patchwork

of separate fiefdoms, free cities, and principalities.

These German states and others will cobble together

to form a loose union called the Holy Roman Empire,

ruled by the aging Emperor Maximilian.

His death, in early 1519,

triggered the election of a new emperor,

and just seven powerful men, called electors, had a vote.

Frederick was one of the seven.

Pope Leo, who had no vote,

nonetheless wanted to influence the outcome,

so rather than alienate Frederick,

the Pope kept his hands off Luther for a time.

(scampering music)

As part of the arrangement,

Luther agreed to stay quiet.

(quill scratches)

He tried,

(crowd chatters)

but when the opposition derided his ideas,

Luther went on a writing spree, in 1520,

churning out some of the most significant works

of his career,

bestsellers that were the talk of Europe.

The first, titled

"To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,"

laid out Luther's ideas for church reform

and addressed a particular injustice

that Luther found disturbing and un-Christian.

The Catholic Church had long considered

priests, monks, and nuns

as having a higher calling

than regular Christians.

To Luther this was all wrong.

He saw the Bible leveling the playing field.

- Priests, bishops, or popes

are not superior to other Christians.

A cobbler, a smith, a farmer,

each has the work of his trade,

like priests and bishops,

and everyone must benefit and serve every other.

- So Luther's views on this were radical.

They revolutionize a society.

- When we look to Luther,

I think that he is valuing all vocations,

all things that people do,

that they have importance.

- So a maid who cleaned a room

was not simply cleaning a room.

She was doing God's work.

- He said the farmer out in the field pitching dung

is doing a greater work for God

than the monk in a monastery

praying for his own salvation.

- Luther's the one who has said

it is the attitude with which you pursue your calling

that makes it godly and holy,

not the calling itself.

(determined music)

- [Hugh] Luther's assertion that in God's eyes

peasants were on equal footing

with monks and priests was radical.

Soon commoners demanded more from their princes,

and many monasteries emptied out,

their purpose no longer clear.

It was the kind of message the public was ready to hear,

and Luther the writer

knew just how to grab their attention.

The printers sold every copy of the treaties

they could print.

Luther's fame grew.

- The things that one might say about the church

in the pub, but you wouldn't say it too loudly,

Luther puts it in writing.

- There's a freshness to Martin Luther's writings

that's unmistakable,

a very fun and interesting writer to read.

- That social media savvy

was something that got Luther a great hearing

and became one of the most published men in Europe

at the time.

- [Hugh] In his other writings in 1520,

Luther attacked the supremacy of the Pope

and challenged the Catholic view of the sacraments.

- He's certainly one of those personalities

that's bigger than life.

Sometimes, at least, when I read him...

Others may disagree with this,

but I'm like, "Good Lord.

What must it be like to be so sure you're right?"

- Had he not been

an arrogant stubborn bombastic bull-headed figure,

he would not've been able

to oppose the church corruption

in the way he did.

- [Hugh] Luther fueled the controversy

by using especially extreme language.

Moderation was nearly impossible for him.

He saw himself engaged in an epic struggle for souls,

a battle that called for strong words,

not polite talk.

- [Martin] You are murderers, traitors, liars,

the very scum of all the most evil people on earth.

You are full of all the worst devils in hell,

so full that you can do nothing but vomit,

and out come devils.

- It was quite common

on all sides of the Reformation debates

to make personal attacks on your opponents

and to say absolutely awful things

about them and their mother

and all sorts of other relatives.

- [Martin] He is a pig, an ass, a dunghill,

the spawn of an adder,

a lying buffoon,

a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face.

- He had outbursts of anger.

That express itself in a language that was crude sometimes.

- [Martin] I beg you, blow your nose a bit.

Make your head lighter and the brain clearer.

- He's still talked like a farmer or like a miner, you know?

So his language was colorful and excessive and fun.

- [Martin] We are permitted to laugh

and have fun with and embrace our wives,

whether they are naked or clothed.

- Yeah, Luther's fun to read,

in part because he expresses himself

in a very, how would you put it, earthy way,

sometimes in a, what would you say, scatological way.

You know what I mean? He's crude at times.

- So he will regularly say,

"When the Devil troubles me at night,

I fart in his face and say, 'Begone, Devil.'"

- It sounds, again, crude, but it's an expression

of his disdain for the ultimate claims of evil,

his disdain for anyone

that would try to claim authority over God.

(luminescent music)

- [Hugh] By now Luther's understanding

of the relationship between God and people

was coming into focus.

The central question Luther was answering

is one that nearly everyone asks:

"What makes me a good person,

a righteous person,

in God's eyes?"

- The normal way in religious rhetoric is you say,

"Well, God does this, but you have to do this."

- There was a mentality and sense that...

You are taught that there are certain things

you can do to make yourself better

and when you fail it's all on you.

(wretched music)

- [Martin] Luther had long been tortured

by his feelings of unworthiness,

tormented by the guilt of his failings

that even his devotion as a monk could not remove.

(racing music)

(music stops)

- The righteous person lives by faith alone.

The righteous person lives by faith alone.

(determined music)

All at once I felt I had been born again.

Immediately, I saw the whole of scripture

in a different light.

(door knocks)

I ran through the scriptures from memory

and found that other words had similar meanings:

the work of God, that is, what God works in us;

the power of God by which he makes us powerful;

the wisdom of God by which he makes us wise,

the strength of God,

the salvation of God,

the glory of God.

This sweetest phrase of Paul was now for me

the very gate of paradise itself.

- [Hugh] Luther's breakthrough,

triggered by a passage in the Bible's book of Romans,

was his understanding that God's favor could not be earned,

even partially, by doing good deeds.

Instead, he saw righteousness

as a gift given by God

to those with faith in Jesus.

- To him this is astoundingly good news.

It's not the news that people have been getting.

- It was a change that took us away

from focusing on what we could do

to put us in good standing with God.

That change was monumental.

- He now has what he considers to be good news

to proclaim to his people

rather than merely burdening them

with more and more things that they have to do

and more and more standards that they have to meet.

- From the Catholic perspective,

where Luther goes a little bit wrong

is by separating faith and good works

and saying that faith alone is enough.

- Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection

has accomplished everything.

Your good works do not earn your salvation,

not in the least, no.

Grace is a gift for you from God.

- [Hugh] To many hearers Luther's ideas sounded ridiculous,

too good to be true.

It seemed more logical that God would judge people

by their deeds,

but Luther was frightened by that view of God

because he saw himself as a man who could not stop sinning.

- We are all sinful.

We all need God's grace.

Now, the problem is is that some of us don't realize

that we are all sinful

and that we all need God's grace.

(men chatter)

- [Hugh] Luther's ideas then faced an obvious follow-up:

if God frees people

from the need to do good works to earn Heaven,

then what should Christians do with that freedom?

Again, Luther saw the answer clearly.

- Here's the truly Christian life,

when a man applies himself with joy and love

to serving others voluntarily and for nothing,

doing only what is helpful, advantageous, and wholesome

for our neighbor,

since by faith

we already abound in all good things in Christ.

- The more you read Luther, the more you begin

to hear Luther say,

"Look, you now are living a life

in this world on this earth,

and God has given you a rich field

in which to be a useful person to your neighbor,

so I want you to serve your neighbor,

as you are now free

to serve your neighbor and to love your neighbor."

- When you didn't have to worry about your future,

you are free to care for the futures of others.

- If you're caught all the time,

as Luther put it, turned in on yourself,

and life is just about you and all that,

what a pitiful life

when you don't have the eyes to see others,

whom you could love.

- Now you can live who you really are,

a loving person,

to love your neighbor.

- We're free to love our neighbor

and free to care for our neighbor.

We do that as a response to God.

That's what the Reformation's about, the whole thing.

Everything is hinged on that.

- Luther's point of view is "don't just sit there.

Do something.

If it turns out to be the wrong thing,

God will forgive you."

- Your neighbor's need became the measure of what you did

rather than some eternal calculus that said,

"You've gotta do so many good works

in order to get in good with God."

- You are free. (laughs)

Well, that's a lotta fun.

It's about as countercultural as it gets.

(tense music)

- [Hugh] Back in Rome, Pope Leo was not overly concerned

about Luther's view of freedom or salvation,

but he was increasingly annoyed

at Luther's questioning of church authority.

- To a large extent,

the Catholic Church doesn't wanna dispute about doctrine.

As far as they're concerned, doctine is not an issue.

The issue is how to control one and another

of a long line of medieval heresies.

- In all good things in Christ.

- [Hugh] Leo tried controlling Luther

by issuing a papal bull,

a formal document that required Luther

to disavow his writings.

(messenger speaks in foreign language)

(men chatter)

- Please. Please.

(messenger speaks in foreign language)

(men speak in foreign language)

The time for silence is over.

The time to speak has come.

(men cheer)

(fire crackles)

- The delivery of the papal bull stirred up unrest

among Luther supporters,

Luther himself took his boldest step yet,

burning the bull.

- They excommunicated me for the sacrilege of heresy,

so I excommunicate them

in the name of the sacred truth of God.

Christ will judge whose excommunication will stand.

Amen.

- [Hugh] There was no turning back now.

(malicious music)

When he heard that Luther had burned the bull,

an incensed Pope Leo renewed his demand

that Luther appear in Rome for a hearing.

Luther's luck seemed to have run out,

until his supporters arranged

for one last option, an appeal

to the most powerful man in the Western world, the emperor.

When emperor Maximilian died in 1519,

his grandson Charles was elected to replace him.

He was only 19 years old.

- He was raised to be a king,

but he was still 19 years old.

- Charles was now in charge of a collection

of semi-autonomous territories and states,

which all wanted their say.

- He was very frustrated.

He has people opposing him on every side.

He's just constant conflict.

This is the life of a Habsburg emperor in the 16th century.

It's not a good time to be emperor of anything.

(imperious music)

- [Hugh] The needs of the German people

were not important to Charles,

but he did want to keep his empire united.

He believed the key to cohesion was a unified religion,

a policy that made Martin Luther

an unwelcome thorn in his side,

but Charles had to tread lightly.

Public support for Luther was enormous,

so in an attempt to appear fair-minded,

Charles agreed to a formal hearing on German soil

in the city of Worms in 1521.

- Because people knew that Luther was going to be there...

He was a media star by this point, so lots of people came.

- When he got there, it turns out that this guy's called

the German Hercules.

Luther probably had 90% of Germany behind him

when he entered Worms.

- [Hugh] Anticipation ran high for this showdown

between the powerful emperor

and the lowly but popular monk.

- When he finally got to the gates of Worms

the crowd went wild.

- Tell your master that if there were

as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs,

I would enter.

I will have a debate. I must.

(apprehensive music)

- [Hugh] As he approached the hearing,

the gravity of the situation began to sink in.

(staffs clack)

Many assumed Luther would be burned at the stake

before the day was over.

- Burning at the stake, it's terror violence

exercised by the state

in order to maintain social control.

It's very powerful, very disturbing.

(room chatters)

- [Hugh] In the center of the room was a collection

of books written by Luther.

He was asked to disavow all his writings,

to publicly retract his statements,

and so spare himself.

(staff clacks)

(herald speaks in foreign language)

(man speaks in foreign language)

- This affects the salvation of souls.

Of this, Christ said,

"He who denies me before men,

him will I deny before my Father."

To say too little or too much would be dangerous.

I beg you, give me time to think it over.

(room grumbles)

(man speaks in foreign language)

- He asked for 24 (chuckles) hours to think about it,

because he realizes how he's gonna answer

could end up in his death.

- This might be it for him, so, yeah, he's very nervous

about what might happen here.

- [Hugh] Luther was granted the night to think it over.

- God, how dreadful is the world.

Behold how its mouth opens to swallow me up

and how small my faith is in you.

God, help me against the wisdom of this world.

My God, my God, do you not hear me?

Where are you?

My soul belongs to you.

God, help me.

(jittery music)

- [Hugh] The next day

Martin Luther would face the emperor, Charles V,

one last time.

(staff clacks)

(herald speaks in foreign language)

- I do not set myself up as a saint.

Therefore, Your Most Serene Majesty,

expose my errors.

Overthrow them by the writings

of the prophets and the evangelists.

If I am shown my errors,

I will be the first to throw my books on the fire.

- [Hugh] Luther was still deflecting the question,

frustrating his questioner,

who finally asked Luther for a simple straight answer.

- Since you desire a simple reply,

I will answer without horns and without teeth.

I do not accept the authority of popes and councils,

for they have contradicted each other.

Unless I am convinced by scripture or clear reason,

my conscience is captive to the word of God.

I cannot and I will not retract anything,

since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

(warlike music)

May God help me.

(room grumbles)

- He had a chance to save his neck,

but after he had a chance to test his own commitment:

"This is what I really believe in."

He was willing to die for it.

He never changed from that.

- Oh, the meeting just blew up,

late afternoon, April, dark,

torches providing the only light, and bang.

- Thinking about him as a master of drama,

he sweeps out of the room and disappears for a while.

(eerie music) (fire crackles)

- [Hugh] The cheering crowds at Worms

gave Luther a few moments of seeming freedom,

but he was about to become the most wanted man in Europe.

Charles signed a decree condemning Luther,

ordering that he received punishment for high treason.

Charles realized it would not be politically wise

to arrest Luther in the midst of the adoring crowds,

so he honored a previous agreement

to give Luther safe passage,

a few precious days of furlough

before the sentence would be enforced.

(jittery music)

Luther took the opportunity to head for home,

but he never made it.

(menacing music)

(urgent music)

Martin Luther was dead;

that's what most Germans assumed when they heard

about the kidnapping,

(gleaming music)

but Luther's story was not coming to an end.

In fact it was about to enter a whole new chapter.

(mysterious music)

Luther's hideout was a secret room at Wartburg Castle.

He grew a beard as a disguise,

his code name Knight George.

Martin Luther disliked the isolation of the castle,

but it didn't slow down his work.

Here he embarked on one of the most significant projects

of his life,

translating the New Testament

into the language of the people.

Luther finished the translation in just 11 weeks.

- So many people are anxious to have the Bible in German.

I wish this book could be in every language

and dwell in the hearts and minds of all.

- He translated the Bible into German; he said,

"So every plowboy could read God's word."

- That the words would be used

that people out there in the fields

would understand and relate to.

- Joseph is speaking to Mary in the most beautiful German

you can possibly imagine. (laughs)

- [Hugh] The translation was an immense success

that would unite the German tongue for the next 500 years.

- To translate we must listen to the mother in the home,

the children on the street,

the common man in the marketplace.

We must be guided by their language,

the way they speak,

and do our translating accordingly.

I sometimes searched and inquired about a single word

for three or four weeks. (scoffs)

If anyone does not like my translations,

well, they can ignore them.

- Luther would be known for that if nothing else,

as one who brought some conformity

to the German language at the time.

(bustling music)

- [Hugh] Luther never received any money

from the printers who published his Bible

or any of his best-selling works.

Even a small royalty would've made him rich,

given that he wrote nearly a quarter

of all the books sold in Europe,

but Luther wasn't worried about any loss of income,

because he quickly grasped the power of the press

to spread ideas,

and that's what mattered to him.

- The interesting thing is how quickly Luther said,

I can get my ideas across

if I just make friends with the printers.

- He paid great attention

to what fonts the printers would use.

He was very careful to make sure

that his books looked as beautiful as he wanted them to look

in order to have an impact.

- When you think of Martin Luther,

you can't just think of him as a church Reformer.

He was also the first living best-selling author.

- He brings these theological biblical,

sometimes abstract things down to earth.

It's almost like he transport himself right there

in those biblical texts

and he takes the reader with him.

- [Hugh] Luther's exile at Wartburg Castle

went on for months.

(vindictive music)

He began to hear stories of how the movement he started

was veering off course badly.

(glass shatters) (crowd cheers)

In Wittenberg, anti-Catholic mobs

were smashing church windows and destroying art,

so-called prophets were proclaiming

they had knowledge superseding the Bible.

- I think it pained Luther to see

that people that he loved and trusted...

While he was gone, his tempering influence was removed,

like the control rods were pulled outta the reactor.

- There's a lot of confusion

about what this Reformation is really about,

to the point where Luther feels compelled to return

to try to calm everybody down.

- [Hugh] To quail the unrest, in March of 1522,

Luther ended his exile and returned to Wittenberg.

- We must do to one another

as God has done to us through faith,

for without love faith is nothing,

and here, dear friends, have you not grievously failed?

I see no signs of love among.

- [Hugh] He preached civility,

patience, and nonviolence.

Order returned, for a time.

- He came back to Wittenberg and then started that series

of sermons where he said, "Look,

we do not force people to believe what we believe,

and we do not inflict harm on other people

because they believe differently."

- When he gets back to Wittenberg,

he's completely on his own.

I think if he was not able

to impress himself on the people at that point,

it would all've been over,

so that's a remarkable moment.

(proud music)

- [Hugh] By the early 1500s,

tiny Wittenberg was the seat of the Reformation.

Students came here from all over

to study under Luther

as well as his fellow Reformers,

like Philip Melanchthon.

Even those who could not come to the university

were advancing the cause of the Wittenbergers,

including a Bavarian woman named Argula von Grumbach,

a staunch supporter of Luther and Melanchthon.

For a time her writings outsold

every other author in Europe,

save Luther himself.

Through sheer force of will,

Argula became one of the most influential women

of the Protestant Reformation.

- What news from Bavaria?

- [Hugh] Luther encouraged Argula's writing,

but the men in her community tried to suppress her.

- When you wanna belittle a woman, you call her whore,

a bitch, desperate, a crazy woman,

or, the worst, wrinkly old woman. (laughs)

(troubled music continues)

- [Hugh] Argula didn't have the protection

of a leader like Frederick the Wise,

and that put her in jeopardy.

- These university people and some princes

were contemplating the possibility of strangling her

or just getting rid of her body (indistinct)

or cutting her fingers off.

- [Hugh] Argula survived

and gave Luther perhaps the best advice he ever received.

- Please continue.

- [Hugh] She encouraged him to get married.

(Argula speaks faintly)

(shadowy music)

In early 1523

Martin Luther received a secret letter

from nine nuns hoping to escape their convent.

In most German territories, this would be simple,

but these nuns lived in the staunchly Catholic land

of Duke George.

Anyone who helped them leave faced a penalty of death.

Luther devised a covert operation:

(obscure music)

A local merchant would bring the normal delivery

of pickled herring

to the nuns' cloister

but when he left, the empty wagon wouldn't be empty at all.

The plan worked perfectly,

but then Luther had a new problem,

what to do with a wagon load of young women

who had no means of support.

In time he would find suitable homes or husbands

for all but one.

The holdout, Katharina von Bora,

didn't like the arrangements Luther would make for her,

eventually rejecting several marriage proposals,

(devoted music)

but she was willing to marry Luther.

By this point Luther was 41 years old

and getting pressured by his friends to find a wife.

- Luther's friends kind of say, "Well, how about her?"

so he thinks, "Hmm, well, okay."

They convinced him that she would be a good person

to become his wife.

- [Hugh] It seemed hypocritical

for him to avoid marriage,

because he had long condemned vows of chastity.

- He also says

by vowing chastity we're trying to counteract something

that's in our basic human nature

and we can't do that.

- He doesn't exclude celibacy, by any means.

He does see this as a special gift,

but that's his point:

it's a special gift.

You can't decide to be celibate.

(nuns sing in foreign language)

- [Hugh] Martin finally agreed to marry Katharina,

although it wasn't because of any romantic feelings,

at least not at first.

Luther explained that the reason he married

was to please his father and to spite the Pope.

Over time, Martin came to love Katie dearly.

She was intelligent, resourceful, and savvy with finances

in ways that Martin was not.

- We remember her

as Katherine von Bora

and not Mrs. Martin Luther

for a reason:

she stood on her own.

She didn't belong to anybody.

- To be married to somebody as gruff and bold

as Luther could be,

she had to match him.

- [Hugh] Katie managed orchards, brewed beer,

slaughtered pigs, and gave birth

to six children. (affectionate music)

At any given time,

the Luther home, a former monastery,

housed more than a dozen guests.

Katie managed it all skillfully.

- He would turn to her and say, "Well, by the way, sweetie,

we're going to have 40 extra folks for dinner.

Find something for them to eat."

- Luther invites anybody to their house he wants to.

He had no problem opening their doors

even when they had no more room.

- Good girls.

- He had this kind heart and jovial hospitality

that Katharina had to keep in check.

(touching music continues)

(Martin speaks faintly) (Katharina sighs)

- Argh. Ha ha.

- [Katharina] Hmm!

- Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must've had

in the course of their 900 years.

Eve would say, "You ate the apple,"

and Adam would retort, "Well, you gave it to me."

- Mm. - (chuckles) Thank you.

(Katharina speaks in German)

It's impossible to keep peace between the husband and wife

if they do not overlook each other's faults,

I wouldn't give up my Katie for France or for Venice.

- [Hugh] In an era when it was illegal for a man

to will his estate to his wife,

Luther did it anyway,

so great was his respect for Katharina.

- He was not a feminist,

but his view of humanities

is about as inclusive as you can expect

from a 16th-century man.

- [Hugh] It'd been many centuries

since any clergy in the Western church

had a wife and children.

The Catholic hierarchy had long declared chastity

superior to sexuality.

- You like some?

- [Hugh] But Luther championed sex within marriage

as a gift from God.

His family life was a daily expression

of his belief that spouses and children are a blessing,

a school for character that far surpassed the celibate life.

- What happen in a bedroom with Katharina?

What happen at the dinner table with Katharina?

What happen when he saw Katharina nursing?

And when he was changing the diapers?

(tuts) Something clicked,

and he saw God everywhere.

(eerie music)

- [Hugh] Part of the reason Luther waited so long

to marry and have children

was that Emperor Charles V had put a bounty on his head

and Luther feared his end could come at any time,

but by 1522 Charles wasn't focused on Luther's arrest.

He had a much bigger problem, war.

Charles fought off the French in the Netherlands

and revolts in Spain,

but his biggest threat came from the East,

Muslim leader Suleiman the Great,

whose armies were approaching Vienna.

Charles had his hands full.

- He's trying to deal

with hugely far-flung territories, and so forth.

This is just one problem among many.

He's only 19 years old when he's elected,

the Holy Roman Empire.

He's got a lot of other things to worry about,

besides just this troublesome Augustinian friar.

(crowd jeers)

- [Hugh] Meanwhile, Luther had his own war to deal with,

and he didn't handle it well.

See, dear friends,

I fear some prophets of murder have come among you.

- [Hugh] By the 1520s the German peasants were restless.

Luther's stand against the church hierarchy

had emboldened many to stand up to their princes and lords,

sometimes with violence.

Luther was the only person in Germany

with the status and respect

to negotiate a peaceful resolution.

- God's wrath is there.

Fear it I advise you.

The Devil has sent false prophets among you.

Beware of them.

- [Hugh] He tried, but diplomacy was not in his skillset;

his overriding concern, avoiding chaos.

- Luther fears anarchy.

He fears the kind of thing that may burst out.

(bitter music)

- [Hugh] Luther's worst fears were realized

as the peasants' looting and killing escalated.

He then overreacted,

encouraging the nobility to crush the rebellion brutally.

They did.

- The Peasants' War was a horrible event.

You had 50,000-60,000 peasants slaughtered.

- Afterwards, he's mortified to see

how terribly it actually all turned out.

(Martin whimpers)

- [Hugh] In 1527 Luther fell ill.

Sickness was no stranger.

In the past he'd suffered debilitating kidney stones,

gout, insomnia, dizziness, and ringing in his ears,

but the most challenging of all hit hard this year,

a recurrence of his deep bouts of depression.

At times he would lock himself in his room for days.

- There's a specific word that he basically coined.

It's (speaks in German), that is, an attack.

Some people translate it as anxiety or something like that.

It is spiritual attack.

- Luther was depressed for a long period of time.

He just couldn't get out of this depression.

- [Hugh] In this, his most severe attack,

Luther felt utterly abandoned,

full of doubt, alone in the universe,

as if God had died.

(despairing music)

By late summer 1527,

it might have seemed like God had died,

as grotesquely masked plague doctors arrived in Wittenberg

to try and stop an outbreak of the plague.

The needs of others

were enough to finally break Luther's malaise,

and he began to minister to the sick and console the dying.

Many evacuated the city,

but Martin and Katie stayed,

even though Katie was several months pregnant.

Her child Elisabeth would die a few months after birth.

- Suffering, which was such a thing

to fear and to be avoided in Christian spirituality,

now for Luther became an opportunity to love the neighbor.

Luther's advice during the hard times

is to reinterpret those hard moments

as occasions for beauty and occasions for love.

(resolute music)

- [Hugh] In these most dire times of death and abandonment,

Luther wrote his most powerful hymn,

"A Mighty Fortress."

♪ A mighty fortress ♪

♪ Is our God ♪

♪ A bulwark never failing ♪

(treasured music)

The title might suggest a hymn about battle, but for Luther

"A Mighty Fortress" was about comfort and hope

in times of trial.

Luther restructured worship gatherings

to include more music,

lively songs sung by the congregation.

- They could sing

while they were plowing the fields or making shoes.

Those hymns then did sink deeply

into the religious consciousness of people across Germany.

- [Hugh] Incorporating more hymns

was just one part of Luther's larger strategy

to revitalize the church service, or Mass.

He advocated the Mass be conducted in German

as well as Latin

so that the common people

could understand it. - Call me a heretic.

- [Hugh] And Luther placed new emphasis on the sermon

as a method of teaching laypeople, who had much to learn.

- The sermon also becomes a way in which

Luther instructs people

on how to find the right things

about God and life

in the scriptures.

- Now he's the leader of a reform movement

that has to figure out a way

to really make itself a real thing, a real force,

and not then to simply hand the Bible to every person

and say, "Make of it what you will."

(insubstantial music)

(Martin speaks faintly)

- [Martin] Luther's plan to reform local congregations

faced a major setback in 1528

when he visited nearby churches

and learned just how poorly trained the priests were.

Some didn't even have a Bible.

- How do you do?

(priest speaks in German)

Please, tell me, how've church attendances been?

(priest sighs)

(priest speaks in German)

How many pastors are altogether incompetent

and live like dumb brutes and irrational hogs?

The common people have no knowledge whatsoever

of Christian doctrine

and yet now that the gospel has come,

they have nicely learned to abuse it like experts.

Good God, man!

(priest speaks in German)

Have you done anything

to rectify church attendance? (priest speaks in German)

Please, may I see inside?

(priest speaks in German)

- I think Luther initially is a bit naive

in how things are going to play out.

What he realized,

after they went around and visited these churches,

is that nobody really knew anything

about the Christian Church, or the things that they knew

were just strange and odd.

- He said, "And now that they've heard

about Christian liberty,

they've mastered the fine art of abusing it."

- For God so loved the world

he gave his only son.

- [Hugh] Luther thought parents would teach their children

about the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer,

and other fundamentals of the faith.

With his own children, he often turned teaching into a game.

- [Martin] Yes (laughs).

Well done. - A coin in the correct sleeve

meant a reward for the right answer.

- Who's next?

By far the most important of all

is namely the command of God,

who urges parents so often to instruct their children.

Faith or love?

Indeed, for what purpose do we old folks exist

other than to care for, instruct, and bring up the young?

Have a little something for you. Ta-da!

- [Hugh] Part of Luther's response

was to create an educational tool,

a basic textbook of the faith,

called a catechism.

- His ability to be succinct

and to come to the heart of it all

is just remarkable.

(birds tweet)

- Now.

(intrigued music)

- [Hugh] Long before comic books,

Luther understood the power of images

to communicate to young people.

His catechism was richly illustrated

with explanatory woodcuts.

- So the image ties everything together

and helps us not only

to know it and to have that information

but to feel it.

- [Hugh] Luther tapped artist Lucas Cranach

to illustrate the catechism

and many of Luther's other works.

New, inexpensive printing methods meant

that for the first time in history,

storytelling images could be widely disseminated

as a new kind of educational tool,

a tool Luther embraced.

- For example, the very first version

of Luther's Small Catechism,

published in 1529,

was actually published on large sheets of paper.

These were really designed as posters.

You could pin 'em up on a wall,

and people could come by and see the pictures

and see the message that's conveyed there in the text.

- [Hugh] In more and more homes across Germany,

the sheets of the catechism

hung side-by-side with images of Luther.

- Luther's picture hung in people's houses

because they loved him and they thought

that he was doing something great and good for them

and they had a passion to see...

Even if they didn't understand the theology, they thought

that he was helping take down the corruption of the church.

That was a very, very attractive thing.

(vexed music)

- [Hugh] By late 1529 Luther's reforms had spread

to nearly two dozen German territories,

now labeled with a new term, Protestant.

Despite growing popular support for Luther's ideas,

the Protestants faced a renewed military threat

from the emperor.

(uneasy music)

To strengthen their position,

a meeting of Protestant leaders was held

in the city of Marburg.

The plan was to iron out theological differences

and build solidarity,

but if the goal was mutual agreement,

Martin Luther should've stayed home.

Nothing in his personality

would suggest an ability to compromise

on matters of theology,

(Ulrich speaks in German)

especially with his Swiss counterpart, Ulrich Zwingli.

- He was capable of great friendship,

but he was also capable of...

I don't wanna say cruelty

but a real unfairness

to his opponents.

- He didn't wanna go.

He wasn't gonna go, because "why would I go?

He's wrong. I'm right."

(illuminated music)

- [Hugh] The sharpest difference between Zwingli and Luther

centered on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

Zwingli saw the bread and wine as a symbol

of Jesus' body and blood.

Luther believed the body and blood were actually present

in a mysterious but very real way.

As the meeting wore on,

Luther wrote the relevant scripture in chalk

and covered it up.

Then he lifted the tablecloth

and revealed what he'd written.

- "This is my body."

Here is our scriptural proof.

You have not yet moved us.

- [Hugh] To Zwingli this was another example

of Luther's condescending attitude.

To Luther it was an illustration

of how he would never retreat from what he believed

to be a clear teaching of the Bible.

- These are the words of my Lord, Jesus Christ,

(Martin speaks in Latin)

so I must believe the body of Christ is there.

- Zwingli, he hated Zwingli.

Zwingli's the stupidest man that lived on this earth,

because trying to figure out something

that cannot be figured out.

- Zwingli was quoting a text he thought

would really make Luther stumble,

and Luther said, "Zwingli,

you're in Germany, not Switzerland,

and necks don't break so easily here in Germany."

- I think he thought Zwingli was a rank skeptic,

when it really came down to it,

not really a real believer.

- [Hugh] As a result there would be no grand alliance

of the Protestants against the emperor.

Luther didn't care at all.

His concerns were theological, not political.

- I pray God you come to the right understanding.

(Zwingli speaks in German)

- That's a tradition-dividing disagreement.

When they disagree at Marburg in 1529,

it's the fountainhead

of the still-existing distinction

between Reformed and Lutheran Protestantism.

- It is the point at which

the Lutheran tradition and the reform tradition diverge,

so today, we have Lutheran churches,

and we have Reform churches.

They're separate entities.

That separation finds its historical origin

in the failure to reach agreements on half a point

at the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529.

(determined music)

- [Hugh] By 1530 Emperor Charles V had a break

in his many wars

and once again returned to the matter

of the territories aligned with Luther,

summoning leaders to Augsburg,

promising to weigh their opinions.

Luther couldn't attend, because he was still

an outlaw, a condemned heretic,

in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

He got as close as safety would allow,

the castle at Coburg, 120 miles away.

(chair scrapes)

The event stretched on for months,

frustrating Luther as he sat on the sidelines,

waiting for updates.

In Augsburg the Protestants submitted

to Charles a statement of their faith

called the Augsburg Confession.

In effect, they were asking Charles to accept their terms

to reunite the Christian world.

Back at Coburg Castle, Luther's frustration turned to grief.

When he received a letter

announcing the death of his father.

- My beloved father departed this life

at one o'clock on Sunday.

(chair clunks)

This death has cast me into deep mourning,

although it is consoling to me that he fell asleep softly

and strong in his faith in Christ,

yet his kindness and the memory of his pleasant conversation

have caused a deep wound in my heart.

(menacing music)

- [Hugh] Charles rejected the Protestants

and gave them an ultimatum:

(Charles speaks in foreign language)

return to the Catholic Church or face a military invasion.

Charles's move backfired badly.

His threat solidified the Protestants

and led to preparations for war.

(severe music)

Despite the saber-rattling,

no one really wanted war in the early 1530s.

The Protestant princes could not match the emperor's army,

and Charles V now had a new preoccupation,

the fate of his aunt Catherine of Aragon,

who was the first wife of Henry VIII.

Henry wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine

so he could marry Anne Boleyn,

but the Pope would not allow it.

More precisely, it was Katherine's nephew Emperor Charles V

who was pulling the strings, pressuring the Pope

because he wanted to keep the English throne in his family.

- The Pope does not want to upset Charles V,

so the Pope refuses to grant Henry a divorce.

- Furious that he could not get an annulment from the Pope,

Henry appealed to theologians across Europe,

hoping to gain a consensus in opposition to the pontiff.

Henry even tried to enlist Luther,

an odd request, given Henry's previous statements

declaring Luther a heretic.

Unsurprisingly, Martin did not support Henry's quest

for an annulment.

Henry's next move was more drastic,

splitting from the Catholic Church,

starting a new strand of Christianity,

the Church of England.

It was one of dozens of new forms of Christianity

to grow out of the church tumult of the era.

Another strand, called Anabaptists,

sought to separate themselves from the broader culture

and live more simply.

Their modern-day descendants are

the Amish and the Mennonites,

the latter named for the 16th-century leader Menno Simons.

A much larger group subscribe

to the teachings of John Calvin,

a second-generation Reformer

who ranks behind only Luther

in his continuing influence on Protestantism.

Today's Presbyterian denominations are

among those who descend from Calvin's theology.

One group of Calvinists felt so strongly about their faith

they left Europe altogether

so they could practice their religion unfettered.

In America they are known as the Puritans.

- They wanna worship in their own way.

They wanna lead

devoutly self-conscious Puritan-Calvinist lives

and are willing to make this outrageous risky crossing

of the Atlantic Ocean circa 1630 in order to do it.

That's extraordinary.

- Luther's Reformation really cracks things open

in a way that ultimately leads

to the Pilgrim Fathers

in the 17th century

and the birth of modern America.

(modest music) - Avoid those who (obscured).

- [Hugh] Back in Germany

churches that aligned with Luther's teachings

began to call themselves Lutherans,

a name Martin Luther himself detested at first.

- The first thing I ask

is that people should not make use of my name

and should not call themselves Lutherans but Christians,

for what or who's this Luther, hmm?

The teaching is not mine,

nor was I crucified for anyone.

How did I,

poor stinking bag of maggots that I am,

come to the point

where people call the children of Christ

by my evil name?

I am no one's master,

nor do I wish to be.

I simply want to share with all men

the one common teaching of Christ,

who alone is our Lord.

- Are that no one buy an indulgence.

- [Hugh] But by the 1530s,

the movement and the name had become entrenched,

bigger than the man himself.

- You run from them.

(afflicted music)

- [Hugh] Martin Luther didn't age well.

Now in his late 50s, his body seemed decades older

as illness after illness took their toll.

Luther hoped to hand the reins to his right-hand man,

the brilliant Philip Melanchthon,

but in the summer of 1540,

Melanchthon suddenly fell ill and seemed near death.

Luther visited, offering a prayer for his old friend.

(Martin sighs)

- Lord, I know

that you are our God and Father.

If you do not heal him,

the result will be disaster for us.

The entire situation is yours.

It cannot be your will for this man to die

in his despondent condition.

- He's blunt, he's bold,

and he doesn't hesitate to talk back to God.

- He starts in, and he prays urgently and compellingly:

"You sent this man to help us,

and now he's sick with grief.

You better make him well!"

(laughs) It's not petitioning. He's demanding.

- [Hugh] Melanchthon recovered, lifting Luther's spirits,

(bitter music)

but not long after,

Luther faced the most devastating emotional blow

of his entire life

when his 13-year-old daughter Magdalena fell ill.

- When you love a child and something breaks,

you just see the raggedness of his heart.

- Raising children taught Luther

about patience, love, and now grief.

- [Martin] I love her very much.

- [Hugh] Magdalena would die with a father at her side.

- [Martin] I pray, God, that I and all of us

may have such a death,

nay, such a life,

her bright presence,

her eye so full of trust

all drew forth our love.

- That event, then...

If you read letters that came afterwards,

when he's comforting people who lost loved ones

or children or wives,

he again and again brings up: "

I know what you're going through.

I still think about my Magdalena.

I still think and miss her."

- [Hugh] Magdalena's death triggered a dark period

for Martin Luther.

(Martin sobs)

Within a few weeks,

he would pen his most infamous and disturbing work,

a shocking attack on the Jews.

- He read his Bible through a Christ-centric lens.

He could not ever compromise on any other kinda reading,

which is a problem if you're talking with a Jewish person.

(obscure music)

- [Hugh] Exceedingly vulgar at times,

the document advocates burning synagogues

and expulsion of the Jewish people.

Modern Lutheran church bodies have officially repudiated

Luther's anti-Jewish writings,

but the book remains a black mark on his legacy.

- We have to also take into account

that Luther's readiness to engage that issue

comes in the context of societies

which are not tolerant.

There is no modern notion of tolerance.

- [Hugh] 20 Years earlier Luther had written about the Jews

in very positive terms.

- In 1523 he writes a work

entitled "That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew"

in which he argues

that it is the duty of Christian neighbors

to be kind to the Jews who live in their towns

in order to try to win them over to Christ,

in order to try to bring them into the church.

- [Hugh] He assumed that when his view of the Bible

was explained to Jewish people,

they would convert.

- Well, of course, this was terribly naive.

They were the product of centuries

of medieval persecution and all that.

They did not come back to Christianity.

This Luther simply could not understand.

- Towards the end of his life,

he's getting madder and madder and madder

about "come on, Jews.

You've had 1,500 years to figure this out.

Time is gone," probably because he fears

that his time is out.

- [Hugh] When the Jews did not convert,

Luther became increasingly puzzled, perplexed,

and eventually angry.

At the time Luther's writing on the Jews

didn't lead to any violence,

but 400 years later

Adolf Hitler's regime would dredge up Luther's statements

and use them to justify its campaign

against the Jewish people.

- The Nazis can pull phrases out of Luther

to bolster their opinions.

(laughs) Ya can pull phrases outta Luther

to bolster anything.

He says all sorts of things.

- [Hugh] William Shirer's

"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"

famously blamed Luther for the Holocaust.

More recent scholarship refutes that view.

- William Shirer's thesis,

that Luther was essentially responsible

for the Holocaust, is wrong.

It's wrong because it's far too simple a story.

He plays a role.

His works were reprinted by the Nazis

and became part of the living propaganda

that paved the way for the Holocaust.

I think if Luther had never lived,

something like the Holocaust would still've happened.

- The Nazis aren't sitting around reading Luther

and coming up with these ideas.

- [Hugh] Instead, most historians trace Nazi beliefs

in a master race

to the philosophy of eugenics,

which advocated improving humanity

through selective breeding

and the weeding out of undesirables.

- When things move in that direction,

the stronger are going to pound on the weaker.

(shadowy music)

- [Hugh] Hitler then used Luther's words to justify opinions

that were already fully formed.

- There is clearly a link

between 16th-century anti-Judaism

and 20th-century anti-Semitism,

but it's not a straightforward one,

because the rise of racial theory in the 19th century

does transform the discussion.

- Certainly, the Nazis go back and use him

because he's, of course, such an important cultural figure,

but I think

that that's not viewing those writings in context.

(hopeful music)

- [Hugh] Ironically, in the very same decade

that Hitler was beginning to use Luther

to justify oppression,

an American visiting Germany

saw Luther as an inspiration to do the opposite.

The American was so taken by the story

of Martin Luther's bold fight against oppression,

he changed his name

from Michael King

to Martin Luther King, Sr.

- When he came from Germany, he said to his son

that we're gonna change our names to Martin Luther

and we're gonna be Martin Luther King:

Martin Luther King, Sr., and Martin Luther King, Jr.,

so that resonated greatly in the black community.

- He saw something there

in terms of Martin Luther

that he grabbed hold of and said, "This is who we are."

(exalted music)

- [Hugh] That Luther could elicit massive social change

without a call to arms

continues to offer hope to the downtrodden around the world.

- I think Luther becomes a model

for how one can stand up

on the basis of their faith

against institutions and individuals

who are hurting people.

- [Hugh] That two of the most influential and opposite men

of the 20th century

were inspired by the same German monk

shouldn't be surprising.

Martin Luther was not a compromiser.

He did nothing halfway.

Right or wrong he was all in.

For his entire adult life,

Martin Luther was simultaneously

the most loved and most hated man in the Western world.

- We are all beggars before God.

This is true,

for it is in the gospel

that the righteousness of God is revealed,

a righteousness that is by faith,

from first to last.

Just as it is written,

"the righteous will live by faith alone."

(grieving music)

(woman sobs)

(man speaks in foreign language)

- [Hugh] On February the 18th, 1546,

Martin Luther affirmed his beliefs one last time

before passing away.

With Luther dead

Charles V finally carried out his longstanding threat

to send armies into territories loyal to the Reformation.

His troops marched on Wittenberg

and destroyed the farm Luther had left his wife.

(cursing music)

Charles' military victory belied his eventual failure

to reunite the empire under a single unified religion.

Once he came to realize

that not even his army could stop the Protestant tide,

Charles resigned as emperor

and lived out his last days as a monk

in quiet solitude.

(glowing music)

In the mid and late 1500,

the many strands of the Reformation would wind together

to create a rope powerful enough

to establish Protestant churches across much of Europe

and then the Americas and the world.

Even in death Luther remained the movement's primary leader.

Knowing what Luther would have said about any issue

was never a problem

because no one in history

left behind a more detailed written record

than Martin Luther.

- 130 volumes.

When he started, it just never stopped.

When he wasn't writing,

his students were sitting at the table

writing down the things he said at the table.

- He's not unaware

that people are following him around

and writing down everything he says.

- Oh, course, it also amazes me (laughs)

that somebody sat there wrote it all down,

'cause they clearly didn't feel

they needed to edit him. (laughs)

(laughs)

- [Hugh] No Protestant church subscribes

to everything Luther wrote and said,

but his ideas have left an indelible mark

on the lives of nearly 1 billion Protestants today.

- So we will claim Luther.

We will claim what Luther has to say and teach.

At the same time, we will disagree with Luther.

- I would suggest that Luther's important

because agree with him or disagree with him,

he asks some of the most basic questions

about human existence.

- [Hugh] Despite its initial repudiation of Luther,

even the Catholic Church would eventually adopt

many Luther-like positions:

The common language replaced Latin in the Catholic Mass,

Bible reading was encouraged,

and Catholic hymnals now include Luther's signature hymn,

"A Mighty Fortress is Our God."

Luther's lasting influence extends

far beyond even the church.

He unleashed new ways of thinking

that continue to profoundly shape

the secular world. - Truly Christian one.

For God so loved the world. - For example,

as a vocal advocate for the education of children,

Luther helped pave the way

for the now-ubiquitous public school system.

(Martin laughs)

- That's absolutely true.

There's many more schools opened up, say, in German cities

than in Italian cities or than in Spanish cities.

- He saw that teaching people to read,

teaching people to write,

was good for society.

Luther was concerned about educating,

in particular, the youth

because he recognized

that they were the future of the church.

He runs into a bit of a problem

because the people are more interested

in "what kind of a job are my kids going to have?

How much money will they be able to make?"

Materialism is not a 21st-century phenomenon.

- He was always irritated with people who ran a business

and decided that they were gonna take a little Wolfgang

right out of school

and make him work in the jewelry store.

- Faith or love?

- [Hugh] Luther included the need to educate women at a time

when no other prominent figures thought that worthwhile.

- Within the 16th-century context,

to advocate that all girls

should receive a basic education was revolutionary.

- [Hugh] As an impoverished outsider

who stood up against kings and popes,

Luther continues to inspire a belief

that individuals can nonviolently affect change.

From the American civil rights movement

to countless Third World protests,

Martin Luther still fuels an ideology of hope.

He was speaking boldly.

He was just saying the word that needed to be said.

I think that is what most resonates in the Third World.

It's this freedom and the capability of saying a word

that otherwise was not permitted to be said.

- Ideas really do matter.

Maybe ideas are more powerful than armies are.

(exalted music)

- [Hugh] Luther likely would not have supported

the American Revolution,

but he inadvertently set in motion cultural changes

that led to democracy in America and Europe.

- He lets the genie outta the bottle, in some ways,

on issues that will ultimately bear fruit

in notions of democracy.

- You cannot even, I think, see the democratic revolutions

of the 18th century

without taking into account

Martin Luther's contribution to it.

(immense music)

- [Hugh] Luther laid the groundwork for Western democracy

in one other important way.

He was the first to prove the power of the media,

to amplify the marketplace of ideas,

and to serve as a check on government.

- Luther is sort of a media rock star.

He recognizes what the technology can do.

He's going to use that technology to the fullest.

- He's able to communicate to people

in a way not only that they'll listen to

but will move them to action.

I think that's really a gift.

- [Hugh] Despite his impact

Martin Luther wanted very little to do

with politics or secular life.

Luther's focus always was the quest

for the right relationship

between God and people

and how to show love for others in need.

- I simply talked, preached, and wrote God's word.

Otherwise, I did nothing.

And while I drank beer with my friends,

the word so greatly weakened the papacy

that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses

upon it, but I?

I did nothing.

The word did everything.

- He speaks to the very basic universal hunger we have

to find our ground of being

and to found an orientation that helps us

to explain "why am I here? Where am I going?"

That all then has an impact

on how we actually live in this world.

- [Hugh] The millions of words

Luther wrote, taught, and preached

all boiled down to one idea,

(Martin whispers)

the breakthrough in understanding that changed his life,

summarized in just two words: God forgives.

And a forgiven person wants to help others.

These were the words

young Martin Luther desperately needed to hear,

the idea he most wanted to tell others.

500 years later, he still is.

(bell tolls)

- Hans Lufft, the printer,

lives in the basement of the monastery,

so there are lots of writings

where Luther starts out

and thinks he's gonna do one thing

and then changes his mind halfway

but can't change his mind,

'cause it's already in print in the basement. (laughs)

(resolute music continues) (quill scratches)

(text swooshes)