Question by : How did Martin Luther change European Society in the 15th and 16th Centuries?
I’m doing a project about the changes in European Society because of Martin Luther and his works such as the 95 Theses and the Protestant Reformation that he made happen. So basically, I need to know how the society and lives of the people changed because of Martin Luther. A preferable way is if you could be able to say how society was before Martin Luther and how society was after Martin Luther and explain why the changes took place.
Thank You!
top response:
Answer by Ima Phukov
~If your task is to address Martin Luther, why focus on something as mundane as the 95 Theses? Posting them was simply the means by which, as was the custom of the day, he advertised a discussion he planned to holding, inviting those interested to attend and soliciting writing commentary from those who could not be present personally. He did not intended the to create a schism in the Church by posting them and events took on a life of their own after he did post them. He was not the first to address the issues he presented and he was certainly not an early advocate of parting company with the Catholic Church.
In 1543, on the other hand, he wrote “on the Jews and Their Lies” was a clear agenda and goal in mind. From calling Jews “a brood of vipers and children of the devil”, “miserable, blind, and senseless,” “truly stupid fools,” “thieves and robbers,” “lazy rogues,” “daily murderers,” and “vermin,” to calling for the denial of property rights, protection of law and for their expulsion from the Germanic states of the Holy Roman Empire, to recommending that their homes and schools and synagogues be burned to declaring that “we are at fault in not killing them”, he clearly wanted to rid the Germanic states of that “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God,” who were “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine”. He urged that their (Jews) money and property be confiscated, the rabbis be forbidden to teach, their prayer books be destroyed and ” They should be shown no mercy or kindness”, “afforded no legal protection”, and the “poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor. He believed that Kosher food was a Jewish plot designed to poison the Gentile populations of Europe, and that they ate it to flaunt their differences, their presumed superiority and their separateness form society at large, and to mock the Christians. A true Christian and devout follower of the “Prince of Peace”, a Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, his solution was expulsion, enslavement or genocide. Sounds a bit like a neocon fundamentalist Christian bigot of the twenty-first century, doesn’t he?
Luther’s words were widely acclaimed and a significant catalyst of the anti-Semitism that followed over the course of the next several centuries, in the Germanic states particularly, but across the Western world. Ben Franklin and George Washington took his words to heart at the Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention when they asked for constitutional provision that would deny Jews entry into the US states or, failing that, that the Jews be specifically and expressly denied citizenship, due process and equal protection of US law. Naturally, Luther was widely quoted by the National Socialists and was an icon of their movement. Luther did not start anti-Semitism by any means, but he have it a boost that would lead directly in an almost straight lie through Kristalnacht and into the slave camps and gas chambers.
If you want to write about things that happened due to things Luther wrote with the design and intent of setting things into motion, “On the Jews and Their Lies” fits much better the parameters of the theme than do the 95 Theses. It will set your paper apart from those of your classmates as well, for it will show that you actually took the time and effort to actually try to learn something about the man.
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