Essay On Luther's Impact On The Protestant Reformation

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What Luther did and revealed, had a major impact on what christianity is today. Luther is arguably the most significant figure in the protestant reformation. The protestant reformation was started when people (including Luther) started communicating ideas of corruption of the catholic church and the view that the church had lost it’s relevance with the bible. As rebels started to break away from the main religion, new branches were being created including Lutherism.
It was obvious that this was hurting the Catholic church as they responded quite harshly, the Catholic Church used many methods to respond to heresies within the Church. Punishments ranged from recantation, to excommunication, to death. Also, the Catholic Church developed a list …show more content…
With this, selling of indulgences were forbidden and corrupt bishops and priests were prosecuted in the “Council of Trent”. This again relates to how influential Luther was, forcing a whole religion to re-evaluate it’s ethics.

In the beginning, the attractiveness of the change came mainly from the bible itself, which Luther had gained most of his ideas from. The effect that the bible was magnified as Luther and his colleagues started translating it into other languages so more people could read it. Some argue that Luther’s translation was a poor attempt and only used to advertise his own views and opinions.
German humanist Johann Cochlaeus complained that;
“Luther's New Testament was so much multiplied and spread by printers that even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the fountain of all truth. Some committed it to memory, and carried it about in their bosom. In a few months such people deemed themselves so learned that they were not ashamed to dispute about faith and the gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks and doctors of
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