Wittemberg, There 3 January 1521
On the morning of 3 January 1521, three hammer blows they nail the door of Wittenberg Church the Papal Bull “Decet Romanum Pontificem” of Leo X. And’ the sentence defined promulgated by the Church of Rome to Martin Luther, considered now a heretic, along with all those who consider themselves followers of his doctrine. It will be the same German theologian to take notice of excommunication by burning the Papal Bull. The game that the Church of Rome and Luther were playing on the same Exchequer is over, the Schism started. To move the Church in its foundations are served 95 thesis, posted on the door of the Church itself five years earlier by the same Luther and some simple powerful concepts: predestination, direct reading of Scripture, salvation by faith alone, uselessness of the sacrament of confession. Luther's struggle was a battle against the indulgences that the Catholic Church of the time not dispensed according to the will of God, but according to private economic interests of the various popes who followed one another throughout history: one of the era's most famous sayings, coined by an Archbishop was “just a coin tossed in the alms tintinna, a soul flies away from purgatory”. Ideas spread by Luther found so perfectly with the discontent of the German princes and the Church's malpractice averse population: the birth, the development and the full existence of the Protestant Church are full testimony. Luther was a personality that is hard to understand, maybe even for himself: He avoided the extremes, against the Catholic Church, where degenerated John Calvin and maybe at the end of his life he tried, According to legend, a reconciliation with the papacy, asking to take the priestly dress. Of course some of his thoughts make us realize how his thinking was ahead for its time and, maybe even for our:
“Superstition, idolatry and hypocrisy perceive rich rewards, While the truth goes around begging”
CIT. Martin Luther
