96 Fun Facts About Martin Luther

Which English king won the papal title 'Defender of the Faith' for a 1521 book attacking Luther?

Henry VIII defended the seven sacraments against Luther and the pope rewarded him with the title; a dozen years later Henry broke with Rome himself, yet English monarchs went on using it.

Luther was born in 1483 and, 62 years later, died in which town?

Eisleben saw little of him in between: his family moved away within a year of his birth and he came back only as a visitor; in his honour the town's official name is Lutherstadt Eisleben, 'Luther's town Eisleben'.

What did Luther's father Hans do for a living?

Hans Luder, a former miner, leased copper mines and smelters around Mansfeld and sat on the town council; he was determined that Martin, his eldest son, should become a lawyer.

At which university did Luther take his master's degree and begin law before entering a monastery?

Erfurt was where Luther took his master's degree in 1505, placing second of seventeen; he began law to please his father and dropped it within weeks to become a monk.

Caught in a thunderstorm in July 1505, Luther cried out a vow to which saint that he would become a monk?

Anna, mother of the Virgin Mary, was the saint he called on: 'Help, Saint Anna, I will become a monk!' Two weeks later he gave his friends a farewell supper and entered a monastery the next day.

Which religious order did Luther join in 1505?

The Augustinians took him in July 1505; his superior Johann von Staupitz befriended the troubled young friar and insisted, over Luther's objections, that he take a doctorate and teach.

Martin Luther King Jr., who shares the reformer's name, was born with which first name?

Michael King was his name at birth; in 1934 his father, an Atlanta pastor also born Michael, came home from a Baptist congress in Berlin and began calling himself and his five-year-old son Martin Luther King.

Luther's core doctrine held that a sinner is declared righteous by what alone?

Faith alone, or sola fide, was Luther's answer; he even added the word 'alone' to a verse of St Paul in his German Bible, and wrote an open letter defending the choice when critics attacked it.

Which Dominican friar's sale of indulgences in Germany prompted Luther's protest in 1517?

Johann Tetzel, a Dominican, preached the 1517 indulgence meant to fund the rebuilding of St Peter's in Rome, though half the takings were secretly diverted to repay the debts of the archbishop who had licensed the sale.

How did the indulgence jingle 'As soon as the coin in the coffer rings' end?

The jingle ended 'the soul from purgatory springs'; Luther's Thesis 27 condemned preachers who claim a soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the coin clinks in the chest.

What was the formal title of the Ninety-five Theses?

The Ninety-five Theses bore the formal title 'Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences'; Luther wrote them in Latin in 1517 as propositions for an academic debate on indulgences.

According to the traditional story, where did Luther nail his theses in 1517?

Tradition has Luther nailing the theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg in 1517; some scholars doubt it, since the story rests on a colleague who only reached Wittenberg in 1518.

Luther's Thesis 86 asked why the pope, richer than which famously wealthy Roman, did not build St Peter's himself?

Crassus, a byword for riches in ancient Rome, was Luther's yardstick: the thesis asks why the pope does not build the basilica with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers.

Which cardinal questioned Luther for three days at Augsburg in 1518, in hearings that became a shouting match?

Cardinal Cajetan, the papal legate, examined Luther at Augsburg on 12-14 October 1518 and demanded that he recant; Luther refused and slipped out of the city by night.

At the 1519 Leipzig Debate, which theologian drove Luther to defend teachings of the condemned heretic Jan Hus?

Johann Eck turned the debate to Jan Hus, burned as a heretic in 1415; when Luther called some of Hus's condemned teachings perfectly Christian, the presiding duke swore out loud before the whole hall.

The papal bull Exsurge Domine likened Luther to which animal in the Lord's vineyard?

A wild boar from the forest, the bull called him, borrowing a line from the Psalms; it condemned 41 of his propositions and gave him sixty days to take them back.

Which pope excommunicated Luther in January 1521?

Leo X had himself approved the indulgence sale for St Peter's that set Luther writing; the excommunication he went on to issue was still in force when Luther died.

Luther's hymn 'Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her' was first printed as a children's song for which feast?

Christmas: in the hymn an angel brings the news to the shepherds, and Luther modelled its opening lines on a popular song of the day.

Which words attributed to Luther at Worms do scholars consider unreliable, appearing only in later versions?

'Here I stand, I can do no other' is absent from the earliest accounts of Worms; what is recorded ends 'I cannot and will not recant anything... May God help me. Amen.'

Which prince protected Luther, obtaining his safe conduct to Worms and then staging his 'kidnapping'?

Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, had Luther seized on 4 May 1521 by masked horsemen posing as highway robbers near Altenstein on his way home from Worms, then hidden in one of his castles.

In which castle did Luther hide from May 1521 to March 1522, calling it 'my Patmos'?

Luther hid at the Wartburg, above Eisenach, from 4 May 1521 to early March 1522, growing a beard and living there in disguise.

Under what alias did Luther live while in hiding in 1521-22?

As 'Junker Jörg' (Knight George) Luther passed for a minor nobleman while in hiding, growing his hair and beard to look the part for ten months.

What major work did Luther complete during his ten months in hiding in 1521-22?

A German translation of the New Testament, made from the Greek, came out in September 1522, hence its nickname, the 'September Testament'; it sold so fast that a second edition followed in December.

Luther's 1534 Bible turned the Old Testament into German chiefly from which language?

Hebrew was his starting point, not the church's Latin; Luther leaned on Wittenberg's Hebrew scholars and wrote that in the Book of Job they sometimes managed barely three lines in four days.

Which artist made anti-papal woodcuts for the Luther Bible and witnessed Luther's wedding?

Lucas Cranach the Elder, court painter at Wittenberg, supplied the Bible's anti-papal woodcuts, stood witness at Luther's wedding and was godfather to his first child; his portraits fix how we picture Luther.

Luther's German translation influenced which English one, itself a forerunner of the King James Version?

The Tyndale Bible drew on Luther's German New Testament alongside the Greek; William Tyndale had it printed at Worms in 1526 and smuggled into England, and was later executed for heresy.

The 'Johannine Comma', a verse Luther left out of his German Bible, spells out which doctrine?

The Trinity: the clause in 1 John names the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost as three heavenly witnesses who 'are one'; other editors put it into Luther's Bible only after his death.

Which New Testament book did Luther call 'an epistle of straw' in his 1522 preface?

In the preface to his 1522 German New Testament Luther called James 'an epistle of straw' beside the Gospels and Paul's letters, because it said little about Christ.

By tradition, how were Luther's future wife and her fellow nuns smuggled out of their convent in 1523?

Hidden among herring barrels is how the story is told: a merchant who supplied the convent drove them off in his covered wagon at Easter 1523. Their families would not have them back, so Luther found them husbands or posts.

Luther's 1530 letter to his son Hans describes a wonderful what?

Garden: writing from Coburg, Luther told four-year-old Hans of a garden where children who pray and learn pick cherries and ride ponies with golden bridles; Hans was the eldest of his six children.

Which building, a wedding gift from Elector John, became the Luthers' family home?

Elector John the Steadfast gave the couple the Black Cloister, the former monastery where Luther had lived as a friar; it stayed the family home, filled with students, relatives and boarders.

Which 1525 Luther pamphlet urged nobles to 'smite, slay, and stab'?

'Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants' came out in May 1525, only weeks after Luther had urged peace and faulted the lords as well; a journey through rebel country in Thuringia hardened him.

Luther's 1525 work On the Bondage of the Will was a reply to which humanist scholar's On Free Will?

Erasmus's 'On Free Will' of 1524 challenged Luther, whose reply 'On the Bondage of the Will' he later counted as one of only two of his books worth keeping.

Which radical preacher, executed after the 1525 Battle of Frankenhausen, led peasants in Thuringia?

Thomas Müntzer led Thuringian peasants to defeat at Frankenhausen and was beheaded days later; four centuries on, communist East Germany hailed him as a hero and put his face on its five-mark note.

What did Luther write in 1529 in a large version for pastors and a small one to be memorised?

The Catechisms followed a tour of Saxon parishes that appalled him: ordinary people knew almost nothing of Christian teaching and many pastors could barely explain it. The small one let parents teach their children at home.

Which colleague drafted the Augsburg Confession of 1530 while the outlawed Luther waited at Veste Coburg?

Philipp Melanchthon drafted the Augsburg Confession while Luther, still an outlaw, stopped at Coburg, the southernmost town of electoral Saxony and as near as he could safely come, advising by letter.

Which Luther hymn is called the 'Battle Hymn of the Reformation'?

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God ('Ein feste Burg') draws on Psalm 46; its defiance led the poet Heinrich Heine to call it the Marseillaise of the Reformation.

The prince who shielded Luther from Rome had filled his own church with thousands of what?

Relics: pilgrims who came to venerate the prince's vast collection earned indulgences, the very system his own professor went on to attack.

What did Luther's notorious 1543 treatise On the Jews and Their Lies urge rulers to do to synagogues?

Set them on fire, he wrote, and raze Jewish homes as well; Lutheran churches have since disowned the treatise, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in a 1994 declaration to the Jewish community.

Luther died in February 1546 on a winter journey he had made to do what?

Settle a quarrel among local counts: the lords of Mansfeld, his home county, had fallen out, and Luther, sick and 62, brokered their agreement on 17 February and died early the next morning.

Where is Luther buried?

Before the pulpit of Wittenberg's Castle Church he has stayed: the emperor who captured the town a year later left the grave alone, and when it was opened in 1892 Luther's remains were still there.

In his 1520 appeal to the German nobility, Luther argued that every baptised Christian already holds which office?

Priest: with that claim Luther knocked down the first of three 'walls' he said Rome sheltered behind, the idea that clergy stand above laypeople, and so called on lay rulers to reform the church themselves.

Which reformer's image-smashing in Wittenberg did Luther return from hiding to reverse in 1522?

Andreas Karlstadt had pushed through image-smashing and a radical Mass in Luther's absence; Luther returned in March 1522 and preached the eight Invocavit Sermons urging patience over force.

A verse in which biblical book gave Luther his new understanding of 'the righteousness of God'?

Romans was the book: Luther came to read 'the righteousness of God' in its first chapter as a gift God gives rather than the justice by which he punishes, and said he felt as though born again.

In 1999 Lutherans and Catholics signed a joint declaration on which doctrine that had divided them since Luther?

Justification, how sinners are put right with God, had been the core quarrel of the Reformation; Methodists, Anglicans and Reformed churches later signed on to the 1999 agreement as well.

Reformation Day is celebrated by Protestants on which date?

Reformation Day falls on 31 October, the date in 1517 on which Luther sent his theses to his archbishop and, by tradition, nailed them to the church door.

What did every communicant receive in Luther's German Mass of 1526?

Both the bread and the wine went to everyone, where the medieval church had kept the cup for the clergy; a century earlier the followers of Jan Hus in Bohemia had made the same demand their cause.

According to legend, what did Luther hurl at the devil while in hiding in 1521?

An inkwell, the story goes, and guides long showed the stain on his wall, touched up more than once; his own remark about driving the devil away with ink more likely meant his writing.

Luther's still-angry father attended which 1507 milestone?

First Mass: in May 1507 it drew his father with a party of friends; when Martin spoke of his heavenly call, the old man said he hoped it had not been an apparition of the devil.

In 1517 Luther sent his Theses to Albert of Brandenburg, who had licensed the indulgence sale as archbishop of which city?

Mainz was one of several sees Albert held, and paying Rome for that privilege had left him deep in debt; half the indulgence money was to clear it, and he passed Luther's theses on to Rome.

Lutheran princes' 1529 protest, which gave Protestants their name, was lodged at an imperial diet in which city?

Speyer's diet voted in 1529 to enforce the old ban on Luther's teaching; six princes and fourteen free cities lodged a formal protest, and their party was soon known as the Protestants.

Which young emperor presided at the Diet of Worms and declared Luther an outlaw in 1521?

Charles V, just turned 21, issued the edict that let anyone kill Luther without penalty; yet Luther had come under a promise of safe conduct, and the emperor let him ride away first.

At Worms, Luther said he would recant only if convinced by what?

Scripture or clear reason alone could move him, he said, since popes and councils had often erred and contradicted themselves; his conscience, he added, was captive to the Word of God.

A famous saying wrongly credited to Luther has him planting which tree even if the world ended tomorrow?

An apple tree: 'If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today' is quoted everywhere as Luther's, but the earliest written trace of it dates only from 1944.

What nickname did Luther give his wife Katharina, reflecting her control of the household?

Herr Käthe, 'Lord Katie', was his teasing salute to the wife who ran the house, the boarders and the family purse; in household matters he left the last word to her.

Katharina von Bora died in 1552 after a cart accident while fleeing Wittenberg to escape what?

The plague, along with a failed harvest, drove her out; her cart crashed at the gates of Torgau and she lay bedridden there for three months before she died, six years after her husband.

Which instrument did Luther often play to accompany hymn singing?

The lute was his instrument: he taught himself to play as a student while laid up with a leg wound, and in later years there was singing at his table after dinner.

Luther chose which colour for the rose in his seal, calling it the colour of the spirits and angels?

White, not red, Luther insisted: the rose stood for joy, comfort and peace, set in a sky-blue field for the joy of heaven and ringed with gold for a bliss without end.

Luther compared his boyhood Latin schooling to what?

Purgatory and hell was his later verdict on those schools: he recalled being beaten fifteen times in a single morning for failing to recite a lesson no one had yet taught him.

Questioned at Worms on whether he stood by his books, what did Luther do first?

Asked on his first day before the Diet whether he stood by his books, Luther requested time to think and was granted a day; he prayed and consulted friends overnight before refusing to recant.

Luther wrote that his marriage had made him so despised that the angels would laugh and the devils do what?

Weep: 'I expect the angels laugh and the devils weep', he told a friend in June 1525, days after the wedding; even his closest colleague thought the step reckless.

Where did Luther place the Apocrypha in his Bible?

Luther gathered the Apocrypha into a section at the end of the Old Testament, headed as books 'not held equal to Holy Scripture, yet useful and good to read', rather than removing them.

Which business did Katharina run at the Luther home to support the family and its boarders?

A brewery was one of several ventures: Katharina brewed the household's beer, bred and sold cattle, and in times of epidemic turned the house into a hospital and nursed the sick herself.

As a poor schoolboy in Eisenach, Luther is said to have won a home with the wealthy Cotta family through what?

His singing caught the ear of Frau Cotta, who by tradition took the boy in for it; under her roof the boy had his first taste of modest comfort.

Luther often wrote that a Christian's soul does what between death and the resurrection?

Sleeps was the picture Luther kept returning to: the dead enter 'a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace'. He never made it binding doctrine, and later Lutheran teachers set it aside.

Which text did Luther read in Latin translation in 1542, then oppose banning?

The Qur'an reached Luther in a Latin translation in 1542; when Basel jailed the printer of a new edition, Luther wrote urging that it be published so readers could judge it for themselves, and supplied a preface.

Telling a colleague that God saves real sinners, not imaginary ones, Luther wrote, 'Be a sinner, and let your sins be' what?

Strong: 'but let your trust in Christ be stronger', he went on. The line, often shortened to 'sin boldly', comes from a letter written in hiding on 1 August 1521.

Luther's son Paul, who served the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, had what profession?

Paul Luther (1533-93) was physician to the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg and an alchemist who devised drugs for Saxon pharmacies, including a drinkable gold, Aurum potabile.

How did Luther answer the 1520 bull that threatened him with excommunication?

He burned it publicly, on a bonfire outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate on 10 December 1520, along with volumes of church law, as students looked on; the formal excommunication followed within weeks.

After two days' hunting while in hiding in 1521, Luther called the sport a worthy occupation for whom?

Idle people: the bag was two hares and a few partridges, and among the nets and hounds Luther saw only a picture of the devil hunting down innocent souls.

Which band of visionary zealots arrived in Wittenberg at the end of 1521?

The Zwickau prophets were three men who claimed direct revelations from the Holy Spirit and rejected infant baptism; Luther, back from hiding, wrote that he asked them for a miracle as proof, and they refused and left.

Returning in 1522, Luther wrote to the Elector that Satan had entered his what?

Sheepfold: Luther saw Wittenberg as the flock in his care, and although his protector had misgivings about his leaving safety, he rode home in March 1522 to deal with the unrest in person.

Which Wittenberg pastor officiated at Luther's wedding on 13 June 1525?

Johannes Bugenhagen, the town pastor and Luther's confessor, married the couple on 13 June 1525; he later preached Luther's funeral sermon and published a Low German version of the Luther Bible in the 1530s.

At Heidelberg in 1518, Luther set his 'theology of the cross' against a theology of what?

At the Heidelberg Disputation of April 1518 Luther contrasted the 'theology of the cross', which knows God through suffering, with the 'theology of glory' that seeks him in power and works.

Luther called Katharina the 'morning star of Wittenberg' because of which habit?

Rising at 4 a.m. gave Katharina a head start on a house full of students and guests and all the work of feeding them; for all her authority at home, she addressed her husband as 'Sir Doctor' to the end.

Luther's 'Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland' ('Now come, Saviour of the Gentiles') became the main hymn for which season?

Advent: Luther reworked a Latin hymn by the fourth-century bishop Ambrose of Milan, and for centuries Lutheran churches sang his version on the first Sunday of the season.

What did Luther write in chalk on the table at Marburg in 1529, during a debate over the Lord's Supper?

Luther chalked 'Hoc est corpus meum' ('This is my body') on the table at Marburg in October 1529 and kept pointing to Christ's words of institution throughout the debate.

Students who boarded with Luther wrote down his conversation, later published under which title?

Table Talk, or Tischreden, grew from notes that students at his table took between 1531 and 1546; it was printed in 1566, twenty years after his death, and biographers have mined it ever since.

Luther's last written note was in Latin except for which three German words?

"We are beggars", in German, then 'This is true' in Latin, closes a note written two days before he died: only a farmer grasps Virgil's farming poems, he wrote, and no one has fully understood Scripture.

Who kept the profits from the pamphlets Luther wrote?

His printers kept them: Luther took nothing for his writings, just as he charged his students no lecture fees, and he lived on his professor's salary.

A prophecy credited to Jan Hus, whose name meant 'goose', is why Luther is often shown with which bird?

Swan: Hus is said to have told his judges they might roast a goose, but that in a hundred years a swan would sing whom they could not silence; Lutheran churches took to swan weather vanes.

Warned off Worms in 1521, Luther reportedly vowed to go even if it held as many devils as what?

Tiles on the roofs, as a friend at court recalled his message; the next day Luther rode into the city in an open carriage, still in his monk's habit, with a crowd of horsemen around him.

Overworked in 1516, Luther told a friend he needed two what?

Secretaries: he did almost nothing all day but write letters, he complained, on top of preaching, lecturing and overseeing eleven houses of his order.

Luther ranked which art second only to theology, saying the devil fled from it?

Music: 'next to theology there is no art equal to music', he wrote to a composer, since it alone could give a quiet and happy mind and send the devil running.

Luther's hymn 'Aus tiefer Not' paraphrases the penitential Psalm 130, known by which Latin name?

De profundis, 'out of the depths', is how the psalm opens in Latin; Luther's German version became a funeral hymn, and a crowd sang it in Halle as his own body was carried home for burial.

On first reading the Ninety-five Theses, the pope reportedly put them down to a German who was what?

Drunk: he would think differently once sober, the pope is said to have remarked, and at first he treated the whole affair as a squabble among jealous monks.

Threatened with exposure over Philip of Hesse's bigamy, what did Luther advise the landgrave?

Tell a good, strong lie was his counsel once the secret leaked: Luther had privately allowed the second marriage as a lesser evil than divorce, on condition that it never became public.

Which 1523 work saw Luther advise kindness toward Jews in hopes of converting them?

In 'That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew' (1523) Luther urged kindness toward Jews to win converts; when conversions did not come he grew bitter, culminating in the treatises of 1543.

Which largely Catholic country keeps Reformation Day as a public holiday to honour the reformers who printed its first books?

Slovenia marks the day because Protestant reformers gave it a written language: Primož Trubar's catechism and primer of 1550 were the first books printed in Slovene.

Back at his lodgings after refusing to recant at Worms, Luther flung out his hands and joyfully cried what?

'I am through!' he cried, twice over; minutes earlier he had left the hall to hisses from the emperor's Spaniards and applause from the Germans.

Which future Strasbourg reformer became a follower after hearing Luther at Heidelberg in 1518?

Martin Bucer, then a young Dominican, was won over at Heidelberg and went on to lead the Reformation in Strasbourg; exiled to England in 1549, he helped revise the Book of Common Prayer and died at Cambridge.

By 2017 a toy figure of Luther had become which company's best-selling figure of all time?

Playmobil made its little Luther for the 500th anniversary of the theses; the first 34,000 sold out within three days, and by 2017 no figure in the firm's history had sold more.

Which Zurich reformer told Luther at Marburg in 1529 that a Bible verse 'breaks your neck'?

Huldrych Zwingli held that the bread and wine only stood for Christ's body; 'German necks don't break that easily,' Luther shot back, and their host, Philip of Hesse, had to calm them both.

Luther teased Katharina as 'boss of Zulsdorf', which was what?

A farm she ran: in 1540 Luther bought the small Zulsdorf estate, south of Leipzig, from her hard-up brother, and Katharina took it in hand herself, so he hailed her as its 'boss'.

Which actor played the title role in the 2003 film Luther, opposite Peter Ustinov in his final film?

Joseph Fiennes, who had played Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, took the part; the film was partly paid for by a financial firm that serves American Lutherans.

While princes met at Augsburg in 1530, Luther joked that which noisy neighbours at Coburg were holding their own diet?

Crows and jackdaws: in a wood below his window, he wrote, they flew to and fro and squabbled day and night without drawing breath, a parliament of proud kings, dukes and grandees.