Martin Luther Trivia
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96 free Martin Luther trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Martin Luther was a miner's son who meant to be a lawyer, promised Saint Anna in a thunderstorm that he would be a monk instead, and ended up splitting Western Christianity. This quiz follows the man from Eisleben and Erfurt through the Augustinian cloister to Wittenberg, the indulgence-seller Tetzel, the Ninety-five Theses (nailed to a door or not), the shouting match with Cardinal Cajetan, the burning of the papal bull, the Diet of Worms and the staged kidnapping that hid him in the Wartburg as 'Junker Jörg'. It then covers what he built and what he broke: the New Testament translated in ten weeks, the full German Bible, the marriage to a nun smuggled out in a fish wagon, six children in a former monastery, the catechisms, the German Mass, the hymn called the Battle Hymn of the Reformation, the Marburg row with Zwingli over the Eucharist, and the harsher side too, from the call to slay the rebellious peasants to the antisemitic treatises of 1543. Easy questions suit anyone who did the Reformation at school; the expert tier asks which thesis mentions Crassus. For the wider movement, Calvin, Zwingli and Henry VIII, try our Reformation quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Luther, his wife, the Wartburg and his works, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01Which English king won the papal title 'Defender of the Faith' for a 1521 book attacking Luther?
Henry VIII
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.
Q 02Luther was born in 1483 and, 62 years later, died in which town?
Eisleben
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'.
Q 03What did Luther's father Hans do for a living?
Leased copper mines and smelters
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.
Q 04At which university did Luther take his master's degree and begin law before entering a monastery?
Erfurt
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.
Q 05Caught in a thunderstorm in July 1505, Luther cried out a vow to which saint that he would become a monk?
Anna
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.
Q 06Which religious order did Luther join in 1505?
The Augustinians
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.
Q 07Martin Luther King Jr., who shares the reformer's name, was born with which first name?
Michael
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.
Q 08Luther's core doctrine held that a sinner is declared righteous by what alone?
Faith
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.
Q 09Which Dominican friar's sale of indulgences in Germany prompted Luther's protest in 1517?
Johann Tetzel
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.
Q 10How did the indulgence jingle 'As soon as the coin in the coffer rings' end?
the soul from purgatory springs
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.
Q 11What was the formal title of the Ninety-five Theses?
Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences
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.
Q 12According to the traditional story, where did Luther nail his theses in 1517?
All Saints' Church, Wittenberg
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.
Q 13Luther's Thesis 86 asked why the pope, richer than which famously wealthy Roman, did not build St Peter's himself?
Q 21In which castle did Luther hide from May 1521 to March 1522, calling it 'my Patmos'?
Wartburg
Luther hid at the Wartburg, above Eisenach, from 4 May 1521 to early March 1522, growing a beard and living there in disguise.
Q 22Under what alias did Luther live while in hiding in 1521-22?
Junker Jörg
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.
Q 23What major work did Luther complete during his ten months in hiding in 1521-22?
A German translation of the New Testament
Crassus
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.
Q 14Which cardinal questioned Luther for three days at Augsburg in 1518, in hearings that became a shouting match?
Cajetan
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.
Q 15At the 1519 Leipzig Debate, which theologian drove Luther to defend teachings of the condemned heretic Jan Hus?
Johann Eck
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.
Q 16The papal bull Exsurge Domine likened Luther to which animal in the Lord's vineyard?
A wild boar
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.
Q 17Which pope excommunicated Luther in January 1521?
Leo X
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.
Q 18Luther's hymn 'Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her' was first printed as a children's song for which feast?
Christmas
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.
Q 19Which words attributed to Luther at Worms do scholars consider unreliable, appearing only in later versions?
Here I stand
'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.'
Q 20Which prince protected Luther, obtaining his safe conduct to Worms and then staging his 'kidnapping'?
Frederick III, Elector of Saxony
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.
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.
Q 24Luther's 1534 Bible turned the Old Testament into German chiefly from which language?
Hebrew
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.
Q 25Which artist made anti-papal woodcuts for the Luther Bible and witnessed Luther's wedding?
Lucas Cranach the Elder
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.
Q 26Luther's German translation influenced which English one, itself a forerunner of the King James Version?
The Tyndale Bible
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.
Q 27The 'Johannine Comma', a verse Luther left out of his German Bible, spells out which doctrine?
The Trinity
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.
Q 28Which New Testament book did Luther call 'an epistle of straw' in his 1522 preface?
James
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.
Q 29By tradition, how were Luther's future wife and her fellow nuns smuggled out of their convent in 1523?
Hidden among herring barrels
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.
Q 30Luther's 1530 letter to his son Hans describes a wonderful what?
Garden
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.