Young Age
His matriculation records, which showed that he was ineligible for financial aid, listed him as being in habendo, which is a subliminal allusion to his father’s commercial success. In 1502, Luther completed the typical liberal arts curriculum and received his baccalaureate degree. Three years after that, he received his master’s degree. His studies gave him a thorough grounding in Scholasticism; years later, he referred to Aristotle and William of Ockham as “his teachers.
Monastic Lifestyle
Luther was qualified to continue his education after leaving the arts faculty in one of the three “higher” fields of law, medicine, or theology. He began his legal studies in accordance with the wishes of his father. He proudly purchased a copy of the Corpus Juris Canonici, a collection of important legal works on canon law. But on July 17, 1505, less than a month later, Luther abandoned his legal studies and enrolled in the Erfurt monastery of the Order of the Hermits of St. The Order of St. Gregory was established in 1256. Augustine.
He explained his sudden change of heart by saying that he unknowingly made a vow to become a monk if he made it through a terrifying thunderstorm near the village of Stotternheim. Luther’s vow, which was undoubtedly made under duress, could have easily been ignored; however, the fact that he decided to uphold it demonstrates that the thunderstorm experience was only a catalyst for much deeper motivations. Naturally, Luther’s father was angry with him for choosing the monastery over a prestigious and prosperous legal career. When Luther said that during the thunderstorm he had been “besieged by the terror and agony of sudden death,” his father only remarked, “May it not prove an illusion and deception.”. “.
Doctor of Theology
But Luther was not willing to accept the monotonous and anonymous life of a monk. In 1507, he began his theology studies at the University of Erfurt. He moved to the Wittenberg Augustinian monastery in the fall of 1508, where he carried on his academic endeavors. Because Wittenberg University was a young institution (founded in 1502), its degree requirements were relatively loose. After only a year of study, Luther had acquired the prerequisites for both the baccalaureate in Bible and the next-highest theological degree, the Sententiarius, enabling him to instruct students in Peter Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences (Sententiarum libri IV), the dominant theological text of the time. He was transferred back to Erfurt in the fall of 1509, however, and the Wittenberg University was unable to confer the degrees on him. Luther then made a formal request for the degrees to be granted to the Erfurt faculty. Despite being unusual and fully justified, his request was ultimately granted.
Indulgence Debate
In the autumn of 1517, a seemingly unimportant event led to Luther’s name becoming quickly well-known throughout Germany. Luther was enraged when it was claimed that a Dominican friar named Johann Tetzel had told the faithful that obtaining a letter of indulgence implied forgiveness of sins. As a result, Luther created a set of arguments in order to hold an academic discussion on indulgences at Wittenberg University. He sent a copy of the Ninety-Five Theses to Archbishop Albert of Mainz, Tetzel’s superior, asking him to stop his extravagant preaching. Additionally, he sent copies to a number of his friends. Soon after, Albert formally requested that the orthodoxy of the work be decided in Rome. It began to be distributed in Germany in the interim, along with some of Luther’s exegetical works.
The Ninety-Five Theses have an overall exploratory rather than dogmatic tone because Luther clearly intended them to be a subordinate document to the church and the pope. But there is unmistakably a “reforming” sentiment running through the work, as evidenced by the numerous theses that begin, “Christians are to be taught that. “. “Dot” along with a few overtly provocative remarks. Thesis 86, for instance, poses a question.
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