All Martin Luther (Not Dr. King, Martin Luther) did was nail a piece of paper to a wall, and he sparked dozens of religious wars and 21 different versions of Christianity, most of which are still alive today.
Absolutely! Martin Luther's actions had reverberations that we still feel today.
Pedantic point of contention though: historians (some at least) don't believe he nailed the theses to the door. It makes a nice and exciting image, but then anyone could have just come along and tore them off. If this happened, Luther likely would have faded into obscurity as he gets excommunicated or executed for his heresies against the Catholic church and nobody else would have been the wiser.
More likely that he distributed them, left multiple copies around, that sort of thing. It seems it's too important a matter to simply leave to chance.
Yeah, that's fair. Although what I learned in history class was he nailed it to the door of a cathedral. Even if somebody tore it off, they would probably show it to the bishop anyway, since this was treason. So I think he may have left multiple copies, but did nail it to a door.
Ahh fair enough!
But regardless, I completely agree with your overall assertion. Martin Luther absolutely changed the world.
Luther, King Henry VIII and Louis XIV are giants in history who set off an insane chain of events.
I'm currently obsessed with Europe in 1400s-1800s. Such an intense and earth-shattering era, and so much of it started with the Ninety-Five Theses.
One of the weirdest things to me is that Henry VIII did so much weird and new shit, but he's just remembered for killing his wives. He was the first child of house Tudor, ending a war that had lasted generations. He separated from the Catholic Church. He revolutionized healthcare. He was extremely popular at first, but descended into tyranny. He's really interesting.
He is a fascinating man (not a good man, he was a total shithead at least relationally), but very very interesting to read about.
He reads like some sort of crazed fictional character in a fantasy epic. Like the bad guy you're supposed to feel empathy for at first, but then you despise him more and more as things go on.
I mean these other things you mention facilitated his wife killing/divorcing except for the Tudor thing, but that's just a consequence of being born. Any actual achievements of Henry VIII that aren't affected by his desire to bed multiple women?
IIRC the healthcare bit was entirely separate from that, he just was fascinated by the subject from a young age. The religious reform was absolutely because he wanted a divorce, but history isn’t always black and white. Even hitler liked dogs.
Yeah, the healthcare bit coincided with his interest in beheading, which he did to wives. I don't know why you're trying to portray Henry VIII or Hitler positively. That kind of implies something about the type of person you are.
The fuck? I said -even- hitler, which with the phrasing strongly implies that he’s not a good person. So , let me say it in no small terms. Henry and (I can’t believe I have to point this out) Hitler were both vile people. HOWEVER, your statement on his interest in medicine is completely false and, to be frank, is something I’ve never seen in any academic journal m.
He opened the royal college of physicians in 1518, -15- years before he divorced his first wife Catherine. Please read a history book instead of throwing insults at people for disagreeing with you on topics you clearly know nothing about.
That's social media for ya. You say anything with some nuance or anything people don't like, they go right to well, you must be a terrible person too. I thought your comments were interesting
Fun fact: The Nazis actually supported animal rights.
That's about the most humane thing they did, and I'm pretty sure anybody who doesn't directly benefit by a lack of animal rights supports animal rights. So it doesn't really make up for anything.
Agreed, it doesn’t make him a better person by any means. Though I get your point, it’s not really a fair comparison for Henry since advancing the field of medicine does far more for humanity than just liking animals.
Was more trying to point out that even horrible people will have traits that can be considered ‘good’ without they themselves being good.
Oh, I wasn't making a point by telling you that. Sorry. I was just saying that because I thought it was interesting, but I wanted to clear the record and make sure nobody interpreted what I was saying as me being a Nazi sympathizer.
I've recently become obsessed with ancient history myself, and it is quite interesting learning about figures that had such profound impacts on society and culture, such as Charlemagne.
I signed up for The Great Courses and have been having a ball watching lectures on history, literature and art and learning all this stuff.
I'm an atheist but I have also been watching a ton of courses on the old testament and Christian history.
The course I am most excited for is the one on the reformation actually.
Sometimes it's still important to stop and realize how incredible it is, the amount and quality of information at our fingertips today compared to even a couple decades ago.
It's the Great Courses Plus. It's been around a while, they used the be called the Teaching Company I think.
If you have Prime, they will often have Courses for a limited time now and then. For example, they had The Black Death course and that's how I got into it.
Being older now and out of college for many years, I realized how much I missed these academic lecturers, especially with teachers that are incredibly good at what they do.
I ended up doing a free trial (found a one month trial) and after that signed up for a year. It is pricey, I will warn you. The annual membership ended up being a much better deal and I believe it was in the 150 to 200 dollar range.
But I really love the Courses and listen to it every night or when I fly (I travel for work and fly a lot). You can download for offline viewing which makes it super useful.
Definitely see if you can find a trial and see if it's something you'd enjoy.
The first course I completed was History of the Ancient World with Profressor Greg Aldrete. He is such a good lecturer and has a number of great courses on Roman history as well.
One I'm doing right now is a course on Heroes and Legends by Dr. Shippey, who is an expert on Tolkien and consulted Peter Jackson for the Lord of the Rings films. I'm really loving the course so far, it's so good!
Anyway, I know I sound like a shill for Great Courses, but I really watch it more than Netflix at this point and am glad I stumbled on it.
How about the storm that wrecked the Spanish Armada and the two that stopped the Mongols from invading japan. 3 storms had more of an effect on history than anything since history started.
He did not. That whole thing was basically a carefully constructed, ancient guerilla marketing campaign. Luther was just the figurehead of an effort to undermine the peasant uprising at the time.
He's like the Columbus of religion, a terrible person that did nothing of value but got idolized through centuries of historical revisionism.
I'll look up some more sources when I have the time, but here's the main gist.
The protestant movement was already popular when Luther came became a public figure. There were AT LEAST 18 different translations of the bible from Latin to German at the time Luther made his. Some of them were already very popular, so the claim that he "brought the word of God to the masses" is false.
The main thing his translation changed was making antisemitism a core part of his theology.
Even as a Jew, I have to admire Martin Luther's actions. Dude was as anti-semitic as any figure I've read about in history. Dude thought burning us alive in our synagogues would be a mercy to us.
That said, the Catholic Church (especially around this time) was about as evil of an organization that mankind has ever achieved. A truly corrupt and evil entity. That's not to attack modern day Catholics but merely an observation of the "burn the heretics" and "steal all the valuables" of their operations. It takes balls of titanium to nail reformations into their door and to refuse to renounce his writings at the Diet of Worms. Dude was asked by the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor to renounce his beliefs or be punished, and he didn't just refuse, he used the audience as a way to spread his message. Just truly insane.
Edit: I think the people saying WW1 and WW2 would never have happened without Martin Luther are taking a huge leap of Faith. History would be different, but it's hard to believe Germany wouldn't have become Nationalistic and Stalin wouldn't have taken the Soviet Union down the same path. It's fun to think about, but I don't think it's fair to blame Martin Luther for all bad history since he reformed the church.
I'm a Protestant Christian, so I tend to have a bit of a biased skew towards Luther, but I'm with you.
The Jews and Their Lies is appalling, and especially tragic since Luther was originally a supporter of the Jews; he just didn't like that they didn't magically drop their beliefs the moment the Protestant wave began.
He was tremendously influential and the HRE needed the smack-down it got; but he was also tremendously flawed.
Yeah, but my point was that those people were in positions of power. (Well, most of them) Biden could send a nuke China's way and change the world right then and there. But Luther was just like any other guy. Yet, managed to change history forever.
The church had too many german and latin speakers for that to have worked. Their contention with luther was interpretation not words, if they said the issue was the words, then there would have been a huge massive problem in the clergy who would have to accept this abomination to their faith
I've wondered, why was Luke's name in the Bible casually called Luke (as opposed to Lucas), but Matthew wasn't Matt, Deborah wasn't Debbie, Rebecca wasn't Becky, etc.
Gavrilo Princip is the reason for WWI, which is the reason for WWII, which is the reason for the Cold War, which is the reason for the War on Terror, which is the reason why it takes so fucking long to board an airplane.
It...basically was. Everyone was itching for an excuse to fight. Tensions had been high for a while, and there were already several instances where war easily could have broken out and was only barely avoided. That wasn't going to stop, and eventually they were going to fail in avoiding it.
It wasn't inevitable in that there's always a non-zero chance of anything, but Europe was basically always going to lead itself there. Gavrilo Princip just lit a match. Austria carried the match to a fuse. Neither of them individually built the bomb.
You're not understanding. It was going to keep happening. Even if every time it's only a 20% chance to kick off the war or whatever, if you roll the dice a half dozen times in twenty years at some point it's going to click. This is independent of what specific circumstances any particular instance was, it's just a matter of waiting, and so the only way time save you is if you wait so long that social movements literally change the nationalist dynamic (which had yet to show any signs of slowing down). And even then you're confronted with very real geopolitical needs by some countries (UK, France) to stop an ascendant newcomer (Germany) throwing them off their perch.
I'm not saying the war was inevitable in this instance. It's possible they could have avoided it after the assassination. But it was inevitable overall.
It's like chemistry. You literally cannot predict the amount of time for a specific reaction will occur. But you can make it more or less likely to happen. Early 20th century Europe was an environment that heavily encouraged that outcome.
Except he isnt. Its not like the war started right after prince Ferdinand died. Did his actions accelerate the timeline? Certainly. Could WW1 have been prevented? Probably not due to how the major factions had their diplomacy laid out (German blanko check to austria and so on)
WW1 started because of Austria’s war with Serbia, which happened because Serbia did not cooperate with Austria in finding the people who killed Archduke Ferdinand. It is a direct cause and effect. There were tensions, but war was certainly not a forgone conclusion. Arguing otherwise is speculative.
Yeah. Judging by how many people came to his aid almost immediately, I'm guessing the seeds of revolution had already been planted. People were just too afraid of the Church's immense power.
The catholic church was a puddle of gasoline (or possibly they turned christanity into a puddle of gasoline). Martin Luther was the first spark... but that doesn't mean quenching him would have prevented the fire.
So much of world history can be attributed as a result of those conflicts aswell. WW1 and 2 and everything after was affected by one guy nailing a piece of paper to a door.
Damn that sucks that he was used as a motivation. Tbf tho everyone hated the Jews back then. All of society was antisemitic pretty much throughout most of history.
He also made antisemitism a core part of his theology, being partially responsible for bringing it into the religious mainstream.
The dude was just a fucking dumpster fire all around
and he sparked dozens of religious wars and 21 different versions of Christianity
came across as sarcasm. Just wanted to clear things up, cause I genuinely hate how much historical revisionism happens around that guy.
I'm German and almost all of what I learned about him in school was either half-truths or straight-up lies.
Glad I'm not the only one to bring this up. Everyone knows about Martin Luther's 95 Theses but nobody ever seems to mention his On the Jews and their Lies.
He nailed 95 ideas to a door and then leaned into the reform cause that he started and picked a fight with the Catholic Church and deliberately started Europe on a trajectory it could never recover from.
Uhhhh that’s a complete oversimplification. He did FAR more than that, and Luther’s Protestantism was not new or unique, but a continuation of theological thought criticizing the Papacy that had been seen before in movements such as the Hussites.
Yeah, I know. It's not like he just dissipated as soon as he was done nailing the paper. But at his core, Martin Luther was just one normal guy, and yet he changed the world. I exaggerated to get my point across.
No no no dude. Didn’t you hear you have to write a detailed dissertation with sources on the topic otherwise “u wrong” lol. People on here just like tell others they’re wrong so they feel more validated themselves.
This is Reddit. If I wanted to make myself look smart, I'd go to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat... Literally anywhere other than here.
Everybody on Reddit is basically anonymous. The only place where you're more anonymous is 4chan, where everybody is just "Anon". People here don't know me. I get no advantage spreading these facts. I just felt it was interesting and should be shared.
I don't think that's really how history works, it's more like someone was bound to do something similar, or a similar type of event would have happened anyways. Martin Luther was just the right guy at the right time, the history created him, if you will
Jesus - Christianity, anyone? Probably unhappy at the schisms, wars, different versions and pretty sure he'd throw mega church types and televengalists out of his temple, those are NOT his teachings.
Prophet Muhammad - Islam. Also probably unhappy the direction it's gone in with all the offshoots, holy wars and sub sects (sunni/shia).
Prince Siddharta Gautama (Buddha) - definitely would be unhappy his philosophy has been turned into a religion
Confucious - without his teachings China would have been ruled by women
Karl Marx - without him there wouldn't have been communism, Lenin / Stalin / Mao Zedong
Hitler - set a new standard in how evil and low human beings can be.
Gandhi - Passive Resistance. He's that original equal rights guy that inspired Martin Luther King AND Nelson Mandela.
Abraham Lincoln - freed the slaves.
Churchill - gave one of the greatest speeches of all time "we shall fight in the trenches ... we shall never surrender" and basically epitomized the British stiff upper lip, resolve and "keep calm and carry on" attitude.
Famous inventors like (a) Alexander Graham Bell / Steve Jobs - don't act like you don't love to your phone (b) whoever invented TV (c) the computer (d) bicycles (e) cars etc etc.
All those super stars that invented the wonderful food we have now - like whoever invented cheese, ice cream, pizza, noodles (pasta, chow mein, all of them)
Confucious - without his teachings China would have been ruled by women
despicable
Hitler - set a new standard in how evil and low human beings can be.
Gandhi - Passive Resistance. He's that original equal rights guy that inspired Martin Luther King AND Nelson Mandela.
Fun Fact: Gandhi liked Hitler. He thought of the Nazis as allies in their fight for the freedom of India.
Famous inventors like (a) Alexander Graham Bell / Steve Jobs - don't act like you don't love to your phone (b) whoever invented TV (c) the computer (d) bicycles (e) cars etc etc.
Another Fun Fact: Alexander stole the idea of the telephone from Elisha Gray.
Confucious - without his teachings China would have been ruled by women
despicable
Yeah. The dowager Empresses and for some reason Eunuchs were the real power behind the throne for the longest time. Sadly way too many poor people with way too few rich ones. Not surprised it eventually blew up. When people end up starving with no food and nothing left to lose, that's when you end up with a revolution.
China has a long and checkered history. It's so crazy they've made tons of movies about it. Hitler has tons of movies too, but I think I only saw the one Gandhi movie (but it was great and won Best Picture). They really "sanitized" the version of him in that movie too. TIL Gandhi liked Hitler. I did not realize that! Amazingly the poor inventors rarely get movies made about them. Maybe not sensational enough to be good entertainment (although they did a lot of good I feel).
Note. I should have added whoever invented electricity. And put a curse on whoever did robo calls, that person can burn in hell.
After watching many movies and reading various histories, it seems the pattern you described is common in most dynasties across the world. Very perceptive. They have the same thing in
Ancient Ayudhia (now Cambodia/Thailand but once a huge empire), Nippon (Japan) Joseon (Korea), lots of others in Asia (China went communist)
European Houses (poor King Arthur, he was only trying to do the right thing, same crap in Germany etc, but Russia ended up going communist).
I haven't checked out the Mexican and South American histories (other than Motorcycle Diaries which was excellent) though.
Have realized the population can endure a certain level of corruption as long as they have enough to meet their needs, but if the population is too desperate or there are too many of them that's when the uprisings end up turning communist (Russia, China).
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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '21
Actually, one person can change the world.
All Martin Luther (Not Dr. King, Martin Luther) did was nail a piece of paper to a wall, and he sparked dozens of religious wars and 21 different versions of Christianity, most of which are still alive today.