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.
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.
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.
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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '21
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.