Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation with a single document. He challenged the most powerful institution in Europe and survived against all odds. Furthermore, he used the printing press to become the world's first celebrity author. Consequently, his legacy completely reshaped Western history and culture. Explore these fascinating details about the monk who changed the world.
Martin Luther
A lightning storm terrified him into becoming a monk. Specifically, a bolt struck near him in 1505, and he screamed a vow to Saint Anne to save his life.
Martin Luther helped twelve nuns escape from a convent in fish barrels. Cleverly, he hid the women inside a wagon delivered by a herring merchant to smuggle them to freedom.
Luther married one of the escaped nuns, Katharina von Bora. Although he originally tried to find her a different husband, she refused to marry anyone but him or his friend Amsdorf.
He lived in hiding as a knight named “Junker Jörg.” To avoid capture by the Emperor, he grew a beard, carried a sword, and lived secretly at Wartburg Castle.
Legend says Martin Luther threw an inkwell at the devil. Reportedly, Satan disturbed him while he worked, so Luther grabbed his ink pot and hurled it at the demon in rage.
He suffered from severe chronic constipation. Interestingly, he claimed he made his greatest theological discovery, the concept of justification by faith, while sitting on the toilet.
He translated the entire New Testament in just eleven weeks. Remarkably, he completed this massive task during his short stay in hiding at the Wartburg.
Martin Luther loved beer and his wife brewed it at home. Frequently, he praised her brewing skills in his letters and even used beer as a remedy for insomnia.
He wrote the famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” In addition to his theology, he was a skilled musician who played the lute and believed music was a gift from God.
Archaeologists discovered his actual toilet in 2004. They found the stone latrine where he spent hours in contemplation during a dig at his former home in Wittenberg.
He used incredibly colorful and vulgar insults. For instance, he often mocked the Pope and his enemies with scatological jokes and names like “fart-ass.”
Students recorded his dinner table conversations in a book called Table Talk. Therefore, we know intimate details about his daily life, jokes, and arguments from these unauthorized notes.
He likely did not nail the 95 Theses to the door. Most modern historians believe he simply mailed the document to his archbishop, and the nailing story is a later legend.
The Pope sent him a “Golden Rose” to try to silence him. However, Martin Luther refused the bribe and eventually publicly burned the Pope’s letter of excommunication instead.
Finally, his last written words were a humble scrap of paper. On his deathbed, he scribbled a note in Latin and German that read, “We are beggars. This is true.”
