Who wrote the Ninety-five Theses that sparked the Reformation?

Martin Luther, a German monk and professor of theology, wrote the Ninety-five Theses in 1517. They were framed as academic propositions for debate rather than a manifesto, and their target was the sale of indulgences, payments that were being marketed as reducing time in purgatory. Luther's objection was theological before it was political: he argued salvation came through faith and God's grace rather than through purchased remission, and that the pope had no authority over purgatory. What turned a scholarly dispute into a movement was printing. The theses were translated into German and reproduced across the empire within weeks, reaching an audience no academic argument had ever reached before, and Luther followed with pamphlets and a German Bible written in a plain style that shaped the language itself. Refusing to recant at the Diet of Worms, he was excommunicated, and the resulting split ran through European politics for more than a century.

The story of the theses being nailed to a church door is traditional and its accuracy is debated by historians.