Martin Luther

Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar and professor of Scripture at Wittenberg whose protest against the sale of indulgences in 1517 lit the fuse of the Protestant Reformation. Convinced from his study of Paul that sinners are justified by faith alone, as a free gift of God’s grace, he was excommunicated and, at the Diet of Worms in 1521, refused to recant. He went on to translate the whole Bible into vigorous German — a landmark of the language — and his commentaries and sermons, above all on Romans, Galatians, and the Psalms, reshaped Western Christianity.