
Duke Frederick III of Saxony was one of the seven electors of the German emperor. He was determined to make his little-known capital of Wittenberg into a first-class city of culture and learning. He established a university there and sought to build an outstanding faculty. Having inquired of the Augustinians, who had a reputation for academic excellence, Frederick received a recommendation from them for the young monk Martin Luther as a professor for Frederick’s new university.
Luther soon gained a reputation as a popular and capable teacher. While carefully
studying in preparation for his class on the Pauline epistles, Luther came to realize that

Paul considered our righteousness to be an alien imputation of Christ’s righteousness on the basis of faith alone (soli fide). This understanding, gained from his study of Romans 1:16-17, was an epiphany for Luther that he described as opening to him the gates of Paradise. He now believed that salvation was not the result of human merit and works but a free gift of God. His new and radical thoughts, although his beliefs were similar to those of John Hus a century earlier, he now incorporated into ninety-five theses in which he challenged scholars to debate. Published October 31, 1517, they instantaneously resulted in a firestorm throughout Germany.

In 1518 he debated Cardinal Cajetan in Augsburg and presented his views in Heidelberg. In 1519 he met with the foremost debater of the Roman Church, Johann Tetzel, in Leipzig, and in 1520 the pope, the Medici Leo X, issued a papal bull of excommunication, Exsurge, Domine, which consigned Luther to the depths of hell. Luther’s faculty at the University of Wittenberg were largely in agreement with him; thus, when the bull arrived six months after its publication, having been read in all the towns and villages in Germany along the way, Luther was ready with a bonfire. He burned not only the copy of the bull of excommunication, but various decrees and publications of the pope and Roman hierarchy. That night in 1520 the break was definite; Rome and the new Protestant movement went their separate ways.
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