The first modern media event. But did Luther in fact nail his theses to that door?

Published: 3 November 2017

On All Hallows’ Eve anno Domini 1517 (i.e. 31 October 1517), Augustinian monk and teacher of theology Martin Luther nailed his famed theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The image of Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door has become an emblem of the Reformation, whose 500 years we celebrate this year. Robert Kolb has called it ‘the first modern media event’*.

Luther Márton szobra a németországi Eisleben városában

‘Luther opted for the external door to the church as his media platform. He did not construct a bulletin board inside, for regular churchgoers to peruse his theses. He was not satisfied with the internal publicity of the church but used a more efficient channel instead, with surprising aplomb. In a deliberate anachronism, we might say he chose to speak on a show with high listener ratings rather than a religious radio station less known to the wider public. He spoke during prime time rather than in an off-peak slot’, says Tamás Fabiny, bishop of the Northern Hungary Lutheran Diocese.

But did Luther actually display his theses on the door of the Castle Church and did he do so using a hammer and nails? This question has not been answered satisfactorily to date, but it has been the subject of lively debates among historians of the Reformation for decades*. Around three hundred publications have been written on the subject so far.

Countless images immortalized the event at the Castle Church door, and it was accepted as fact by everyone until the middle of the last century. It came as a bolt from the blue when Catholic researcher Erwin Iserloh asserted in 1961 that the nailing of the theses to the door belonged to the realm of legends*. Gradually, Protestants also started to question the the authenticity of this event. Most Luther researchers today doubt whether Luther nailed the theses to the door, while a minority continues to hold that original view. Back in the beginning of the 20th century, however, church historians did not dispute the veracity of the ‘hammer blows’, which ‘were heard even in Rome’.

Nevertheless, the arguments that this event indeed took place appear rather convincing. Two contemporary sources report on the theses being nailed to the Castle Church door. One was written by Luther’s collaborator Philipp Melanchton, also a theologian. However, Melanchton wrote his account nearly thirty years after the presumed event, shortly after Luther’s death in 1546. What is certain is that Melanchton could not have witnessed the event as he was still living in Tübingen in 1517 and became a teacher at the University of Wittenberg only in 1518.

In 2006 major media publicity was given to the announcement that Martin Treu had discovered in the library of Jena University a note in a page of a New Testament copy used by Luther, entered by Luther’s secretary Georg Rörer in 1540: ‘On All Hallows’ Eve in 1517, Dr. Martin Luther published his theses on indulgences on the doors of churches in Wittenberg’.

Yet Rörer could not have been present at the presumed ‘nailing’ of the theses to the door, as he too was not in Wittenberg at the time. It should nevertheless be emphasized that what Rörer says about the church doors of Wittenberg is in fact congruous with the regulations of the University of Wittenberg, which state that public announcements should be displayed on the doors of churches.

Historians who consider the nailing of the theses to the door as legend point out that while both reports come from Luther’s collaborators, neither of these men could have witnessed the event itself and wrote their reports later.

By contrast, the historians who treat these sources as credible argue that these are two independent reports of the notable event and point out that one of them was in fact produced during Luther’s lifetime.

Luther himself did not leave behind any mention of the nailing of the theses to the door, not even his voluminous Table Talk, which is a compendium of the aging Luther’s conversations with visiting friends, fellow thinkers and disciples. It should also be noted that the theses were never debated publicly in Wittenberg, and no original Latin manuscript of the theses has ever been found. Written originally in Latin, the theses were first translated into German by Christoph Scheurls already before Christmas 1517, but no original print of this translation survived. The oldest printed document  containing the theses dates from 1545.

All we know for sure is that Luther wrote a letter to Albert, Archbishop of Mainz on 31 October 1517 and (at the same time or somewhat later) to Hieronymus, Auxiliary Bishop of Brandenburg. In his cover letter for the 95 theses, Luther called for an end to the misuse of the pardoning of sins and the sale of indulgences. (The sale of so-called indulgences started in 1516 so that the money thus collected could be spent on the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome and, unofficially, on paying off the debts of Albert, Archbishop of Mainz. The faithful were promised a full pardoning of their sins if they bought the indulgences.) When the archbishop failed to respond, Luther sent the theses to his acquaintances, including Wilhelm and Konrad Nesen, who published them without Luther’s knowledge and made them a subject of public debate. We also know that Luther’s sympathizers in the Wittenberg area reprinted his criticism of the sale of indulgences a few weeks after the presumed event and hanged them up in various public places, including on church doors.

With his 95 theses, Luther never intended to lay the grounds for a new denomination; that happened as a consequence of subsequent events. Instead, he set out encourage debate in the hope of putting an end to the abuses he identified within the Catholic church. Luther wrote his theses to inspire a theological debate on the practice of pardoning sins and selling indulgences.

We also know that it was customary in Wittenberg at the time to print scholarly debates on notices and, as mentioned above, the regulations of the Theology Faculty of the University of Wittenberg required that these bills should be posted on the doors of the churches in the town. But posting them was never the role of the instigator of the debate but, to use a present-day expression, it was within the remit of the University’s caretaker (janitor). Other universities followed a similar practice.

So Luther was not, or cannot be presumed to have been, the first to post (or have posted) writing on a church door. This had been everyday practice for centuries. We could say that the doors of churches had served as the public space for spreading information ever since the Middle Ages. Religion and daily life were much more closely intertwined in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era than they are today. The House of God was not just a house of prayer but the arena for community life and the exchange of information.

Incidentally, we do not even know what the door to the Wittenberg Castle Church looked like in Luther’s time. The church door of the day no longer exists. Instead of the door the theses are claimed to have been nailed to, there now hangs a bronze door donated by the King of Prussia in the 19th century.

The 16th century sources also fail to mention how the theses were affixed, and there is no explicit mention of a hammer or nails. Printed pamphlets and notices bearing the clear mark of nails have in fact survived from the Early Modern age. But contemporary sources also suggest other ways of affixing notices; glue and wax were also used, for example.

It is possible therefore that Luther or someone else did indeed put on display the 95 theses on that church door in Wittenberg (at a later date, most likely not on 31 October 1517) but it is not certain at all that this was done with the hammer and nails suggested by the pictorial and filmic representations created in later ages.

No matter how it happened and regardless whether Luther nailed or in any other way affixed his theses to the door of the Castle Church, his ideas and thoughts spread with lightning speed, thanks in part to Gutenberg’s invention of movable type printing, and started the complex process not only leading to the emergence of Protestant denominations but also resulting in a deep economic, social and cultural transformation of a thereto Catholic Europe.


 

*Márton Mészáros: Protestantism and Mediality (Protestantizmus és medialitás). PhD dissertation. Szeged University, 2010. p. 16.

*For details see Márton Mészáros: Protestantism and Mediality (Protestantizmus és medialitás). PhD dissertation. Szeged University, 2010. pp. 16–33.

*Cf. Erwin Iserloh: Luthers Thesenanschlag Tatsache oder Legende, Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Verlag Gmbh, 1962.