Joe Heschmeyer picks apart a popular 101 video on Martin Luther’s revolt, pointing out many painfully common factual inaccuracies.

Transcription:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. So we’re talking about the reformation, particularly the beginning of the Reformation with Martin Luther. I think a lot of people feel like they have a pretty good grip on the basic story, and the basic story tends to go something like this. On October the 31st of 1517, a Catholic monk and priest named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, and he was protesting the Catholic doctrine of indulgences. He had denied indulgences, which depending on who you listen to, were about buying the forgiveness of sins or buying time out of purgatory or atonement of some form. Eventually though, Luther translates the Bible into German so that for the very first time people can read for themselves what the Bible says in their own native language. And he does this so that people can realize that these Catholic doctrines they’ve been led to believe are biblical, are actually just manmade traditions.

Okay, now what if I told you every single sentence of that was false, that there are factual errors in every sentence I just said, but that we’ve been fed basically 500 years of propaganda from both Protestants and secularists, fascinatingly telling us the kind of version of this story that historians know isn’t actually true. Now, as I’ve just alluded to, this isn’t just a Protestant thing. Plenty of people who aren’t religious have seized upon Luther as kind of the victor of free thought, the radical individual against the forces of tradition and hierarchy in the church, which is great for people who, for instance, reject Christianity outright on those same grounds. And so there’s a very popular kind of narrative around Luther, but as I hope to show today, it’s largely a mythological one that isn’t rooted in history, isn’t rooted in reality. And to show this, I want to look at a short five minute video that National Geographic of all places put out. I mean, the place we just got our kids Butterfly farm from also has weighed in on the reformation and it’s called inaccurately enough, a most precise and nuanced look into the life of the man, legend and visionary Martin Luther. And it’s kind of tongue in cheek, it’s kind of fun, but it’s intended to be a sort of 1 0 1 primer telling the basic story of Martin Luther. And in this five minute video, there are at least six major factual errors,

A most precise and nuanced look into the life of the band legend and visionary Martin Ruth. Sir, one day when Luther is 21 years old, the most and nuanced look into the life of the band legend and visionary Martin Luther, sir.

Now you might be wondering why pick on this video? Well, hopefully I’m not picking on it because it’s true. You can find more bias, more radical, more extreme, more inaccurate versions of the story of Luther. But usually when people are watching those, they know what they’re getting. They want to hear someone tell you Catholicism is bad and evil, and as long as you’re saying that they don’t really care if what you’re saying is true or historically accurate, but this is National Geographic and a lot of the people watching this believe they’re getting something like a neutral, objective, accurate sort of history. And it’s not a few people, right? National Geographic has 23.1 million subscribers on YouTube. This video alone had 1.4 million. And when you read the comments, it’s people saying things like, who else is here? Because their teacher assigned this for class. That comment has 1800 likes and 289 replies. So lots of people are learning about Martin Luther in the Reformation from videos like this one. So what does it get wrong? Now, I’m going to skip the very first part of the video, which is about how Luther becomes a monk because that’s not really important for this conversation. And turn to the very next thing they look at, which is the posting of the 95 these and what kind of causes Luther to begin the reformation in the first place.

Luther cannot understand it if God’s intention is really for poor people to spend all their money buying their way out of punishment so they can go to heaven. And why should it be easier for the rich to avoid a long time in purgatory than it is for the poor?

So let’s just analyze those two claims that the poor spent all of their money on indulgences or were the church was trying to get them to spend all their money on indulgences. And second, that indulgences were easy to get if you were rich and not if you were poor. Both of those are clearly demonstrably untrue, both generally and in the particular circumstances of Luther’s life. And we know this from several historical sources. I’m going to look first the historian, RN Swanson’s book, religion and Devotion in Europe. He’s looking at the period of 1215 to 1515. He’s purposely stopping right at the eve of the reformation two years later, but in there, Swanson, now as we go, it’s going to be confusing using medieval money and I’ll do my best to kind of explain it. This, by the way, was a part of the video that took the most time to make sense of in the research, which is unpacking pounds and shillings and pence in the middle ages and what those basically correspond to because all of that to a modern American seemed like meaningless currency.

So Swanson explains that the general level of four pence, so when you see the four D, D is for denari, which is what they’re calling pence, it’s confusing, but four pence per pardon in early 16th century England. He says, Swanson says it was still substantial for a craftsman. So perhaps the purchasers were mainly from the wealthier layers of society with artisans and people below them, content with the indulgences, which required effort but not money, like repetition of prayers or visits to churches. Okay, so the very first thing you should see here is the point of indulgences, and we’re going to get into a closer look at this in the next inaccuracy. The point of indulgences isn’t to take people’s money and many indulgences don’t involve money at all and never did. So particular prayerful devotions the church was trying to cultivate, stepping back. The idea of an indulgence is to help you grow in your Christian life and incentivizing you to become more Christian, to be more charitable, to be more loving to God and to your neighbor.

And there’s a bunch of ways that can look including charitable giving, but also including things like praying and going to church more. And those are important parts even of the indulgences that Luther’s protesting. So there’s two things you should notice from what Swanson has said. First, you didn’t have to pay anything for some of these indulgences and second, for the ones that did have money attached to them, it was often something like for Pence. Now he says this is somewhat still cost, but what does that actually look like? Well, let’s turn here to a concrete measure of money bunnies. Steve Rappaport is looking at this same time period in his book, worlds Within Worlds Structures of Life in 16th century London, and he explains that when Henry VIII becomes king in 1509, a bushel of flour costs three shillings that is 60 pence because there’s 20 pence to his shilling back then because the British hate base 10 and a rabbit cost roughly two PEs.

So if you want to put it in those terms, an indulgence is two rabbits. That’s not all of your life savings, even if you’re someone who is not wealthy. And so the idea that we’re taking all the money of the poor is factually inaccurate, and that’s just at the asset. That’s just a particular indulgence they’re looking at in early 16th century London. Now let’s go back to Swanson’s book because he says not all indulgences were so cheap, and then he gives the example of the plenary indulgence and the jubilee of 1500, but he says that the collector in England, Jasper Ponts set a sliding scale of charges varying with landed income or the value of movable goods. I’m going to warn you, it’s going to get mathy here for a second into make it a little easier. I’ve translated everything into pence, so I’m going to give it to you in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, and then the equivalent value in pence.

So you get a sense of the portion, what percentage of your assets is the church asking you to part ways with for this indulgence to make this more confusing, as you’ve already heard, there’s two different scales. One, if you have landed income, you’re a wealthy landowner and the other, if you have movable goods, maybe you’re a merchant or something, but you don’t own ’em like a fief dim or something. There’s two different sliding scales in use for the landowners. The top tier you’re making over 2000 pounds, that’s 480,000 pence. That’s what you’re worth, at least the cost for indulgence there is three pounds, six shillings, eight pence, or 792 out of your 480,000 pence. The lowest bracket is for those people who are landed and their worth is between 20 and 40 pounds. So 4,800 to 9,600 pence and they’re has to give 16 pence as you can see, in neither case at the top or the bottom, is this anything like the lion’s share or a crippling amount of what we’re not even close to something like a 10% tithes like they had in the Old Testament.

Now what about those with goods like movable goods? If you had a thousand pounds worth of movable goods, so 24,000 pence, you were asked to give two pounds, 480 pence, so two out of your thousand pounds, if you had less than that, let’s say you had 22, 200 pounds worth of movable goods, you’re asked to give a shilling, which is 12 pence out of your 4,800 to 48,000 pence worth of stuff. Again, this is not a lot. Now you might notice the bottom bracket in both of those cases is still someone who’s landed or still has a pretty sizable amount of money. Now we’ll get into what happens if you’re below that, but I want to just point something out here. One shilling the lowest tier. If you’re in that 20 to 200 pound range, that’s six rabbits. You’re someone who’s a merchant who’s making something in the pounds, not in the pence, not in the shilling category, in the pounds category, you has to part ways with six rabbits for a plenary indulgence.

The idea this is taking all of your money is just factually incorrect. But here’s the kicker, Swanson acknowledges people falling below 20 pounds paid whatever they felt able to contribute out of devotion. Now you might say, okay, Joe, that’s early 16th century England, which you used because you kind of understand pounds and shillings and pence. What about medieval Germany, which has an even more confusing system of currency, but it’s more relevant to Martin Luther because after all, he’s not living in early 16th century England. He’s living in early 16th century. So how do we know people like Johan Tetzel, the infamous preacher of indulgences wasn’t bilking people of all their worth? Well, because we have the instructions that the archbishop gave to Tsel in 1515 and in the instructions Archbishop Albert of Mons says, because the conditions of men are many and diverse, it is not possible to establish a general fee.

We have therefore fixed the following rates, and then he gives a confusing list of rates using medieval gilders, which is even more complicated. I don’t know how many bunnies you can get for a gilder, but the point there is the richer expected to give more than the poor. And there it’s very explicit that those who do not have any money should supply their contribution with prayer for the kingdom of heaven should be open to the poor, no less than to the rich. In other words, that’s not Luther’s like protest. That’s something that the Archbishop had said at the outset. So reading this as Luther’s a class warrior who’s upset that the poor are being expected to give all their money and it’s easier for the rich doesn’t understand the medieval system of indulgences and doesn’t understand particularly the fact that the poor were not expected to give in many cases at all, they were expected to pray instead straightforward, right? So let’s go back to the video and see the next mistake it makes.

He thinks it’s way too much about money and too little about God when priests sell letters of indulgence with slogans such as when the coin in the coff clings the soul from purgatory springs,

Okay, so did the indulgences of Luther’s day make it all about money rather than prayer? Well, we’ve already seen that’s not true because we know the poor we’re asked to pay in the form of prayer rather than money. But from that same instruction, everyone whether you’re giving a financial donation or not, is first required to do several other things. The instructions read as follows, everyone who is contrite in heart and has confessed with his mouth or at least has the intention of confessing, shall visit the designated seven churches in which the papal coast of arms is displayed. Pause for a second. Think about all the times you’ve heard about Martin Luther, the protests of indulgences and the like. How many times in your experience have you heard anyone mention that this wasn’t just give a bunch of money that you were supposed to go in a little mini pilgrimage in your own diocese in your own city to seven different churches?

That seems like a pretty important part of the story, that this isn’t just write a check and you’re going to get out of purgatory. You’re being asked to go on a mini spiritual pilgrimage and then when you get to those churches, you’re asked to pray in each church, five devout lord’s prayers, the our Father and five of Marias in the Hail Mary in honor of the five wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby our redemption took place or one misre, that’s Psalm 95, which psalm seems particularly appropriate to obtain forgiveness of sins. So several things are being asked of you. Number one, you have to be contrite for your sentence. Number two, you need to have gone to confession or at least be planning on going. Number three, you’ve got to go on this kind of mini pilgrimage to the seven churches. Now that one, if you are too sick to be able to go, the church will accommodate your confessor, can give you a substitute penance, a substitute kind of journey of some kind.

They can literally just bring you religious images if you’re home bound and then you’re supposed to pray there. That’s the fourth. And then really the fifth is that you then contribute to the building of St. Peter’s. Now I understand many people are going to say, well, whether it’s a lot or a little, that’s a problem, right? Why is money involved here at all? And there’s a good answer to that question. To understand this, you have to understand the biblical evidence, which you have to hold two things at the same time. On the one hand, you cannot buy spiritual rewards. You can’t just cut a check and get out of purgatory free card. You can’t just automatically go to heaven because you bought your way there. It doesn’t work like that. And we know this partly from the Bible in Acts chapter eight, there’s a guy named Simon who tries to buy the spiritual power of the laying on of hands and he’s told by St.

Peter, your silver per with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. This is where the sin of Simon he comes from. On the other hand though, so you can’t buy spiritual rewards, you can’t buy the gift of God. On the other hand though, God does reward generosity and that’s also very clearly taught in the Bible. So for instance, in second Corinthians chapter nine, St. Paul says that he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You’ll be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God for the rendering of this service. Not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many Thanksgivings to God. So here’s the tension. It was the tension faced in Luther’s day.

It’s the tension faced by anyone who takes the biblical evidence seriously. You don’t want to say you can buy your way to heaven. You do want to say if you’re serious about going to heaven, you need to be generous with your money. You see the tension? It’s not a perfect analogy, but think about something like politics. It is okay to spend money supporting your candidate that’s considered good democratic action. It is bad to bribe a candidate and sometimes that line can seem a little fuzzy where you say, I’m going to give a lot of money to this candidate because I know they’re pro-life. That’s okay, that’s good. But if you say, I’m going to give a lot of money to this candidate to make sure that they vote pro-life, that starts to look more like bribery. And so in Luther’s day, the indulgences thing is more on the line than I think many Protestants understand.

Now the church realizes there are times it would cross the line, and so in response to it, the Council of Trent condemns the sale of indulgences. Don’t even get near the line, but it would be a mistake to take from that. That generosity was this was all just transactional. No, the whole point of this is if you are helping to build a church or a bridge or any of these things for the good of the church, the good of community, those are real areas of growth and generosity. Some people may be stone masons and amazing at physically building the church, wonderful, but if you’re not a stone mason but you’re someone who has a lot of money to hire a stone mason, you can contribute too. That’s not buying your way to heaven any more than it’s buying your way to heaven for the stone mason to work on building the church to glorify God. I hope that’s clear. So that’s actually going on. This isn’t just about, let’s just cut a check and we’ll go straight to heaven. The documents themselves, including the ones that the archbishop writes to tetzel, the one that the whole indulgences controversy that Luther is specifically arguing about, we can see quite clearly it is not as later descriptions would have it just rich people get out of purgatory free card or let’s just make this all about money. Alright, let’s turn now to the third major mistake.

Luther wants to discuss this with other monks and priests. So he writes 95 these and nails them to the church door in Denberg where he lives. The church door you see acts as a form of bulletin board and is a completely normal way to put things up for debate.

For some reason the video goes into a good deal of time explaining in a five minute video it spends like 15 seconds explaining why it was okay that he nailed the 95 these to the church door in Wittenberg when the crazy part is historians don’t believe he actually did that. So Joan Ella in an article for the New Yorker points out that modern scholars differ on many points, but something that most of them agree on that the hammering episode, so satisfyingly, symbolic, loud, metallic, violent, never occurred. Now why do they think it didn’t occur? There were no eyewitnesses. Luther himself ordinarily an enthusiastic self dramatize, as she says, was vague on what had happened. He remember drawing up a list of 95 theses around the date in question, but that’s what he did with it. All he was sure of was that he sent it to the local archbishop.

That is I think, key to really pointing out how dramatically mythologized this whole thing is because the most kind of characteristic thing, that famous image of Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door is seemingly a work of legend, not a fact of history. Now we do know what the 95 theses were about. So while we’re talking about this, let’s just do a little bonus round here. Did Luther reject indulgences? Now in the video’s defense, it doesn’t claim that, but many people do claim that or believe that Luther was posting these 95 theses because he thought indulgences were wrong. The video certainly would give you that impression, but it stopped short of explicitly saying it. Luther actually does not deny indulgences. He has questions about the administration of indulgences and critiques and some of those critiques are perfectly valid as we’ve already heard. The Council of Trent basically sides with Luther against Tetzel in the way money is being treated in all of this.

But Luther is quite clear, beginning in the 69th thesis, he says, bishops and curates are bound to administer the commissaries of papal indulgences with all reverence. Did you catch that? He doesn’t say don’t comply with papal indulgences. He says the exact opposite, but then he says in the 70th, but they’re much more bound to strain their eyes and ears Les. These men preach their own dreams instead of what the pope has commissioned. Notice that he’s not saying the pope is wrong, he’s saying some of these preachers and he means hear people like tetzel are going beyond what they were ordered to do, that they were given a particular commission which is good and that they should be doing and they’re abusing it. That’s an important distinction because in one you’re complaining that the Catholic doctrine is bad and in the other you’re complaining that the local preacher isn’t preaching Catholicism correctly.

Catholics are constantly saying the local priest isn’t preaching the Catholic doctrine correctly on various issues sometimes correctly, right? So then thesis number 71, Luther says, let him who speaks against the truth concerning papal indulgences be anathema and a cursed. That is the only anathema clause in the 95 thesis and it’s against those who deny indulgences. So all that’s to say the history of the 95 thesis has three major errors in this and a fourth major error that isn’t in the video but is common enough that it felt appropriate to mention it. Now the video is going to jump from the 95 these to what’s called the Diet of verbs, where Luther is on trial defending his views and it’s a famous scene and a scene that is once again largely fictional.

Luther is allowed to defend himself at a trial in the city of Vs. The church hopes that Luther will withdraw what he said and wrote so that everything can return to normal, but Luther will not. He maintains that if no one can prove him wrong through arguments or quotes from the Bible, he must be right. I cannot and I will not regret what I have said. I cannot act against my conscience. Luther says, not many in the audience have heard the word conscience before, but they are in no doubt as to whether Luther stands firm on his beliefs or not. I

Was struck by how bizarre that depiction of the diet of Rems is. So let’s just ask the question, is it really true that most people had never heard of conscience at this time? The answer obviously it’s completely fictional and I would point you to several sources including Timothy PO’s book conscience and medieval philosophy. He makes the points that the medievals were more concerned about the idea of conscience and we’ll get into why. So he says conscience has been much neglected by philosophers. It is not directly treated in ancient philosophy. So go back to the ancient Greeks and then apart from Bishop Butler who is primarily interested in the as... Read more on Catholic.com