Tag Archives: Luther
Older postsLuther on His Way Home
In the dreary coldness of February I have to admit to not being entirely sad that we aren’t walking back from Rome, especially thinking of the rotten weather that Luther certainly would have encountered in the famously harsh winter of … Continue reading
A Couple of Days in Lutherland
Monday morning we officially re-entered the modern world of travel by boarding a plane. A distance that had taken us 70 days to walk we reached in an hour and forty minutes by plane. That as much as anything shows … Continue reading
Reformation Day in Rome
Yesterday morning we woke up extremely early, though not because we aren’t craving excessive amount of sleep—only because Daylight Savings Time ended in Europe today. For all that, we still managed to be a few minutes late to church. The … Continue reading
All Hallows’ Eve, Reformation Day, and Two Anniversaries
According to legend, 493 years ago today Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on indulgences on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking off what came to be the Reformation. Of the ninety-five, these two are the … Continue reading
We’re in Rome!
Today’s post comes to you live from the eternal city! For one last time we got up way too early, forced our poor roadies to drive us back to our connecting point, and plowed off into the frigid morning at about … Continue reading
Where Was the Pope?
One of the few things we know about Luther’s pilgrimage to Rome is that he didn’t meet the Pope. There’s no reason that he would have even tried. His business was an internal matter within the Order of Augustinian Hermits, … Continue reading
Martin Luther’s Hymn “Dear Christians, Let Us Now Rejoice”
Luther composed a good number of hymns beside the well-known “A Mighty Fortress.” The first hymn he ever wrote, in 1523, was actually a martyr ballad for Heinrich Voes and Johann Esch, who were killed in Brussels for supporting Luther’s … Continue reading
From Martin Luther’s “A Brief Introduction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels”
“The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s Son, who died and was raised and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell. Just as there is no more than one Christ, so there is … Continue reading
Augustinians and Capuchins and Sacramentines, Oh My
We thought we had the thickest fog ever two days ago, but we were wrong. Today’s fog was thicker yet. But this time, after a short walk, we were above the fog, on a ridge of land jutting out from … Continue reading
An Interview with Jared Wicks, S.J., Catholic scholar of Luther
Jared Wicks is a theologian and writer at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. We asked him a few questions about his unusual vocation. How did you as a Jesuit become a scholar of Luther? My pre-ordination theology studies … Continue reading
Catholic Scholars of Luther
Johannes Cochlaeus was a contemporary of Luther’s and his first “heresiographer,” in the words of Ralph Keen*—in other words, the opposite of a hagiographer, one who demonizes a supposedly wicked and impious enemy of the church. Cochlaeus’s 1548 biography, “The … Continue reading
Developing an Ecumenical View of Luther
The wonderful and insightful statement “Martin Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ” (please! take ten minutes and read the whole thing!) stakes out some common ground for Lutherans and Catholics to share regarding the person of Luther himself. One important aspect … Continue reading
The New Catholic—and Lutheran—View of Luther
Luther is a stumbling block for Catholics—and often enough for Lutherans, who tend to have equally caricatured if more positive views of him. The real Luther is an incredibly complicated person. The absolute best statement of a mature, ecumenical view … Continue reading
Hex: #E97451 RGB: 233, 226, 81
No, that title isn’t a typo, a secret code, or the order number for a new pair of synthetic socks. It’s the color coordinates for Burnt Sienna, a color you may recall from a childhood box of Crayola 64s and … Continue reading
Elsewhere in 1510
It’s easy to overlook, when diving into the details of the Reformation, that a lot of other very important things were happening at the same time. There’s the Renaissance, of course, whose capital—Florence—we’ve just visited. Boticelli died the same year … Continue reading
