SOURCE: "The Dawn of a New Era," in The European Reformations, Blackwell Publishers, 1996, pp. 56–90.

In the excerpt below, Lindberg gives a brief overview of the medieval worldview and the religious practices of the day, focusing on Luther's opposition to the Church's granting of indulgences for monetary donations.

It is through living, indeed through dying and being damned that one becomes a theologian, not through understanding, reading, or speculation.

Martin Luther

Luther came from an upwardly mobile family. His grandfather was a peasant farmer but his ambitious, determined father worked his way up in the mining industry to the position of a small employer. Luther himself was the first of his family to gain a formal education and become an academic. It is striking that other leading Reformers—Melanchthon, Zwingli, Bucer, and Calvin—came from similar backgrounds.

The poor to modest circumstances of Luther's youth were ameliorated as his...