How Did Martin Luther Contribute To Reform

Martin Luther was responsible for the church's eventual reform in the 16th century. Though he started as a monk and was highly devoted to the church, he quickly noticed the high levels of corruption and greed throughout the catholic church. Luther set out to change the ways of the church to better fit the needs of the people who served it. After separating himself from the church, he wrote a document called the 95 theses. The 95 theses was a list of 95 things that the church was doing that was either a form of corruption or wrongdoing. Luther took this list and nailed it to the door of one of the biggest churches in Rome. This document served as the basis of Martin Luther’s movement towards a new church. In the church system that Luther was trying to correct there were many things happening that he considered to be against the bible. One was the indulgences. The indulgences were pieces of paper that were used by the church to “absolve” different sins. People bought this because they wanted to achieve salvation. Therefore, the churches could charge a high price for these documents. Another idea the church forced into the heads of its followers was the idea that they needed to perform a certain amount of selfless things to be able to achieve salvation. However, Martin Luther believed in a different set of principals. He believed that the only way you could achieve salvation was through faith in god, this differed from the catholic church because it did not require someone to perform good works

It was through documents like the 95 theses, that he was able to spread his idea throughout the masses. These documents also served as the basis for his new set of beliefs that became very popular amongst the people. He did all this to fix the growing level of corruption he saw throughout the church system in the 16th