An indulgence was a grant that excused a person from doing penance and reduced the amount of time of punishment of sins in purgatory. The Roman Catholic Church believed that every sin must be purified on earth or after death in a place called purgatory. Purgatory was a temporary place of punishment where souls bound for heaven must go after death to atone for unconfessed sins or sins they have not done enough penance for. The popes emphasized that they had the power to withhold the punishments of an individual. The Roman Catholic Church believed that saints did more good works than necessary to get themselves into heaven. The Roman Catholic Church began to claim that it had a treasury of indulgences which consisted of the merits of Christ and the saints. The pope served as a treasurer and could …show more content…
Martin Luther concluded that the Bible says that the just shall live by faith alone and that God was the only one that forgives sin. He believed that salvation was God’s free gift and was disturbed to see that the people in his parish were deceiving with the sale of indulgences. Because of this, Martin Luther wanted to expose the false beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church about their sale of indulgences and non-biblical teaching of the forgiveness of sins. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted a document on the church’s wood door which served as a public announcement board for the town. This document that he nailed to the door of the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, is best known as the Ninety-Five Theses. The Ninety-five Theses contained a list of ninety-five reasons why the sale of indulgences was wrong. Martin Luther bravely challenged the false beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church about the forgiveness of sins. Some people called Martin Luther’s actions “the spark that set Europe aflame.” His actions would “spark” the beginning of the Protestant