Admonishment of Secular and Religious Authorities in Martin Luther's Address to the Christian Nobility

In the year 1520, Martin Luther published the treatise, Address to the Christian Nobility. This work showed the core of Luther through his admonishment and exhortation of secular and religious authorities of the time. In Luther’s address, he meticulously pinpoints the “three walls” of the Roman Catholic Church and proceeds to break them down one at a time through thought-provoking and idea-inducing arguments. Address to the Christian Nobility impacted Europe not only through politics and religion, but also, through economic means.

Luther’s address provided religious complications that proved to be fundamental to his thesis. This fact was visible through his application of the doctrine of the priesthood of believers to the precedent set by the “three walls” of the Roman Catholic Church. Of the three, the first wall, noting the difference between secular and spiritual classes, was eliminated by the doctrine of the priesthood of believers. Due to the fact that the believers were in the priesthood, there was no distinction between a peasant and a priest; everyone was equal in God’s eyes. The second of the three walls alleged that Scripture could only be interpreted by the pope. Coincidentally, Luther found no proof of this in the Bible, but instead found several passages that said common man could interpret Scripture. The last of the walls was the notion that a council could only be summoned by the pope, meaning that the church could not have orders dictated to it by a secular council. By using history and Scripture itself, Luther eradicated the belief, stating that it is the church that should be subjected to the state. Through Luther’s ‘tearing down’ of the three walls, the Roman Catholic Church’s world completely changed; stripped...

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...ng net loss of exports for Germans. He thought that Germans should live off of what products their land produced and limit trade strictly to close neighbors. Tying in with the previous aspect, Luther also wanted a more equal distribution of wealth among merchants and guild owners. Though most of these economic demands would never be fully realized, a desire for equality among the economy was born through Luther’s vision.

Luther’s Address to the Christian Nobility was spread throughout Europe through innovative thinking and the printing press. The statements and push for the priesthood of all believers and Christian freedom proved to influence many future reformers. Luther’s ideas and opinions fueled Europe’s revolution, and even though many of his arguments were never fulfilled, they succeeded in securing a foundation for future innovative thinking to build upon.