Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/153

 November, All Saints' Day. It was the anniversary of the consecration of the church, was commemorated by a prolonged series of services, and the benefits of an Indulgence were secured to all who took part in them. At noon on All Saints' Day, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church. It was an academic proceeding. A doctor in theology offered to hold a disputation, such was the usual term, for the purpose of explaining the efficacy of the Indulgence. The explanation had ninety-five heads or propositions, all of which "Doctor Martin Luther, theologian," offered to make good against all comers. The subject, judged by the numberless books which had been written upon it, was eminently suitable for debate; the propositions offered were to be matters of discussion; and the author was not supposed, according to the usage of the times, to be definitely committed to the opinions he had expressed; they were simply heads of debate. The document differed however from most academic disputations in this that everyone wished to read it. A duplicate was made in German. Copies of the Latin original and of the German translation were sent to the University printing-house and the presses there could not throw them off fast enough to meet the demand which came from all parts of Germany.

The question which Luther raised in his theses was a difficult one; the theological doctrine of Indulgences was one of the most complicated of the times, and ecclesiastical opinion on many of the points involved was doubtful. It was part of the penitential system of the medieval Church, and had changed from time to time according to the changes in that system. Indeed it may be said that in the matter of Indulgences doctrine had always been framed to justify practices and changes in practice. The beginnings go back a thousand years before the time of Luther.

In the ancient Church serious sins involved separation from the fellowship of Christians, and readmission to the communion was dependent not merely on public confession but also on the manifestation of a true repentance by the performance of certain satisfactions, such as the manumission of slaves, prolonged fastings, extensive almsgiving; which were supposed to be well-pleasing in God's sight, and were also the warrant for the community that the penitent might be again received within their midst. It often happened that these satisfactions were mitigated; penitents might fall sick and the prescribed fasting could not be insisted upon without danger of death-in which case the impossible satisfaction could be exchanged for an easier one, or the community might be convinced of the sincerity of the repentance without insisting that the prescribed satisfaction should be fully performed. These exchanges and mitigations are the germs out of which Indulgences grew.

In course of time the public confessions became private confessions made to a priest, and the satisfactions private satisfactions imposed by the confessor. This change involved among other things a wider circle