Martin Luther- Indulgences and The 95 Theses

Martin Luther has been described as the 'Father of the Reformation'. He spent most of his youth in saxony. In 1505, much to his father's disgust he abandoned his study of law to join an Augustinian monastery. Although the Augustinians were a strict order, they were not shut off from the world and the community acted as teachers and lecturers. Consequently Luther became a professor at the University of Wittenberg. 

The Indulgences controversy and the 95 Theses:

The Church claimed that the Pope could draw on a Treasury of Merits (the superabundant store of merits and satisfactions, comprising those  of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints.) to reduce the time that an individual soul spent in purgatory. Different indulgences offered different amounts of 'time reduction'. Such was the popularity of indulgences that the Pope's of the late 15th century realised that…