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A Fun, Animated History of the Reformation and the Man Who Started It All | Short Film Showcase


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] A most precise and nuanced look into the life of the man, legend, and visionary Martin Luther.

One day, when Luther is 21 years old, he experiences something which will affect him for the rest of his life. Suddenly, a thunderstorm—a wild, violent one. Luther is terrified of being struck by lightning and dying because all his life he has been told that he must earn a place in heaven when he dies, and he doesn't think he has done that quite yet.

So, he falls to his knees to pray, not to God, but to Saint Anna, so that she might ask God to look after him. Luther promised that if God would see him safely through the thunderstorm, he would offer the rest of his life to God by becoming a monk.

Luther cannot understand it: if God's intention is really for poor people to spend all their money buying their way out of punishment so they can go to heaven, then why should it be easier for the rich to avoid a long time in purgatory than it is for the poor? He thinks it's way too much about money and too little about God.

When priests sell letters of indulgence with slogans such as "When the coin in the coffin clings, the soul from purgatory springs," Luther wants to discuss this with other monks and priests. So, he writes 95 theses and nails them to the church door in Wittenberg, where he lives. The church door, you see, acts as a form of bulletin board and is a completely normal way to put things up for debate.

Luther is allowed to defend himself at a trial in the city of Worms. The church hopes that Luther will withdraw what he said and wrote so that everything can return to normal, but Luther will not. He maintains that if no one can prove him wrong through arguments or quotes from the Bible, he must be right.

[Music] "I cannot and I will not regret what I have said. I cannot act against my conscience," Luther says. Not many in the audience have heard the word "conscience" before, but they are in no doubt as to whether Luther stands firm on his beliefs or not. As a result, they declare him an outlaw.

This means that anyone now has a duty to catch him and hand him over to the authorities. Luther has been outlawed; he is forced to hide. He hides in his friend Elector Frederick's castle, Wartburg.

[Music] Up until then, the Bible has only existed in Greek and Latin. While hiding at Wartburg, Luther translates the entire New Testament into German. Luther wants people to have the opportunity to read the Bible in their own language so they do not depend on the priests and the church's interpretation because Luther sees the Bible as God speaking to all people.

When people get access to reading the Bible themselves, they also begin to use the words of the Bible as an argument for all sorts of things. Luther has started something he cannot control. His new thoughts are used as arguments in the power struggles of princes, in revolts, and in the struggle between kings, princes, and the pope about who actually decides what.

Soon, everyone is quarreling and fighting; some even go to war. Luther had dreamt about changing the church he knew, but his thoughts ended up splitting the church in two—the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church—and that soon becomes important for many other things than the church.

[Music] [Music] You.

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