Reformation Day

The story behind the day

Reformation Day, 31 October, remembers the day in 1517 when the friar Martin Luther sent his Ninety-Five Theses on indulgences to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, an act that Protestants treat as the start of the Reformation. Lutherans and other Protestants mark it worldwide, some churches, among them Presbyterian and Methodist ones, keep Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of the month, and several German states and Slovenia make it a public holiday. Whether Luther also nailed the theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church is disputed.^[1–7]

Origins

Luther wrote the theses in Latin as the basis of a scholarly debate on indulgences. From the Middle Ages the Church had offered indulgences to repentant believers, but the practice he attacked had come to involve the atonement of sins through payment, and he objected to the way the so-called Peter's Indulgence was being preached. On 31 October 1517 he wrote to Archbishop Albrecht and enclosed the theses. That date is the vigil of All Saints. Printing then carried the theses well beyond the university, though perhaps more slowly than the legend suggests.^{[2, 9–12]}

What it marks

For Protestants the day recalls the opening of the Reformation, and in popular memory that opening is the picture of Luther nailing his theses to the Castle Church door. The picture rests chiefly on Philip Melanchthon, who reported a posting after Luther's death in 1546. Church doors did serve as university noticeboards, and posting theses for a debate was ordinary practice. Historians nevertheless disagree. Erwin Iserloh rejected the posting in the 1960s, and Richard Rex finds no credible evidence for it. Volker Leppin and Timothy Wengert judge that the arguments for and against are equally good, and that the question cannot be settled.^{[1, 7, 13–14]}

How it came to be

The annual observance took root in Saxony. In 1667, the 150th anniversary of the theses, the elector John George II decreed that the event be commemorated each year on 31 October throughout his lands. The order of service at the Dresden court chapel in the 1660s and 1670s opened with Luther's hymn "Ein feste Burg", his paraphrase of Psalm 46. Swiss Reformed churches, which had never kept 31 October, set their own Reformation Sunday in the late nineteenth century on the first Sunday of November, close to the German date.^{[8, 15–16]}

How it is kept

Wittenberg church door with wreath, choir insideIllustration · AI-generated

Protestants around the world mark the day, and the Lutheran World Federation describes it as an occasion for Lutherans to affirm their faith identity, in varied local ways. Some Protestant churches, among them the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Methodist Church, keep Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of October. Red is named as the liturgical colour for the day in a Presbyterian youth resource and in the United Church of Christ's guide to colours.^{[3–4, 17]}

Across traditions

In Germany the day is a legal holiday in Saxony and Brandenburg, among other eastern states, and in 2017, for the 500th anniversary, several states made it a one-time holiday. Slovenia keeps it as a public holiday. The reformer Primož Trubar produced the first Slovenian printed books in 1550, and on the day Slovenians commemorate the birth of their language.^{[5–6, 18–19]}

Sources

Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.