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The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences (Latin: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum) are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church which profoundly changed Europe. They advance Luther's positions against what he saw as abusive practices by preachers selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates believed to reduce the temporal punishment for sins committed by the purchasers themselves or their loved ones in purgatory. In the Theses, Luther claimed that the repentance required by Christ in order for sins to be forgiven involves inner spiritual repentance rather than merely external sacramental confession. He argued that indulgences lead Christians to avoid true repentance and sorrow for sin, believing that they can forgo it by purchasing an indulgence. They also, according to Luther, discourage Christians from giving to the poor and performing other acts of mercy, believing that indulgence certificates were more spiritually valuable. Though Luther claimed that his positions on indulgences accorded with those of the pope, the Theses challenge a fourteenth-century papal bull stating that the pope could use the treasury of merit and the good deeds of past saints to forgive temporal punishment for sins. The Theses are framed as propositions to be argued in debate rather than necessarily representing Luther's opinions, but Luther later clarified his views in the Explanations of the Disputation Concerning the Value of Indulgences. More...

• 1486 – Birth of theologian and reformer Martin Luther
• 1759 – Birth of poet Friedrich Schiller
• 1887 – Birth of author Arnold Zweig
• 1918 – Birth of chemist Ernst Otto Fischer, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• 1955 – Birth of film director, screenwriter, and producer Roland Emmerich

• ... that, when Martin Lehmann became the 29th Kreuzkantor of the Dresdner Kreuzchor, he programmed music by his predecessors across three centuries?
• ... that Rossini in Wildbad is an annual festival of bel canto opera held at the spa in Bad Wildbad, where Gioachino Rossini stayed in 1856?
• ... that Stephan Steinlein, Germany's current ambassador to France, held the exact same diplomatic post for East Germany three decades ago?
• ... that a statue of Saint Christopher by Albrecht von Nürnberg was stripped of the Christ Child after the Reformation and turned into a Swiss mercenary?
• ... that the English edition of Gottlob Herbert Bidermann's Eastern Front memoir includes events absent from the German original, added 36 years later from interviews with him?
• ... that Anny Schlemm, simultaneously a member of the Komische Oper Berlin from 1949 and the Oper Frankfurt from 1952, performed 135 roles between 1946 and 2003? 7 Oct
• ... that Carola von Braun was appointed in 1984 as the first women's representative of the Senate of West Berlin?
• ... that Angela Merkel was present when Günter Bannas retired as head of the national parliamentary office of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung?
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