Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Religion: Luther: Giant of His Time and Ours
Half a millennium after his birth, the first Protestant is still a towering force
It was a back-room deal, little different from many others struck at the time, but it triggered an upheaval that altered irrevocably the history of the Western world. Albrecht of Brandenburg, a German nobleman who had previously acquired a dispensation from the Vatican to become a priest while underage and to head two dioceses at the same time, wanted yet another favor from the Pope: the powerful archbishop's chair in Mainz. Pope Leo X, a profligate spender who needed...
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