October is my favorite month–maybe because the weather and the leaves change (and I celebrate another birthday). It’s also the month of the Protestant Reformation and Halloween. Martin Luther chose the date wisely for nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg.
“Martin Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church (also called Castle Church) on October 31, 1517. This was the eve of All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day (the origin of the name “Halloween”). It was a time when Christians were particularly focused on their dead. The unfortunate thing was that, by Luther’s time, there was tremendous confusion about just what happened to believers after death – ultimately moving Luther to address the misconceptions associated with the afterlife.”
To learn more about The Protestant Reformation and how it connects to Halloween, visit the Crosswalk link above.
Without printing, would there have been a Protestant Reformation?
Only a century earlier, both John Wycliffe and John Hus spawned movements of intense spiritual fervor and wrote prolifically. But the absence of adequate printing technology limited the distribution of their works. Wycliffe was condemned, Hus burned at the stake, and history casts both as mere harbingers of the main event…
Johannes Gutenberg pioneered printing with movable type in Mainz, Germany, in the mid-fifteenth century. Within a few decades, the new technology spread throughout all of Europe; virtually all major cities in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and England had presses. Suddenly there were many more books in the world, and each book took less time to produce…
A single working press might produce 3,600 pages a day, whereas a monk might have copied four or five. It took early printers themselves several decades to come to terms with the press’s full potential for speed and new design; the earliest printed books imitated their manuscript counterparts. But by the time of the Reformation, printing was a fully developed business enterprise with established conventions.,,
Luther, who would later use the printing press with great success, was initially surprised at its effectiveness; within two weeks of the posting of his 95 Theses, they were printed without his permission and distributed throughout Germany.
~from The Reformation Room
In light of the history of both Halloween and the Reformation, it seems appropriate during this time to remember and rejoice over those who have died in Christ, both heroes of the faith and loved ones – for in biblical terms, all Christians are called “saints” and the blessing of heaven awaits us after death (until God gives us new glorious bodies to live on a new earth).
~from Crosswalk
As we head into the month of Thanksgiving and gratitude, from my author point of view, I’m so grateful for the printing press’ invention that allows our words to go out to the world.
Copyright 2022, Lynn U. Watson
Photos from Pixabay