Commenting on the popular belief that Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, P. Finton Lyons, a Catholic monk who has a PhD in Reformed theology and taught Reformation History in the Angelicum University and the Pontifical Liturgical Institute, Rome, and member of the Pentecostal-Roman catholic International Commission, wrote:
Despite the tradition that he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church, he never referred directly to having done so, but he did send letters to the relevant bishops, Albrecht of Mainz and Hieronymus of Brandenburg, enclosing copies of the theses and warning Albrecht in a covering letter: ‘What a horror, what a danger for a bishop to permit the loud noise of indulgences among his people, while the gospel is silenced’. (LW 48:43-49) This source for the traditional account of the nailing o the theses to the chapel door was his friend Melanchthon, writing an introduction to his works among years later, but there has been a discovery of a note by Luther’s secretary in his later years, apparently confirming the tradition. But neither man was in Wittenberg at the time. (Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, 1) (P. Fintan Lyons, Martin Luther: His Challenge Then and Now [Dublin: Columba Press, 2017], 56)
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