Thinkers Timeline

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a German friar, theologian, and biblical scholar whose objections to Catholic practice became the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation — a movement that reshaped European Christianity, politics, and culture, and whose effects continue to the present day. He was born at Eisleben in Saxony on 10 November 1483, the son of Hans Luder, a copper miner who eventually became a small mine owner, and Margarethe Luder. His father intended him for a legal career and sent him to study at the University of Erfurt, where he completed a master's degree in 1505. In July 1505, caught in a thunderstorm, he was thrown from his horse and vowed to Saint Anne that he would become a monk if she saved him. Two weeks later, against his father's wishes, he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. He was ordained priest in 1507, completed a doctorate in theology at Wittenberg in 1512, and was appointed professor of biblical studies at the new University of Wittenberg, where he remained for the rest of his life. His extensive study of scripture — particularly Paul's letter to the Romans — combined with his own spiritual struggles produced the theological breakthrough that would become the foundation of Protestant Christianity. On 31 October 1517, he sent a letter with his Ninety-Five Theses — academic propositions for debate, originally intended to challenge the sale of indulgences — to his archbishop; whether he actually nailed them to the church door at Wittenberg is uncertain. The theses spread rapidly through new printing technology, and what began as a scholarly dispute became a European crisis. In 1521 he refused to recant before the Diet of Worms, was excommunicated, and was sheltered at Wartburg Castle by his prince Frederick the Wise, where he translated the New Testament into German. He married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, in 1525; they had six children. Over the following twenty-five years he wrote extensively — biblical commentaries, sermons, treatises, hymns, and the Small and Large Catechisms. He died in 1546 at Eisleben, the town of his birth. His legacy is deeply contested. He transformed European Christianity, made the Bible broadly accessible in German, and articulated principles that would shape modern ideas about conscience and authority. He also produced shockingly anti-Jewish writings in his later years that provided material for subsequent antisemitic use, and his political theology helped legitimise the brutal suppression of the 1524-1525 Peasants' War. Engaging honestly with Luther requires holding both dimensions of his legacy together.

Huldrych Zwingli was a Swiss priest and reformer. He is one of the three central figures of the Protestant Reformation, along with Martin Luther and John Calvin. He was born in 1484 in a small Alpine village in eastern Switzerland. He died in 1531, fighting in battle at the age of 47. Zwingli came from a prosperous farming family. He was a clever child and was sent away to study. He attended universities in Vienna and Basel, where he learned the new humanist scholarship of the early sixteenth century. He became a Catholic priest in 1506. In 1519 he became the main preacher at the great church in Zürich, then a small but proud city-state. Working independently of Luther in Germany, Zwingli began calling for major reforms in the Church. He led Zürich into a sweeping break with Rome. Under his guidance, Zürich removed statues and images from its churches. It banned the old Catholic Mass. It reorganised church and city government together. Zwingli died on the battlefield at Kappel in 1531, during a war between Protestant and Catholic Swiss cantons. He was killed as a chaplain carrying weapons. His death is one of the most striking facts about him.

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, was a Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic, reformer, and writer whose works on contemplative prayer are among the classics of Christian spiritual literature. She was born in Ávila, in central Spain, into a family of converted Jewish heritage on her father's side — a background that carried dangers in Inquisition Spain and may have shaped her guarded approach to certain topics in her writing. Her paternal grandfather had been condemned by the Inquisition for reverting to Judaism; her father had purchased a certificate of hidalgo nobility to escape the associated disabilities. Teresa grew up devout and imaginative, famously attempting as a child to run away with her brother to become martyrs in North Africa. At twenty she entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation in Ávila, where she spent nearly three decades living under the relaxed observance that had developed in many Spanish convents — with private cells, social visits, and considerable laxity about the original Carmelite rule. A serious illness in her early years as a nun nearly killed her and left lasting physical problems. In her middle years, around 1554, a period of intense spiritual experiences began — visions, locutions, and states she called the prayer of quiet and the prayer of union. In 1562 she founded the Convent of Saint Joseph in Ávila on a strict reformed observance of the Carmelite rule, beginning what would become the Discalced Carmelite reform. Over the following twenty years she founded sixteen more convents across Spain, negotiating with bishops, royal officials, financial backers, and opposing Carmelites. She also wrote extensively: The Book of Her Life (1565), The Way of Perfection (written for her nuns), The Interior Castle (1577, her most mature work), and detailed letters. She travelled constantly, organised effectively, and wrote with a distinctive combination of deep contemplative experience and practical wisdom. She died at Alba de Tormes in 1582, was canonised in 1622, and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970 — one of the first women to receive that recognition.

Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita was a Kongolese Christian prophetess and political leader. She founded the Antonian movement, which imagined Christianity in Kongolese terms. She was born around 1684 near the mountain of Kibangu, in the Kingdom of Kongo (in what is now northern Angola and the western Democratic Republic of the Congo). Her family was of Kongolese nobility, though not wealthy. She was baptised Beatriz, following the Catholic faith of the Kongolese kings, but her Kikongo name was Kimpa Vita. The Kingdom of Kongo in her time was in deep crisis. A civil war that had begun in 1665 was still going on. The ancient capital, São Salvador, lay abandoned. Rival families fought for the throne. The wars produced thousands of captives, many of whom were sold into the Atlantic slave trade. Kongo had been officially Christian since 1491, but the Italian Capuchin missionaries often dismissed local religious practices as witchcraft. As a young woman, Kimpa Vita was trained as a nganga marinda, a Kongolese religious medium who consulted the spirit world for community healing. In August 1704, when she was about 20, she fell seriously ill. She said she died and came back to life. Now, she said, she was possessed by Saint Anthony, the popular Italian Catholic saint. Through her, Saint Anthony preached. She led a remarkable movement that reoccupied São Salvador in 1705. She won thousands of followers, including peasants and some nobles. In 1706, she was captured by King Pedro IV with help from the Capuchin missionaries. A church tribunal condemned her. She was burned at the stake on 2 July 1706, aged about 22. Her infant son, born just weeks before her capture, was spared.