There are two conventional views of history. One view sees great men and women as the agents of historical changes; the other view of history is that events shape the circumstances in which the major players emerge. Both of course have their validity, and in fact we need to use both points of view to understand an event as important as the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther broke away from the Roman Catholic Church gradually in a series of events and decisions that he could not have foreseen when he began questioning his own fitness for salvation. Born the son of a humble copper miner in 1483 in the village of Eisleben in Saxony - now a part of Germany - Luther went to the prestigious university of Erfurt, where he earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees (Bainton 269).
He became a Catholic monk after a traumatic life-altering experience in a violent thunderstorm at the age of 22.
The Christianity of his day was a far cry from the warm and fuzzy rock masses and other pleasantly attractive measures used by both Catholics and Protestants today to lure young people into their respective churches. In the Middle Ages, life was short, and death a much more familiar companion with the average person than it is now in Western industrial societies. In fact the Church emphasized the transitory, unimportant nature of this world, and persistently called upon the faithful to contemplate "the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and the eternal fire" (ibid.).
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