German friar and theology professor whose 1517 protest against the sale of indulgences sparked the Protestant Reformation — built on three ideas: that salvation comes through faith alone, that scripture alone holds authority, and that every believer stands directly before God — and whose legacy includes both a revolution in religious liberty and a record of virulent antisemitism that the Nazis later cited approvingly.
In April 1521, a German monk stood before the Holy Roman Emperor and the assembled princes of Christendom at the Diet of Worms. He was ordered to recant his writings. He refused. 'Here I stand,' he reportedly said. 'I can do no other.' Whether he said precisely those words is disputed, but what he did was not: he held his ground against an authority that had the power to burn him alive. Within a decade, half of Europe had broken with Rome. The man who made that possible was not a general, a king, or a conqueror. He was a theology professor who had once been so terrified of God's judgment that he confessed his sins multiple times a day.