Whois & Analysis for reformation.org

The Book of Daniel is a biblical apocalypse, combining a prophecy of history with an eschatology (the study of last things) which is both cosmic in scope and political in its focus.

In more mundane language, it is "an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, a noble Jew exiled at Babylon." In the Hebrew Bible it is found in the Ketuvim (writings), while in Christian Bibles it is grouped with the Major Prophets.

Its message is that just as the God of Israel saved Daniel and his friends from their enemies, so he would save all of Israel in their present oppression.

Pope Leo X (11 December 1475 – 1 December 1521), born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was Pope from 9 March 1513 to his death in 1521.

The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler of the Florentine Republic, he was elevated to the cardinalate in 1489.

Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520) was the second of the three major treatises published by Martin Luther in 1520, coming after the Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (August 1520) and before On the Freedom of a Christian (November 1520).

It was a theological treatise, and as such was published in Latin as well as German, the language in which the treatises were written.

The Diet of Worms 1521 was an imperial diet (assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire held at the Heylshof Garden in Worms, then an Imperial Free City of the Empire.

An imperial diet was a formal deliberative assembly of the whole Empire.

This one is most memorable for the Edict of Worms (Wormser Edikt), which addressed Martin Luther and the effects of the Protestant Reformation.

The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church which profoundly changed Europe.

They advance Luther's positions against what he saw as abusive practices by preachers selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates believed to reduce the temporal punishment for sins committed by the purchasers themselves or their loved ones in purgatory.

In the Theses, Luther claimed that the repentance required by Christ in order for sins to be forgiven involves inner spiritual repentance rather than merely external sacramental confession.

He argued that indulgences lead Christians to avoid true repentance and sorrow for sin, believing that they can forgo it by purchasing an indulgence.

They also, according to Luther, discourage Christians from giving to the poor and performing other acts of mercy, believing that indulgence certificates were more spiritually valuable.

Though Luther claimed that his positions on indulgences accorded with those of the pope, the Theses challenge a fourteenth-century papal bull stating that the pope could use the treasury of merit and the good deeds of past saints to forgive temporal punishment for sins.

The Theses are framed as propositions to be argued in debate rather than necessarily representing Luther's opinions, but Luther later clarified his views in the Explanations of the Disputation Concerning the Value of Indulgences.